Website Traffic Building

Increase Your Tourism Web Traffic Amp Sales Guaranteed

2009-03-03T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Tim Warren

Web sites are a major part of the tourism marketing success strategy used by international tourism promoters in the new millennium: tourism boards, Associations, lodging, tour operators, etc. If your tourism web site does not have these four primary elements clearly and quickly represented, you are missing opportunities and losing sales.

1. Creates a desire to use your tourism services, visit your destination or participate in your unique tourism option

2. Clearly informs prospects of travel and service benefits, options, sites, nature/environment, activities

3. Answer questions and concerns a typical visitor may have

4. Motivates prospects to contact you quickly (not your competitor) for more information, travel options and dates, answer questions and address concerns

If your site achieves all these goals, then the prospects that have visited your site will be more excited, motivated, qualified, informed and much closer to giving you a booking or visiting your country. This article is not about web design and layout theory, but why the written word and consumer psychology is a prime factor in influencing arrivals and sales.

Create a desire to Visit your destination or travel with your company

Prospective travelers may or may not choose to visit your destination based on what they read on your web site usually just your home page.

Read the article Tourist Safety and Security on Adventure Business Consultants, then you'll know how crucial it is to first communicate to prospective travelers that your destination and/or tour is a safe, secure and fun place to visit. With so many global destination choices online and so much international turmoil, you MUST communicate clearly it is a safe and fun destination quickly.

The best place to first communicate safety, security and fun is on your home page, not buried deep in your site. When someone first comes to your web site, you literally have five to twenty seconds to grab their interest and compel them to want to know more about your destination, tours, etc. If you don't grab them on your home page, they are gone. Those prospective tourists are back to surfing the web, seeking out a more interesting, compelling tourism web site and vacation destination.

If you look at your log report, (the statistical report that your internet service provider should make accessible to you) that monitors your web visitors activity, i.e. pages visited, length of time on your site, key words used to find your site, etc., you may notice that the majority of visitors may stay less then a minute. On a poorly written and designed web site, maybe less then fifteen seconds. So grabbing their attention and motivating them to want to know more is the first obstacle and opportunity. Testimonials and photos of happy tourist are perfect for communicating safety and experience quickly. Use them liberally.

Tourism Web Site Must Clearly inform

One of the prime reasons people travel is to experience "something different" from their ordinary life and location. Active and ecotourists want to learn about new cultures, see different houses, hear and speak a different language, reflect on ancient religions and buildings, marvel at unbroken vistas, or try a new activity. This is exactly what most ecotourism operator and destinations are selling and what you must communicate to your web visitors.

Too many web sites that give web visitors unknown destinations instead of activities or types of regions. Most people surfing your web site are not going to know, for example, what they'll find in Hosgol, Khenti, or the Gobi which are major regions of Mongolia I discovered during two consulting projects I did there for their tourism Association and ministry. You be better off to define what type of regions they are and what they have to offer. Use descriptive words that everyone will understand. For example:

Hosgol Mountains Lakes Fishing Horseback Riding Hiking

Khenti Steppes Rivers Fishing Horseback & Mt. Biking Religious Sites

Gobi Desert Camel Riding Trekking Archeology

You must use descriptive text and compelling words that paint a desirable mental picture.

Summarize your trips in bullets and short headlines and sub- headlines

Use descriptive verbs and compelling words in the body of the text to give substance and details to the headlines and sub-heads.

Effective Tourism Marketing Web Sites -Answer Questions and Concerns

When a prospective tourist is considering a destination, in addition to types of regions and activities, they have additional questions and concerns that must be addressed to earn their visit or booking. The same holds true with Out Bound Booking Agents, but even more so.

Some of these travelers questions and concerns include:

Safety precautions and procedures How you are going to protect their safety? Length of vacation Costs Difficulty of trip Travel options to Ulaan Bataar Lodging hotel, camping or Ger Food vegetarian or special restrictions Water Is it safe? Medical emergency/1st aide resources Qualifications of staff Experience level of company Exchange rates & procedures Times of year to visit Group discounts Children minimum age/experience Insurance needs/options Cancellation policy/minimums for departure In-country transportation & equipment Visa requirements Inoculations/disease precautions language

One of the best ways to deal with all the typical questions you'll get from prospective clients is a Frequently Asked Questions and Answers page FAQ's. You should also create a pre-written response E-mail that responds to these questions and more. Testimonials and pictures that address these questions are great too.

Successful Tourism Marketing - Motivates prospects to Buy

Remember that: Marketing is the actions and steps to getting prospective and qualified visitors/clients to call or e-mail you.

Selling is the transference of enthusiasm from you to the prospect.

Sales is getting those prospective visitors/clients to feel comfortable and excited enough about your destination/or trip, to give your money and book a trip.

Your tourism web site quickly communicates that region and your tours:

Are fun, safe and secure on the home and subsequent pages

Effectively answer questions and concerns

Uses a blend of testimonials and images of happy visitors (especially celebrities and/or recognized media)

When prospects call or e-mail, they will far more motivated and excited. If you are excited in your spoken and written words too, then making a sale is ten times easier. If you or a staff member can effectively speak the foreign language of your prospect, can be excited about what you are selling and can ask for the booking, it would be better to schedule a phone call with serious prospects at your expense whenever possible. This will radically increase your odds of converting that web site visitor into a paying client.

Web site Samples and Resources

See the following web sites for good use of testimonials, compelling headlines, layout, photos and descriptive text that clearly informs prospects of travel options, sites, nature, activities, etc. How a site looks is important, but it is the words and how they are expressed, that is most important.

www.BajaTravelVacations.com/ www.AdventureBizSuccess.com www.Alaskadogsledding.com www.Anotherland.com www.california-river-rafting.com www.tightlinesfishing.com

How-to Create Tourism Web Sites that Sell Guaranteed

Here is one of the best resources to help you define and communicate your most important information to prospective visitors and guests. This will motivate them to call, e-mail and give you a booking: Tourism Marketing Success©2005. http:// www.AdventureBizSuccess.com/tourismmarketingbook.php

This special print or E-book will take you step by step through the process and helps you create effective and profitable Tourism marketing communications for brochures web sites, tradeshow booths, advertising, videos and more.

Tourism Web Site Check List for Success

Web sites are a major part of the marketing success strategy used by international tourism promoters.

Prospective travelers may or may not choose to visit your region or use your tour, based on what they read on your web site usually just your home page.

Your web site quickly communicates that your destinations and tours are fun, safe and secure.

Your web site effectively answers questions and concerns.

The best place to first communicate safety, security and fun is on your home page, not buried deep in your site.

You must use descriptive text and compelling words that paint a desirable mental picture.

Summarize your trips in bullets and short headlines and sub-headlines

Use descriptive verbs and compelling words in the body of the text to give substance and details to the headlines and sub-heads.

One of the best ways to deal with all the typical questions you'll get from prospective clients is a Frequently Asked Questions and Answers page FAQ's.

Don't forget that your web site must show up in the top 1 20 positions of directories and search engines from a relevant key word search. Without this, no matter how well written and laid out your web site is, you will loose out on the majority of prospective clients. See www.AdventureBizSuccess.com for articles on search engine success and more E-marketing strategies for tourism professionals.

Since 1994, Tim Warren and Adventure Business Consultants, has helped dozen's of ecotourism, adventure travel, nature and cultural tour operators, travel agents, destinations, tourism associations and boards with training, consulting and creating exceptional marketing material. Click Here For Free Bimonthly E-zine Outdoor Tourism Marketing Business Success - http://www.AdventureBizSuccess.com">http:// http://www.AdventureBizSuccess.com

News, tips, tools and specials that you can use to increase your tourism marketing and business success. 800-707-7570.

Link Exchange A Better Way For 2006

2009-03-02T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by John Schwartz

While traditional link exchanges still hold some value, it may be time to add a different tactic to your link-building arsenal. Why? Because it appears that swapping links doesn't provide quite as much 'oomph!' for moving up in the search engine rankings that it used to, at least not for sites in highly competitive niches. Many sites that were on the first page of results and relied heavily on exchanging links have lost those coveted positions after recent search engine updates (especially the 'Jagger' update at Google).

Disclaimer: Only employees who are in the know at the search engines can say with certainty which factors determine rankings. The decrease in link exchange benefit is speculation based on testing and some consensus among 'experts' outside of the engines.

Build More One-Way Links

Assuming that it's true about link exchanges becoming an obsolete way to get higher search engine rankings, it's wise to find ways to build one-way inbound links. At the very least, no web site owner should rely completely on one form of link gathering. It's never smart to put all of one's eggs in the same basket, after all.

The rub here is that most site owners still pursue link swaps as their 'bread-and-butter' means of building links. That can play against you in your own link strategy if you don't continue to offer exchanges. What to do?

What you need is a sort of hybrid approach. That is, find a way to appeal to the barter mindset of exchanging something of value for something else of value that most web site owners have ingrained in their modes of thinking. Along those lines, here's a great way to continue building links without swapping them: offer original, unique content in exchange for a one-way link.

Trade Content for Links Instead

Here's how it works...

Instead of offering to exchange links on your links page, write a short notice that you will write a few hundred words of original, exclusive content (300-500 is plenty) that the other site owner may use on his or her site. In exchange, they must post a link to your site on either their home page or another important page that is linked directly from the home page. Make it clear that your link must not appear on their links page, where it would just share space with many others. For the value to be equal, your link should get special handling in exchange for that great page of new content.

Now, expect not to get too many takers at this stage. The link exchange notion is pretty ingrained in most site owners. That being the case, there's another part of this strategy you should definitely pursue.

Be proactive! Seek out related sites from which you'd love to have a link, and approach the site owner or webmaster with an offer to write a page of high quality content in exchange for a return link. We've been following this strategy for months with our network of sites and the results are impressive! You can expect a much higher rate of agreement from this approach than the tired old "I love your site! let's exchange links!" routine, which is increasingly too time consuming to be worth the effort.

Some Important Points

First, follow through and write truly excellent content. Don't just dash off a quick article that doesn't convey useful and interesting information. Savvy web site owners will quickly refuse to post your link if you abuse the situation in this way.

Second, make the content you give away original and exclusive. This is your 'hook' your best selling point. If you try to give a site owner the same content that appears somewhere else, you'll lose a wonderful opportunity to get a great one-way link.

Perhaps the most important point of all is to use this strategy only with closely related sites that have high quality content. Be picky! Start by checking out the top ranked sites in your niche. Search Google or another major search engine to get a list of the top sites, then visit each one and, if you deem it worthy, find their contact information and send a short, polite inquiry to see if they are interested in an exchange of content for a link back to your site.

When other site owners approach you from the notice on your links page - again, be picky. You'll be spending some of your valuable time to write them a page of high quality content. You will want a high quality link in return. If a site does not meet your high standards, take a pass. In all cases, if you agree to the content-for-link exchange, always request a link from their home page. It's the best possible place for your link and, at worst, the other site owner will refuse and suggest a different page. It can't hurt to ask!

Ultimately, the real long-term value in following this link-building strategy is the return on your investment of time. The relatively short amount of time you invest in writing the content you give away may produce dividends in traffic and higher search engine rankings that last for years. Viewed from that perspective, doesn't this make good sense?

John Schwartz is a professional writer and web site publisher. If you need higher search engine rankings to increase web site traffic, you must have lots of original content and links. Find out how to get more of both - visit http://www.web-article-writer.com today.

My Top 12 Web Site Marketing Strategies Part 2

2009-03-01T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Herman Drost

Part 2

7. Ezine Ads - create an ad for your product and find ezines that cater to your target market. Write several ads and track them until you find one that pulls well.

8. Signature file - include this all your online and offline correspondence. Set up your email client so that it does this automatically each time you send out an email. Include your name, who you are, what your business is about, a way to subscribe to your newsletter, your web site address and your email.

Link strategies

9. Write articles - ezine publishers are always looking for original content. You can include a link back to your web site in your signature file. If several ezine publishers (that may have thousands of subscribers) publish your article, you can get hundreds of links pointing back to your web site.

10. Reciprocal linking - get links from other sites that compliment yours. ie if you just offer web design and someone else offers search engine optimization you could exchange links with each other, thus adding to the quality of each of your sites.

11. Forums - offer your help to other forum participants then leave a link back to your site in your signature file. Popular forums are spidered regularly by the search engines, thus giving your site a link boost.

12. Offline marketing

Not all your customers are online. Market offline by including your web site information on all stationary ie letterhead, and business cards. Place ads in newspapers, trade publications, send out postcards, fliers and get involved in local organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce. You can even set up your own local club or be a guest speaker for others.

Continuously evaluate, test and refine your web site marketing strategies so that you can apply them to any product. These are the keys to building a successful online business.

Here are the 6 Web Site Marketing Strategies discussed in Part 1 of this article.

Herman Drost is the author of the popular ebook: 101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles at: subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

Increase Your Website Traffic And Get Sales

2009-02-28T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Rick Hendershot

No matter what you sell or are trying to promote online, you want visitors to your website -- traffic. And you want to turn that traffic into sales. To turn your website and other online activities into a powerful traffic and sales generating system, the simple fact is you need an aggressive website promotion program that is ongoing and relentless.

Website promotion is not brain surgery, but it must be done correctly. Here are six of the main components that should be emphasized in a good website promotion program:

1. Know Your Product, Define it Clearly
2. Use Powerful Copy in Your Website, and Sales Materials
3. Create an Aggressive Link Program
4. Write Articles and Submit Them Everywhere
5. Turn Site Visitors into Leads
6. Get Instant Traffic with PPC Advertising

**1. Know your product and define it clearly

Many of us have difficulty telling other people exactly what we do. Imagine you're at a party, a meeting, or on the golf course and you get asked the inevitable question, "So, what does your company do?" What happens? Do you stumble around trying to remember what you told the last guy who asked that question? Or do you have a clear, precise and memorable answer that you can recite back to them in one or two sentences.

It goes without saying that your clarity or confusion will be reflected in your website promotion. Make it one of your primary objectives to develop a clear explanation of your product or service, and your website promotion will fall nicely into place as a result.

**2. Promote your product with powerful copy

If you want your website to create sales, then the job of your most important pages is to get your primary selling message across quickly and powerfully before your impatient visitors click on to another site.

For your people audience you must get to the point quickly and precisely, and with sufficient emphasis to impress your visitors that you know what you are talking about.

The search engines also demand a clear product definition and clear product descriptions. But in this case the result should be search engine optimized copy. This is because the search engines do not read between the lines. They look for clear indications of what your pages are about. And they make their decisions on the basis of "keywords".

If the task of "optimizing" your website seems too daunting, then look for a website promotion expert who can bundle this service with other promotional services.

**3. Create an aggressive link program

Getting links from "relevant" sites serves two important purposes. First, relevant links create an important source of direct traffic. A visitor to a related site will see the link to yours, click on it, and become your visitor. Some estimates put the percentage of internet traffic resulting from this kind of link as high as 21% of total traffic.

The other important purpose of your linking strategy is to impress the search engines. Links to and from other sites indicate other site owners in your area of interest consider your site worth looking at. That is why Google and the other major search engines give a much better ranking to sites with incoming links from relevant high traffic sites.

The bad news is a productive link building program takes quite a bit of time and effort, and will take up to six months or more to do properly.

The good news is there are website promotion professionals who will plan and execute a link building program for you as part of a package of promotion services. This makes it very economical. But it will still not happen overnight. Link building is an ongoing long term project.

**4. Write Articles in your field of expertise, and distribute them wherever you can

Publishing articles in online publications, directories and ezines is one of the most effective and least expensive kinds of website promotion. It is a perfect way to generate interest in your site, and create traffic.

Well written articles can be used to highlight various aspects of your products or services. At the same time you will establish yourself as an authority in your field. And the articles you write and publish today will continue to be available on the web for years to come.

Distributing articles is also an important way to create incoming links. Other websites and ezines publish your articles and in the process create links pointing back to your website. Why? Because when you write your article you make sure to embed a link or two pointing back to your site. Often this is done in what is called the "Resource Box" -- a short bio of the author that contains a low key pitch for your products or services.

But writing and distributing articles is not for everyone. It is a very time-consuming activity, and if you are not much of a writer it will cost some money to have someone write articles for you.

One interesting alternative is our own program in which we embed sponsor links in relevant articles. This is probably the easiest and least expensive way to get the benefits of article distribution without the pain and aggravation of actually having to write original articles.

**5. Turn visitors into leads

The online sales process starts with traffic visitors to your site. But traffic is not enough. You want to turn some of these visitors into leads. A "lead" is a visitor who expresses an interest by contacting you. This puts them in "most-likely-to-buy" category, and gives you a clearly defined group of people you can target with more specific sales messages.

To capture leads you need a carefully planned strategy. You need to get beyond the usual "send us an email for more information" approach.

Simple online forms backed up with autoresponders are perfect for this task. Normally this involves offering some tip or free information course, or possibly a free piece of software.

In order to receive the free gift the website visitor must fill in a short form giving you their name and email address. Then the autoresponder automatically sends out a message containing or pointing to the free gift, along with a presentation of your product. You can also program the autoresponder to send out a series of messages so your promotional pitch is placed in front of them a number of times.

**6. Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising for instant traffic

Pay-Per-Click advertising especially Google Adwords can be an amazingly powerful tool to reach your exact target market and generate pre-qualified, targeted leads almost instantly.

But this service is also becoming increasingly expensive. And when you make mistakes they can be very costly. There are ways of maximizing your Google Adwords results. These techniques can save you thousands of dollars, and greatly increase the effectiveness of your Adwords campaigns.

The best website promotion program is one that combines all six of these techniques into an organized program. If you are too busy getting your business started, or too busy servicing your clients, then your best bet is to look for a website promotion professional who can prepare and maintain a program for you.

Rick Hendershot publishes Linknet News | Link Aufbau - Pagerank-Optimierung durch Aufbau von Links | Web Reviews and Product Reviews and Promotions.

5 Little Known Ways To Generate Free Traffic

2009-02-27T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Jo Han Mok

Most people have the notion that generating traffic is a one-off event, and it involves spending huge sums of money on advertising.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

First of all, it's possible to open up streams of autopilot traffic geometrically, surely and steadily over time.

Secondly, it costs next to nothing to do it, if you know how.

Here are 5 instantly implementable methods to open up new traffic streams without needing to spend a dime.

Free Traffic Method #1: Contribute Content

Writing an ebook is a time consuming and arduous task. In comparison, writing a chapter of rock solid content is much easier and more achievable.

I've personally been invited to contribute content to many people's info-products, usually in the form of 'chapters', and this has resulted in a lots of quality traffic that is not only free, but presold.

While I understand that a person who is little known might not receive invitations to contribute, one can always solicit permission for your content to be included by publishers.

It's all a phone call and email away, and if your content is good and your approach is right, a rejection is unlikely, and even if it happens, it's not gonna kill you, so just tell yourself 'next' and move on.

Free Traffic Method #2: Give away Free viral Reports

Put your best content into reports and give it away.

Articles are great, but when you package them as Portable Document Files, there is a greater "perceived value".

Give away free reports. Allow people to give away your free report to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the internet.

Obviously, your reports will have to be 'viral' in order for that to happen.

The best way to make your reports viral, is to include a monetary incentive.

The links within the reports can be made brandable, and it'll be to your advantage to find some sort of multi-tier affiliate program that will increase your earnings exponentially, because you make money when the person giving away your reports makes money.

It's a win win situation, and also allows you to use these magic words "make money by giving this report away".

Free Traffic Method #3: Help Other Publishers

It may surprise you, but your own website visitors may be info publishers as well.

Help them help you by using these magic words, "Use Our Free Content On Your Site Or In Your E-zine" Allow your visitors to use your articles on their own web site or in their e-zine. Just ask them to include your resource box. This will spread your advertising like wildfire all over the internet.

Free Traffic Method #4: Offer Testimonials

If you're reading this article, chances are you're an info-junkie. If you've bought lots of info products, why not offer an unsolicited testimonial to the info-product creator?

Simply include your URL under your name when giving the testimonial, and if it's used, you'll have additional exposure, and traffic.

Obviously, you'd only give a testimonial to a product that you think has value and is good, and not endorse anything or everything under the sun.

Testimonials can bring you traffic and top of the mind awareness, so don't underestimate the use of something as simple as this.

Free Traffic Method #5: Syndicate Your Content

A word of caution: don't use JavaScript. Why not? Because search engines don't 'see' JavaScript, so JavaScript feeds are useless for SEO. To make newsfeeds visible to search engines, their text has to be embedded into your page.

FACT: If you view the source of your page and you don't see the actual text of the newsfeed, then search engines aren't going to see it either.

Intead, do try using Real Simple syndication, or RSS. It's the buzzword on the Internet. RSS is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing things like news headlines and other web page content.

You have a variety of opportunities for increasing traffic to your website. Publishing your own feed is a great way to cut through all the noise and clutter and get your message directly to your target market. On the other end of the spectrum, importing feeds from other sites or even other parts of your own site and displaying them on your webpages can increase your search engine rankings by automatically keeping your website full of fresh, relevant information

If you're a little lazy and not too motivated, you'll be glad to know that regardless of what topic or subject matter you've built your website around, there's valuable content out there... articles and information written by an "expert" in that particular field.

Because a large portion of it is available through the magic of RSS feed capability - YOU don't have to create the content yourself! Yes, you can profit from other people's content.

There you have it, 5 easy ways to start getting free traffic fast.

Now, go get it!

About The Author

Jo Han Mok is a frequent guest and featured speaker at Internet Marketing bootcamps and conferences on subjects such as copywriting and Joint Venture Marketing. Find out how he can help you flood your website with red hot traffic that is 'primed' to buy at

http://www.InstantVisitorSurge.com

11 Quick Tips To Drive More Return Traffic To Your Business Website

2009-02-26T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Christoph Puetz

Sometimes you need a kick start to get of the ground when promoting your new business website. Use these 11 tips to get started. A combination of several tips will most likely guarantee return visitors on your website. Return visitors most likely mean more sales.

1. Build a solid business foundation before starting. Create a business plan (this should be document revisited every quarter), marketing plan, client profile, and a site map for your web site.

2. Be very consistent. Brand your company and stick to it.

3. Create acceptable and easy to understand policies the build trust: Customer Service, Code of Ethics and a Privacy Policy.

4. Network locally to bring people to your site. Start with the local chamber of commerce as an example.

5. Place your website's URL address on all your printed business literature -- business cards, brochures, newsletters, letterhead, invoices, ads, etc.!

6. Offer added values that are related to your business and the ideal client (target group). A solid resource database helping clients getting most out of your services could be a good start. Maybe offer products. A FTP software for a web hosting client makes perfect sense as they can use it to conveniently upload their files to the hosting web server.

7. Add a "Recommend This Site to a friend" script on your site. If someone visits your site and knows someone else who may appreciate it, this feature will email the page's link to the recipient. Easy access to a tool like this could increase 'word of mouth' advertising.

8. Setup monthly chats about related topics or install bulletin boards (forums) to build a relationships and community. This will attach customers to your business. Invite industry specific folks to a chat so that they can answer customer questions. This is a perk nobody can resist.

9. Teach classes in colleges or schools or speak to groups about subjects relating to your products and services. Students suddenly turn into customers and/or spread the word ....

10. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on your site. As a web host you could have contest for who has the best web design on your servers. People like to show off. Use this behavior to attract new clients.

11. Participate in online forums as an expert. Do not SPAM the forums with your advertising messages. Use the signature to quietly promote your services. Once people see you as a valuable member with lots of information and start trusting you, they will start trusting you their business.

This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com is provided. (this note can be removed as long as a link from the author's resource box is provided)

Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.

Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com

Increase Online Traffic With Directory Listings

2009-02-25T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Anita DeFrank

Some of the best advertising available online would be getting listed in directories. This doesn't mean submitting to search engines. If you write quality ad copies and build a quality site; the important search engines will find you.

What I am talking about is directories that you pay to be listed in. With these types of directories you pay to be listed in for a certain about of time. Some are weekly, monthly, yearly and even lifetime listings. This is also an excellent way to get those 'back links' to help you rank better in search engines.

It is a proven fact that 'back links' help increase online traffic. But, the back links that are most effective are links to your website without a return link. Take Link Exchanges for example. With Link Exchanges you request one website owner to place a link to your website on their site with a link on your website to their in return. These are effective however, most directory listings that you pay for do not require a link in return and these are a more effective form of backlinks.

Search for directories that best fit the target of your marketing program. Take a look at this list http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/why-purchase-directory-listings.html for example. If your target is for small business owners, home business owners and work at home moms then some of those directories may be of interest to you. The key is to find your market and advertise there.

Still looking for more traffic secrets? Aren't we all?!? For even more secrets to Non-Stop, FREE Targeted Traffic, I highly recommend taking a look at author Jim Edwards's book Turn Words Into Traffic. The targeted traffic it brings you is as good or better than anything you could pay for ... except you don't have to pay for it! Check it out; you'll be glad you did ;-).

Don't be too quick to jump at every program available that might help increase your online traffic. Stop by and find out what NOT TO DO too http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/increase-online-traffic-donts.html

About the Author
Anita DeFrank a WAHM of two and co-owner of DirectSalesHelpers.com which was created specifically for those in Direct Sales. Do you find yourself asking how to make more sales? The above is only a small taste of the wealth of information available at http://www.directsaleshelpers.com. Stop on in if you're serious about your direct sales company and want to know how you can make more sales.

Get Your Site Listed In Google Within 24 Hours Or Less

2009-02-24T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by John Forman

Here is a little tip I picked up while doing some research into web site development and promotion. It is a simple but very effective way to get a web page listed in Google within just a few hours or less.

Search engine submission programs are about as obsolete as the keystroke typewriter. Traditional submission programs are no longer really necessary and do not guarantee inclusion into Google. These days most web pages are found and indexed automatically, when one of Google's greedy little spiders crawl the web looking for fresh new content to devour. Once the Google spider crawls your web site, instantly it is listed into Google according to the rank it gives you and the way in which your pages have been keyword optimized.

The way you can call one of the little information starved Google spiders to come to dinner is to do a search using the Google Toolbar. This will require that you first download and install the Google toolbar. To download the Google Toolbar go to http://toolbar.google.com/. (To learn all more about the various functions of the Google Toolbar go to: http://toolbar.google.com/help.html

How It Works:

After you've downloaded and installed the Google Toolbar, notice the green PageRank strip just above the Google logo. Now rest your mouse cursor on top of the PageRank strip and a text box will appear showing the PageRank number of the site you are on. It shows a PR of between 0 and 10. Very few sites if any have a PageRank of 10. What you eventually want is a 4/10 or above.

To get your web pages quickly indexed or listed into Google and Yahoo, enter the index page URL of your site into the Google Search box. Next, click the Search Web button next to it, and Google will begin searching for your URL.

This action will instantly call the Google Spiders to come search your web pages and immediately your site will get listed into Google... that's it!

YOU ARE NOW INDEXED IN GOOGLE!

You will know when the #1 page (the index page) to your site has been indexed when you look at the Google Toolbar Page Rank indicator. There you will find the bar color is "White". This indicates Google has you indexed. This does not mean you can instantly do a search in Google for your site and see it listed, though. It means your web site has been indexed and is waiting in the queue to appear.

NOTE #1: For reasons unknown to anyone, sometimes your page may not get index for several hours, several days or weeks. Some index within one or two hours. However, you must be patient if your pages do not show they've been indexed.

NOTE #2: At the start, you will not have a Page Rank worth mentioning. That will come from getting inbound links from other sites, among other things. That is a topic for discussion in another article.

This little trick works like a charm. Within about twenty-four hours of my setting up a new site, I was able to see in my statistics that the Google crawler had been there several times. Give it a shot!

John Forman has been developing and promoting web sites covering an array of businesses, organizations, topics, and functions for several years. To see some of the resources and tricks he's picked up along the way, check out the page he's set up to share them here.

Power Packed Linking Strategies Part One

2009-02-23T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Tony Cooper

This is the first in a series of three articles showing you how to find a suitable linking strategy for your website and put it to work for you.

If you've been sitting and wondering why the traffic to your website is trickling in to your website ever so slowly then this article is intended to help you add some much needed oomph to your marketing campaign by using a linking strategy.

You may have heard that linking to other websites can benefit your website. Here are the three main reasons:

Traffic . By linking to sites with similar themes to your own you can develop a hub of traffic that will always remain constant. There's an old saying that "a link lasts for all time" and it's essentially true. There are short termers, shysters and hucksters that try to tilt the playing field but ultimately they are the biggest losers in the link strategy game.

Once links have been placed they generally remain for years to come, feeding your site with a steady stream of reliable traffic. In fact it often happens that some domains which have been given up by their previous owners have thousands of links still pointing to them after many, many years. It may be a slog in the beginning to set up a linking exchange program but you will be rewarded with quality traffic which lasts well into the future.

Popularity. When search engines look at how highly to rank a site on their search engine results pages (serps) they follow an in house algorithm which determines where your site gets placed in the results page. On page factors such as page titles, headings, Meta tags etc all have a bearing on how your page gets ranked but also important is the "popularity" of your website.

The popularity of your site is determined by the links that point to your site. Not just any old links either. The type and quality of the link is also under scrutiny here and so there is no point rushing off and trying to get as many links as possible, you need to track down quality links to your site to gain the best benefit from a linking campaign.

Partnerships. Growing your business in the wired world has many similar facets to establishing a business in a traditional manner.

You need to cultivate and establish your partnerships with other sites to enable growth. Trying to do everything in an insular manner by relying on one method (for example "pay per click") is certain to end your hopes of building a successful website prematurely. It's essential that you seek out like minded businesses and work with them to satisfy your customer.

It's unlikely that you will have all of the necessary requirements in place to satisfy every customer, so just as in the high street, it makes sense to partner with other businesses that can provide the missing components to the overall solution.

Viewed in this way it makes complete sense to seek links with related sites.

For example. A site that specialises in tailored suits would be in a particularly niche market. Saville row tailors are much in demand these days but who would they partner with online?

Traditional linking strategies would have you seeking out similar tailors, maybe from other parts of the country so that you were not in direct competition.

However, thinking laterally, it makes complete sense that someone doing a search on Google for "tailor" would want to see other tailor related sites so that they could compare services.

So an improved linking strategy would be to provide links to related services. For example, one of the most common reasons for getting a new suit is a wedding. So wedding organisers and marquee companies would be good to approach. High class catering services and wedding limousine companies would be other good avenues to explore.

The strategy should be to link with partners who will actually be able to provide a service to your website visitors rather than just linking to a site because you can. As well as the value of the link in your popularity stakes you will also benefit from the increased traffic that the related links provide.

In the next article I examine some practical methods you can use to gain link popularity and traffic

About The Author

Tony Cooper is the Internet Marketing manager at http://www.keywordmarketing.com Building web sites that achieve tangible and accountable results.

tony@storebuilder.co.uk

Planning For Your Websites Future Get Search Engine Traffic

2009-02-22T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Heshy Shayovitz

Five tips to effectively schedule your content.

In order to get traffic on your site you need content. It's that simple the more content you have the longer visitors stay at your site and the more free search engine visitors you receive. So should you just find out what content your visitors like and publish it? No!

Try to get as much content as you can, then schedule it. PHPNuke and other CMSes offer you an option to "program" a story to appear in the future. So it doesn't matter when you write it, it matters when you publish it.

Here are five tips on how to schedule your articles most effectively:

Seasonal If you have articles that is more effective in a season or near a holiday. Then schedule it around that landmark so it will be more pertinent to visitors.
Correspond it to your site events- if your site is launching a new service or product keep articles about the product to coincide with your launch.
Maintain a consistent schedule- If you adopt a frequent schedule then your visitors will visit you more often. Google likes this to and they will send their FreshBot to visit your site often if you have consistently new content. The more frequently you get visited the more free search engine visitors you'll cultivate- especially for timely topics.
Don't overload on one topic Schedule your articles so that you do not display too many stories about the same topic in one period. While some of your visitors may love it, other may not be interested in that topic and may decide not to come back.
Tease your visitors. Show your visitors what's coming in the future so they are encouraged to come back. For example MetOpen offers an upcoming articles section so visitors can see what we are offering in the future. Users of PHPNuke can download MetOpen's free Met Future Articles module.

Copyright © 2004 Heshy Shayovitz. All Rights Reserved. Permission to reprint this article is granted as long as all text above this line is included in its entirety. We would also appreciate your notifying us when you reprint it: please send a note to reprint@metopen.com.

About The Author

Heshy Shayovitz is president of Metropolitan Computer Solutions- a computer consulting firm specializing in giving small business a big business presence on the internet.

metcomp.com

heshy@metcomp.com

4 Cheaper Ways To Get Visitors To Your Website

2009-02-21T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Chet Holcomb

This introduction to getting more traffic to your website without spending a lot of money is what any business on the internet strives towards and we will cover the basics, which will be followed by a more focused look at other ways to get traffic to your site in subsequent articles.

Anonymous to many there are a few ways of attracting visitors to your site that do not require risking a lot of cash. But consider the fact it's not that simple and takes more work on your part. So, if you prefer to work to get traffic to your website, instead of paying for it, then here are a few simple ways to accomplish that:

1. Submit to article directories is perhaps one of the most valuable ways of driving traffic to your website. By writing and submitting articles with a theme associated to your website, you are almost guaranteed of getting traffic to your website for an extended period of time. As long as your articles stays in the directories that you suggest to, people can find it and the odds of receiving traffic to your website is substantial. Some of the submission sites where you can submit to are goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com, dime.com, articlecity.com and Marketingtooltime.com.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a procedure that you apply on your web site pages to rank higher in the search engines. Search engine optimization is not hard to learn and there are several software applications that do a good job of SEO. Search engines first look at your meta tags to determine what your site is about. Here are a few key factors when preparing meta tags:

As you continue to read this article, pay special attention to how parts 1 and 2 relate to one another.

a) Your domain name should have your keyword in it.

b) Title tag for each page of your site should include your keyword.

c) Your keyword should be on the first paragraph of your page.

d) The image alt tags should include your keyword.

e) The directory and file names of each page of your site should also have your keyword.

3.Create a blog that links back to your website. Blog Posts at Blogger.com are readily indexed by Google and other search engines. By updating your blog you are feeding the search engines. and each time you put new content out, the search engines will spot it and th spiders will come. Putting your keywords in the content of your pages will help you rank higher in the search engines. By placing a link in your blog back to your site the search engines will follow the link and your site will get indexed and updated more often . Blogging is painless and it adds a lot of your web pages to the search engine index that and without these pages you will not be found on a keyword search, There are several places to get unlimited blog accounts started with some that are hosted free such as Blogger.com, Another popular blog application is Wordpress.com that is hosted on your website.

4. Posting in forums relevant to your theme will give you the opportunity to place your links, to your products and services in the signature line, so you will get visitors from the forum members and search engine, that follow your link. Make sure the signatures you publish in forums are memorable to magnetize readers and make them click on your related link and come to your website.

These 4 marketing tactics are simple and cheaper ways of getting visitors to your website. By implementing the above strategies on a regular basis would warrant a flow of traffic not only for the brief term but also for the long haul.

Chet Holcomb of Internet Promotions Marketing Tools is a successful marketing expert providing advice for web marketers and webmasters on how to promote your website, or product using marketing tools that work. His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information.

You may reprint this article only if all the authors information is kept intact.

Using Traffic Exchange Programs Part 1

2009-02-20T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Edmund Loh

I have an ingenious concept in store for you!

I am sure that you have heard of Traffic Exchange programs such as Traffic Swarm, No More Hits and Hit Pulse. If you do not what they are just yet, quite simply, Traffic Exchange programs allow you to surf for credits in exchange for traffic to your web pages.

If utilized correctly, these Traffic Exchange programs can bring you effective results in both list-building and sales, free of charge. And I am about to teach you just that.

In this series, I will teach you not only how to earn credits from several Traffic Exchange programs simultaneously without having to cheat but how to organize your list-building campaign effectively.

Have I got your attention? So, here we go!

First Thing's First
===============
Before anything else, you must have your own regular newsletter (also known as e-zine). Do you have one just yet? If you do not have one, then you have to have one right now!

The objective of this series is to gain targeted subscribers to newsletter at no expense. Since you will not be spending any money, the success lies heavily in your efforts.

Also, make sure that your regular newsletter is free for everyone to join.

If you do not have a regular newsletter, you can compensate with a free e-book or a report to give away in exchange for your subscriber names and e-mail addresses. Just be sure that your e-book or report is free and viral in nature so that your subscribers can pass your e-book or report to other people in their network.

In the end, your objective is still to collect a list of targeted subscribers so that you can follow-up with them later when you have products or services to promote.

The reason I use the word "targeted" is because you do not want to get just anybody to subscribe to your newsletter. If you are selling collectible game cards, you will want to get people who are fans of collectible game cards to subscribe to your newsletter and not people who are old enough to be your parents.

Register With A Few Traffic Exchange Programs
=========================================
These are some of the best Traffic Exchange programs I have found to date. You can join as many as you wish as you need not join all of them.

[1] www.trafficswarm.com
[2] www.ts25.com
[3] www.trafficpods.com
[4] www.nomorehits.com
[5] www.fastlanetraffic.com
[6] www.fastfreeway.com

The more programs you join the more credits you can get and in exchange, you can get more traffic to your web page.

If you are not familiar with how a Traffic Exchange Program works in detail, you can learn more from either one of the web sites listed above. They work more or less the same.

In the next series, I will teach you how you can surf for credits at the same time legally and get targeted opt-in subscribers for free.

See you again!

(To be continued in Using Traffic Exchange Programs Part 2)

About the Author:
Edmund Loh is the author of the E-Biz Wiz Blog and Starting An Internet Business Special Report with over 6 years of web designing experience before he engaged in an Internet Business. Visit his website for more online business ideas and reseller tips. http://www.ebizmodelsyoucancopy.com/ebizwiz

Why Resources Added To A Web Site Increase Revenue

2009-02-19T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Vishal P. Rao

There are literally billions of Web sites online now offering all types of products and services. Some succeed brilliantly, while others fail miserably.

There can be many reasons for the failure of some Web sites: poor marketing, poor planning, a weak knowledge of the target market, or just an overall lack of knowledge of business principles by the Web site owner.

One shared trait of successful Web sites, however, is the ability and drive to provide good resources to its visitors. This is a tactic that increases traffic, keeps visitors engaged and coming back, and lends authenticity and reliability to a site. Yet many new (and sometimes "not so new") Web masters neglect this very important facet of Web site development and Internet marketing.

Why? There are many reasons, however, here are the "most" common:

1. A Web master may be unaware that resources when added to a Web site can add value and increase sales. Adding resources, especially those that are Affiliate links to other products or services, is a great way to "backend" sales, by offering visitors more than the main product or service to buy.

2. A Web master may feel (wrongly) that offering other products or services, or including great informational resources may "compete" with their own product or service. They may be reluctant to expose others to resources or products and services that are the "same" as theirs, feeling that the competitor will end up with the sale. This may be true to some extent.

However, the benefits of providing other resources and products or services besides the main product or service greatly outweigh the negatives. Studies have shown that Web sites containing great resources have more return visitors, and greater sales numbers overall.

3. A Web master may not feel comfortable assuming the liability for other products and services, or other resources that are added to a site. Of course, the more that a site contains, the greater the maintenance and cost associated with a site. However, again, the benefits of a resource-laden site far outweigh the liabilities.

4. A Web master may have no idea how to find good resources or make a judgment about what to add and what to omit.

All of the above seems to account for the reluctance of some to add additional products and services or resources to their sites. Since adding additional products and services are beneficial to almost all Web sites, here are a few guidelines when choosing which resources to add, which to omit, and the approximate amount of resources to add.

1. Resources should always reflect the main theme of a Web site and be complimentary to the main Web site, as well as the other products, services, and resources that already exist. E. G. An Internet Marketing site should, in all probability, only contain links to products, services, and resources that reflect Internet Marketing.

2. Resources should always be "content rich" and interesting to the visitor. A smattering of lackluster, "same old, same old" type resources does the Web master little good, and may even hurt the Web site, by reducing its sales effectiveness.

3. Resources should be updated at least monthly, to keep the site "fresh and lively" for return visitors. Visitors quickly lose interest if a site seems stagnant.

4. Resources should be plentiful enough to fill out a site, however, they should never overshadow the main theme of a site nor should they take away from the main purpose. They should be placed in an orderly fashion, and laid out for easy accessibility and readability. Clutter should be avoided at all costs, and a clean look maintained. There is a fine line here between "just enough" and "way too much".

5. Avoid gimmicky, poorly written, ethically substandard resources. A Web master must use judgment when choosing resources that are truly an asset to the site. "If in doubt, don't" is a good rule of thumb here.

Resources not only add quality and backend sales on a Web site, they enhance Search Engine placement by providing content and incoming links. They give visitors a good feeling about the site, and they set the Web master up as an "expert" in any given field.

However, quality must always rule over quantity, when placing resources and additional products and services on a site. If prudence is used, resources will enhance sales and traffic, and keep the site "alive and well" long after other competitive sites have disappeared!

-----------
Vishal P. Rao is the owner of Work at Home Forum, an online community of people who work from home.
-----------

Get More Web Site Traffic From Search Engines

2009-02-18T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Ken Leonard Jr

Considering all of the money you spend on promotion and advertising, wouldn't it be great to build a steady stream of web site traffic from the free search engines?

Steady web site traffic from search engines is just a dream for many home business owners. Especially in profitable niches, it can be virtually impossible to get a decent listing. That means you'll get little or no traffic from Google, MSN and many other popular search engines.

To solve your problem (no web site traffic from the search engines), you should begin by creating a web site with a lot of useful content on a certain subject. But even if you know something about optimizing web pages for the search engines, this still may not be enough to bring in a steady stream of targeted visitors to your web site each month without paying for it.

Let's look at your next two options...

Both will cost you on a regular basis and both will bring you a steady stream of quality web site traffic.

' Pay For Inclusion Search Directories '

When you search the internet from Yahoo, the results are provided by a web site other than Yahoo. Search the Yahoo Directory (hundreds of thousands of people do each month) and you'll see web sites that have paid to be in those results. Each web site owner pays at least $299US per year to be there and may not even be included. This fee is for the application only. If your site is accepted, you will pay at least $299 per year, every year. You will pay more if you want a premium placement for your listing.

' Pay Per Click Search Engines '

The concept of pay per click search engines is very simple and works well. You buy targeted ad space based on a keyword phrase that is related to your product or service. Your ad is displayed on the search results page after a user searches for your keyword for that ad. Every time a visitor clicks through to your web site from that ad, it costs you from one cent up to $10 or more. You get web site traffic that is interested in your niche, as much as you are willing to pay for.

If you are not careful, pay per click services can cost you a lot of money. You must know what you are doing before you start using them. Consider yourself warned.

Now for another option for getting web site traffic from the search engines...

' Hire An SEO Specialist '

A Search Engine Optimization specialist can get your site listed highly in search engine results, which will bring you loads of quality web site traffic. This can cost into the thousands just to get your web site set up. Some SEO services will charge a lower amount for setting up your web pages, then charge you on a cost per click basis after that. A good example of a reputable company that operates in this manner can be found at http://www.arundel.net.

Unless you have deep pockets, you may want to look at your next option. Pay a small fee up front to use a product as much as you want that will bring you targeted web site traffic. You won't pay monthly or yearly bills like the options described above.

' Produce Web Pages That Bring In Search Engine Traffic '

There are useful software products available that will let you create web pages that will bring you targeted web site traffic from the search engines. And you won't pay a dime for it.

If used wisely, these tools will work well to bring in the quality web site traffic you want. Each of these products use different methods to bring targeted visitors to your web site. Use them to create more valuable resources for your web site visitor. Do not use them to try to fool the search engines into thinking your site is not what it really is. This is frowned upon by search engine companies.

For example, Product A lets you set up niche directories of related, quality web sites. These directories are linked to from your web site home page so all of your visitors can benefit from the resources included. Each Product A directory page contains search engine listings of related web sites based on a specific related keyword phrase. This keyword is also related to your product or service, so the pages bring targeted visitors to your web site.

The search engines want relevant results for their user's searches. When Product A or another similar product is used properly, you can produce web pages that will be relevant and useful to anyone searching for that particular keyword phrase. Done responsibly, you can create the steady stream of web site traffic you want without having to pay for it.

Depending on your resources, these are your options to choose from if you want more web site traffic from search engines. Choose wisely and you can see a steady stream of web site traffic in just a few months time.

About The Author

A steady stream of targeted web site traffic means more orders and more leads for you. Get your steady stream of search engine traffic started today... http://websitetraffic.for-your-biz.com.

Link Building Strategies That Work

2009-02-17T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Steve Hill

There are a number of ideas about what are the best ways to promote a website and about the best ways to attract more visitors to a website. In my opinion, it is important to start up a link building campaign to increase the number of websites which have a link to your site on their site. This is one proven method which has been successful in achieving high rankings for many different sites, however there are some important factors to keep in mind when attempting to build up this link network.

If you have a new site and are desperate to achieve top rankings on the top search engines such as google, think again. Most of these search engines will probably not give your new site a high ranking until it has become established. This is where the age of the domain is important. You can not in reality expect to be placed in a higher search position than a site which has been around for eight years and which has been building up links, during this period. This is where patience is required, you should see your site as something which is going to be online for a long time and hopefully in time, some of the other sites that you are competing with will have dropped out etc.

This is the same attitude that should be applied when building up the number of backward links pointing to your site. Going from only a few, to a few thousand in a short space of time may not be the best idea. Regular increases are in my opinion the way to go and quality is just as important as quantity. Decide the ways in which you are planning to obtain your backward links and try to ensure that you obtain roughly the same amount each month, where possible of course. Over a long period of time this strategy is sure to pay dividends and your search engine position should steadily improve. You will then have an authority site, which all new sites will be aspiring to compete with. Like many areas of life we do not really want to wait for our success and want immediate rewards, such as high rankings. On some search engines this may be possible but on most it will require hard work and this type of patience.

The links that you obtain should where possible be from sites which are in a similar industry or subject matter, to your own site. This is a lot easier said than done however. If your site is very well written, optimised and of use to a large number of people, you may well receive links on other sites without the need to request the link. This is of course exactly what you want and is why it is important to spend time thinking of how your site is written and presented.

A good way of obtaining a link to your site is to write a reference or testimonial to owners of other sites with which you have had dealings with. Offer to write them this testimonial which of course will be of great benefit to them, on the understanding that they will include a link back to your site at the bottom.

I personally concentrate on obtaining one-way links as I believe these to have the most value. One way I do this is by writing articles such as the one you are reading. There are a great number of benefits of writing articles which can be read at most of the article directories such as ezinearticles. I would certainly recommend it to other people who are thinking of starting up a link building campaign.

Stephen Hill helps to promote a number of websites including:

stuttering treatment

guide to anti-aging

quit smoking tips

Importance Of Web Directory For Search Engines

2009-02-16T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Paras Shah

In the old days of world wide web, users preferred to visit web directory to find the site they are looking for. As a matter of fact, Yahoo!, one of the preferred destination for online users, started as a web directory. Nowadays, most online user base rely on search engines too along with link directories, to find what they're looking for.

When search engines started to become popular, they were heavily relied on KEYWORDs and METATAGs of the web page to determine the topic and relevance of the page. Webmasters discovered that by keyword stuffing into METATAGs and webpage content, they could improve their website position in search results for verious keywords. But search engines are smart!. Search engines caught up to the abuse and decided to ignore the METATAGs and rely instead on text content of web page. Webmasters then started to keyword stuffing in the webpage content, often writing them in the same color as the web page's background so for webpage visitors as well as search engines that content is invisible.

Again, search engines worked on that area and discovered the trick and decided that the best way to rank a web page's content and its topical relevance was to rely on inbound links from other web pages. The rationale behind this is that it is much more difficult to influence other people to link back to your website than it is to manipulate your own web page elements. In fact, inbound links are the foundation of Google's Pagerank algorithm.

There are several ways to get inbound links, among them writing articles that include your bylines with a link to your page, link exchange, and add link to web directory are the poupler techniques.

Listing your sites in good link directories is probably the best way to get quality links that are highly valued by the search engines. Since web directories rely on human editors who enforce strict criteria to list a web site, and since directories organize the information in highly focused categories, they are an invaluable resource for search engines to measure the quality and the relevance of a web page.

In summary, web directories are important not because they generate significant traffic, but because they are given great importance by the search engines to qualify and rank web pages, and to determine their topical relevance.

So the bottomline is, you should definitely list your websites with quality web directory such as www.itsallaboutlinks.com, if you want to increase your chances of success with the search engines.

Paras Shah

http://www.itsallaboutlinks.com : Web Directory - Add Link - Submit Article - Website Design - SEO Services

Turn Onetime Quothitsquot Into Repeat Visitors

2009-02-15T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Jim Edwards

Every website owner faces the same challenge: How to get more traffic to their website.

"Build it and they will come" worked for Kevin Costner in "Field of Dreams," but that approach leads to bankruptcy and a failed business when it comes to your website.

Any savvy website owner knows that it takes a lot of work, time, and money to bring a visitor to your site for the first time.

Smart marketers also know that it rates a lot easier and cheaper to get people to come back for a return visit than to attract them for the first time.

The following tips will help any website owner convert more one-time "lookers" into repeat visitors and customers.

** Surveys **

Hold an interactive poll or survey on your web site.

Ask your website visitors questions about a topic of intense interest to them.

Not only do people enjoy giving their opinion, but they'll also want to read the results as you compile them and update them on your website over the next day or week.

One way to get their email address is to tell them you'll email the final numbers once the results are compiled.

My favorite survey tool is www.oneminutepoll.com.

** Free Prizes **

If appropriate, hold an ongoing prize drawing on your web site.

The prizes you give should fit with the interests of your target audience and enable you to showcase what you offer for sale from your website.

For example, if you sell computer cables, give away something like Velcro cord ties with your web address on them and avoid things like teddy bears or bumper stickers.

** Original / Hard-to-find Content **

People go online first and foremost to get specific, relevant, timely information in areas that interest them.

For some that means news articles, for others sports scores, and for others it means current prices for things like stocks or commodities.

Whatever content they want, give it to people in a way they can't find anywhere else (or at least not very easily) and make it easy for them to see that your site rates a bookmark in their browser so they can return often.

** Brain Teasers **

People love a challenge, especially in an area that holds great professional or special interest for them.

If you can provide a quiz, trivia questions, puzzles or some other "brain teaser" for people, many will take up the challenge.

You get them to return to your website by posting the answers and making that the only way they can see if they got it right.

** Breaking News **

People crave up-to-the-minute news on subjects about which they feel very strongly.

Some investors, for example, spend hours combing the Web for nuggets of information to help them evaluate specific markets, companies, or stocks.

One way to make your site invaluable to your audience members is to simply post a news bite, tip, or current "nugget" of relevant information on your site daily.

(Gee, kind of sounds like a BLOG doesn't it?)

If the information you give makes people jump up and holler "MORE! MORE!" then you can quickly build up a regular following.

** Resource Directories **

Few things keep people coming back to a website more than a constantly updated directory they can tap for industry- specific resources any time they need them.

This technique works especially well if it's hard to locate good resources related to your topic because people place a higher value on hard-to-find information.

About The Author

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...

Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

3 Way Linking The New Popularity Building Strategy For Your Website

2009-02-14T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Les Romhanyi

There has been a lot of talk over the past few months, even more so with the latest Google update, about the value of linking. What types of links are better, which types are still seen as value added to a website. Well if the truth be told, the only people who can tell us are not saying anything. I am speaking of the engineers at Google and the other search engines, the very people who are the one who determine the value of all linking.

According to some people at the various search engine optimization companies, reciprocal links are no longer being considered when determining link popularity for a website. Just like so many of the other theories search engine optimization, outside of the engineering labs, no one really knows for certain. I have read some of the reports that have been issued on this topic and these reports are far from conclusive, offering little more than contradictory examples taken over several days of testing.

So aside from a wait and see what happens next stance what can we do? Rather than adopt a reactive position to this uncertainty I feel that it would be far better to move forward and be proactive by changing my linking strategies. As long as there is any kind of controversy regarding reciprocating links, there really isn't much point in relying on them to help build link popularity.

Personally, I still place a value in reciprocating links as a valid means of trading traffic and will continue to utilize them however, as more and more misinformation gets spread over the Internet it will become increasingly more difficult to exchange links with quality sites. So what is a webmaster to do now that this style of linking seems to be on its way out? Simple adapt or disappear off the search engine radar. Well Google's radar anyway.

For my consultation clients I am going to suggest that they be extremely selective on who they link with now. Spend more time evaluating the potential linking partners. If the site measure up to their standards of web development and the theme of the linking site matches their site in some manner then, go ahead and trade links.

Before they trade links with any site they should make sure that the partner site is placing their link on a page that has some "on topic" content rather than a page that contains just random links. If possible only trade links with sites that employ some form of directory system so that all of the links contained on any given page share a similar theme. I will also be suggesting that they set up their own directory style system broken into categories and every page in each category should contain a topical block of text that ties all potential links together. Setting up their own system like this will make linking with their site more desirable.

Another strategy I will be advising my clients on is the use of 3 way links. For those of you who do not know what three way links are here is a brief, simplistic description: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site A. Pretty straight forward eh? The process is pretty straight forward but the application often is not. The only way three way links work is when all the parties involved are honest and are willing to maintain those links.

Recently I tested one of my sites and discovered that approximately 80% of the sites I traded links with were not honoring our agreement. Now I fully expected that there would be some shiftless webmasters out there who would be less than trustworthy but, I never expected the number to be so high.

Although reciprocating linking isn't too difficult of a task it does require a certain amount of time and effort. To have some unscrupulous webmaster cheat you out of your back link in your reciprocated deal is bad enough but to have one do that to your site in a 3 way link deal is even worse.

You see a 3 way linking deal requires slightly more effort due to the necessity of documenting all of the information regarding this agreement. If you are going to go through all of that effort to set up a three way linking agreement you certainly do not want one of the partners to sour the deal by dropping one of the links without notifying any of the other partners.

The extra work required to establish a successful 3 way linking agreement isn't too difficult, it is all about record keeping. After you have researched the two sites that you think would make good candidates for your three way link swap, you are going to need to contact them and invite them into the exchange. More than likely you are going to have to lay out the plan and explain to them why a 3 way link deal is good and make sure that they understand that the only way it works is if everybody involved is open, honest and up front about everything.

As part of the research for the 3 way trade you are going to want to make sure that all three sites are in some way related. Not necessarily in direct competition with each other but connected in some way; much like the way a restaurant site would be similar to a hotel site and the hotel site might be similar to a pub site. Pretty simple really as a hotel can contain both a pub or a restaurant, it isn't too much of a stretch to think that these 3 service based businesses could be related somehow.

Once you have the three sites picked that you would like to trade links with make sure you research them thoroughly. The things you want to be checking for are;

Page Rank
IP
Quality
Age of the sites
Current link popularity

Page Rank
When checking Page Rank you are looking to make sure that everybody is of a similar PR. Don't get greedy and automatically suggest that your site should be linked from the site with the highest PR. In fact it might be a good idea to suggest that the higher PR site should link to the lowest PR site. Doing this may make the deal seem a little sweeter.

IP
It would be best if all 3 sites were on different IP addresses. Sites that are all residing on the same IP may be misconstrued as being part of a link farm strategy. Why take the chance?

Quality
This one should be a no brainer. If the site isn't of a quality that you would recommend to your friends or family to visit why would you want to risk the credibility of your site by suggesting that other people go to it? Rule of thumb here on quality is this; if you wouldn't bookmark the site for yourself, don't link to it.

Age of the Sites
The age of the site is important because of the alleged age delay sandbox effect in Google's algorithms. If the site is too new then you may have to wait for the site to mature before any weight is given to the out going links from that site. You should try to make sure that the sites you include in your 3 way linking are at least 1 year old or more. No guarantees that sites over a year are going to be mature enough but at least the odds are better.

Current Link Popularity
The reason you will want to check out the current link popularity is more about the investigation into their linking history. Do they currently trade links with sites that may be considered as being from a bad neighborhood. Do they link to gambling, porn or FFA sites? If they do and they are not part of the gambling or porn world and your site isn't either then DO NOT link to them.

Three ways linking in this manner revisits the days when linking was more natural. This type of linking will demonstrate to the search engines that you value your linking recommendations and therefore the search engines should value them as well. If the search engines trust your site to make these recommendations then there is no way that the applied due diligence will get you in trouble with the search engines.

Les Romhanyi is an SEO specialist with many years experience placing websites at the top of all major search engines. Big Juice Media is a Sports Betting Marketing company based in Canada. http://www.bigjuicemedia.com

Using Overture Marketing To Drive Traffic To Your Website

2009-02-13T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Christopher J Enders

Overture marketing has long been recognized as an incredible method for driving traffic to websites from the major search engines.

Overture was a pay-per-click marketing service that actually was a search engine originally established in the late 1990s under the name GoTo.

A strategy change in early 2000 positioned Overture as a powerful pay-per-click service as the company made deals with most of the major search engines (Google excluded) which would allow their advertisers to have their cost-per-click advertisements displayed in the major search engines.

This move made Overture marketing highly desirable for website operators as a means of driving traffic to their websites from the major search engines.

In 2003, Yahoo! began making plans to acquire Overture and within a couple of years they dropped the Overture brand re-branding initial Overture products as Yahoo! Search Marketing Products.

So, in effect Overture is no longer in existence as it has been replaced by Yahoo! Search Marketing. Even so, the power of what was once known as Overture marketing is still alive and well but it is now offered through the Yahoo! Search Marketing services.

Google, the most widely used major search engine, did not go for Overture marketing advertisers having their ads displayed in its search results.

Rather, Google launched its very own cost-per-click advertising program which is called AdWords. There is a lot of competition between Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google, of course, since they are the two main providers of pay-per-click advertising services.

Some of the smaller search engines are actually powered by Google, meaning their search results come from Google.

Many of the smaller search engines receive pay-per-click advertising results from Yahoo! Search Marketing, so advertising through the Google AdWords program and Yahoo!

Search Marketing pay-per-click programs provides the potential for your advertisements to displayed in all of the major and some of the smaller search engines.

Rumor have been stirring that Microsoft is considering starting its very own pay-per-click advertising program, perhaps through the MSN search engine that it owns.

In early 2005, representatives from Microsoft confirmed the rumors that the company was looking at getting into the pay-per- click advertising game.

For website owners, this could be a good thing as there will be three major mediums through which to purchase pay-per-click advertising, so the competition for keywords will likely diminish making it less expensive for website operators to achieve good search engine listings through cost-per-click advertising.

At the same time, there is potential that pay-per-click management could become a much bigger job for website operators to desire to be represented in all of the major search engines and thus end up managing search engine marketing campaigns through three different pay-per-click providers.

Overture marketing was once the preferred choice of pay-per-click advertisers. However, when Google launched its AdWords advertising program, it quickly became a popular and preferred method of advertising for many website owners.

The AdWords program is very powerful because when you advertise with Google, your advertisements appear on websites throughout the Google network in addition to appearing in the search engine results.

If Microsoft does in fact launch their pay-per-click program that they have been testing, it is expected to have similar potential for reaching vast targeted audiences due to the variety of MSN services that are in existence.

Yahoo! Search Marketing, formerly Overture, is still a power- packed pay-per-click advertising provider as well and will likely continue to produce excellent results for advertisers.

One thing is for certain. Using pay-per-click advertising services that are associated with major search engines is a productive method for driving traffic to your website.

There will likely be more players on the field in the near future. Which pay-per-click advertising provider will be most beneficial is hard to say, but chances are, all them will be highly effective for driving traffic and pay-per-click expenses are likely to decrease due to increased competition and more opportunities for pay-per-click advertisers.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you're getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

Website Traffic Is Not The Key To Success

2009-02-12T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Mike Burke

Website traffic is deemed the single most important factor when it comes to the success of a website but that statement needs to be qualified. Although it's true that a constant stream of traffic is the lifeblood of a website, the quality of the traffic is far more important than the quantity.

Of course, any amount of website traffic is better than no traffic at all but even if you have the most perfect website, your site is doomed to fail if you are not getting visitors that are looking for the products or information you have available on your site.

It's easy to get caught up in a numbers game. It's exciting to see the number of visitors to your site climb from a few a day to a few hundred a day. On the surface, this looks like exactly what you want but if your visitors are looking for something other than what you are offering, for the most part, your website traffic is wasted.

You could have a great website design, compelling copy, the lowest prices and fantastic specials but all your efforts will be useless unless your website is drawing traffic that is interested in what you are providing or promoting.

What you need are visitors specifically interested in your product or service -- you need 'targeted traffic'.

Don't think of targeted traffic as a sub-category of website traffic because they really are two separate entities. If you're marketing plan is designed to drive as much website traffic as possible to your site, no matter what kind of traffic it is, then you're not making effective use of your time and you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

The web is a very different venue than a shopping mall. A shopping mall relies on unfocused traffic, wondering from store to store, not looking for anything in particular but willing to spend it's money on an impulse.

Believe it or not, people surfing the web will leave a website after viewing it for only about 2 seconds. They're looking for specific items or information and if they don't quickly find what they are looking for on your site, they'll click out of your site and go to one of the other millions of sites on the web.

That's why most of the successful websites are tightly focused on their 'niche' and their marketing plan is focused on driving people to their site that are looking for what they offer - they understand the importance of 'targeted traffic'.

Of course, targeted traffic and a website focused on a particular 'niche' go hand and hand. Think about your website. Does it really lend itself to a specific product or service, or is it so broad that it tends to confuse potential customers?

Here are a few tips to help you prepare your website for targeted traffic:

Design your website to promote one particular product or service as your main item.

Determine the type of people that will be interested in your product or service and adjust your website to be attractive to them.

Establish the items or services that are 'closely' related to what you're promoting on your website. If you think that they would be interesting to your visitors, offer those items on your website as well.

Keep a constant flow of free content, that your visitors will find useful, on your website and add new content and information often. Invite your visitors back to your site to see the new material you're constantly adding.

Keep in mind, a website that's focused on a particular 'niche' item or service lends itself to targeted traffic simply because there is something specific to target and the more targeted traffic your site receives, the more productive your site will be.

There are many conventional and many not so conventional ways to drive targeted traffic to your website but we'll explore them in other articles.

The purpose of this article is to point out the difference between website traffic and targeted traffic. More isn't always better and if you focus your marketing on 'targeted traffic' you'll quickly find that the hits your getting on your website aren't just empty numbers - they'll be potential customers and, more importantly, sales.

Mike Burke is the author of numerous articles and has an affection for website marketing. Learn how to drive tons of targeted traffic to your site without spending a dime on advertising. Visit us at http://www.starttheprofits.com

Simple Effective Web Site Traffic Promotion

2009-02-11T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Christopher J Enders

Web site traffic promotion is central to the success of any online business. Without effective web site traffic promotion, an internet business will literally perish in a matter of no time just as a retail storefront would go out of business without customers walking through their doors. An internet business is as dependent on web site traffic promotion as a traditional retail outlet is dependent on attracting customers to visit their place of business. Though traditional advertising and promotion techniques are applicable to internet business, there are some web site traffic promotion techniques that are unique to online ventures.

Some of the most beneficial web site traffic promotion methods for an online business are:

1. Search engine marketing
2. Pay per click search engine advertising
3. Linking campaigns and link exchanges with relevant websites
4. Giving away expert content containing your website link with rights to republish the content
5. Viral marketing and referral programs
6. Participation as an expert in industry related newsgroups
7. Placing classified advertisements in ezines, magazines, newspapers and industry related online directories or advertising services
8. Listing your business in directories hosted by internet service providers
9. Being featured in media publications and broadcasts
10. Buying bulk traffic
11. Purchasing or trading banner advertisements
12. Email marketing

Some of these web site traffic promotion techniques are very basic, easy and inexpensive while others are more complicated, of course with varying costs. When you first get started in an internet business, it is beneficial to tackle the easy tasks of web site traffic promotion first. If you can get traffic coming to your site and convert those visitors to buyers, you will then have funds to spend on more expensive web site traffic promotion techniques, or even to hire a web site traffic promotion expert to provide consulting and web site traffic promotion services that have the potential of taking your website to new levels in terms of performance and profitability.

Because there is great emphasis on the importance of search engine exposure for internet businesses, many new business owners set out right away to achieve top listing in the search engines either through search engine optimization or pay per click advertising. If you can possibly get a good search engine ranking through search engine optimization that is fabulous because an organic listing in a top-ranking position in the search engines will undoubtedly be a web site traffic promotion move that will produce vast amounts of free traffic and relative benefits.

However, achieving and maintaining such a ranking is not always easy, especially if your industry is highly competitive. Business owners who realize this will often dive right into pay per click advertising which is, without a doubt, one of the cheapest and easiest web site traffic promotion methods for getting exposure to your website quickly.

You've heard the old saying, "It takes money to make money". While that is true, there are some very inexpensive web site traffic promotion techniques that you can pursue even when your budget is tight. Considering costs and effectiveness, a well managed pay per click campaign is highly effective for instant results from your web site traffic promotion efforts; however, link campaigns, distribution of expert articles, participation in newsgroups, media exposure, and trading banner advertisements are virtually cost-free. So, it may be beneficial for some internet businesses to focus their efforts on these low to no cost options first to get some traffic coming to the website which will result in revenue generation as well as making it possible to build an opt-in list of newsletter subscribers for the purpose of email marketing.

Drive More Traffic To Your Website

2009-02-10T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Ted Prodromou

Everyone wants to know the big secret to driving traffic to their website. Every day I see an article or an ad talking about driving people to your website. Driving traffic to a website has become the "holy grail" on the internet. People are realizing that 'if you build it, they won't come... unless you give them a reason'. Website traffic just doesn't happen by itself. Your website is just one of many millions on the web and people rarely just stumble upon your site by accident.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You can buy traffic from vendors that will pummel your website with hits from automated programs. This will increase your hits but will it increase your bottom line? Probably not. You can set up blogs that spider (connect to) your website increasing your traffic count. Does this drive users to your website? Only if your blog is sointeresting that people are reading it. There are thousands of blogs posted on the internet and your blog is just a needle in the internet haystack.

Another trick is to create RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for your website and subscribe to other RSS feeds. This again will increase your hit count but will do very little to drive potential customers to your website unless you're providing valuable information. Tricks will increase your hit count but do very little todrive potential customers to your website.

A better way to buy traffic for your website is by using pay-per-click with Yahoo and Google. You identify the most common keywords associated with what you're offering and bid on those keywords. This can be a costly option if you're bidding on popular keywords but it's a reliable way to generate highly targeted traffic. In my next newsletter I'll go into more detail about using pay-per-click advertising.

The best way to generate traffic for your website is to provide quality content that will solve your customer's problems. People search the internet for information that will solve their problems. Write and post as many articles as you can on your website.If you don't have time to write articles or can't write then hire someone to write the articles for you. You can have quality articles written by freelance writers at www.elance.com for practically nothing. The articles should be relevant to the problems your customers are experiencing and to the services you provide to solve those customer problems. Remember, it's all about providing solutions to your customer's problems. Check the "How To" Articles section on my website at www.valiss.com for more information about your website content.

The bottom line is that you can't trick people into finding your website. You must provide valuable information that solves your customer's problems. Your customers don't come to your website to read your blog about how you spent the weekend. They'll come to your website if they know they can find a solution to their most pressing issues. Keep your content fresh and relevant to solving your customer's problems and in no time you'll have plenty of visitors to your website.

Next time I'll talk about how you can use pay-per-click to generate targeted traffic and not spend a fortune.

Ted Prodromou spent over 25 years in the computer industry working for IBM, Digital, and Cellular one. Today he's the owner of Valiss IT, a consulting firm that provides small business coaching and marketing help. He's also a certified personal and professional coach.

Ted has created and led many coaching workshops and today is helping small businesses automate their marketing with his latest coaching program, "Attract Clients While You Sleep". For more information visit http://www.valiss.com/specials.

Hooking Up On The Internet

2009-02-09T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Alice Seba

No, I'm not talking about THAT kind of hooking upthis is a business article, for goodness sakes! I'm talking about building mutually beneficial relationships with other online business owners. That's the kind of hooking up that will propel your business to long-term success.

Many people get online and think that the mo re people they meet online, the bigger customer base they can get. To some degree that is true, but in this marketing mama's humble opinion, it's not where you should focus your efforts.

Nearly, four years ago, I started my online business. I was just a mom who desperately didn't want to return to work after maternity leave. I had NO CLUE what I was doing. None at all, but one thing I did do is meet people, but I didn't try to make these people my customers.

What, you may ask? Didn't I want to get any customers?

Sure I did, but I realized something much more valuable. The other online business owners that I met online weren't necessarily my target market and they had something much more valuable to offer me than a few dollars in my pocket from an Internet sale. They had knowledge, experience and ideasand I had my own to share too. So, this is what I did

I made friends and now I run a 6-figure per year business.

Yup, good old-fashioned friends with a common interest in online business. I share my experience and knowledge and they shared theirs. We discovered where we could collaborate on projects and build lifetime partnerships together. In other words, I gained a lifetime of value from these friendsnot just another "Notification of Payment Received" email from PayPal.

Through these relationships, I have found:

- A number of partners on numerous profitable projects that we continue to produce and promote.

- Marketing advice from:

- A copywriter who has written million-dollar sales copy for numerous clients

- A guy who works from Florida and makes millions yearly from his online business ventures; and a bunch more. These are people that have made VITAL differences to the future of my online business.

- Someone who has orchestrated 6 and 7-figure product launches for his friends and clients.

- And a bunch of others too numerous to mention, but I am so grateful for every day of my life.

- Indispensable and trustworthy assistants that keep me inline when my mind wanders or I just can't get all the little things done in my business.

and a whole bunch more. It doesn't really matter, what I gained. It's time to ask yourself what you want to gainand if you're in it for the long haul. If you decide you are indeed in it for the long haul, it's time to start building those relationships.

How to Attract The Right People to Your Network

If you are already networking online, through message boards or other means, you're already on the way. Here's some tips on how to make the right kind of friends through your network.

- Scrutinize your networking list. If you belong to a bunch of email groups and even more message boards, it's time to start cutting out the fat. Your time is valuable, so choose just a few quality groups and boards where people are serious about online business. Forget about the ones where people are out to get rich quick or where you simply post for "Ad Mondays".

- Don't be too eager. Don't start out by telling the world, you want to "partner" on a project or anything like that. Take it slow, get to know people and give your input where you can. I emphasize the "where you can" because if you don't have any experience on a subject, just keep quiet. But don't worry, if you feel you really don't have a lot of experience, you can still be a valuable community member by giving support and encouragement to your fellow online business owners. The experience will come with time.

- Share your experiences. Expanding on the previous point, do share on the subjects in which you have some experience. The more freely you share your information, the more willing people will be to share with you. We all have our own experience and expertise. We can cut our learning curves tremendously by learning from others.

- Make personal connections. If you have something you'd like to discuss privately with a member, contact them. It may be to discuss a particular idea you have for their business or you may want to interview them for your newsletter. When you do make these connections, always keep in mind what value it has for your networking partner. If you have nothing of value to offer them, save your personal contact for later.

- View your competitors as partners. There's nothing worse than the sometimes catty world of online business where people see competitors as the enemy. The Internet marketplace is so vast, there truly is room for everybody. People who reach the same target market are your potential partners for products, free ebooks, co-promotion and more. Don't limit yourself.

Bottom Line is

Stop thinking about yourself. Think about how you can help other people and it truly comes back to you.

Alice Seba is a solo online entrepreneur who has increased her profits and reduced her working hours by working with virtual assistants. For more Internet marketing tips to help you earn more while working less, sign up for her Internet Marketing Prescriptions mailing list at http://www.AliceSeba.com

Driving Traffic With Pay Per Click

2009-02-08T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Christopher J Enders

Pay per click (PPC) advertising programs are excellent resources for driving traffic to your website.

Internet marketing is a bit different than traditional marketing, primarily because your marketing efforts have to drive traffic to your website instead of to a physical store.

For that reason, it is essential that advertisements for your internet-based business are visible to an audience that will actually follow an online link that takes them to your website.

Advertising in offline publications is always an option and it can be effective. However, getting your website listed in the search engines is by far the most powerful method for driving traffic to your website.

Getting and maintaining a good rank in the search engines through the process of search engine optimization can be difficult due to heavy competition.

Pay per click advertising is a solution to that problem. With PPC advertising, you bid on the keyword search terms that you want your site to be displayed for.

Advertisements appear in the search engines as sponsored ads when an internet user uses the search term that you bid on.

The ranking of the advertisements is generally determined by the amount of the bid, so the highest bidder gets top ranking in most cases.

On Google, the popularity of the website is also taken into consideration, so the highest bid doesn't necessarily get the top spot.

Pay per click advertising is advantageous to website owners for several reasons.

First, you can get listed in the major search engines quickly and easily.

Second, search engine listings produce excellent results in regard to driving qualified traffic to your website.

Third, you are billed for your advertising on a cost-per-click basis which means that you only pay your bid amount when someone viewing your advertisement actually clicks on the link and is directed to your website.

This is quite different from traditional advertising and some types of online advertising where you pay for impressions.

With PPC advertising, you don't pay for the number of times your ad is seen, or has the potential to be seen, rather, you only pay for responses to the advertisement that actually produce traffic for your website.

The most popular pay per click programs at present are Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture).

When you advertise with Google AdWords, your advertisements appear in Google's search results and on websites that are in the Google network.

This is really good, because Google is the most widely used search engine so there is a lot of potential for reaching a large audience with your advertisements.

With Yahoo! Search Marketing, your advertisements will appear in several different search engines that the company has agreements with including the two leading search engines that are right under Google in terms of usage - Yahoo! and MSN.

MSN is in the process of development and testing for its own cost-per-click advertising program. Whether or not they will remove themselves from the Yahoo! Search Marketing program is not certain.

In addition to the major search engines, there are smaller search engines, directories and even specialty search engines that target a very specific audience.

Getting listed in these search engines or directories, either through paid listings, free listings, or pay per click listings can be beneficial as well.

There is less competition for listings in smaller search engines, specialty search engines and directories.

Even though they may not be used as much as the major search engines, most do have an audience, sometimes a very precisely defined audience and have potential for producing qualified leads and driving traffic to your website with minimal costs to you.

How To Drive Traffic To Your Site Without Paying Big Bucks

2009-02-07T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Ed Rodriguez

Everybody who owns a website dreams about getting tons of traffic directed to it. But getting your site noticed out of literally millions of sites can be a pretty tedious task sometimes. Many people think that they need to invest hundreds or thousands through pay per click search engines or SEO programs in order to get any traffic, but that simply is not the case. There is a simple way to get your site noticed that requires no money at all: content. In this article we will discuss how to use content on your site to draw in more traffic via search engines.

One popular misconception that a lot of people have is that Meta Tags are the key to getting search engine traffic. This simply is not true. While meta tags are important, what really draws a search engineÕs attention is content. The more content you have about a subject on your site, the higher your chances are of getting traffic from a search engine. But remember to mention your topic plenty of times on the page. You do not have to get too redundant with it, but it is essential to mention your keywords at least six times. Also, you must write actual content, not just the keyword over and over again, because this is called keyword spamming, and it has been said that it can actually get you blocked from engines. Another good tip while creating your content pages is to make them single pages, do make them frame based, because some engines have a harder time picking this up.

How many content pages you need depends on what your site is. If you are doing something that is unique you may not need many pages. If you are working in a saturated market, however, you may need dozens, maybe hundreds of articles to get your site to the top of the engines. This may sound like a lot of work, but it is not that bad once you start doing it. Just do a few articles a day, and within a month you will likely have have more than enough content to pull in the traffic you deserve. And if you need help building the content, there are countless sites that offer either free or very cheap content for your sites. Remember: if you build the content, they will come!

Ed Rodriguez is the owner of Mysearcharoo http://www.mysearcharoo.com a metasearch engine part of the ISEDN network providing website owners affordable and effective search engine and advertising.

The Four Smartest Ways To Spiral Your Website Traffic

2009-02-06T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Cari Haus

People are paying pretty significant dollars for website traffic these days. Pay-per-click charges of $1-10 are not uncommon for top search terms. Multiply that by the 300 unique visitors per day that my log furniture website gets, and you are talking at least $300 per day, or $9,000 per monthdepending on how many days are in the month.

"There Must Be Some Easier Way"

While pay-per-click may be a good business model for your website, there's nothing like free traffic to lay the foundation. My log furniture site used to get 100 unique visitors per day before it started fetching in 200, and now 300 on an average basis. The personal goal here is 1,000 unique daily visitorsbut 10,000 would also be welcomed!

Following are some of the best ways we have found to grow website traffic:

#1: Website Optimization

A local business magazine recently ran an article calling SEO (search engine optimization) the equivalent of "hocus-pocus". The author of the article, who apparently worked for an SEO firm, described optimization as a somewhat "shady" activity that's impossible to get a handle on. I say "Baloney!"

SEO is not pseudo-science. It is a very tangible and real way to increase website traffic. If you haven't taken care of the basicse.g. making sure your website has a relevant title, focuses on the right keywords, avoids practices that are disdained by the search engines, etc., you can be sure that, once found, your website will not rank as highly (or get as much traffic) as it otherwise would. Begin your traffic-garnering efforts by making sure your website is up-to-snuff.

#2: Publish Helpful, Relevant Content

Publishing helpful articles on the Net with a link back to my log furniture website seems to result in traffic spikes nearly every time. Notice the emphasis is on "helpful" articles. There is plenty of useless drivel out there by people who are being paid $5 to write an article. Not to insult anyone, but I spend 2-8 hours on the articles I writedepending on how much research is required and how technical the article isand that costs more than $5.

It doesn't seem to matter what you write about. My topics so far have included SEO, the simplicity of Amish life, improving your bottom line, and understanding Google operators. The key is to make them relevant, short and helpful.

#3: Add more products to your website

Our experience has been that adding more products to the website helps us to come up in the search engines more often. A person who finds a rustic night stand at our site might notice that we have log bunk beds. Somebody who is shopping for an unfinished pine dresser might not be thinking of rustic furniture at all, stumble across one our products, like the whole site, and end up furnishing their cabin. Each product is like a fishing line cast in the sea. The more well-described bait you have out therethe more "fish" will bite.

#4: Improve your website conversion rate

Five years ago, we used to get one log furniture order for every 100 website visitors. Now it seems like closer to one order for every 300 unique visitors. Part of the reason for this, we believe, is that the web has become more competitive. But we also pay attention to our conversion rate.

We are in the process of making a change right now that might really help. Someone pointed out that when you click on an item to buy it within Miva Merchant's standard interface, there is no confirmation that the item has been added to your shopping basket. This might lead some customers to believe that the website isn't working properly. They might not be savvy enough to check the shopping basket. They might even leave the site without ordering (perish the thought!)

These "glitches" can really hurt website sales. We went to the Miva Merchant site for third-party modules and found a script that displays the shopping basket after each item is added. We purchased the script and install, and are watching to see how it affects website sales and conversion rate. Our guess is that this will have a positive impact on sales.

Conclusion

Obviously, there are a lot of other ways to increase website traffic. The four listed above are a great place to start. If you're not into SEO, find somebody who is. If you are paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars of month for pay-per-click traffic, it may be wise to divert enough of those dollars to ensure that your website is the traffic-snagging, profit-generating machine you intend it to be.

Cari Haus is a CPA and entrepreneur who has been offering quality log furniture on her website, http://www.logcabinrustics.com/

Reciprocal Linking And Traffic Building

2009-02-05T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Kevin William Davies

Ideally you don't want to be in the position of having to email other webmasters asking if they're interested in reciprocal links. You want your website to be such that people will want to link to it, whether it be because of a cool feature, generous affiliate program, whatever. The problem is unless you have at least some sites linking to you you're not going to get noticed.

In short, if you have a fairly new website you're going to have to email other webmasters and ask if they're interested in reciprocal linking. So how to you go about finding suitable websites?

Here's one of the methods I use:

Let's say I created a website about killer whales. The first thing I do is a google search on killer whales.

Next I take the first website that's listed and do a google search on it's url. So if the first website's url is "www.allaboutkillerwhales.com" I would copy and paste that url into the google search box.

One of the nifty things about Google is that if you search on a url it'll give you an option of finding pages that link to that url. So continuing the example the above the next thing I do is click on "Find web pages that link to www.allaboutkillerwhales.com."

Now I have a list of urls that have links to a site about killer whales. I can email these sites and ask if they'd like to link to my site.

But it doesn't stop there. When I find a web page I can also use Google to find similar pages. These similar pages are likely to also be suitable candidates for reciprocal linking.

Finally I repeat the process above for other websites I found when I searched for "killer whales."

Find out how one web site averages over $27,000USD in revenue per month with only around 100 visitors a day. Visit kdaviesnz.com and download this essential *FREE* report today!

Guidelines To A Successful Link Exchange Program

2009-02-04T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by John Kovacs

Webmasters look for ways to get a higher ranking with search engines and increasing traffic to their website everyday. One of the ways they accomplish this is through exchanging links with other websites. In order for a link exchange program to be beneficial, one needs to focus on building a solid exchange program correctly.

With some search engines, like Google for instance, can base your rankings by how many inbound links you have. So one would think...well this can be a simple task, I'll just work on exchanging links with any website who is willing to participate.

It's not as simple as just sending out an email to every Webmaster that's out there. The biggest mistake you can make is linking to sites that are not relevant to the theme of your website. Search engines frown upon sites that link to one another with no relevance. You can risk the chance of being penalized and banned from their search results. So obviously, this is not a good approach.

The best way to build a solid program is to exchange links with only targeted websites and whose customers would have an interest in your products or service. If you are just starting out, a good rule of thumb is to try and devote a few hours one to two days a week just focusing on link building. This will require effort on your part, but the time you spend will show results rather quickly.

You can start by performing a search using keywords that would pertain to your website. Take the time to view each of the sites of interest. As you visit each website, try to view as many pages as you can. As this may seem to be time consuming, never judge a website just from their home page. You want to be sure that their site is one that you would recommend to your viewers.

As your viewing these websites, another factor to consider is how their website is set up for a link exchange program.

Do they have a link to their main links page (resources, link partners, reciprocal links page, etc.) plainly visible on their home page? You don't want to exchange links with sites that hide or bury the link to their exchange partners.

Are they listing their link partners into appropriate categories on their main links page? As your link program builds, it's important to put your exchanges into appropriate categories. You will find that your exchange partners may fall into different categories, such as web design, home business opportunities, software, etc. Listing them in appropriate categories allows viewers quick access to the link of interest.

On each of the category pages, do they list more than 25 listings per page? It is best to keep each category page limited to 25 listings per page. If website has a links page where it requires a lot of scrolling, the changes that your link will be clicked on are slim. A solution to this is when each category begins to grow, list them in alphabetical order, than break the category into separate pages. As an example, lets say you were using web design as your category; you can use Web Design (A through M) than Web Design (N through Z) as your second category.

Does their website provide useful content, or do they have a lot of misleading information? If the website you are exchanging links with has a lot of misleading information, the viewer in most cases will not be on the site long enough to even see your link. Also keep in mind; the links you recommend plays a role on your business reputation.

Other Link Exchanges To Avoid:

There are many ways one can exchange links with other websites, but the following are ones that are not recommended.

Automated Link Software: These software programs automatically search and send email requests for a link exchange with other websites. The biggest problem with most linking software is that some of the links they search for may not be targeted to your website.

You can end up getting a lot of replies from websites you have no interest in. Which would be a waste of time on your part just by viewing these sites alone.

Link Farms: This is a definite NO! These websites are strictly set up to gain link popularity. Anyone can submit their site to their list once you have registered with them. Some link farms can have thousands of websites who have agreed to do a link exchange. Everyone who participates, must agree to link to all websites on the list.

The problems are:

No organization or categorizing with these links.

Most of the sites will not be relevant to yours.

Your link can be located on a page that it is hard to find.

Search engines will penalize sites that use link farms to gain link popularity.

It would be far more beneficial to stay away from using Link Farms. It is looked at as an artificial way to inflate link popularity having more negatives than positives.

FFA Sites: Search engines also view this as a means of artificially inflating your link popularity. FFA (free for all) sites are looked at as the same as Link Farms. You will take the risk of your site being banned from their search results.

Link Exchange Proposal:

Once you have found a website that would be appropriate for a link exchange, look for the contact information to the Webmaster and send them an email. If the contact information includes the webmasters name, make sure you personalize your email by using their first name in the subject box as well as in the heading.

You will want to include your name, your URL, a short description of your site and contact information. In the body of the email, mention what you liked about their site as well as the benefits both of you can receive by exchanging links.

There are some marketers that feel that before you send a potential link partner an email, you should add their link to your website first. Then include in your email that you have added their site and letting them know the location of their link. This option is used to help encourage a "yes" from the Webmaster.

Our advice on this option is to be selective if you're going to use this method. Remember, not all websites will agree to do a link exchange with you. The ones that offer a solid resource to your website, will be an improvement. The ones that fit the theme of your site, but are not necessarily a solid resource, will cost you time by going back in and deleting their link.

The idea is whatever email approach you use, be brief and to the point, you do not need to send a book. If the person is interested in exchanging links with you, they will reply to your email to go over the details.

John Kovacs is the CEO and founder of "A Home Business Opportunity". His website mainly focuses on supplying free marketing tips, resources and support for home startup businesses and Internet marketing.

To get a step-by-step guide in building an online business, visit http://www.ahomebusinessopportunity.net

3 Proven Free Marketing Methods Guaranteed To Improve Your Website Traffic

2009-02-03T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Adam J. Thompson

Why would you pay for advertising if you could just get it for free? Well, the truth be told, most free advertising methods are mostly alot of hype. You often get what you pay for: nothing! Even the good free methods are often misunderstood & not used to their maximum benefit.

The purpose of this article is to show you a few proven methods of getting quality traffic to your site for free. I also want to show you how to maimize these methods.

Method #1: Link Exchanges

Link exchanges, or swapping links with other sites, has two advantages. First is the traffic that those links will drive to you. Secondly, & even bigger is the improvement in your search engine rankings that inbound links give you. Here, though, I just want to deal with the first, because there us not enough space here to cover the second.

Things you can do to improve traffic from link exchanges

1: Only swap links with high-quality sites
2: Only swap links with relevant sites
3: Swap home page links with a few really good, relevant sites
4: Make your link titles enticing

If you're looking for sites to swap links with, here are some tools that help you locate potential link partners:

http://www.linkalizer.com
http://value-exchange.sitesell.com
http://www.linkmarket.net

Method #2: Exit Traffic Exchange

Here's how an exit exchange works: when a visitor leaves your site, the site of another member of the exchange pops up. Each time that happens you get a credit. Depending on the exchange, you may need from 1-2 credits for your site to pop up on another members site.

The obvious drawback to this method is that the visitor did not choose to go to your website, so it's not a very high-quality visitor. The best way to use these visitors is to direct them to something free on your site.

Method #3: Articles

How does one market with articles? Easy. There are hundreds of website owners & ezine publishers out there looking for quality articles to include on their site or newsletter. You allow them to use your article, as long as they put a link to your site at the end. The easiest way to do this is to submit your article to free article directories, which you can find by searching the web.

Use these three methods, & I guarantee that your site traffic will increase. What's more, it won't have cost you a cent!

Adam Thompson is a full-time internet marketer, co author of "Duplicate Our Success: Step-by-Step Guide To Home Business Success". If you're looking for more free internet marketing resources, go to http://www.internetsuccesskey.com

You are free to reproduce or use this article, as long as you keep the above aythor's information, & make the links active.

Targeting A Niche Market

2009-02-02T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Ivan Kelly

Targeting a niche provides focus for your website and has great appeal to search engines as it gives them a better idea of the sort of traffic they should send you. Try to determine where your market is. Are they parents? Retirees? Home owners? Pet lovers? If you are selling art supplies you may find hobby sites will cater to your audience. If you sell information for do-it-yourself projects you could show up in home decorating as well as financial sites ('Save Money on Home Building Projects!' for example).

Targeting a niche also means that your visitors will be aware that you are able to provide the sort of information they are looking for, hence they will bookmark your site for future reference and think of your site when looking for products that are related. As well, if the content of your site impresses visitors, not only are they likely to return but they may well recommend your address to their friends.

With a targeted niche, you can have more confidence when contacting your customers about new products, industry news or specials - and this is without postage costs or time consuming envelope stuffing.

There are a number of tools that will help you to find a niche that is likely to be profitable. WordTracker is a top grade tool that requires a subscription but there are a number of keyword analyzers for sale that will assist. A useful free one is Good Keywords. These tools are especially useful for identifying keywords that are attracting traffic. In other words, they indicate the level of interest from the public. Some of the commercially available tools will also give an idea of the level of competition that will be facing you. Search in Google under "keyword tools" for details of programs currently available.

Invite your subscribers to recommend the site to friends who are interested in the topic. Even better, have a place on your website to 'tell a friend'. Your visitor will enter their own name and email address as the sender of the message to avoid spam complaints. However, a warning - do not start emailing the invitee unless they sign up personally for your newsletter.

Niche sites will really benefit from a newsletter. Create an appealing free gift, such as a special report or how-to manual, that they will receive with their subscription. By providing valuable information related to your topic you will gain the trust of subscribers. By contacting them at least several times a year - up to once a week if possible - they will be reminded of your website when looking for information or products in your niche.

Be sure to create a website that has informative content. Incorporate the keywords (words or phrases visitors type into their search engines) into the content to improve your place in the search engines.

Also, if you write articles about your particular niche, that will help to set you up as an 'industry expert'. If you don't feel capable of writing them yourself you can hire a ghostwriter. End the article with your name, a comment about your business and a link to your website. Submit your article to relevant article directories or ask if website owners would like to use your contribution. Be sure they agree to keep your name and website link intact.

You may find discussion groups that cater to your market. Involve yourself in their conversations and attach a signature with your website address if the policies permit. Be careful not to advertise on these forums; however you may be able to offer your free items when the situation allows.

If you are expanding an existing off-line business by setting up a webpage you may find your most valuable contacts right in your store. Make some brochures or cards that announce your online presence, or ask customers if they'd like to sign up for your online newsletter.

Whether you are following the advice of top Internet Marketers or if you just happened to have a business that caters to a very specific target audience, you must be able to find them, and they must be able to find YOU. If your website has focus, this at least makes it easier for your audience to "hear your call". Then you can consider the nooks and crannies where THEY abide!

One of the joys of niche marketing is the luxury of tapping into a favorite hobby, occupation or expertise and building a business around it. Focusing on a niche also makes it EASIER to channel your energies and appeal to an enthusiastic audience. And possibly make a profit.

Ivan Kelly managed a Direct Mail business with extensive mailing lists for ten years and has designed and promoted many websites. He also provides quality f'ree courses on key internet marketing subjects. A list of these f'ree courses is available at: http://www.WebStartAdvisor.com/info.html

10 Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Website

2009-02-01T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Jim Hamelton Jr

Ever since the time websites became new to the World Wide Web, webmasters have been trying to direct traffic to their websites. As this was no easy task, webmasters found a way; a way that cost them money. Over the years, website promotion became much easier. Now, with over four million websites on the internet, when a web user has found your website, you shouldn't take their visit for granted. So, I have listed ten ways to increase your traffic.

1. Main problem is that most websites are "Under Construction", so when a visitor visits that website, they will waste no time leaving. So, FIRST, you must keep your website out of too much "construction." And, you may use an e-mail notifier to announce to your members or customers that your website construction is complete and they can come back.

2. Second, ADS; I see too many ads on one website, and because of that, i don't want to stay there for long. The best web host yo ucan get is HostUltra. They offer unlimited disk space, ad-free, but the reason this host is the best... it's FREE! I hosted one of my websites there and loved it.

3. If you have content on your website that can be found in other places, most likely your visitors will leave. so, it's wise to use your own content or anyo other content that can't be found on any other website. But if you use content from someone else, be sure to get their permission first.

4. Add-ons. If you anything like an email service or a message board or forum, that can be acessed on your website, your visitors will hafe something to come back to. With an email service, your visitors can register or login to check their mail. People like me, check their mail everyday, so this is a great idea to consider. You can get a free email service at http://www.zzn.com/. And with a message board, yor members can talk to you or each other.

5. Another great way to increase your traffic is by a Tell a Friend form or button that you can put on your website. With this, your visitors can invite their friends and their friends, on and on. So, your traffic will keep flowing if this happens. But do not force yor visitors to invite their friends, just remind them.

6. Short URLs are also importantif you want your visitors to have an easy and quick way to acess your website. One of the best is FreeDomain.co.nr; CJB.net is good too.

7. Affiliation. With affiliates, you can get alot more traffic. When you affiliate with someone, try to partner up with a popular website that has content related to yours.

8. Advertise. You can advertise your website at www.trafficexchange.com, which is a great traffic exchange program for anyone to use. When you advertise on a large website like TrafficExchange, millions of web users could find your website and keep returning to it.

9. Service or product support. If you have a service or product, your customers would like to have a place on your website that they can get support, otherwise they will find a better place. You can go to Bravenet to get a free chat service ar you can just search Google for one.

10. If you have a business where you offer products online for residents in your area, sponsoring a car, purchasing a billboard or anything else you can advertise on is a good idea.

I hope this article was helpful to you.

About the Author:

I am a web designer that currently is in high School and writes articles and soon, Ebooks to help others learn and get tips for web design and development. I have also had a web service network that died down when two and the rest of the staff moved over 1 1/2 hours away from our location.

River City Designs is my current project and soon, a small business. http://www.freewebs.com/rivercitydesigns/

Bringing Traffic To Your Home Business Website

2009-01-31T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Ryan Joseph

Most Home Business Owners realize that once they have created their website, the real work then begins. It is one thing to build a website ot hire a designer to do it for you, it is quite another thing to bring traffic to it on a consistent basis.

This can be a tricky task. This is not to say that building, tweaking, tracking visitors and otherwise testing your website is not very important, because it is. In fact it is essential, because the amount of quality content that your website contains will be a significant factor in how many sites link to your site and how much traffic you recieve (also known as the stickiness factor of your site).

But ultimately, the job of consistently promoting your home business website will almost certainly be the more challenging side of the coin for you, so this is where you will need to concentrate much of your efforts.

Of course the easiest way to achieve your traffic goals is to hire an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Firm to do the bulk if the work for you. But you will still have to monitor their progress intensely to make sure you are getting your money's worth. And speaking of that, SEO Firms are usually relatively expensive for the home business owner and small business entrepreneur because they are primarily geared toward the the large and midsize firms which are generally better funded.

Most home business owners I know cannot afford to pay $1500 a month for a typical service. Therefore most of you (and myself as well) will have to accept the fact that the marketing burden will fall on our shoulders. The good news is that you can probably generate adequate traffic to your website on your own with little investment. But it will cost you some time and effort.

I recommend that you submit your site to directories first since they will take the most time to approve you. While you are waiting for their approval begin lurking and then posting to relative forums with your signature line (which contains your website url, of course). Only post if appropriate but if the forums are relevant to your business then there should be plenty to talk about. The forums will give your site instant links, which will not only provide traffic but also help your site get indexed in the major search engines faster. If you post to at least several forums you will not have to even submit your website to the search engines.

In short, posting to forums will provide the initial thrust that will help you with the visibility of your site. The next thing you will probably want to do is get blogging. You can get a free blog with no ads at places such as blogurple dot com.

Set your website as the permalink and every time you post to your blog you will be creating a new backlink to your site, even if it is just a short post. This will work even better toward your website's relevency if you post about subject matter related to the general theme of your site. Now you will want to repeat the process as time allows. Just was, rinse and repeat.

Every time you do, you will increase your home business website's pagerank and link popularity that much more.

Ryan Joseph is a small and home-business author. More useful info at http://www.home-business-match.com/mortgageglossary.html

Eleven Fresh Out Of The Box Viral Marketing Tips

2009-01-30T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Joseph Pattison

Beyond all the hype, what makes a viral marketing campaign successful? While many factors come into play, I believe that a desire to help others to succeed is the most important piece of the puzzle. In that spirit, here are eleven ways to succeed brilliantly with viral marketing.

1. Give people an opportunity to make more money than you do-much, much more! Operate with the mindset of a franchise owner. Mcdonald's only keeps 3% of the profits from its many restaurants, but takes in billions of dollars every year!

2. Create a "mini-system" that people can easily apply to start profiting almost immediately. Give them every tool they need to start giving a free item away.

3. Put the "duplication factor" into play, again in the spirit of a franchise owner. Create a proven system for wealth, keeping a small percentage of the profits, and let people teach one another the system, or give them a central location they can come back to again and again for training.

4. Be a kind of "mentor" to the people that you want to give away your free items. Constantly help them to succeed, and by doing so you will succeed greatly yourself.

5. Develop a relationship with whoever you would like to give your your free items away to. They will in effect become loyal to you because you have demonstrated your willingness to serve them.

6. Occasionally e-mail your list with updates regarding the viral marketing campaign. Always keep it fresh, so they stay excited about it.

7. Constantly refine and improve on your viral marketing efforts, and also add to them as well.

8. Help people to create their own viral marketing campaigns in a manner that benefits them as well as you.

9. Sell your product and offer generous affiliate commission to entice people to promote it.

10. E-mail newsletter owners (make sure they don't mind you e-mailing them) and give them an incentive to be part of your viral marketing campaign.Explain the benefits. For example, how much they can profit by taking part in your viral marketing campaign.

11. Line up joint venture deals that allow your joint venture partners to profit immensely-give them a lot while you take a little.

Success in Internet marketing, and in anything else in life, requires ingenuity, creativity, determination and drive. I wish you much success with your Internet marketing campaign!

Can two sales lead to infinite income? => http://www.easyincomesystem.com

Aim At The Bullseye And Your Online Home Business Will Prosper

2009-01-29T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Kirk Bannerman

Traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is everything.

You have no doubt seen dozens of offers similar to "10,000 hits per hour driven to your website!". This type of website traffic is completely untargeted and will undoubtedly result in a very low conversion ratio. It's basically "throw it up against the wall and hope something sticks". The big incoming numbers give the illusion of progress, but you will achieve better results with a lower volume of highly targeted traffic.

I speak from experience because in the early days of developing my home business, I went for the big numbers instead of focusing on targeting prospects. It took me a while to appreciate the importance of targeting (quality) instead of just going for the big numbers, but it was a lesson well learned.

Exchanging links has been an important part of generating website traffic for quite some time, but the vast majority of people looking to trade links don't understand that just wildly swapping links with any willing webmaster is not the way to go.

For the last few years, most webmasters have been in a "pleasing Google" mode since Google had such a dominant position. Now that challengers are emerging, most notably Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves, the search engine ranking landscape is becoming much more complicated than just marching to the tune Google played.

Many website owners seem to be of the opinion that the sole purpose of exchanging links is to try to improve the search engine ranking position of their website. While it is true that links pointing to your website can help your search engine ranking, the reason for obtaining inbound links goes far deeper than that.

In my opinion, the targeted traffic that relevant links pointing to your site will bring can be as important as the traffic that comes to your website from people using search engines. This is where linking philosophy comes in. If you limit yourself to exchanging links only with websites that have a theme highly relevant to your own, the traffic you receive from those links will be far more targeted (valuable) than traffic you might receive from links with websites that have nothing to do with your theme.

Not only do highly relevant links bring you more highly targeted traffic, but they also play a "customer satisfaction" role for visitors to your website who arrived there as a result of a search engine query. If someone arrives at your website after performing a search for, lets say "work at home" and then finds your website full of links to a bunch of off topic sites (Viagra, online casinos, hotel reservations, sports betting, etc, etc) the impression is often not favorable and may actually drive your visitor away before they consider whatever it is that your website itself is offering.

Keep your eye on the bullseye and develop highly targeted traffic by having good content on your website and exchanging links with highly relevant sites that also offer good content. Remember, traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is everything.

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Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business.

Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.

Inbound Relevant Links

2009-01-28T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Patricia Fason

It is common knowledge that we need links to our website to boost our rankings with the search engines. Those links are even more important if they are relevant to the content of our website. The problem is getting those kind of links.

Think about it. How often have you performed a search and been led to a links page? I'm willing to wager that it hasn't been often. Even if you are lucky enough to place your link on a links page with similar content, or better yet, with your own detail page, you can't be sure that the owner of the website has made the link a permanent one (some of these kinds of links create a page when clicked on but otherwise are not available - meaning the search engines don't see them). If it is a permanent link, have they instructed the search engines to follow all links?

I have been mulling this over lately and decided I wanted to conduct an experiment where I have control of all the variables. I set up a new website containing tools to help optimize your webpages. There is also a directory that features listings that lead to a detail page. I have made all the URL's permanent, search engine friendly, and with instructions to follow all links. Contributors are allowed to write their own detail page using their keywords as they see fit, as well as specify their keywords for the page. All that's needed now is to get the PageRank(PR) up so that the links are more valuable. To do this, I have specific instructions for reciprocal linking, however, this is not mandatory and only affects how high you are placed on the list.

As you can see, I need some test subjects. I'm looking for people to place a link and then contact me after several months to let me know if their detail page is performing for them, If it has a PageRank(PR), and if you have any suggestions. If you are interested in participating, visit Webmaster Nook to submit your link to the directory. There is, of course, no charge. I plan on publishing an article on the outcome in approximately six months. If these kinds of links prove to be effective, this will tell us how to set up directories in the future to make them more valuable to our visitors and contributors.

Please visit Webmaster Nook to contribute to my findings.

Increase Online Traffic What Not To Do

2009-01-27T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Anita DeFrank

Since everyone is so obsessed with ways to increase our website traffic (and of course we should be) people often are quick to jump at anything that might help. We are always talking about ways to increase search engine traffic. But, what about what we shouldn't do? The following I'll share a few tricks that you shouldn't be doing.

--->Do Not Buy Traffic
This is one of the oldest scams around the internet. I'm not talking about PPC programs; that's a whole other article. The ones I'm talking about are the ones that 'guarantee you' 10,000 visitors for $10.00 (just an example). Do you really think that's possible? Not only do they try to sell you visits; they also try to say you'll get such and such amount of sales. In plain wordsBULL! Besides, there is NO company that can guarantee you any amount of sales. Sales depend on the demand of your product/service, price and of course your ad copy. Plain and simpleBuying traffic is a scam. Don't do it.

--->Don't Bother with Top Sites
These quickly become a big waste of your valuable time. (Remember, your time is valuable and time IS money.) Everyone else listed there with your site is doing the exact same thing you're doing. Let me guess, every day you are clicking on your link and voting for yourself and/or you are sending out tons of emails (possibly spam) begging all your friends to vote for you. Am I right? Don't waste your precious time doing this. Instead spend your time working on your ad copy. It'll take you much further.

--->Submitting Your Site Myths
You don't need to submit your site to search engines. Submitting your site to search engines does not increase your search engine rankings. The important search engines will index a properly built website.

--->Web Rings
Web Rings can be fun but, you very well could be sending your traffic AWAY from your site. You are giving your visitors the opportunity to click away to another site. You need to be concentrating keeping your visitors and selling your product or service. Besides that, a lot of people break the web rings. These rings are set up to be all about the same topics. You are giving your visitors direct links to your competitors.

--->Don't Spam Your Website
Some webmasters out there have decided to spam their own websites. How do they do this you ask? One way they do this is to place a lot of unrelated keywords into their meta tags and keywords. Another way is to make 'invisible text' on their website by making the text so small that it actually looks like a dot or period. Don't do this. This can easily get you banned from the search engines.

--->Do Not Participate in Link Farms
What exactly is a Link Farm? A link farm is list of links created and maintained solely for the purpose of constructing links between member sites. For example: One page of links is generated and to be listed on this page it is a requirement to place this page on your website. Search engines see this as an illegal move and can have you punished and banned from them. Please don't hesitate to investigate if you have a question about a particular program that you are involved with. It could save you tons later.

One thing that I frequently hear when referring to the above 'programs' is the following: "But, it's free, it's not going to hurt me." First of all, these aren't free. These are a waste of valuable time. As I mentioned Time IS Money and your time is precious. For every moment you are spending on these basically worthless ideas, you COULD be improving your traffic instead. Secondly, a few of the above mentioned are against search engine rules and could get you banned. That is a lot of hurting.

Starting to get depressed? Want to know what TO DO to increase your online traffic? No worries. (I wouldn't let you hanging like that.) There are lots of great ways to increase your website traffic. Take a look at http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/increase-online-traffic.html to find out what you should be doing.

How To Change Traffic Into Your Ustoppable Neverending Income

2009-01-26T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Seth Chong

The following paragraphs summarize the work of traffic experts who are completely familiar with all the aspects of traffic. Heed their advice to avoid any traffic surprises.

Do you have a website which pulls in large number of visitors everyday? You can actually benefit yourself with the traffic and earn a great, residual income if you give a little more effort. Here are some of the greatest ways you can convert those traffic into mountainous cash:

1. Sell a product/service

Of course, to earn money you need to sell a product or service to your visitors. It is the best way to profit from your own product. Usually, an e-book or software works the best they can be downloaded right away, no shipping included, no handling to be done. You earn 100% of the profits without any investments to be taken before that.

Other than that, selling your own product allows you to set your own price.

2. Opt-In list

It is very crucial that you try to convert every visitor of yours to a subscriber of your mailing list. The most important asset that an Internet marketer has is his or her list of subscribers. They define whether you will go far in the online business venture.

With an opt-in list, there are tons and tons of ways you can profit greater in the future. You can make previous customers purchase again from you, making them your repeating customers that is of course, if they are in your mailing list and you can urge them to buy again.

Building a closer relationship with your own subscriber will be the best thing you can do. By having your subscribers 'trust' you, you can endorse many other useful products to your subscribers and the chances that they will buy from you will be high because they trust you.

3. Viral marketing

You can provide a free product or bonus to be listed on your site to be downloaded by your visitors. Usually it'll be an e-book where people can read from and learn useful information. In this bonus, you include give away rights and urge readers to give it away to anyone they want to. This way, you increase your own publicity and branding.

In the future, you will receive great benefits as when you are known, people will trust you more and this profits you. Between a product let's say a tooth brush from a beggar and a doctor, who will you prefer to purchase from? Unless the beggar offers something special, it is hardly that you will purchase the tooth brush from him.

How can you put a limit on learning more? The next section may contain that one little bit of wisdom that changes everything.

4. Pay-per-click

In this case, you don't pay for every click but earn instead. There are many advertising programs that give you a percentage of the bidding on a certain keyword. The famous ones are Google Adsense, Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera.

When people click on the ads shown from either of these advertising programs, you will earn a small portion of money. Nevertheless, if you have high traffic to your site these programs alone can generate your residual income.

5. Offer an advertising space

Usually websites which brings in very high traffic will sell a small portion of space on their web page. You can charge a minimum of $300 for advertising someone's ad a single month on advertising fee if your web page is pulling more than 2000 visitors a day.

Other than that, you can also create exit pop-ups that advertise other websites as well. By doing this, you don't clutter your website with too many ads and you can earn a better reputation from your visitors.

6. Affiliate marketing

If you don't have your own product for sale, you can sell other's products instead and receive a commission on every sale. With affiliate marketing, you have an unlimited source of products to sell and you don't need to go through any problems after your sales.

No customer service, you don't need to issue any refunds, just let the owner do everything else for you after each sale. If you have a mailing list, you can endorse many other products and earn very great profits from your subscribers.

7. Pay-per-lead

Instead of earning money from every click your visitors clicked on, you are paid if you get your visitors to subscribe into other's mailing list. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that you just get visitors to become other's subscribers.

There are a lot of bigger companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi which holds survey every few months. By referring your visitors to them in order to complete a survey, you can also earn great profits from it.

Applied correctly, you can make a huge fortune on the Internet and build a steady online business taking over the place of your day job. Take some time to put effort in either of these strategies, because it can make your day bright.

When word gets around about your command of traffic facts, others who need to know about traffic will start to actively seek you out.

Seth Chong is the owner of IMViral, one of the largest, greatest viral Internet Marketing Newsletter which is being spread around the world, you can sign up for the Newsletter(worths $597) for Free at http://www.IMViral.com

Answer Aggregators The Rules Of The Game

2009-01-25T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Sasson Margaliot

Answer Aggregator is a new type of Answer Engine. Answer Aggregator provides a systematic way to collect links to existing on-line resources that can be used for answering questions and maintains "mapping" of Questions into Answers.

In order to make the content of a website accessible to Answer Aggregator, all the webmaster has to do is to list the pages together with the corresponding Questions in a file called SYNDICATE.TXT (located in the root directory) and submit the URL of this SYNDICATE.TXT file to an Answer Aggregator. If found acceptable, the links listed will be included into the database which the Answer Aggregator uses to match answers to the questions people ask.

Another file read by Answer Aggregate's robot is NOMINATE.TXT, where a webmaster can include the resources he recommends that are found on other syndicated websites. The NOMINATE.TXT is rated for appropriateness, quality, and relevance of its recommendations and the Authority Rank is assigned to it.

Listing a page in SYNDICATE.TXT or NOMINATE.TXT is just a proposal. An Answer Aggregate may decide to reject any content for any reason. In particular, the syndicated pages must be appropriate for all age groups, including children who use the Question Answer Engines for their school papers and research.

Answer Aggregates may use natuaral language technology in order to expand the number of supported Questions. Advanced Lingusitic Technology is the key component of Answer Aggregates, which enables the expansion of the number of supported Questions. Most importantly, this task of discerning which Question Templates are equivalent to each other is doable using current Linguistic Technology, and there is no need to wait for further progress in the field.

Sasson Margaliot
Founder
Linguistic Agents Ltd
SmartInform
LingLab

Building A Business Without Advertising Your Product

2009-01-24T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by John Layton

Are you trying to sell your product online with little or no success? Are you spending lots of money advertising all over the web and getting very few sales? Well, maybe it's time you try something a little different. Try not selling your product! You read that right. People do not want to be sold to. They do like to buy things, however.

So what are you supposed to do? Well, I will try to keep this article short and to the point, without a lot of confusing jargon to make it longer. I have been reading everything I can get my eyes and hands on about online business. The one thing that sticks in my head is this - If you build it, will they come? Build what, you say? Build an online place where people will want to visit; an online community. And, if you do it right, they will come!

How do you do that? There have been many books written on this subject. You may want to check out some at your local library. Here's a really good article that sums up this idea remarkably well.

First, you must identify your target audience. Who are the people that will be interested in your product? What would bring these people together? What do you think their interests are? If you have to, do some research or take a survey.

A Message Board and a Chat Room are basically a must for any online community. Also, lots of free information about their interests. A Links page where you can list links to other sites that may be of interest to them. You should include a form for them to submit their input. See what they like or dislike about your community. Ask them what else they would like to see at your community. Members like to be involved in their community, either online or offline.

Also, you should have a "Tell a Friend" link. This way they can tell others that they know who would be interested in joining your community. A "Tell a Friend" link could be a prewritten letter about your online community that sounds like one friend telling another friend how great it is! All your current members have to do is copy and paste this letter into the body of an email. Or, they could write their own letter of recommendation. There's nothing better than free advertising!

After you have your online community established, you need to let people know it's there. There are many ways to do this. One good way is to find an e-zine that accepts articles from subscribers. Make sure it fits in with the topic of your community and/or products. Then you write an article to submit to the e-zine. Make sure it is professionally written. Mistakes reflect poorly on your professional image.

At the end of the article, you can include a link to your community. Remember, do not try to sell them anything in the article. You just want them to visit your community. First, get visitors, then turn visitors into customers through valuable relationships.

Another way would be to form a partnership with another website owner. One that, again, fits in with the subject matter of your community and/or product. Here, you would exchange links or advertising space with your new partner. Just send a letter to the webmaster of the site you're interested in exchanging links with and ask them if they would be interested too. Some will, some won't. Some might not even write back. DO NOT get discourage, forget about them and move on to the next one.

There are websites that focus mainly on this kind of partnership. Some people call it a Joint Venture (JV). These websites have members who are interested in finding a JV partner. All you need to do is find one or more that interests you. Most of these websites will take care of all the detail work of setting up the partnership, keeping track of who is partnered with who, if anyone is trying to cheat, etc.

There are many other ways of gaining attention for your website. Some are free, some are low cost and some are high cost. There's more information about this topic than can be written in one article. There's entire books dedicated to each of them.

John Layton has been publishing websites since 1998. His latest website, The Rebel Computer Guy (http://www.geocities.com/jlaytonjr1), has many resources and learning tools for the online business newbie. You may use this article for your own e-zine, newsletter, website, or whatever purpose you need. All I require is that you use the entire article, including the resource box giving me the credit. I would appreciate, but do not require, an email letting me know that you are using it and where I can find it. The Rebel Computer Guy website has lots of information about working on the Internet. Topics include; Guide To Working On The Web, Learn How To Write HTML, Ebooks and Reports, Classified Ads, Articles, and lots of Tips. There's also a Links section and a What's New section. Perfect for beginners. For more articles visit my articles page at http://www.geocities.com/jlaytonjr1/Articles/Articles.htm

Traffic Equals Sales Learn The Secrets To Heavy Explosive Traffic

2009-01-23T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Keith Wellman

What ways do you know to bring more traffic?

-Pay Per Click

-Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

-Forums

-Joint Ventures

-Tell a Friend script on your website

-Blog n' Ping

-Real Backlinks

-Affiliates

-Safelists

-Paid Ads

-Offline postcards, flyers, posters, etc.

Ok ok I'll stop there. As you can see there are many ways to get a ton of targeted traffic. Today I will focus on a couple of my favorites.

Tell-A-Friend

First the tell a friend script. If you have your own website this will work great for you. If you don't have your own website you need to get one :)

First download a free tell-a-friend script. You can easily find one by searching on Google.

You will need to follow the directions to edit the script but it is fairly simple to use. Make sure you have an autoresponder system that you can have the email addresses and names sent to.

When you set this up on your website you should not just throw it in. No one will ever use it if you do not do it right. Here is what you do...

Offer the visitor something of value for filling out the tell-a-friend script!

Once they fill it out then you can send them their free gift. This works incredibly well especially if you really offer something of good value. It doesn't have to be much, just useful.

Back-links

Yeah I know a lot of you don't like spending the time with these but really I have gotten so much traffic from just asking people if they would link to me. There are right and wrong ways to go about this so I will give you a few tips that have really helped me.

First off do not mass email potential link partners! They hate it. They also hate getting an email that sounds cut-n-paste. So take the time to write out personal emails and talk a little about their site. Then kindly ask if they wouldn't mind linking to your site.

How do you know if they are a good link partner? Well you can download the free Google toolbar to get their pagerank (1-10). Anything 2 or higher is good. 4 and 5 are awesome and 6 and more means you just found an avalanche for traffic :)

Ok so you find them and get them to link to you...easy enough right? Well not really. The task can be very daunting and take up a lot of time. I recently found a program that not only automates the process to a great level but also does a whole lot more. You can find many products like this by searching for SEO optimization through Google.

Finally I am going to talk a bit about another favorite of mine and that is affiliates. Some of you may not think this is a valid traffic avalanche and I assure you that you are absolutely mistaken.

Affiliates are so powerful that they doubled the amount of business that Amazon.com did in a year. They are so powerful that the ONLY traffic source that some people use is from affiliates. So how do you get a small army of affiliates to perform well for you?

If you have a product and would like an army of affiliates to start promoting it then head over to Google and search for free merchant accounts. There are several where you can get a free account and affiliates to promote for you at no cost! How cool is that?

Keith Wellman is the owner of ViralFX. Keith interviewed several 'guru's' on viral marketing tactics and even made them available online for free. With these same tactics Keith was able to achieve over 3,000 members in less than 48 hours! If you are interested in Keith's site please check out http://www.viralfx.com

How To Generate Exponential Traffic Growth By Writing Articles

2009-01-21T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Tim Wright

Writing articles is probably one of the best things any internet marketer can do.

Why?

Because it establishes you as an authority on the subject that you are writing on and because writing articles will also increase the number of people (and visitors) who know about and visit your website.

Writing articles and allowing other webmasters to post your articles on their website will absolutely explode the number of backlinks to your site, in addition to increasing the number of people who visit your site both of which help to increase your website's popularity and search engine ranking.

The best part about giving away free articles for other webmasters to publish on their own website is that this sort of thing is viral so you could end up getting thousands of visitors to your site from just one article that you wrote.

Think about that for a moment.

You write an article and then make it available to webmasters to post on their site, because they need content for their website. But on every article that you write, you have a link back to your website so in a way they are promoting your website in exchange for you allowing them to post their article on their site.

So, if your article gets published by twenty webmasters, you will automatically have twenty additional backlinks to your website, along with twenty additional streams of traffic coming to your website.

Also, the visitors who visit the webmaster's site and see your article automatically make the assumption that the webmaster endorses you and your website. That makes these visitors a little more likely to visit your site than if a link to your website was just listed on their links page.

With advantages like these, you can see why you want to submit your article to as many different websites, forums and article directories as possible.

This article was taken from Tim's ebook, White Hat SEO Revealed, which covers detailed, step by step information on how you can dramatically increase your current search engine rankings and website traffic. Tim's ebook is available for free at http://www.phase1.ws

How To Increase Web Site Visitors For Relevant Terms Using Your Less Relevant Listings

2009-01-20T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Tinu Abayomi-Paul

Completely by accident and through no effort of my own, besides the effort to get my site spidered by Yahoo's Slurp Search Engine Spider and Google's Googlebot Search Engine spider, I've seen an accidental increase in the visitors to my web site.

Suddenly, I was ranking first page for Google, Yahoo and AOL for the phrases like "picture of William Hung", and "william hung she bangs".

The Good news is, this means that when the Yahoo Slurp spider came to the site and indexed my front page last Saturday, (and no, I didn't submit my site OR pay for inclusion), my results were in the search engine by Sunday apparently, which is when I started getting clicks from Yahoo for this unusual term.

The Bad News is, William Hung, except for being an example of the power of Free Marketing, has NOTHING to do with my site!

So how does one fix this situation? How do you turn an accidental good ranking into several good rankings for other terms? Or say you've got great rankings for a relevant, but fairly insignificant term? The solution is the same.

Just give the spider more of what it wants.

Google, Yahoo - and apparently their search partners - love that page. So, first thing I did was improve the page in question. At the time there was no picture of William Hung on the page that was ranking so well. It's important that you satisfy web site visitors who accidentally happen up on your site.

It only happens once in a while, but sometimes the person who come by is also interested in your regular content.

The next thing I did, was create other pages I believed the two sites would like. Since the articles here primarily offer resources to webmasters who want to learn how to increase the number of visitors to their sites, all I had to do was tweak some of the wording to the liking of both those visitors and the search engine spiders, and write one more article.

How did I know what the search engines would like, and how that would increase the number of people who would come to the site? Well, I found out that some guarded information about the latest optimization tips for Yahoo and Google was available on the Web FREE. (If you want to know what that resource is, just download the updated Free Google Optimization Guide.)

Once I had the pages optimized to my satisfaction, all I had to do was link some of those pages to the front of my site (where the article was then located) and wait for the increase in traffic to my site. Google spiders me every day like clockwork ever since I made this tiny change to my website that increased my site rank from zero to five in January.

Of course, I then had to figure out if my secret technique to baiting the Google spider was going to work with Yahoo's new search engine spider.

Not only did it work, but it worked faster than leading the Google spider to specific page of my site! Yahoo's spider is not back at my site on a daily basis yet, but it does come regularly, finding new pages, and reindexing the area with the most content.

So there you have it. If your site has been indexed well for a term you didn't really want, first, make the page as relevant as possible to the visitors who end up at your site.

Next, give the search engine spider "food" to eat that is more relevant to your site. It doesn't hurt to optimize this page. You can now download the new optimization guide for FREE here- IF you're one of the next 100 subscribers. Only 1000 copies will be available for download so get yours now.

Third and last, get the spider to come on back to your site. If you know how to bait a search engine spider, great! You'll get your results faster, and since the spider finds the link on its' own, you may get better placement. Or, you can submit your site to one of Inktomi's partners, and/or Google and wait the 6-8 weeks it takes to be included.

About The Author

Tinu is a free traffic FANATIC> She's been offered treatment for this condition, but says it just saves too much money. Her parting words "If you don't know how to bait the Google spider, subscribe to my newsletter. I give that tip away free in the second issue. Email ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com or join at http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com, where you can also read more articles about getting quality visitors for free."

Link Popularity Means More Traffic

2009-01-19T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Donald N. Lombardi

The first place that a potential customer goes to find a product or service on the internet is a search engine. The higher you are listed in a search engine the better the possibility of your site being found. If the potential customers do not find you in their search, chances are that they will not visit your site and as a result you will not have an opportunity at making a sale with that prospect.

What has this all got to do with link popularity? Well, link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines. It determines the ranking or positioning your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine by a potential customer when looking for a product or service. The higher the position the more likely a prospect will find and click onto your site.

There are a few things you should be aware of and guard against in your quest for link popularity. These can be summed up in two words: Quantity and Quality.

You will not achieve link popularity just by linking up with a large number of other websites. In fact, it may work against you. There are web sites that are known as "link farms" containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines will discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The quality of the site you are linking to is also super important. So be sure to check out the site you are linking to before you commit to linking. If you have any reservation about your visitors seeing that you are linking to a site that is indiscriminate and cheap, forget about it. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

Here are some things you need to do to achieve link popularity and improve your rankings on the popular search engines.

The fastest way to get your foot in the door is to get a listing on some popular directories. You can do this manually or with the aid of software. There are several excellent software products on the market and when you consider the cost versus the time, you can decide which course is best for you.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site visitors. For instance, if you are selling life insurance, someone selling health insurance would be a good link choice. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website traffic, you are increasing both of your site business prospects - and both of your sites link popularity.

Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a link or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with this crowd. Again you can do this manually, or with a software program.

There is a lot of hard work over an extended period of time involved to get a high ranking with search engines. Other than some software programs to assist you there are no shortcuts to achieve link popularity. So be prepared for a long journey to the top. This is one of those areas where patience, commitment, and persistence pay off. Good Luck!

P.S.: You want to be sure to have an attractive and interesting site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you.

Donald N. Lombardi is a business consultant, as well as an Expert Author on Home Based Business. Prior to starting his consulting pratice in 1984, Don spent over 20 years as a senior executive in Corporate America.

http://www.HomeBasedBusinessWizard.com

Employing The Kiss Model As The Fourth Step To Increase Internet Traffic And Deliver Results

2009-01-18T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Reading at least 10 to 50 articles each day, I realize that I am drawn to those articles that remember the old KISS Model Keep It Simple and Short. Articles that are intentionally written with simplicity, are short in length and provide me with valuable and rich content attract me.

Simplicity does not mean that you, the author, need to "dummy down" the content, but rather write in such a way that the reader can quickly progress from one point to another without being confused. Your message should provide the reader with new rich content and not recycled content. Think of a funnel in which the beginning of the article is the top of the funnel and the tip is the conclusion. Your articles should draw the reader down with the desired end result of visiting your website or even better giving you a call or an email.

As writers, we need to remember that potential readers have limited time and that the human brain can only process so much information. Even though it is in our nature to want to share all of our experiences or expertise, sometimes this creates a feeling in the reader of "drinking from a fire hydrant." Writing a series of shorter articles rather than one long article respects the readers' time. Also, shorter articles work for many of the newsletters that search the Internet for new content.

For a moment, consider yourself as a reader. Do you actually read those long articles or do you skim through the content? If you are like me, you probably quickly glance through the content looking for a new idea or concept. Would it not make more sense to write a shorter article where the reader actually reads more words?

Articles that vary in word count from 300 to 600 words provide an opportunity for the reader to actually read and easily recognize the expertise of the author. Shorter articles force writers to expand their vocabulary by incorporating words that better describe the topic. HINT #4 The Thesaurus is your best friend.

Shorter articles do take more time to write because being concise and succinct is a learned skill. In working with one colleague, Alan Boyer at www.leaders-perspective.com, Alan has reduced his articles from 1,500 words to 6oo to 1,000 words and is working to reduce them even further.

As more and more individuals use article distribution as an Internet marketing strategy to achieve the goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the quality of the articles becomes even more important. Your mission as an article marketer, if you decide to accept, is to write both for quality and submit enough quantity to accomplish that noble goal.

This article may be freely published. Permission to publish this article, electronically or in print, as long as the bylines are included, with a live link, and the article is not changed in any way (grammatical corrections accepted).

Leanne Hoagland-Smith, M.S. CEO of ADVANCED SYSTEMS located outside of Chicago, IL, is the Learning & Process Specialist. With over 25 years of business & education experience, she helps her clients to double their performance. By uniting systems, strategies and people to create loyal internal customers, Leanne delivers ROI solutions in 4 key areas: financials, leadership, relationships and growth & innovation within a variety of industries including education, healthcare, manufacturing and professional services. As co-author of M.A.G.I.C.A.L. Potential: 7 Capacities for Living an Amazing Life Beyond Purpose to Achievement due for 2005 release, Leanne speaks nationally to a variety of audiences. Please contact Leanne at 219.759.5601 or visit http://www.processspecialist.com if you are seeking to connect your passion to your purpose to double your performance for unheard of results.

Is There Truth In The John Reese Complaints Or Is He A Good Guy

2009-01-17T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Jennifer Carter

If you're wondering whether it's really possible for an "average joe" to make money with Google Adsense, then now is the time to finally get going and start your own internet business.

If you've read about making money online over the past month, you've almost certainly heard of John Reese. John is an internet marketing expert and has been running his own internet business since shortly after the internet was created.

In February 2005, John decided to set up a test to see if it was truly possible to make money with Google Adsense. The results are staggering in less than a year, he has earnt $526,744.35 in Adsense earnings that's over half a million dollars in just twelve short months.

John claims to have done this in less than 150 hours work! Mind you, he is the expert!

That said, there are just two things he gets excited about (if it was me it'd be about 526,744 things!):-

His first 93 cents this proved that his idea was possible!
The fact that this is residual income he can continue building his other internet businesses and this money will keep on rolling in!

These sites are not about internet marketing, but about ordinary, everyday subjects where John has identified that a Niche market exists.

It seems like now is the time to be starting your own online business, there are plenty of opportunities available for people with enthusiasm, determination and the will to succeed! People like John prove that it is possible to make money online, the only question is, are you willing to try?

You can find out more about his monthly newsletter, at Reese Report

Jen Carter runs a successful internet business. For further hints and tips on making money with Google Adsense, visit Make money with Google Adsense.

How To Drive Web Traffic To Your Site

2009-01-16T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Peyton Randulf

Wow, have you ever wondered if there's some way to really get good traffic to your site? If you're like me, that can seem like a herculean task. You build that first web site and you find that you're getting 10 to 20 site visits a day, most of which is robots searching your site, not real traffic from potential buyers.

How do you get a web site to attract 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 visitors a day. That's the subject of search engine optimization. You want your site to have the attributes and information that the search engines are looking for to rank you high in their search results.

Getting your site to the first page of search results can be done, but you've got to use tools and techniques designed to do that. There's tremendous competition out there, as anyone who's ever tried to create a web site knows. How would you like to find a tool that gets you a first page search listing. Here is one tool that does the trick: http://seo.5x1.net

Using this tool for Search Engine optimization, sites have been listed on Google page one for these keywords, as examples:
- lose weight
- weight loss
- how to lose weight.
The competition is in the millions of other sites for those keywords. Now wouldn't you like to have a tool that really works for your keywords and your web site?

As one user of this tool said "I've been using it for a few months now and it's become one of my 'must use' applications for planning the search marketing efforts for all of my sites. Previously I had used a combination of other products that did 'half the job', manual search and the popular technique of 'wishful thinking'. If you want to predict results rather than hope for them, people need this product."

You have to decide if you need and want to improve the flow of traffic to your web site. Having the right tool can make all the difference. That's true for carpenters, it's true for auto mechanics, and it's true for anyone trying to build a web site that brings in the traffic. Good targeted traffic can be your source for revenues that put a smile on your face.

(c) 2006

The author writes on a variety of topics related to web site construction, management and revenue optimization. See http://seo.5x1.net for more information.

3 Quick Ideas To Boost Website Traffic And Broaden Your Audience

2009-01-14T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Melissa Brewer

No matter what you're marketing on the web, there are days that it seems like your traffic numbers are dwindling, and you can't seem to tell exactly what's off. It doesn't matter if your audience is out of town, glued to the Olympics, or simply not making it to your website. They're just not there when you need them to listen most. Every website owner has a time when they feel that their traffic may be suffering. Luckily, this is the best time for you to get moving and take a few fail-safe steps to action. Stop checking your statistics in a fever pitch, and choose one or two of the following traffic back-up plans to boost your traffic, and reach a new audience, within days.

Idea 1: Post on Craig's List in your area. Everybody's doing it. Create a professional ad in the appropriate section. Make sure it is well-written, has an active HTML link, and sells your brand or products. You can post a new ad every day, as long as it's not the same ad. Post and feature one of your products every day, if you're an online retailer. If you sell services, run a special for Craig's List users only. If you can code a simple HTML table, with links to the graphics on your website, your advertisement can set you apart from the crowd. Visit: http://www.craigslist.org and look around for examples of ads. It's also a great place to barter some of your services or products with other small businesses.

Idea 2: Do a contest for a giveaway and spread the news about it. Choose a nice item or quick service that you want your audience to know about, and give it away in a drawing. You can do this on a weekly basis or once a month. It's easy to do, and not too expensive. All you need is a form on your website which is great for adding subscribers to your email list or postal list. If you have a message board or discussion group, make sure to announce your giveaway. In fact, any forum you belong to should be notified about it. Write up a quick announcement for email lists and newsletters you receive. (Or, if you're really, really bold, and want a huge amount of traffic, submit it a few internet sweepstakes sites) A press release is also a nice, professional touch that may help your contest make its way to a few websites and local papers. If you decide to do a regular contest, expect a lot of links to your website in the future.

Idea 3: Join a business or social network online and introduce yourself. Have you heard of MySpace? (www.myspace.com) How about Ryze? (http://www.ryze.org) Both of these forums are a place for self employed and other business professionals plan their work, and play. The concept is simple; your network expands as more people join your "friend list". You can join forums, groups, and subgroups based on your interests, as well as learn about real-life, local networking events. Think of it as part directory, part chat room, and part advertising space; a place where people surf around, view profiles, and form an opinion of you and your business. Then they decide if they want to network with you in real life. So take a few minutes, create a professional profile, and join some discussion forums. Be friendly, chat openly, and participate. Every time you join a group or create a post, people are watching and visiting your website. And every time you have something to announce, you'll have a whole new subculture listening to you!

These are just a dent in the many ways there are to increase your audience and build traffic. They're great in a pinch, and you'll be able to see tangible results after about a week. But it's really a great idea to have a thorough marketing plan in the long run. Use these as a quick fix, and build up your audience, but be aware that building website traffic is a daily affair. Hard work and determination, and the right knowledge, will help you immensely in your quest for quality traffic.

Melissa Brewer is an award winning writer based in Northern Virginia, just on the cusp of Washington DC. Her copywriting skills have been put for work for the past 6 year, helping a plethora of clients on and offline. You can learn all about her copywriting and marketing services at her website, http://www.techsavvycopy.com If you're stuck trying to brainstorm marketing ideas, she's always available for a free consultation, just email: Melissa@techsavvycopy.com

Valuable Content Is Credible Recomendation

2009-01-13T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Ko Santo

To be successful, the needs of your target group have to be your #1 Priority. Your desire to earn income comes second.

Use great content to create an open-to buy/hire mindset in your visitor. Deliver strong, appropriate editorial content that PREsells. PREsold visitors convert more easily and more frequently into paying customers --higher Conversion Rates (CR) which is exactly the result that your online business has to achieve in order to flourish.

Bottom line?

There is no such thing as "passerby traffic" on the Net. You have to build and attract warm, willing-to-buy traffic on an ongoing basis. A great content site helps you achieve that goal. It increases targeted traffic, which produces more sales, which in turn produces more income. In other words, the key is to develop great content that leads to the money-making click...Make Your Word Sell !

Valuable Content = Credible Recommendation = Turned ON customer = High CR.

Don't push your visitors to the click, make them want to click through. It makes all the difference if your visitors feel that it's their idea to deliver your Most Wanted Response (MWR) -- in other words, what you most want your visitor to do on your site. Your MWR is to get your visitors to click through to your order page (or your particular income generation source) so that you can make the sale!

And it all begins with effective PREselling...

Site Build It! makes it a snap to identify profitable keywords for your theme (i.e., keywords that many people are searching for but that very few sites provide information about). Just click on a button, and SBI! does the research for you! Hours of tedious research reduced to minutes. And all you have to do is wait for the results!

For example, your page about concrete statues explains all about how to make and repair striking statues for the home and garden. You could even expand it into an entire "Statue Section," with a page on the history of concrete statues and another one about how to market and sell the statues that the visitor makes.

The main point, though, is that you create truly excellent, high-value content that delivers what your reader sought at the Search Engines. See! It happened again! By writing about a niche that you know and love, the content is easy.

OK, a second "concrete" example that comes at you from a different angle...John A. Smith is a passionate lover of all things concrete, and owner of "Smith's Concrete Repair Service." Mr. Smith's company repairs foundations, retaining walls, driveways, statues, swimming pools -- heck, if it's concrete and it's busted, he'll fix it! The first thing of note is this...Smith's "Concrete Repair Service" is a locally-based service, but Mr. Smith has great vision.

He builds a Web site that appeals to both local and global interests. Here's how

1) His well-written concrete-related articles provide a valuable information resource for all visitors, regardless of their geographic location.

2) Local visitors (who are not currently clients) come to trust Mr. Smith as he demonstrates over and over again through his articles, and his e-zine, two very appealing attributes -- his unwavering commitment to the "putting-the-needs-of-thecustomer- first" philosophy and the breadth of his knowledge pertaining to all things concrete.

Before long, Mr. Smith becomes established in his visitors' minds as "The Concrete Man." When these local prospects need a concrete repairman, guess who they're going to call?

3) Local visitors come to recognize Mr. Smith as more than "some guy with a concrete repair service." Thanks to the bio (About Us) page, they learn he's a dedicated father, an active member of the community, and a little league coach, as well as being the owner of a company. This information adds to his credibility.

4) Global visitors produce a secondary income stream for him. Mr. Smith can refer these surfers to merchant-partners (and their products) that he represents (ex., books about landscape design, a retailer of concrete statues, a garden supplier for concrete molds, trowels, etc.,). And, of course, he could also sell his own e-book, consulting services, Google's AdSense, .

Mr. Smith's warm-and-willing-to-buy visitors trust his knowledgeable advice. His PREselling efforts make it easier for him to convert these visitors into customers.

Bottom line?

PREsell effectively to sell effectively. It's as simple as that! And this meansThe needs of your target group must be your #1 priority, the reason behind every action you take. always comes second.

So keep your visitors in constant focus and

1) PREsell... don't sell! Use great content to create an "open-to-buy/hire" mindset in your customer. Warm up your visitors first.

2) Maximize profit by maximizing your traffic (by delivering lots of topical content) and Conversion Rate (CR).

3) Your CR depends upon what you do and how you do it. You will achieve higher Conversion Rates if you...

4) Reach targeted traffic in a reputable fashion (ex., visitors find you via the Search Engines).

5) Deliver valuable, appropriate editorial content that PREsells.

6) Recommend visitors to your income-generating source (ex., your sales/order page, the site of the merchant-partners that you represent, your online store, etc.) after they come to respect and like you.

OK, let's build on this extremely important foundation. We introduced the term "Most Wanted Response" earlier. Now it's time to go into more depth about this conceptand take the "Get to the Point Test".

It's a powerful demo of just how badly off their business is, traffic-wise, and how much better they could be doing. http://traffic.sitesell.com/focusonsmart.html

You can now truly realize the potential of the Net. All you have to do is... BYOBAM! (Bring Your Own Brain and Motivation!) Let We supplies the rest . "Why build JUST a Web site...when you COULD build a Web BUSINESS?"

http://www.sitesell.com/focusonsmart.html

Drive Swarms Of Traffic To Your Site

2009-01-12T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Larry Potter

Successful affiliates know that, in order to make serious money as affiliates, they need to play "the numbers game." Here's what we mean:

Between 1% and 20% of the people who visit your web site will click through your affiliate link. (The range is wide because it all depends on how targeted your traffic is and how good the affiliate link, banner ad, text link, or other promotional tool you're using is.)

Out of every 200 people who actually click through your affiliate link (not just visit your site, but actually click on your affiliate link), only 1 to 2 will buy.

What does this mean? The bottom line is that in order to make one affiliate sale, you'll need to attract at least 500 people to your web site.

Now, we're not telling this to scare you -- after all, there are plenty of IMC affiliates just like you who easily drive more traffic than this to their sites each and every month. We just want you to be aware that it takes a bit of work.

So how do you go about driving more people to your site?

There are a number of strategies that super affiliates use to keep visitors coming:

Search engine optimization
Pay-per-click advertising
Discussion group contributions
E-mail marketing
Classified ads

If you want to skip the failing actions and get a personal tour of REAL PEOPLE making REAL PROFITS on the Internet, then go to...

http://advancedinternetwealth.50webs.com/index.html6.htm

... and take advantage of the invaluable tips and tricks that these Internet successes reveal so that you can start applying them to your business today.

Optimizing Your Dead Links

2009-01-11T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Rick Hoogendoorn

I have been reading, with great interest, all the online advice about how to optimize a website. We have a financial planning business in Victoria, BC. Like most towns, there are lots of financial planners, investment advisors, insurance agents, brokers, dealers, and Starbuck's locations here. Somehow we needed to find a way to stand out, perhaps by getting our meta-tags in order.

For a time, we were looking fabulous in searches on Google, but our site couldn't be found on Yahoo! Then we got the Yahoo search engine figured out but promptly disappeared off of Google. Now I thought this optimizing thing would fix it once and for all.

The strategy made sense. You have your title designed, and it ties in with your meta-tags and content. You have your meta-tags match your content. You think about what content you actually want to have. I spent an hour or three on several of our site's pages optimizing like crazy. Poof!

We were nowhere on Google and now I had successfully torpedoed our site on Yahoo! There were old (really old) dead link pages cropping up in searches for us on Yahoo. The brand spanking new, optimized pages were nowhere to be found. Huh?

Perhaps I needed to wait for the spiders and robots to visit. Day after day I would check. Financial Planning Victoria? Nope. Financial Planner Victoria? Nope. CFP Victoria BC? Nothing.

And then, today, I checked Yahoo and there we were #1 or #2 on Yahoo for all kinds of different search terms! It works!!! We were top ranked for at least three dozen different search terms! Financial Planner Victoria - #1! Retirement Victoria BC - #1! Tax planner Victoria - #1! And so on. I was thrilled.

I sent an email to everybody in the office bragging about it, and then set about creating our e-newsletter which tells clients about our website updates each month. I uploaded the new articles. One was about the wonders of technology. I encountered some weird loading prompts. I checked the website. It was extremely slow in loading. I checked it again. The main page was a dead link this time! I checked again, and while the main page loaded, the navigation bar only loaded partially. Dead link. Slow load. Nothing!

Here I had spent all this time optimizing pages and on the day it works, people will be clicking through to dead links! So I am now leaning out the second storey window, holding the computer by the cords in one hand, whilst finishing this article in the other. Should I drop the computer on the street? Come on! Lemme do it! Please! I'm swinging it around now like a lasso. I think I can hang it up on the telephone wires like an old pair of sneakers!

About The Author

Rick Hoogendoorn is an 'associate' and 'pessimistic optimizer' with Cheri Crause & Associates Inc. in Victoria, BC. Cheri Crause is a certified financial planner in the same town. www.chericrause.com

Email Forwards Source Of Valuable Traffic That Low Traffic Bloggers Never Talk About

2009-01-10T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Christopher Kyalo

At this blog where I was focusing on reader comments to generate content and posts, I noticed an interesting development when I studied my steadily growing daily traffic figures in more detail.

I was getting increasingly high traffic from emails. That is visitors who were clicking through on a link to my site that had been emailed to them by somebody. The wonderful system I use to track traffic to my low traffic blog is able to give me this sort of information.

This is a source of traffic for blogs that is not talked about much. But it has become clear to me that any blogger can actively promote and provoke email forwards that will have a high impact on their traffic by multiplying the number of targeted visitors the low traffic site receives.

To start with people will not forward a link to just any other article or blog post. They will tend to favor articles that are not only unique but particularly relevant to their current situation and recent experiences. That is why basing content on reader comments is such a powerful marketing strategy for any blog.

And once again, this is the sort of strategy that only low traffic sites with fewer comments can accomplish successfully.

Visit the author's make money from email forwards blog to read the rest of this article. Or Email him now for a personal reply, Free Special Report and a valuable free online course.

How Tagging And Keywords Stack Up

2009-01-09T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Lisa Ann Ginger

Fed up with being shoveled content by search engine algorithms, a segment of searchers have switched to tagging and social bookmarking to find online information. Can you capitalize off this new wave of search?

What is tagging?

Tags are basically keywords. A tag can be a category or a subject. When we talk about tagging, all we are basically referring to is how you summarize what your webpage or site is about.

Is it about dogs?

If so, then you might want to use the tag, "dogs".

What else is your site (or blog) about?

Perhaps German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, dog training, and puppy toys.

Well, then all these would make great tags as well.

So the concept of tagging is not really that much different from your standard keywords.

But there's an interesting difference between using tags and using keywords in the hopes of getting some traffic to your site.

As an internet marketer optimizing a site for the search engines, you're generally taught to select a keyword (or keyphrase) and stick with that keyword throughout a single page. A single page on your site becomes the official "dog training" page or whatever keyword you chose.

You can most certainly create a page that revolves around dog training and puppy toys, but the search engines will get confused when it comes to categorizing your site. The fact that you're trying to rank well for both keyphrases will dilute them both out. In the end, you won't rank real high for either term.

So with search engine optimization, a single page equals one keyword (or keyphrase) to get the optimum effect.

When you want to rank well for another related term, you know you need to create an entirely separate page.

But with tagging, you can select several keywords (or tags) for each page of your site and not be penalized. In fact, you actually get rewarded for selecting a number of related tags rather than just one.

With tagging optimization, a single page equals a chance to rank high for many tags.

As you can imagine, this can really help you maximize your efforts. If every page can rank well for a dozen terms, it's as though you just wrote a dozen pages instead of one.

Obviously, the search engines don't rank based on tags (they have their million dollar algorithms), but many other sites do. Many of the Social Bookmarking sites use tags to help organize their content. And many of these sites are highly trafficked.

What is Social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking sites are cropping up all over the internet. Del.icio.us and Furl are two of the most popular Social bookmarking sites to date. But sites like these run rampant on the internet and are set to explode in popularity.

The basics of Social bookmarking revolve around allowing users the option to store their favorite sites and webpages online and label them with tags.

Since the bookmarks are stored online, they are not limited to a particular computer. Most Social bookmarking sites also have built in RSS features so users can share their bookmarks. As a web owner, this means you will receive some extra exposure if your pages are favored by Social bookmarkers. Each Social bookmarking site is run quite differently, but all are organized by the concept of tags.

I should point out that the system of tagging is not perfect. Since people may choose their own tags you will come across a number of grammatical errors and other strange tags. You may get misspellings, both the singular and plural forms of the word, and even spaced and unspaced versions of the word. For example, if you have a site about dog training, your tag might be "dog training" or dogtraining".

However, since your webpage may be tagged with many tags instead of just one, none of this will matter much to you. With tagging, you will want to be tagged with as many related tags as possible to increase the chances of your webpage being found.

Many searchers prefer to use these social bookmarking sites to find content online due to the fact that they are organized for people, by people. Each bookmarked site is more of a referral than just a site with the right number of keywords to rank it high in the search engines.

One of the top tagging sites on the internet, Technorati, allows the web owner to tag their own content and add it to the Technorati index. Bloggers have been rewarded with thousands of extra visitors per day by mastering Technorati.

There's no doubt about it, add tagging to your traffic building arsenal and you will definitely see some results.

Lisa Ann is the author of Tagging Secrets. To learn more about tagging for traffic visit the Tagging Secrets website at http://www.taggingsecrets.com

Website Traffic How To Generate An Extra 108160 Hits A Year Without Working Hard

2009-01-08T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by I-key Benney

Traffic is the food that every website needs in order to remain alive and be profitable.

Do you want to increase your website traffic?

I know your answer is yes.

But it is getting harder daily to attract traffic.

Most websites and businesses are being starved to death because of lack of traffic.

Most of you have seen those little award graphics on web sites.

They are given to the web site by another web site or award association to reward the web site for a specific reason.

They usually link right to the site that has given the award.

These award sites are drawing tons of traffic to their own web site.

The reason is because all the web sites who get the awards are linking right back to them by posting the award on their web site.

What is stopping you from offering other awards to other web sites?

You could design a graphic for the award.

The graphic could include something that will draw them to your web site.

Have an online form at your web site so other people can enter to qualify for the award.

You then judge all the entrees and pick a winner.

You give them the award graphic with a link included.

They post it on their web site and now they're linking your web site.

You could offer web site awards for many reasons.

The web site might offer outstanding and original content.

The design of the web site could be very professional.

It could have a fast load time.

It could include original web features that aren't found on most web sites.

The site may be easy to navigate through.

Let's say you give out 20 web site awards a week. In a year that would be 1040 people linking to your web site.

If you received 2 hits a week from each link, that would be 104 hits a year from each award you have given.

That equals an extra 108,160 hits to your web site a year!

May these web site traffic secrets help you to make a lot of money.

Warmly.

I-key Benney, CEO

I-key, a Millionaire CEO from New York City is the creator of "Mscsrrr: Millionaire Secret Cash System", (home based business) program, which has helped thousands of ordinary people from all over the world to attain financial security and shining success during the past 2 yrs.

Mscsrrr Millionaire Cash System helps you to generate $1,500+/Week for life, from home or office, part time or full time. No large investment or hassles. Win $1000-$2000 free "cash"

Send Loads Of Free Targeted Traffic To Your Site

2009-01-07T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Robin Dary

One of the top concerns for anybody with a website is traffic. You need traffic to get them to buy your product, come to your store, or buy your services.

There are many ways to get traffic. Reciprocal link campaigns are good but they take time. Try linkmarket.net, linkciti.com, linkmetro.com, or linkdiy.com. There are plenty out there. You can request links in your category and by being listed people will ask to link to you. There are paid and free programs. Start with the free and then move on to the paid. This helps with your page rank so a link campaign should be ongoing.

Running a PPC campaign with Google, Yahoo or a smaller search engine (like exactseek.com) can work but you need money for that. You can start small and spend more as your business grows.

You can create a free blog at blogger com. There are plenty of other free blog sites. This one is easy to set up and use. As a bonus it is owned by Google. They won't admit it but I think it helps you in Google. If you are passionate about your site topic or know the subject well you can easily write a blog. Postings don't have to be long and add a post once or twice a week at a minimum.

Once you have your blog set up and your first post created it's time to ping. Ping after every post. A ping is simply an announcement that "I have new content on my blog". Two free ping services are pingoat.com and pingomatic.com.

Article directories are also great ways to get traffic to your site. There are many out there. Do a search for article directories and you'll see what I mean. A few good ones are articlecity.com, ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, articles411.com, and ideamarketers.com.

If you need content for your site you can pull articles to use. Post your articles here and people can use them on their site with a link back to your site.

Submit articles to the directories on a regular basis. If you submit the same article to multiple directories try to change it a bit for each one. And don't submit them all on the same day. Submit to a directory a day or 2 today and 2 tomorrow. It'll help get those spiders after your site and keep the article fresher.

And remember it does take time to get traffic steadily coming to your site. Amazon didn't launch have a million visitors dashing to their site day 1.

Robin Dary is the marketing power behind http://www.parkercomputerguy.com Parker Computer Guy is a computer repair and consulting business in Colorado.

The Top 4 Ways To Get Traffic To Your Website

2009-01-05T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Ed Duvall

There are more ways to get traffic to your site than you can possibly imagine.

Getting traffic to your site is the single most important aspect of any online business.You've probably heard it a million times, but without traffic you might as well be fishing for whales in a shallow creek. Site owners should try to get traffic from both online and offline sources and by conventional as well as creative methods.

Excluding the offline methods, here are the Top 5 online ways we know of to get more traffic to your website.

1. Search Engines

Perhaps the best and most well known of the traffic generating methods - If not the hardest. Every website owner who has pages related to your market is competing for this traffic. It's going to take more patience and effort on webmasters part's to get your pages listed in the major search engines as well as keep them at the top.This will be especially true with Google now filing for a patent on the criteria they will be using to rank pages. You can see more on that by going to this page http:/www.cashway.com/googles.htm

To play the SE traffic game you need to optimize your webpages, provide relavant content and have good back links to sites that compliment yours.

If you have an existing site you should spend some time reviewing and optimizing those individual pages for the keywords and content that you have selected for it. That's the one basic task you can do to help improve your site in the eyes of the search engines. This includes making sure the keywords are placed throughout your meta tags, title, description, headlines, body and even in the alt tags of your graphics on your page.

You can get a more detailed plan for optimizing your pages by reading the Search Engine Optimization article located on http://www.cashway.com/articles/search_engine_articles.htm

If you want to get a better perspective on what keywords are best for your webpage content you might want to download a Free copy of Good Keywords keyword search tool or use Overtures'Search Term Suggestion Tool:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

2. Link Exchanges

I think the second most viable way to get traffic to your site is through reciprocal link exchanges. It's a time consuming process (unless you use automated software) that you can really develop some long term traffic sources for you site.

If you want to check the number of links to your site from within the major search engines you can download this handy little piece of Free software that runs from your desktop that will give you a count on the number of links you have. You can get it here:

http://www.cashway.com/jmag/lpc/lpc_ed.exe

3. Wrting and Distributing Articles

If you have your own website chances are that you've gained some specific expertise in the area associated with your site. You can turn that knowledge into a traffic generating machine by writing short, helpful articles that help solve problems and point people in the direction of your site.

You can write and submit them to other newsletter publishers and website owners . Here's a short list of where to distribute them:

- Include in your site's Article Section
- Article Directories
- Ezine Publishers
- Publish in your ezine
- Publish in your blog
- Announcement lists
- Forums

4. Site Content

This goes hand in hand with writing and publishing articles.You can research using the various search engines to find articles, newsfeeds and other relevant content to place throughout your site.

just remember that whatever outside content you decide to include on your site should be with the copyrighted owners permission. You should also take the time to optimize those content pages for the search engines.

These pages should also have links either in a sidebar, header, footer, etc that act as doorways that visitors can enter other parts of your site. The more optimized content pages you have and that get spidered by the SE's, the more likely you'll bring visitors to your site.

That's a brief look at the best ways to bring traffic to your website. If you've noticed anything at all you should have seen that all for are strategically integrated to help you get more visitors to your site

At this point in time it also looks like they are going to be the best and most accepted ways to get the traffic you want using search engines and especially without being penalized by Google for not following their soon to be patented guidelines.

''''''''''''''''''''''''

Copyright 2005 Ed Duvall. Guru's drive unlimited traffic to their sites - why can't you? Free ebook shows you how: "8 Steps To Claiming YOUR SHARE Of The Enormous Traffic Available Everyday From Search Engines..." AND get Free marketing tools weekly http://www.cashway.com/biz_rm.htm Resource box must remain as is if republished.

Good Traffic And Bad Traffic

2009-01-04T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Niall Mehaffey

Getting traffic to your website is a very important part of online marketing and sharing information with people but are you getting traffic to your site that is actually interested in your site or are they just using up your bandwidth?

If all you want to do is get traffic to your site then you can easily go and purchase something like 10000 visitors for fifteen dollars but do you really think they will do you any good, because I don't. What you want to do is get targeted traffic that comes to your site because they are interested in the subject of it and really want to see what you have to offer. This is much harder to do.

Here are a few methods of getting good traffic and a few of getting bad traffic.

Good:

1)Link exchanging with other relevant sites. You can put a description of your site beside your link, therefore the visitors you get will already know what they are looking for and will have decided themselves that they would like to visit your site.

2)Search engine optimization for the keywords that your site is about. When someone searches for a term, they are looking specifically for sites around that term therefore if your site is well optimized for good keywords then you should be able to gain some quality visitors from the search engines.

3)Free ebooks and reports are excellent as you can provide quality information about your subject and then link to your site from within the product. Doing this will mean that people will first read your product if they are interested in the subject, enjoy reading youir product and then want to get more information and that is when you can give them a link to your site.

Bad:

1)Buying loads of visitors for a few dollars. It is possible to buy good traffic but only when you are in control of how they find your site. You will find that most companies that offer traffic for a price will normally only send autosurfers and people who are not in the least bit interested in your site to it.

2)Autosurf programs are not a good source of traffic as people will just leave their computer on and let it surf from site to site without anyone actually getting to view and stay at it.

3)Advertising on sites that have absolutely nothing to do with yours. If you have a site about cooking, then you will have very little success by advertising on a site about computer games. That's just an example of the top of my head but I mean that you should not advertise on sites that are not related to yours.

There are many different ways to get traffic and many of them work very effectively, however, I would definitely advise anyone not to simply go out and look for ways to get any sort of traffic but instead look for ways to get good traffic that is actually interested in visiting your site and seeing what you have to offer.

Niall Mehaffey is more than willing to share his traffic generation methods from his website for free at http://www.the-internet-marketer.com

5 Ways To Get A Flood Of Targeted Visitors

2009-01-03T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Raamakant S.

Just a few months ago I received a mail from one of my subscribers describing launching of his new site. He was really very excited and thought that this site really bring him a handful of money. When I visited his site I was also surprised by the creative designing, easy and quick navigation, graphics, etc. but what I came to know by his second email after some time that he is not earning a single penny.

In fact he has not earned that much amount that he spend on developing the site. He was really very upset and sounds dull. What the reasons is that his mind blowing site not earn a single paper money? The answer is his site did not get targeted visitors which really want to buy the products he is offering.

The back bone of internet based business is Traffic. Traffic is first need for success of any e-commerce business. If you don't have traffic on your website, you can't make even a single penny, no matter how beautiful and attractive your site is. Even if you have the best product in the world but do not have traffic, you cannot make any sale.

Traffic is the most essential thing to a successful e-commerce business. Every book you will find about internet marketing would always include the importance of generating traffic.

If you are reading this article, I am sure you already have a site and you are not getting enough traffic that you are supposed to be getting.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some ways to get a flood of targeted traffic.

1. Link exchange with similar sites

Link exchange with similar sites is a great way to increase traffic to your site because both sites get benefited. The more you exchange links with different sites, the more traffic you will get. One thing you should remember that always exchange links with compatible sites not competitor sites.

2. Write Articles and submit to article directories

This is a sure and proven method for targeted traffic. Writing articles and submitting to article directories can give massive exposure to your site. Not only your site's page rank and search engine ranking will increase, you will also become as an expert in your field. You can write articles yourself or get it written by freelance writers for a small fee.

3. Start your own Newsletter

If you want life time traffic to you site, it's time to start your own newsletter. It's a proven fact that only 5% visitors buy from any site at first visit. If you get them in your opt in list, you can follow up with valuable content and they will come back again and again to your site.

4. Participate in Online Communities and Forums

Forums and online communities can became huge source of traffic to your site. It requires only your time and nothing else. All you have to do is sharing your knowledge and expertise. It will also build your reputation as an expert and people always want to work with experts.

5. Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is the fastest way of getting traffic. Do you know what the reason behind the grand success of the hotmail is? It's viral marketing.

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or low costs only. You can create a short report or tiny software and allow others to pass it to their friends and relatives. You can also attach your link to a funny video or entertaining game.

Just follow these simple and easy to follow tips and get your site flooded with traffic. Not only traffic but better say targeted traffic which really want to buy your product as they need it.

Raamakant S. is founder of Best Info Portal, A site dedicated to provide information on various subjects with a collection of great articles on hot topics. Visit here for more information http://www.best-info-portal.com.

Link Swapping There Is A Better Way

2009-01-02T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Dina Giolitto

Do you ever wonder what the point is in spending all this time, energy and money trying to spread your website link around?

Do you get a sinking feeling in your stomach every time you have to shell out more money for clicks that give you impressive numbers but lead nowhere?

Are you weary of crazed marketing types clamoring to swap links with you when you know that there's no *real* interest in what you offer?

Link distribution makes sense if you want to get more exposure and watch your website climb higher on the search engine hierarchy, sure. Being highly and permanently visible is vital to the long-term growth of your business. Buying your way to a big, fat subscriber list will help you to feel popular and loved.

But what good is that sky-high Alexa rank if the people who are clicking on your site have little to no interest in your product anyway?

Having a website that's widely visited by people who are only mildly concerned with what you do, is like having tons of people who claim to be your friends but no one to call up when you want to get close and personal.

Do you ever wish for an improved kind of link swapping, one that not only spreads your link far and wide on the Web, but also leaves your reader with a little golden nugget of who you are and what you can do for them?

Do you ever wish for a widespread marketing campaign that will reach your target audience... the ones who are emotionally connected to your product and willing to pay cash for it? But let me guess... you don't want to invest money in hiring a team of advertising strategists?

It's time to pay homage to the Internet Gods... because they heard your prayers and the answer is finally here.

IT'S ARTICLE MARKETING.

People have a really hard time grasping what article marketing is all about, for some reason.

If they're writers, they want to just go on a meandering ramble about whatever strikes their fancy. They forget about the fact that Article Marketing is a primo opportunity to reel in a hearty helping of hot buying prospects by way of fresh content that's specifically geared to one pool of consumers. They forget that scrabbling their musing is not really going to help to that end.

If they're marketers, they think: Oh, I don't have the time or inclination to write. So they go back to shelling out big bucks for impersonal linking strategies that reach General Audience only, and that's no way to be a good marketer. That's no way to build the power of your brand.

If you've never written an article with the intention of having it picked up and spread around the internet with your business URL at the bottom, go directly to Ezinearticles.com right now, create an author account, and write one immediately.

Once you've done that, a strange, peaceful sensation may steal over you. This peaceful experience you're having is one that comes with knowing you communicated just the right message to the right people. This, dear marketer, is the stuff that Branding Dreams are made of.

So, Article Marketing. Read all about it! Find out about the hottest linking craze on the net that will make you a standout in your niche. Then... map out a campaign, plan to pitch your product... and start writing those articles!

The sky is wide open, what will you do next to help your business?

Liked this article? Have more of the same emailed to your inbox each month. Sign up for the Copywriting and Marketing Ezine from Dina at Wordfeeder.com and learn to write search engine friendly web copy and market your web based business for free.

Maximizing Your Internet Traffic With Adwords

2009-01-01T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Khieng Chho

Technology has come a long way and businesses have taken advantage of its progress. Marketers and advertisers have learned to adapt to the times. This includes getting the Internet users to spread the word about a product or service. For anyone who wants to earn money from the Internet, there is but one effective way to do it and that's by using Adwords.

What is Adwords? Adwords was born out of Google's promotion of online advertising. Often called pay-per-click- ads, Goggle was able to bring businesses and potential consumers in to the same pool with Adwords and Adsense.

Adwords is a paid service for businesses, merchants, companies and professionals. Here, Google asks for a monthly subscription fee and in return, Google shows their ads on words related to their product or service. In a sense, Adwords members are advertisers who want to expand their market through their website.

Adsense is a free service that signs up interested Internet users to have Google Adwords displayed on their websites. The more hits they can provide for the Adwords members, the more they earn money. Depending on the conditions, some Adwords members pay more for actual purchase made from links from Adsense users.

The success of Google Adwords has been amazing that other search engine sites have followed suit. But Google has the advantage of being the first and Adwords has the biggest number of advertisers in their list.

Not only that, Adwords has been such a hit as an online business opportunity that there have been hundreds of guides and books devoted to getting the most of out of Google Adwords and Adsense. The most obvious winner here is Google.

Although adwords can really pay, as an advertiser you have to be able to get the most out of your money. Here are a few tips on getting your Internet traffic going:

1. Choose the best keyword for your ad. It has to be specific but must also be general enough to appear in the search pages of Google.

2. Having a lot of advertising budget doesn't mean you get to stay in Adwords. Adwords rely on the "click through rate" system which means that the more people click your ads, the higher your listing rank becomes and in turn, your ad appears on more Google search pages.

3. Follow Google's editorial guidelines. If you don't, your ad will be taken down from the list and imagine the potential revenue lost! Millions of consumers go through Google's search engines everyday, not to mention the Adsense members' sites. One day could be disastrous to your company.

4. Make sure that your website is enticing enough to get consumers to buy. Adwords can only help you get a product introduced but it can't help you keep customers. Only your product or service can do that.

5. Learn the Google Adwords. There are books and online programs out there that can help you better understand the mechanics of the system. You can also opt to read through the free help page of Google but you will still need time and effort to master the business.

Google Adwords is a great business opportunity for both advertisers and Internet users. Aside from making cash, it teaches you to be more aware of competition, how the marketing landscape quickly evolves and it takes you closer to your target market. In the end you may be surprised at what you'll discover about you're business as well.

Khieng 'Ken' Chho is author and owner of Online Adword Resources. For related articles and other resources, visit Ken's website: http://ad-campaign.onew3b.net

Manual Traffic Exchange A Gold Mine Or Just A Piece Of Scrap

2008-12-31T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Ampuan Yussof

The only way to make money online is by pulling enormous traffic into your website. If you are not getting enough visitors you can't make enough money. It's pretty simple, isn't it? So, the next question is how to attract huge amounts of traffic to your desired website?

You can find an unending list of websites and individuals offering you various techniques and methods for generating trafficWell but I must warn you that most of them don't work even a bit. Anyone who claims to increase the traffic to your website to a million free visitors within a couple of weeks is simply lying and should never be believed.

Here we will be looking at those options that really do work and do not make any false commitments while guaranteeing you the best possible amount of traffic that can be generated.

Below is a list of the best websites on the internet that offer either free or cheap targeted websites via free traffic exchange.

1. http://trafficg.com
2. http://www.hitpulse.com
3. http://www.10khits4unow.com
4. http://www.clickaholics.com
5. http://advertisingknowhow.com

What is 'Traffic Exchange'?

Traffic Exchange' is similar to banner exchange or ad swaps. The only difference is that you need to surf these websites in order to get more hits orvisitors on your website(s).

However, most marketers failed to get much result through traffic exchange due to lack of knowledge. Putting a whole page of the website will never ever bring the targeted traffic.

One needs to have splash pages in order to generate the targeted traffic. A sample of splash page can be found at:

http://www.workpartimeathome.com/traffic/warning.html

The results that have been obtained till date and that you would achieve will be truly amazing and really worth the time, effort and money that would be spent to complete the entire process.

Eventually, you will have an unstoppable traffic machine.Until then, see you next time and I sincerely hope this article will help you to promote your website in a far better way than ever before and generate the desired traffic to your website.

Ampuan Yussof has been actively researching on traffic generation and works from home selling one of the largest traffic building information on the internet. Discover the mind blowing secrets on how to generate free targeted traffic at:http://www.thetrafficgenerator.biz/?ezine

Social Bookmarking Traffic Results

2008-12-30T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Allan Burns

The results of the social bookmarking experiment I have been carrying out are materialising. There have been some surprising results and some results that have restored my faith in the browsing public. I have been pondering whether or not to release the results as I do not want the spammers to tarnish something that is still relatively pure. But as you can see I finally decided to go ahead and publish.

I have mentioned before that I have been looking at social bookmarking as a way to drive traffic to websites. The idea behind social bookmarking is that you share your favourite bookmarks with others, the idea being that if you found these links useful then others might too. Some social bookmarking sites also allow visitors to rate the usefulness of your bookmarks, this allows the truly useful bookmarks to become the most popular. So in theory spam should be removed by natural selection. To carry out my experiment I created three articles. Two of these articles were good well researched pieces, whilst the third was self promotional spam, but not too obvious. I posted these articles to twelve social bookmarking sites and then waited for the results. The results were to be measurable traffic to one of my sites.

It was a week ago I started posting the articles so I am still measuring the results but I am able to give you the results as they all point to one conclusion. That conclusion is that social bookmarking to generate traffic does work as long as you are providing genuine, useful, good quality material. If you post self promotional spam no one will read it and it will disappear into the ether where all spam belongs.

Of the twelve sites I posted to the best performing in terms of traffic was Digg. Over a period of several days my site received hundreds of visitors from the good articles and less than a handful for the spam article I posted. Of the other social bookmarking sites the traffic was minimal, even the famous del.icio.us only managed to send a dozen visitors which I was quite surprised at.

The results seem to conclude that Digg is the out and out performer followed a long way behind by del.icio.us and squik. As yet I have had no traffic from the others, that's not to say that they are not worthwhile as some of the sites were very new. I am going to continue to experiment and will bring you more results as they come in.

Finally I would like to say a big thank you to the guys at Digg for producing such a great site. Not only for the traffic that it produces but for also providing lots of really useful bookmarks. My only criticism is the lack of categories which means that some suggestions are not always well matched although there is a search facility.

Allan is the webmaster at http://www.blogtonomy.com/ where I will show you how to gain traffic to your site.

The Important Tips Of Creating Useful Links From Your Site

2008-12-29T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Heri Rosyadi

Linking is an important job that any webmasters need to do in order to get their web site noticed by internet users. Internet is made up by websites linking each other creating a huge network. So It makes sense that the most visited web sites will be the ones with more links to them.

Although it may appear that it is easy to create link from and to your website there some things that webmasters need to put in mind when doing the linking job.

These are several linking tips that you can use:

Provide visitors with links to other sites similar to yours or a meta-index of links that would be of interest to your target market. If you sell something make sure that you don't link with your competitors. The best way is that you add the sites that will complement your products and services. It will be preferrable if the site have an affiliate program that you can join so that you can monetize from your outgoing traffic.

Do not put outbound links on your home page. Place them down a level or two after the visitors have seen all the information you want them to see before you provide the links away from your site. Your home page should mostly direct the visitors to one of your own page before thay can leave.

Links can be incorporated in two ways. The first is where clicking the link loads the new page in the same browser window. It replaces the content of your page with the content of the linked page.

The second and more preferred method is to have the link open a new browser. Your page stays where it is and the content from the linked page opens up in the new browser window. This is preferred because once visitors are finished with the new page, they can close the new browser window and your page is still in the old browser window.

Try exchanging links with others so you receive a link from their site to your site. As long as the links are of value to your visitor, people will come back to see if you have found any new and interesting sites from them to visit.

You might consider asking if visitors would be interested in being notified when you update your list of links or just make updates to your site in general. By offering this, if they choose to do so, you have the opportunity to send people an email message and remind them about your site while presenting them with new information about what might be going on with your site.

Linking itself could be categorized as viral marketing process as the action will build up your link popularity in Search Engine which in return increases your web site ranking position as the time goes by. Of course you can get your as well instant traffic when you get your link from some popular high traffic web site.

Heri Rosyadi is an internet marketing expert with over 5 years of experience in internet marketing. Visit http://www.Mytrafficstrategies.ws and get a free copy of his eReport on "30 Amazing Advertising Tips" and subscribe to his online newsletter to receive his latest online promotion tips, methods and ideas.

15 Link Exchange Tips

2008-12-28T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Lesley Dietschy

Establishing inbound links through reciprocal link exchanges is a very effective promotional and advertising tool. If done correctly, building inbound links can improve your rankings in the search engines by raising your link popularity, increasing your website traffic, and providing a valuable resource for your website customers and visitors. Here are 15 link exchange tips to get you started:

1. Exchange links with websites that will bring you targeted traffic. Targeted traffic means visitors and/or customers that will be interested in your products or services.

2. Keep your link title brief and free of long sentences.

3. Try to keep your link description brief (aim for 200 characters or less).

4. Do not capitalize all letters in your link title or description.

5. Do not give the webmaster a deadline on when they should reciprocate. Webmasters are very busy people and it may take from 1 to 60 days or more. Be patient and in the long run you will receive more quality link partners!

6. Never remove a link partner from your site once they have agreed to exchange links with you and placed your link on their site.

7. Do not request link exchanges from sites that are unrelated to your website. For example, if you have a candle website, don't exchange links with a pharmaceutical website. This will not benefit your customers or visitors and the search engines may penalize your website for this.

8. Let the webmaster know that you have indeed visited their site and explain to them why a reciprocal link exchange with your website would be beneficial.

9. Be sure that your link pages are search engine friendly. Link pages are easier indexed if they have no more than 25 links per page.

10. Complete your website before requesting reciprocal link exchanges. Most webmasters will not link to a site where most of the pages are "under construction".

11. Do not give misleading information in your link exchange request. Most webmasters are not going to believe it and your request will most likely be ignored. For example, don't claim that your site receives 100,000 unique visitors a day unless your site really receives that many.

12. It is best to categorize your link partners. For example, you might want to have a home and garden page, a home improvement page, a candles page, etc. This is a much better way or organizing your links for both your visitors and your link partners. If you just have one huge page of links in no order, most webmasters will not approve your link exchange request.

13. Make sure your links page is linked and visible from your home page.

14. If your site is family friendly, do not add link partners that offer services or products that are not family friendly.

15. Be aware of free-for-all link programs and link farms. These are sites that basically offer nothing but unrelated links and end up collecting and sharing your email address, which results in a lot of unwanted SPAM in your inbox.

The above tips are only a few suggestions on how to build a successful linking campaign. Most importantly, be patient and take your time to find quality link partners that will add a valuable resource and bring targeted traffic to your website.

Lesley Dietschy is a freelance writer and the creator/editor of The Home Decor Exchange and the Home & Garden Exchange. The Home Decor Exchange is a popular home and garden website featuring resources, articles, decorating pictures, free projects, a shopping marketplace, and more. The Home & Garden Exchange is a unique link exchange directory dedicated to home and garden websites. Please visit both websites for all of your home, garden, and website needs.

http://www.HomeDecorExchange.com

http://www.HomeGardenExchange.com

Simple Steps To Increase Traffic To Your Website

2008-12-27T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Sara Tompson

Every website owner wants their website to be popular; some just might not admit to it! To increase traffic to your website, I suggest the following to start with:

Unique content

Visitors and Search engines love unique content - nobody likes to read the same paragraphs over and over. Your visitors will return to your website and search engines will rank your site high for being unique.

Get linked

Getting linked is very important, the majority of your visitors will find your website through links, whether they be on Google or a directory website. Our advice is to submit your website in appropriate places - directories that are suited to your website. Search engines will find your website automatically, so don't waste your time submitting to them!

Keyword rich text

Most websites are set up to achieve a goal - whether it be to sell a product or service or to promote something or someone. CJ Website Hosting recommends you think of a dozen keywords that you would like people to search for (in search engines) to get to your website. Once you have the list, try to put them within your website content - but keep the sentances making sense - search engines will spot keyword spammers!

Link to relevant websites

Linking to websites can be as powerful as being linked. If you link to websites that are relevant to your websites content - you will receive brownie points for doing so. Search engines categorise your website depending on what you link to, for example, if you linked to several "home made recipe" websites, search engines will guess that your website has something to do with home made recipes.

Use heading tags and appropriate titles

Heading tags such as

<h1>, <h2> etc.. are known to be vital HTML tags. Not only do they tell visitors what your page is about, they also help search engines to categorise your site. Same goes for the <title> tag. Make sure your title tag is short and to the point - including a URL in your tag is a big no no.

Other tips include; making your website standards compliant, minimilising the amount of HTML code on your pages (by using div based layouts), utilising the alt and title attribute and using URL rewriting techniques

Sara Tompson is a support engineer at CJ Website Hosting. Research interests include SEO and Accessibility in web design.

How To Boost Your Website Traffic And Profits With Content

2008-12-26T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Hans Hasselfors

Are you aware of how vitally important and valuable content is to your online business? In fact, content can do more to build your business and profits than just about any other resource or service available.

Following is a list of 5 key ways that content can help build your website traffic, subscribers, and customers starting today!...

1. Boost your search engine ranking and daily visitor count by posting keyword rich articles and content on your website. For example, if your business involves offering products and services related to internet marketing, posting internet marketing related articles and content will attract unlimited prospective customers on a regular basis!

2. Generate double or even triple the number of newsletter subscribers you do currently, simply by offering content in the form of "special reports" or manuals as bonuses for subscribing to your publication. People love freebies, so give them what they want and watch as your results increase!

3. Create an automated cashflow by using content to formulate multi-part email training courses with related website or affiliate links "sprinkled" throughout each course. Use an autoresponder service to automate the delivery of your training course (such as a 5 part training course delivered over a 5 day period).

Training courses can also serve as excellent bonus offers for your prospective newsletter subscribers.

4. One of the most important keys to a successful online business is not just having a list of mailing list or newsletter subscribers... It's about building a trusting relationship with your subscribers (ie, "cultivating" your list)...

By sending informative articles (content) to your list on a regular basis you will establish yourself as an expert on your topic of business, as well as gain the trust of your subscribers over time. As a result, your subscribers will be eager to take advantage of your "paid" product and service offers. (Just make sure that you never take advantage of the relationship you develop with your list by offering products or services of poor quality just to make a quick buck!)

If there is one "constant" in Internet marketing, it's this: A cultivated list of subscribers is as good as money in the bank. Write that down and never forget it!

5. Another excellent way to generate no cost website traffic is by submitting ready-made articles to "content hungry" website and newsletter publishers with your "resource box" attached. A resource box is nothing more than a little 3-6 line "bio" about you and/or your web-site - including a link to your site (or even instructions on how to subscribe to your newsletter)...

When submitting or offering your article(s) for reprint purposes, just make sure to specify that each article is to be reprinted "as is" with your resource box attached.

Even one article can go a long way towards generating no cost website traffic and visitors for you. Just imagine your article being sent out to a newsletter subscriber base of 100,000 individuals - many of whom will be reading your included resource box and clicking on your URL to learn more about what you have to offer!

Well there you have it, 5 sure ways to build your online business exponentially with the help of articles and content...

With the declining effectiveness of many of the online advertising methods that we've relied on in past years, content is only strengthening its position as the ultimate key to generating unlimited website traffic, subscribers, and customers!

Hans Hasselfors is a successful business entrepreneur and internet marketing consultant. Get the net working for you. Join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and make your living online. Become a member of The Business Professional network. http://www.internet-marketing-experts-online.com

Traffic Seeking Marketer On The Loose

2008-12-25T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Gladys Williams

As a new SFIMG affiliate in 2003, I sent a press release to a dozen Southside Virginia small town newspapers, thinking to focus on school fund raising ideas. (SFIMG products are nutritionals, home maintenance supplies, pet care products, and internet access products.)

I've found three WORKING affiliates so far.

Earlier, as a Realtor in Birmingham, Alabama, I placed my office telephone number on my car doors...got a serious sale...and several prospects.

Now, about online marketing...here are my latest ideas....

1) BUY a quality product for starters. Check out the testimonials, use the product, study the affiliate marketing materials. If you decide to become an affiliate, think outside the box the creator has set up...and create new materials for your sub affiliates on a regular basis. Attract SUPER AFFILIATES....reward them..an additional 10% will work. Also, meet with your affiliates via conference calls or a forum.

Find one free viral and brandable product to give away for starters. Add others later.

Here are three super products. I checked www.google.com this morning....more than 20 million freebies!! Check it out for yourself.

Download a free copy of James Maddux' SECRETS MY MOM NEVER TOLD ME at google.

SECRETS is loaded! More than 200 pages of quality content on traffic building and marketing. Brand it....and pass it on.

Jimmy Brown's ouvre exhales quality! Jimmy began his 'Net business by creating viral tutorials in the mid '90's. One of his older goodies is THE SCIENTIFIC, MATHEMATIC, THIS-IS-WHAT-EINSTEIN-WOULD-HAVE-DONE APPROACH TO EARNING MONTHLY INCOME ON THE WEB. You can't help getting caught up in the simple explanation of a profitable 'Net strategy. Jim writes like this title all the time.....the common made uncommon. Share Jimmy.

Harvey Segal has built an internet empire creating TIPS ....101 Super Tips, Ad Tracking Supertips, Viral Marketing Super Tips, Forum Super Tips, Click Bank Vender Supertips. Brand Harvey's books with your information and give them away. Harvey's books are twenty-five, thirty pages long.

2) create a pop-up content tips library the EASY way. Take your first article, and turn it into tips.....put the tips in your autoresponder and offer them to e-zine publishers. These folk are eager for quality. End each tip with your signature information.

E-mail two tips a week for five/six months. Imagine what this will do for your 'net reputation...

3) I'm sure you know what I'm about to say... YOU MUST WRITE ARTICLES. Make it your goal to write one article a week. You could be doing just that in two/three months. Start with one every two/three weeks.

Don't know what to write about?

Here are some ideas.....maybe a bit strange...but hear me out. Make a list of your questions about the 'Net for starters. Read e-articles that interest you or pique your fancy...and --PAY ATTENTION NOW! carry on conversations with the writers USING YOUR TAPE RECORDER. Come up with a take or an odd angle on what you have read. Stir yourself up by reading articles from all over the net. What you are doing is freeing yourself to think in new ways, to put into words wisdom you have stored and intuitions you vaguely sense....I'd suggest thirty or so minutes a day....

Talk to Jimmy, Harvey, and James. Speak as they would and record their answers.

A word of caution. Be sure the members of your family know what you are up to walking around the house, talking to yourself, and recording what you are saying. Just tell them you are stirring up those brain cells, opening up new paths for thought, writing for your website.

Tell them to start packing mentally for a two week vacation in France in three years! Work to make it happen in TWO YEARS

(Maybe this works for me because I am an only child with imaginary brothers, sisters, and playmates....)

Hey, if I can write this article, you can write one too. NOTHING in this article is ROCKET SCIENCE HARD. And, believe me, I started out with half the content here....the other came to me as I wrote.....

So, you can do this. So, do it!

4) Announce your articles to e-zine publishers. Get linked!

5) It's helpful to create swipe strategies....share them with your affiliates and teach them to create their own. (Swipe files are vigorous and action provoking ways of expressing yourself in print.) Check out some of Joe Vitale's work.....he'll show you how to write powerfully...as will Jimmy D. Brown. To put it simply, imitate the style of able net marketers. Not the words......but the style and energy.

So, for starters today, copy a short paragraph by Jimmy or Joe V and put your content in the frame they created. O.K. start with one great sentence...and go on from there.

Another idea ....Why not create a five/six e-mail series called HOW TO CREATE A SWIPE FILE....with two to three illustrations of each step....ten to twelve pages tops! Put this piece aside. Do the same exercise in two weeks....put that product aside. Do the activity two months later......see the difference?! When you feel good about what you have written, publish it!!

6) find and use free article announcement services. The more folk know what you are doing, the more traffic and the larger the e-zines' list that receives your tips......and on, and on......O.K?

7) create a cutting edge newsletter. When you begin earning decently, hire somebody to keep it going..... Bonus content will come from your readers. (see point 10). Plan on publishing every other month.

8) archive free content on your website ---newsletters, articles, ezines, instructional pieces -- your swipe paper, for example. Quality content helps with search engine optimization ---AND lures folk to regularly visit your site. Ask folk to bookmark your site.

An idea...you may want to rotate borrowed content on your website ....articles about marketing for two months, articles about software products for two months.... reviews for two months....articles about blogging and RSS for two months, etc. A rotating archives is something to write about, generating interest...... Be FRESH.

Good sources for free articles are articlecity.com, ideamarketers.com, UltimateArticleInventory.com and ezinearticles,com

9) check www.bravenet.com for free guest books, free classified ads, free message forums, free website templates, free url redirecting, free traffic exchange programs. There's more. Check www.bravenet.com...and use the products. Start small....and add services over time.

10) Ask visitors/clients what they think of your work. Ask for ideas and testimonials. Ask them what they want you to produce. Add a candid (not posed) pictures section of your idea folk to your website. Learn the technology and use real signatures. Folk will respond, remember you, and buy from you when you pay attention to them and offer products of value -- yours or your sponsor's products.

Remember: being on the 'Net is not about you....it is about THEM...

Gladys Margaret Williams continues work on her Gardening, Health and WellBeing Tips, created in memory of her mother, an Alzheimers' victim. Gladys follows her own advice....has purchased an e-book to market and is turning her five articles into a bucket full of marketing tips. With this article, there are SIX****!!!

Submitting Your Articles To Ezines And Viral Marketing

2008-12-24T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Jerry Durham

Viral Marketing Defined

It is allowing others to giveaway and use your free product or service in order to multiply your marketing quickly over the internet. The idea behind viral marketing is that you include your ad with the freebie people giveaway or use.

But to become successful, you must totally understand the concept in order to get the most out of it.

Brand your web site, business and yourself by submitting articles to e-zines. You could include your name, business name, your credentials, web site address and e-mail address in your resource box. An example of a resource box is -

jerry durham lonestar enterprises - opportunity to succeed
http://www.freewebs.com/opportunity_to_succeed/
5705 marvin loving dr suite 202
garland, tx 75043

You could include something like the above at the end of each of your articles, specifing, that the resource box, as it is known, would stay with the article in the event it was used as copy in a ezine, ebook, etc.

Understand and know, or better yet, become known as an expert on the topics you write about. This will give you and your business extra credibility which will help you compete against your competition. Face it, if you don't know what you're talking about. it will become very well known around the net, spreading like a "VIRUS". You'll gain people's trust. If they read your article, like it, and they believe you, they won't be as hesitant to buy your product or service. You will then be able to increase your profits.

Having your article placed on a publishers home page or archives will give you extra exposure. Future subscribers might want to read the back copies before they subscribe. I have several articles in archive, one of which is -

http://www.archives.zinester.com/5997/17517.html

Submiting your article to a publisher that has a free content directory on their web site, allows visitors to republish your article. Some sites are below -

http://www.cashflowseller.com/ArticleSubmit.html
http://article-emporium.com/submit-article.cfm
http://www.allfreelancework.com/submitarticles.php
http://articlefinders.com/submit.html
http://www.articlecity.com/article_submission.shtml
http://www.articlewarehouse.com/SubmitArticle.aspx
http://www.awomaninbusiness.com/writers.html
http://www.boconline.com/sub-art.shtml
http://www.business-opportunity.biz/addarticle.php
http://www.businesstoolchest.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.family-content.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.howtoadvice.com/Submit/
http://www.netterweb.com/articles/
http://ebusinesshelpsite.com/Articles/submit-article.htm
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/termsofuse/articlesubmission.htm
http://www.selfgrowth.com/artman/exec/admin.cgi
http://www.businessknowhow.com/newsletter/articleguidelines.htm
http://www.uniterra.com/submit-article.htm
http://www.vectorcentral.com/articles-form.html
http://www.webmasterslibrary.com/submit.jsp
http://www.web-source.net/article_submissions.htm
http://www.webpronews.com/submit.html
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlecentral.com
http://www.readycontent.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.advertisingknowhow.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
http://www.1st-in-articles.com
http://www.ezinetrendz.com
http://www.submityourarticle.com
http://www.thephantomwriters.com
http://www.articletrades.com
http://www.articlehub.com
http://www.holisticjunction.com
http://www.kickstartyourlife.com/ezinesresources/articles.htm
http://freezinesite.com/articles.cgi?action=add
http://www.searchwarp.com/Register.asp
http://www.ideamarketers.com/writers.cfm
http://www.netterweb.com/articles
http://www.certificate.net/wwio
http://www.dime-co.com
http://businessknowhow.com
http://www.selfgrowth.com/submit-article.html
http://www.ezine-writer.com.au
http://www.boazepublishing.biz/articledir
http://amazines.com
http://www.authorconnection.com
http://www.herassistant.com/1articles/subarticle.shtml
http://www.home-based-business-opportunities.com
http://powerhomebiz.com
http://smbtn.com/smallbusinesstown
http://www.homebiztools.com/index.htm
http://www.ezinearticles.com/submit
http://www.theezine.net/
http://www.stickysauce.com/articles/webarticles_index.htm
http://annamarketing.com
http://www.mag-a-zine.com/mag-a-zine/articles/
http://www.clickforcontent.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.ultimateprofits.com/index_author.htm
http://www.webbers.com/newcontent
http://www.allnetarticles.com
http://www.connectionteam.com/art.html
http://www.family-content.com
http://www.mailbiz.com/mailbiz/magcat
http://www.articlefinders.com
http://www.articlesubmissions.com
http://www.certificate.net/wwio
http://www.freesticky.com
http://www.stickysauce.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com
http://www.web-source.net/
http://www.addme.com/nlsubmit.htm
http://www.amazines.com
http://www.articlecentral.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.articles911.com
http://www.articlewarehouse.com
http://www.authorconnection.com
http://www.boconline.com
http://www.business-dynamics.com/resource_library/index.html
http://www.businesstoolchest.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.bytesworth.com/articles
http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.clickforcontent.com/cgi-bin/epro/print.pl
http://www.clickz.com
http://www.connectionteam.com
http://www.digital-women.com/submitarticle.htm
http://www.dime-co.com/articlesub.html
http://www.ezine-writer.com.au
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.ezinepublisher.org/members/cgi-bin/content/add.cgi
http://www.submityourarticle.com
http://www.top7business.com
http://www.upromote.com/newsletter/submit.html
http://www.vectorcentral.com
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
http://www.web-http://www.womans-net.com
http://www.zineadz.com
http://www.zinos.com
http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
http://www.1st-in-articles.com
http://www.maxebook.com

Other publishers might want to publish your articles in their free e-books. These ebooks are given away, and your advertising could multiply all over the web. Agree to run someone else's article in your ezine, if they'll run your article in theirs. It's a win/win situation.

This is all free advertising that allows you to spend your money elsewhere on other forms of advertising. Such as, buying ad space in other ezines that don't publish your articles.

And speaking of money, if your good enough, you could write other peoples articles, ebooks, speak at seminars, etc. This is a great way to multiply your income.

All the Best...

About the Author:

Jerry durham has been in business as "OPPORTUNTIY TO SUCCEED" since the fall of 2003. We offer ideas you need to start, manage & grow your online business! We also offer strategies, downloads, & articles written by professionals.

Jerry Durham Lonestar Enterprises - Opportunity To Succeed
http://www.freewebs.com/opportunity_to_succeed/
5705 Marvin Loving Dr Suite 202
Garland, TX 75043

"OPPORTUNITY TO SUCCEED NEWSLETTER" mail to: InfoEzineOptnRequest@sendfree.com

What Should Be Known About Traffic Packages

2008-12-23T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Anthony Bae

Doing business online is all about getting traffic to your site. Traffic get you the sales, and traffic is what brings in revenue. People advertise their website to bring in traffic, and advertising costs money.

There are two types of traffic that you can spend your money on; there is traffic that actually brings you the right visitors, and there is traffic that does not. Both of them costs money, but to bring in the right traffic costs a lot more, such as search engine advertising.

When people are eager to bring traffic to their site but can't afford to bring so much using the traditional online advertising method, they go for 'Traffic Packages'. You can just type in "traffic packages" or "bring traffic to your site" in any search engine, and there will be loads of sites that offer cheap traffic. You will also notice that some packages are a lot more expensive than other ones, but don't be alarmed...the results are all alike. Either you pay 100 bucks for 25,000 "Premium Visitors" package or 100,000 "Guaranteed Targeted Visitors" package for $149, the results are the same, and I'm saying that from my personal experience.

While I was running my Amazon.com affiliated website, after spending $500 in search engine marketing, I didn't have much capital left to keep pouring that much to bring less than 1000 targeted visitors to my site. I did some research and found these packages guaranteeing targeted visitors, and when I compared 25,000 or even 100,000 to 1000 and at a fraction of the cost, I was tempted. I tried 3 different companies, BlowOutAdvertising.com, EasySiteHits.com, and I-Web-Marketing.com--I don't really think they are companies but rather just sites ran by no more than 3 people. Of course I got nothing in return. My site received hits for sure, but there was no way of telling whether I was receiving my guaranteed unique visitors because I wasn't making any sales.

Not even 1 out of 25,000 or 100,000 unique visitors purchased anything from my site, which was disappointing, and at the same time, amazing. At least I made a couple of sales out of the 1000 targeted visitors I received from Yahoo! Search Marketing. Then I realized that the targeted traffic packages were just a scam--I may be wrong though, but from my personal experience, these traffic packages seemed like they were bunch of automated hits generated by programs built by these people running the site. Maybe they bought the hit generating programs from upper-level scam artists. Who knows?

What I know is that if you are only interested in bring your site rank up on Alexa.com, spend a hundred or two on these packages to do so, because for that purpose, it works. If you want to make sales and profit from your site, don't purchase any of these packages. Spend your money wisely. As you probably know already, all the lessons that I've learned cost me a lot of money. I hope you save yours.

By the way, if you are really thinking of purchasing those traffic packages, don't bother spending that much either. Look for "Hits" packages. They are not specified as "Unique Visitors" packages, they are way cheaper, and possibly give you the same results. Check out Immensehits.com or MegaPromoter.com. I have not purchased any packages from these two sites (and I never will); I just found them interesting while I was researching for ways to bring traffic to my site. I don't know why I used the above three websites to bring traffic to my site, but you will never know until you actually try it out for yourself. Now I know...

If you would like to share some of your experience with internet scam artists, please feel free to email me at writings@imbae.net

By Anthony Bae
Raising Money for Charity by Selling Links to Online Advertisers
http://www.iGoLink.com

Three Ways On How Content Can Attract Free Long Term Targeted Traffic To Your Website

2008-12-22T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Mohamad Zaki Hussein

Many people out there said that "content is king" when it comes to web traffic generation. Even though, IMHO, content is not the only king, I tend to agree with them. If done properly, content can attract free, long term, targeted traffic to your website.

Here're three ways on how content can attract free, long term, targeted traffic to your website:

1. Content attracts free search engine traffic

It has been well-known that the search engines love content. The more content you have in your website, the more keywords you can rank for, and thus the more traffic you can get from the search engines.

However, not every content can do well in the search engines. The search engines have sets of rules (also known as algorithms) to rank websites in their indexes and some of these rules go beyond content (off-page factors). You need to "optimize your site" to meet these rules if you want to rank well in the search engines.

The problem, though, is that there are differing opinions about these rules and it seems that no one can give exact answers about them. Also, these rules often change, which makes them quite difficult to be followed.

That's why I usually only do little optimization, sometimes as little as putting one keyword in the title tag and getting links. I stopped paying attention to the details because they wasted my time more then they gave me results.

2. Content attracts links from other websites

There are two benefits of having incoming links pointing to your site. First, you can get direct traffic from people who click through the links. And second, incoming links can increase your search engine ranking. In general, the search engines count incoming links as votes to your website.

Now how can content attract links to your website? Well, there are various scenarios on how content can attract links to your websites. But since I only have limited space and time here, let me just tell you the two popular scenarios.

First, you can write articles with link in your resource box and submit them to article directories and relevant websites that accept article submission. Many web publishers out there have a "content deficit" problem, and they're hungry for your content. You can get your links spread out fast around the Internet by using this method.

Second, if your website contains "linkworthy" content, then other webmasters might voluntarily link to your content or website. However, this is a passive method, and you may not want to rely on this method and wait for someone to link to you.

3. Content attracts viral traffic

Viral marketing works by encouraging other people to transmit your marketing message to the others. If done properly, it can spread your marketing message around the Internet just like a contagious virus spreads around a society.

There are various motivations that can encourage other people to spread your marketing message. One of them is the "desire to obtain material possession." You've probably seen the tactic of giving people incentive to spread a marketing message.

However, not all people are moved by the "desire to obtain material possession." Many people are moved by mere excitement or other non-selfish motivations.

This is where content can attract viral traffic. If your content (that is part of your website or contains link to your website), is extremely useful, informative, or just downright funny as hell that people will say "Wow!" when they see it, then people might spread or tell others about your content.

You can also try to increase the viral effect of your content by making it easy for people to spread or tell others about your content, for example by using a tell-a-friend script.

Mohamad Zaki Hussein is giving away a free article submitter that will submit your articles to hundreds of article directories with a few clicks of your mouse. To get your free article submitter, visit http://www.webtrafficideas.com/free-article-submitter.

A Day In The Life Of A Website

2008-12-21T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Cherie Davidson

Ah, there he is. What did he do, sleep all night?! We'll never get any sales if he doesn't do something with me. My navigation is awkward, the page flowwell, it doesn't, and humans keep leaving the site after a few seconds. It's no fun for me, I can tell you! I'm a Website, damn it, and I deserve some respect!

My human he calls himself a business manha! is trying to make a living from me. But what can he expect when he has no clue what my visitors are thinking? This just chaps my scripts, I can tell you.

Okay, in all fairness, he did make me look good. Actually, real good. I'm hotmy graphics are sharp and engaging, my design is striking and if I were a photograph, I'd be framed in a fancy gallery! But doesn't he know, looks are only monitor deep? Pleeeez, get a clue! My very survival depends on business, which starts with happy humans. And unfortunately, as pretty as I am, I'm not making anyone happy. Yep, my days are numbered unless he starts paying attention to my needs!

Impatiently waiting for his human to fill his coffee mug, Website sits, wondering what today will hold

Come on, come on! We're burning pixels here! Yes! Pull out your chair, there you go. Sit alright! Gotcha! Now we're cooking. Yep, there's the familiar tapandwoo hoo! He's pulling some of my files. We're finally going to get something done!

Human has been reading about Web analytics

What is this? He's adding a strange little snippet of code. Hmmm, interesting, it's nonintrusive, butwhoa, baby! I can see who is looking at me! Wow! There's one from Alaska, and Arizona, oh, ya, and that place humans call Florida. This is a rush! Look at those traffic numbers climb! I've got to look at this deal. Ok, ya, reports, good. Easy to read. My human needs to look at these closely. Oh ya!

Wait a second! Only 20% of all these people went to my sales page?! That can't continue. Hey, human! Human! Are you seeing this?!

It seems Human is seeing the numbers, and he is realizing there is a lot he has been missing by not having used traffic reporting before now

Ok, we need to look at this more closely. I see that 10% are buying once they get there. Hmmm, that could be improved! Oh, geez, look at that product description page everyone is leaving when they get to it. What's up with that?! Human, you need to get a copywriter on that page, like now!

This is interesting, that press release he sent brought 379 people to the site. And 214 are from Florida. What else, ohkeywords! Aha! I don't see my #1 product anywhere.

The unpleasant screeching sound issuing from the computer echoes Human's feelings about his site. This Web analytics data is shedding light on some serious issues

Come on, Human! Take your mouse by the horns and make some changes! This is good stuff we're seeing here. Your banner ad on that sweet little site in Canada is getting great response. Do more of that, would ya? I sure wouldn't mind connecting to some other hotties like that one, and we now know that pays off!

Human, you'remaking changes! You go!!! Ahhh, I'm already seeing a differencelook at that! Not so many jumpers from the description page; they're starting to move over to sales. Now you've got it. Oh ya, this is doing the trick. You're seeing what needs to be changed, what works and what flops!

No more long, lonely nights, no more feelings of cart abandonment, no more dollars surfing out of my reach! I'm all choked upHuman, you couldn't have made a better move, and you're going to see the difference I can make now! Oh ya! My virtual world is turning around, thanks to one little snippet and a human who is paying attention to the reports.

What about your Website? Don't keep it in the dark, bored, doing nothing for you. An unfulfilled Website is a tremendous opportunity lost. By using Web analytics, it can do what it was created to dobring you business!

Cherie' Davidson is contracted copywriter and site content editor for VisiStat, an energetic young company leading the next generation of "friendlier" Website analysis services. VisiStat is the first to make analytics reports speak directly to the site & business owner and online marketer, in a language that is easily understood and used. It offers a unique type of reporting that provides maximum feedback for marketing and advertising campaigns. Click to learn more about VisiStat, read about analytics at the VisiStat Blog or contact Cherie at cherie@visistat.com

Want Your Website Visitors To Return

2008-12-20T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Michael Garrett

If your like me you have searched on every search engine any possible way to advertise your website. I have filled out submission forms till my fingers have cramped up. I have looked at link farms, long boring articles on SEO, I even have articles sent to my inbox everyday in hopes of finding the next "new" way to attract visitors.

So now you have designed your site and your thinking it looks great. "Who wouldn't want to visit my site?" You have all your affiliates set up, you have your ads (by Yahoo, Google,) and your ready to start making some money. You have your exchange links set up, you listed on every toplist you can think of and you even paid money on some Pay Per Click program in hopes of visitors. And you even have your tracking program in place so you can tell who is hitting your site and where they are hitting from. You even know what pages on your site are popular.

So why are you only getting first time visitors? Why do they only visit one page? Why are they not returning?

One answer - pop ups.

If you belong to one of those exchange link programs that provides pop up, pop unders,(pop up under the main page) or exit pops (as I call them, when you close your site this page appears) then you could be chasing away your visitors.

I consider my self to be an above normal Internet user. I have several websites that I have created and between them I have thousands of pages in cyber world. I know when I click on a ad or link and all of a sudden pop ups appear out of now where I slightly freak "like whoa!" and once I clear my screen I make a mental note not to click that button again. Imagine how a novice surfer is going to feel. They may never click on an ad again. That kinda defeats all of us using ads. You will get hits added to your counter but they wont be return hits.

In no way am I bashing these programs. But like any good web designer, know what tools are in your toolbox and know how and when to use them.

About the Author

Michael is currently growing his new venture as editor of Christian InTech. Michael spends most of his time gathering technical articles and information for his site. You can find his site at http://www.christianintech.com This article is allowed for reproduction as long as the links are included. © 2005 Christian InTech

How To Increase Targeted Web Site Traffic

2008-12-19T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Titus Hoskins

I get on average around 10,000 to 12,000 unique visitors to my main site each month. Actually, when you're speaking about the Internet, that's not too much to brag about, but it's better than getting say 1000 or 2000 visitors; that was my usual rate until I aggressively went after targeted traffic for my site.

I thought I would briefly and in very simple terms explain how I increased the targeted traffic to my main site from around 1,000 to 10,000 unique visitors each month. That's a ten-fold increase -- I am aiming for a hundred-fold increase but would gladly settle for thirty or forty times the traffic.

How did I increase my site's traffic? The answer might just help you get more traffic to your own site. Most of these techniques are very simple to implement and if you're serious about building an online business, lets face it, the first thing you're going to need is targeted visitors to your site.

I hope you have noticed I have mentioned the words 'targeted visitors' several times already. I did this to bring home the fact that you're not just after traffic but targeted traffic or visitors to your site. You want visitors to your site who are already interested in your site's topic and who are more likely to benefit from your site's content or products.

It's the first ingredient for a successful web site.

Below are my 5 main sources of targeted traffic to my site. Along with a short explanation of how you can create or put the same practices to work for your own site.

1. RSS EMPOWERED One of most effective sources of traffic to my site would have to be my blogs and RSS feeds. Notice I said blogs and feeds; I have created simple blogs and feeds for the major topics of my site: on rss resources, web hosting solutions, notebook computers, etc. These blogs and feeds bring in a great number of targeted visitors to my site.

With the introduction of Google Blog Search, my blog traffic is increasing even more. Within minutes of posting to my blog - I am getting targeted traffic from Google. You are instantly indexed by Google Blog Search; it's reason enough for every webmaster to put at least one blog on their site.

Try to imagine the traffic you'll get when the next RSS empowered Windows browser arrives from Microsoft. Get your own site ready and prepared for RSS to take advantage of all this traffic. Just use Google owned blogger.com to create your blog -- it has that all important blog search bar at the top!

2. SEO EMPOWERED Seo optimization should be your goal! Still the main source of traffic to my site are the search engines. Mainly from Google, followed by MSN and Yahoo. You must optimize your site for the search engines. This includes off/site links and on/site tactics.

I have been online since '98 so I thought I knew how to optimize a website. Boy, was I ever wrong! I didn't notice a big jump in my traffic until I stumbled across a SEO expert, actually stumble is the wrong word, I actually sought out the best SEO expert I could find. His name is Brad Callen. He offers a free email course on how to optimize your sites for the search engines. His main product is SEO Elite.

Just the free course and his helpful newsletter have really fine-tuned my site, which resulted in a major increase of traffic especially from Google. You should try the same for your site or sites and see the results for yourself.

3. ARTICLE EMPOWERED This one works. Article marketing for me has been the major reason for the turn around in the amount of traffic my sites were receiving. It's one of the most effective ways to get targeted visitors to your site.

Getting your articles published in ezines and on sites such as addme.com or sitepronews.com will generate an enormous amount of traffic to your site. As a bonus, you even get 100's of subscribers to your own ezine in one day!

The trick is to write helpful how-to articles on current topics that other webmasters want on their sites, this will boost your link popularity with the search engines and increase your rankings. You must also very carefully choose the right keywords to target in your articles, matching the content on your site. One way to do this is with a site like www.nichebot.com -- it will show how to pick the right 'competitive' keywords for your site. You must target keywords that have high traffic, yet little competition from competing web sites.

My main sources of traffic from article sites include www.ezinearticles.com and www.buzzle.com.

4. EZINE EMPOWERED Building a large opt-in list or subscribers to my ezine is another method that brings in a lot of traffic to my site. You can use an ezine to offer helpful tips to your subscribers. It is a very easy way to get repeat visitors to your site and build up a relationship with your visitors.

Your ezine should relate to your site's theme and offer more information on the same. Whether you believe it not, if you operate a site on a particular subject for a couple of years, you will fast become an expert on that subject. People will regard you as such and this will also bring in visitors to your site.

5. VIRAL MARKETING EMPOWERED Another way to attract targeted visitors is to offer a free product or service. I use free brandable reports that visitors can download and use. These reports and ebooks have links back to my sites. One of my most popular ones is a timely report and guide on how to use and benefit from RSS on all your sites. It brings in a lot of traffic.

Similar to the one above, I use other free viral techniques to build targeted traffic to my site. These are products that can be branded with your links and passed around. Helpful software programs that match the theme of your site are good choices to make.

Another popular one that I have on my site is the DATEwise eCalendar and personal planner that visitors can download and place on their desktops. It has hotlinks to my site that brings in traffic. It can be customized with your site's products so you get targeted visitors or customers.

OTHER SOURCES There are other sources of traffic for my site that I find effective but they bring in lesser traffic than the methods listed above. But they are still worth mentioning, one of these is regular posting on major online forums. This brings in very good targeted traffic, so too, is posting comments in online blogs.

Another good source is a traffic exchange called 'Traffic Swarm' - most sites where members exchange traffic don't work. You get worthless hits to your site. However, Traffic Swarm is one exception that your should try. You just set your start page to this exchange, and click on sites you want to visit.

Increasing targeted traffic to your site is an ongoing struggle for every webmaster. I hope you can try some of the techniques that have worked for me. I am sure they will also work for you.

Empower your site with targeted traffic!

----
To Put RSS On Your Site Within Minutes - Visit This Link:
RSS and Blogging Guide
Titus Hoskins Copyright © 2005 Seo Optimization
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

How To Cheat Traffic Exchanges

2008-12-18T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Dylan Campbell

There are many ways to cheat traffic exchanges and generate massive numbers of hits to your website. Some are complex and some are simple. Below is a list of some of the more popular methods of cheating.

Give yourself a point for each method of cheating that you already employ and then rate yourself on our cheat-o-meter.

-- Opening the same exchange in several windows to generate multiple hits at a time.

-- Insert the Start URL from one exchange into the Target URL from another.

-- Open multiple windows and minimise them until just the "Next Page" link is showing. Click away.

-- Use a custom browser (eg Crazy Browser) to "auto-click" through exchange programs so it generates hits while you watch Jerry Springer.

-- Use custom made software designed to get around the cheat-protection on a traffic exchange.

How did you do?

-- 1pt: You are a liar and a thief

-- 2pts You are a liar and a thief

-- 3pts You are a liar and a thief

-- 4pts You are a liar and a thief

-- 5pts You are a liar and a thief

In truth, if you are a serial cheater, then you have probably stopped reading this article when you realised it wasn't going to teach you anything you didn't already know.

If you have played around with any of these ideas, then you might find the idea of being called a "thief" extreme. I disagree.

If you are using any of these methods, you are one step away from shoplifting sweets from the corner shop.

And this is why.

When someone creates a new traffic exchange a lot of time and money goes into the projects creation and administration. They may give away free hits as an introductory offer but, after that, hits can only be purchased or earned.

This is how the owner makes his income. This is how they see a return on their efforts.

If you earn these credits through fradulent means, this is akin to getting a friend to clock you out of work while you take the afternoon off. You are earning something you haven't WORKED for.

I've heard it argued that traffic exchange owners make so much money, they barely notice the lost credits that cheaters steal.

This is the same ridiculous argument that says it is ok to steal from large department stores because "they can afford it". At the end of the day, the losses are added to the prices that honest people choose to pay. Honest surfer's hard earned credits are wasted by cheats.

And you are still a thief whether the individual you steal from can afford it or not.

I should also point out that the majority of traffic exchange owners are not rich. The successful ones may make a tidy income, but the majority are probably struggling to break even. Stealing credits does not help their endeavours.

If you are using, or considering, any kind of cheat method, please think twice. Think about your reputation, think about the owner you are stealing from, and think about Dylan Campbell whose credits are being frittered away on Crazy Browser enthusiasts who think they have discovered something new.

Theft isn't new. It just keeps changing shape.

And for all those smug surfers out there who are sat back, smugly thinking, "I never cheat". Do you honestly view EVERY website for the ENTIRE time the counter is ticking?

I doubt it. And let's be sensible, it is almost impossible not to break the occasional term or condition. So many traffic exchanges, each with their own unique demands. Who can remember every single last rule?

I'm not demanding perfection from surfers, just a certain amount of fair play. So let me tell you how I surf.

Am I a cheat? No. Do I break terms & conditions? Yes. Do I view EVERY website that I click through? Yes. And I believe that it is every traffic exchange users duty to do the same.

Step 1) Make a list of all the traffic exchanges you belong to. For this example, pretend I am a member of 20.

Step 2) List all the days you know you can spend at least 20 minutes surfing. For this example, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Step 3) Share out the exchanges equally among the days. For this example, I can assign five exchanges to each day.

Step 4) Visit the Start URL of the first exchange on your list. Go to the menu bar of IE and click, "Favourites" and then, "Add to Favourites". Create a new folder called, "Surf Monday" or something similar and add the Start URL to this folder. Repeat for the next four exchanges on your list.

Step 5) Repeat Step 4 for the next five exchanges on your list and place them in a new folder called, "Surf Wednesday" or something similar. Repeat this process for Friday's and Saturday's.

When Monday comes around, open the appropriate folder for Monday's and open all the exchanges in that folder in separate browser windows. Make sure they are ALL full size.

You should see each copy of IE that you have opened, listed in the Windows bar at the bottom of your screen. If they are grouped together, click on the IE group and you should be able to see each Traffic Exchange listed individually. Make sure you haven't acidentally opened the same Traffic Exchange twice.

Click on the first exchange and view the website. When the counter has finished click to the next site and IMMEDIATELY move to the next IE window. Precious seconds are wasted while the next website loads, so use them instead viewing the website in the next IE window.

Once again, view the website until the counter has finished, click to the next site and immediately move to the next browser window in your sequence.

Notice that I am not viewing each website for the full length of the counter, but I am viewing EVERY website. I, for one, would have no problem with my websites being viewed in this manner. Far better, than not being viewed at all because of a cheaters greed.

When you have viewed each browser window in sequence, return to the first browser window and repeat the process. If pop-ups are a problem, try the free Google Toolbar. A good pop-up stopper will make your surfing a lot easier.

If you come across a website that looks interesting, don't stop surfing. If you have assigned 20 minutes for surfing, then you don't want to break your rythym. Instead, right-click the mouse button inside the website you like the look of and select "Add to Favourites". Create a new folder called, "Look Later" or something similar, and add the website to this folder.

You MUST use the right-click technique rather than using the menu bar. Otherwise you will bookmark the traffic exchange and not the website you are interested in.

At the end of your surfing session, once a day, once a week or whenever you feel is appropriate, open the "Look Later" folder and spend as much time as you want examining the websites you selected and joining/investing in the programs that are worthwhile.

Assuming you can view all five browser windows twice a minute, that you spend 20 minutes in each surfing session and that the traffic exchange ratios average 2:1, this example would earn you 400 hits a week.

If you spent an hour each day surfing, this increases to 1200 hits a week. Not too shabby, especially when you start factoring in down-lines and other traffic generating programs you may use.

Final Thought -- Honesty still prevails in this industry and it will continue to do so while people continue to champion the virtues of conducting business in a decent way. Cheaters may prosper, but so can the honest workers, if they are patient and don't abandon their values. If you are a program owner and you catch a cheater, forget the two strikes, benefit of the doubt rubbish. Throw him out into the gutter where he belongs. I would rather be deleted from a program in error than make things easier for the thieves of this industry.

Dylan Campbell has been quietly making a living on the Internet since 2000. He has a unique, and often controversial, view of the industry.

Dylan Campbell writes exclusively for The Nettle Ezine.

Aspiring Webmasters Want To Know What Makes A Website Grow

2008-12-17T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by A Raymond Randall

It appears that most webmasters have come from the world of advertising. Their website content emphasizes "marketing and promotion". Just to prove my point, do a Google search on "marketing promotion". As I write, Google comes up with "about 5,910,000" entries. Gosh imagine the good fortune of a listing on page one! Of course, the number of entries for "marketing promotion" gets shadowed by "sex" which provides you with "about 192,000,000". It's not money and sex; it's sex and money.

Prominent webmasters like Jim Daniels, Cory Rudll,and Kevin Bidwell(one of my favorites) et.al teach you Internet success strategies. Of course, they all started way back in '96 (that's 1996) or so when teaching such concepts made them successful because aspiring webmasters wanted the information. Someone asked me recently if Cory Rudll's two volume manual collects dust on my desk. Chagrined, I acknowledge, "sitting just to the right of my keyboard" (been there for two years). Then I think of all the other manuals, ebooks purchased to vault my Internet marketing skills.

What then gets you the income so many claim to make? You've read the ads, "so and so made $55,000 in one month" and this was their slowest month. Or, affiliate maven makes $463,000 a year marketing affiliate programs. Each of these testimonials appear attached to some alluring ebook which you must have to succeed. Well, hold off. Maybe you just don't need to enter that credit card number.

Here are 5 considerations to ponder before thinking about income from your website.

Purpose: Never gave much credence to business plans; however, you can't get from my house to Boston without a map. Whether you write it down (which is best) or create pictures in your mind, there must be a map. A strategy which defines what steps you take. Strategies begin with brainstorming. Sit down, put a blank paper on your desk, grasp your pen, and write. Write anything that comes to mind relevant to your purpose. Write the not so relevant ideas too; who knows they might turn out to be the most important expression of your brainstorming. A number of routes will get you to Boston from my house: some direct and boring, some scenic and slow. Who cares what way you get there. Herman Drost's article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/2507, "8 Steps to Creating a Simple Business Plan...." provides a "how to" outline.

Persistence: No matter what the hype reads, this takes persistence. Perhaps the only emotion that separates the successful from the no so successful comes down to persistence. Calvin Coolidge's (1872 - 1933) viewpoint may be worth memorizing. "Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. Kevin Sinclair's article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/2508, "Persistence - The Magic Key To Success" inspires you to continue. Also, if you've never read Russell Conwell's "Acres of Diamonds", it's a classic worth reading.

Preparation: "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure," says Colin Powell. Well, historians will assess the current geopolitical "learning from failure". However, every endeavor requires preparation. Ever watch a chef work? Every summer I work a weekend at a camp which serves 250 men seven meals. Doesn't sound like much until I observed the chef arrives to work at 3AM. I would get there at 4:15AM in order to dice, chop, stir, and pour in preparation for the next meal. When meals get served, few understand the amount of "prep work" that preceded the meal. No one sees you doing it; it just has to be done. Judy Collins provides clear guidelines on "Ten Steps To Prepare Yourself for Online Marketing" http://www.echievements.com/articles/2509.

Probabilities: As this article is written, the banter of presidential poll interpretation continues. Everyone has an opinion, and every pole a changing nuance. However, reading polls provides some lessons on reading the probabilities of website traffic. Most of us read the primary poll results rather than referring to the "internal tracking polls". Same may hold true when reading website traffic: we look at the number of visits without reading the "internal tracking". Travis Reeder provides detailed explanations and reasons for digging deeper into the numbers in his article, http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/marketing/a/visitortracking.htm "How (and Why) to Read Your Web Statistics and Analytics" If you do not track visitors, I recommend http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ AWstats. "AWStats is a free powerful and featureful (sic) tool that generates advanced web, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically." "A reasonable probability is the only certainty," writes E.W. Howe. So what probabilities do you have for succeeding and how do you measure them?

Personality: Ever converse with someone knowing that person was not "there"? Many websites give the same impression. What does this webmaster think? What matters to them? What message do they want conveyed? One source of information for news and other resources is Yahoo. Yahoo allows you to personalize your page using my.yahoo.com. I think it takes more effort to insert your personality into your work, to evidence your opinions and world view on a website. Every website page represents you implicitly or explicitly. What matters to you should be evident on your website, and your website should represent your values. Little seems to be written about this subject. Terri Seymour's article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/1296 "The Power of Personality" provides some further insights. Bob Baker's book, Poor Richard's Branding Yourself Online provides substantive help. Oscar Wilde's observation that "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation" deserves a webmaster's attention.

As with all enterprise, Internet endeavors involve you with something that does not happen overnight. As with all worthy efforts, it requires a purpose clearly defined, a persistence resolutely affirmed, and a daily preparation involving your complete personality. You must remain passionately focused on the belief that you add value to this incredible enterprise known as the Internet.

About The Author

Ray Randall serves clients as a registered investment advisor with his firm, Ethos Advisory Services, Essex, Massachusetts http://www.ethosadvisory.com. He has wide experience within the financial services industry, writes a weekly newsletter for Ethos Advisory Services, and coordinates the developments at Echievements . Ray holds a Masters Degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, MA. You may email him or call (877-895-3756).

rayrandall@echievements.com

The Basics Of Asking For A Reciprocal Link

2008-12-16T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Marc Singer

Asking another webmaster for a reciprocal link is standard practice on the Internet. Webmasters have been asking other webmasters for reciprocal links since the beginnings of the Internet. The very nature of the web is linking websites to one another. It is of even higher importance, now that AltaVista and others have changed their ranking algorithms.

If a webmaster considers your email spam, then he can report you. If your emails are unique, without commercials, and are personalized with unique personal information about the webmaster's web site that you are emailing, then it would be hard to call your email spam.

All webmasters must be responsible in their asking for reciprocal links. This includes following simple rules and guidelines in choosing web sites to include in your link directory.

Organizing a Tightly-Themed Vertical Link Directory

Reciprocal links do increase your search engine positioning if used properly.Tightly-Themed Link Directories get high ratings from search engine robots, but only if they are true resources of organized knowledge. Search engines are getting very smart in their query result rankings. They include all kinds of advanced calculations pertaining to how the links point to you and away from you. They can include keywords in their algorithms, and now they know how tightly linked your Themes or subjects are. Don't try to fool them into better positioning by including a lot of web sites that are outside your web site's real Themes in your Link Directory.

Your Link Directory's Themes must match the Themes of your web site. You must not let your zeal to email, and perhaps get a reciprocal link overpower your need to create a true web resource. You don't want to create a directory that includes all the knowledge of mankind and also sounds like a soft drink. You should be happy with organizing a tightly Themed Vertical Link Directory. Be the best in your area, linking only sites that relate to you.

A smaller, tightly-themed Link Directory will grow much faster than a diluted, loosely-themed, large bulky one. Your web site's traffic will quickly increase, not only with visitors from your Reciprocal Link partners but will also increase from Search Engine visitors, once their robots quickly find your Link Directory pages through your Link Partners!

Email General Guidelines

If you are including web sites in your Link Directory just because you want to send an email and possibly get a link, then you are spamming in mind and spirit. The webmaster who receives this kind of email is not a happy camper. He or she is proud of his achievements in creating traffic to his site over the last few years, perhaps millions of hits every month, only to receive an email asking him to link to a web site that in no way can remotely match his web site or be useful for his visitors. This is spam. Remember the phrase reciprocal links? Please change it to Reciprocal Themed Links. This is important !

DO NOT commercialize your email in any way.

It shouldn't look like spam or people will think it is. Do not include ANY links in your email signature area except links to your web site. Keep it short and to the point. Ask for a reciprocal link and that's it.

This message should only be a few lines, and not a long narrative with rules and guidelines. Save that for your information on your link directory. Use a unique email reciprocal link message.

It is possible for webmasters to receive the same basic message from another webmaster. Each reciprocal link request MUST look different by being fresh and original.

Do not use Let's Trade Links as your subject. Let's trade Links is probably the most used email subject line on the Internet today, as there are thousands of webmasters using this phrase. If you keep this subject line, then you are sending the same one as everyone else. It will not be accepted or worse, it will look like spam.

Personalize every email message

Include a personal comment in the email message to each of your selected email addresses. You could include something like: "I really like the animations you had on your home page.", ".. and loved your background image" or "I loved the content on ...... page". This personal comment should prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that you personally visited their web site.

Use logic when selecting those to receive an email.

Before you can send a reciprocal link request, you need to explore their web site to decide if you want to include them in your link directory. You need to also use some thought in who you send a message to. A super large web site will probably not trade links with you in the beginning, perhaps you should save those for later. If you cannot find a links page, they are not going to trade links either. Think before sending email.

I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

About The Author

Marc Oswald Singer

CEO WSP Advertising Inc.

http://www.wspromotion.com/

How To Build Web Traffic Daily

2008-12-15T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Kevin Allman

How to Build Web Traffic Daily

I - Introduction
II - Web Directories
III - Search Engines - Rankings
III - Link ahoy!
IV - Messageboards and Forums
V - Conclusion

I - Introduction

The one thing that webmasters wish for is a steady flow of web traffic to their website.

My aim with this article is to give you a few ideas for bringing web traffic to your website. Once your web traffic is up and flowing, what you do with the web traffic is up to you.

First and foremost, web traffic mainly comes from the following areas; in no particular order
1. Web Directories
2. Search Engines
3. Link ahoy!
4. Discussion Boards/Forums

We go into each of these in detail below.

II - Web directories

A web directory is not my favorite medium for building web traffic; but it can be useful to build PR which can help to achieve better rankings in the Google Search Engine. PR (range of 1-10) is one of the factors Google uses to rank its results when someone does a search. Basically, with a higher PR; it is believed that your listing should rank better than those with other PR.

With a quick overview about PR; PR is determined by how many backlinks you have, and the quality of those backlinks. The more backlinks you have from quality websites you have, the higher PR you will generate; and as a result; better rankings.

Thats the beauty about some web directories and link pages. According to how high the PR values are for the webpage where you want to place your link; your webpage PR value would increase. If you could manage to get many links on various PR6 websites for example; your PR value should increase and your rankings should get better and should drive more traffic.

How to find web directories you ask? Its a simple task: All you need to do is to go to www.google.com and type in your keyword and the word directory For example, if the keyword was 'Cat', the search term would be 'Cat directory' are various Cat directories should come up.

III - Linkahoy!

Ebaumsworld is a very popular website for finding jokes. It currently enjoys over 750, 000 unique visitors a month. Yet, on typing 'jokes' and performing a search, ebaumsworld is not present in the top 100 results. How then can Ebaumsworld enjoy so much web traffic a month?

Ebausmsworld mainly achieves this through backlinks. Interestingly enough, on doing a backlink count with Google, Ebaumsworld chalked up 9,550 in backlinks.

Now lets face reality: Manually creating 9,550 backlinks by manually going to web pages and submitting your link is a very tiring task.

The only way to create so many genuine backlinks is by having GOOD CONTENT.

After studying major websites, I've found that they are two great ways of creating this:

1 Media/Downloads
2. Articles

With Ebaumworld.com, their key is loads of media, not necessarily article writing. Web surfers are attracted to downloads and media in general; It's a much welcomed difference to all of the text found on web pages.

Once you start to create a number of articles and media/downloads, you will find that persons start to visit your website more regularly to check for more media/downloads; Your web traffic will increase especially when the articles and downloads are really great ones.

The added advantage with articles as well, is that you can post them on other related websites. By doing this, you can create numerous backlinks by including your link at the end of your article.

Search engines love Article content; but we'll go more into Search Engines in the next section.

IV -Search Engines

Search engines are great for driving web traffic if you can get into about the top 30 results for popular search terms. With Google, rankings depend largely on backlinks and PR.

In addition to these two variables; another variable is Onpage Optimization.

Onpage optimization is basically the editing of your HTML code so that its ideal for placement in search engine results.

This editing may including the editing of meta tags, descriptions, keywords and content realignment.

Quick tips for Onpage optimization for web traffic

1. Use H1 header tags

Make sure that this tag contains your keyword.

2. Use H2 tags.

Largely taken as a subheading, make sure this also contains your main keyword;

3. Evenly spread keywords

Also, with regards to the content, try to make reference to your keyword regularly, but not too often. Try to mention it evenly throughout the document. This is where the article writing from the previous sections comes in handy. With your articles, make sure that

There are numerous other Onpage Optimization tips I can give you, but I go into that more in the Optimization tips article HERE.

V - Discussion Boards/Forums

Discussion forums are a great way to get your message out and generate even more web traffic.

To find these forums use your keyword and the word 'forums' with www.google.com

For example, 'Cat forums'. Make sure that you keep a log of all of them. You'll want to be making regular posts here.

On registering, try to include your URL and a brief description of your website in your signature. If you make regular posts on the forums, and change signatures every once in a while to reflect what's going on at your website, you will have a steady stream of visitors.

For example, an example signature could be 'Catland.com 'How to make cats happy' article just posted 12/34/04'.

On these boards, you will also realize that there are several recurring questions new persons ask.

With reference to the Cats forums; there may be a question which you find reoccurs 'How should I groom my Cat?'.

If you can create an article to answer each of these questions, you can always post the link to your article everytime a newbie asks question. This will drive fresh users to your website and once your website has in great content; will ensure repeat user and more web traffic.

VI - Conclusion

There are always new ways of finding means of developing web traffic. Offline promotion such as developing business cards can also help. You've only just begun your journey! The last thing I want to say is that fresh content ALWAYS brings return vistors; keep adding content; and your visitors will return time after time.

With that said I wish you all the best with your web traffic quest!

Kevin Allman is a webmaster with over ten years Internet experience. He runs a Search Engine Optimization website at http://www.pzeta.org/seo_global/ which contains many articles on how to optimize your website.

Your Traffic Building Checklist 15 Ways To Get More Visitors Who Are Ready To Buy Part 1

2008-12-14T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Alexandria K. Brown

Many of my clients share that one of their biggest online marketing challenges is getting enough visitors to their site. Attracting traffic isn't a cut and dry process - there isn't one perfect way to do it. But there are many ways that, when used collaboratively, will build you a nice stream of visitors.

To get your marketing wheels turning, check out these 15 simple ways to attract new visitors to your site. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it will give you several fresh ideas to try.

Now, remember - you don't want to expel effort in getting just anyone to visit your site. You only want people who would likely be interested in what you have to offer. So before you read on, answer this question:

"WHO are your target clients or customers?"

The more you know about your ideal clients/customers, the better you'll know where and how to find them.

So ... keep that information in mind as you consider these traffic-building tactics:

___ 1. Search Engines and Directories

Why not be in front of people who are actually searching for your product or service? Get your site listed in the top search engines by either learning about this topic on your own or investing in assistance. Because there is A LOT to learn and the rules keep changing all the time, this is an area I advise you get some help in or hire it out. (I recommend my friend Marc Harty at Search Engine Patrol.)

___ 2. Pay-per-Click Advertising

Services such as Google AdWords let you bid on how much you'd like to pay per click, and many times your listings appear above the regular listings in the major search engines. AND you can get listed in as little as 15 minutes! To learn more, get my friend Cat Seda's step-by-step course, "Search Marketing Mastery".

___ 3. Your Own E-zine

If you publish your own e-zine, you already have a warm pool of prospects who are likely interested in what you have to offer. Give them a reason to visit (or re-visit) your site by adding new content, giving away a free report or e-book, or offering a special subscriber-only promotion on your products and services. To learn more about publishing your own e-zine, get my award-winning course, "Boost Business With Your Own Ezine".

___ 4. Your Articles in Other E-zines and at Other Web Sites

This has been one of my most successful traffic-building tactics. There are thousands of online publishers who would like to use YOUR articles in their e-zines and on their Web sites! Find them via the Directory of E-zines (http://www.directoryofezines.com/) and also post your articles at free content sites like EzineArticles.com (http://www.ezinearticles.com/).

___ 5. Ads in Other E-zines

Identify other e-zines whose readership matches your target market. Search the Directory of E-zines (http://www.directoryofezines.com/) and the Web. Find out if the e-zines accept advertising and learn what their rates are. Run at least three ads in a row to get an accurate representation of how the ad pulls. (Use an ad-tracking program to determine how many clicks each ad is getting, such as the one I use that comes with my shopping cart system, AutoWebBusiness.com.

___ 6. Ads on Other Web Sites

Research other Web sites where your target market visits and inquire about advertising. Have ready both text ads and colorful banner ads of the standard sizes.

___ 7. Online Forums and Discussion Groups

Identify popular forums and discussion groups that are related to your subject area and where prospects in your target market may be lurking. You'll find more than you ever knew existed just by doing a few online searches. Let your value shine through in your postings, and include a link to your Web site.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," publishes the award-winning 'Straight Shooter Marketing' weekly ezine with 20,000+ subscribers. If you're ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at http://www.EzineQueen.com

7 Ways To Increase Web Site Visitors And Boost Sales

2008-12-13T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Herman Drost

Have you spent a lot of money on advertising with the expectation that you would get many sales from the 1000s of web site visitors that read your ad?

Have you poured money into driving traffic to your web site, only to have no one buying your product?

Maybe you have seen the ads, "Get 10,000 visitors to your site, for only $20" . Wow, you think, that's a great bargain, I'll go for it. The result 10 people visiting your site and no one buying. What's the problem? You have not effectively targeted your customers. Your field of customers is too large. Most of them are not interested in your product. You need to zero in on the person that wants, needs and thirsts for your product.

How do I find my targeted customers?

1. Place yourself in your customers shoes. There's an Indian saying that goes something like:

"You must walk a mile in my shoes, before you can understand me".

For example, if I am selling a weight loss product, I would not be targeting skinny people, but targeting those that are overweight.

2. Make a thumb nail sketch of this person

Who is your customer? What are her wants, needs and desires?

Try to understand how they think. Understanding what problems they have, will give you a clearer idea of what to offer them.

For example, let's make a sketch of a typical overweight person:

30-50 years old
Out of shape
Probably married with children
Under a lot of pressure, tight for time, stressed
Looking for ways to improve health and wealth
Lack of self esteem

3. Develop a product that addresses one or more of their needs. Always refer back to your thumbnail sketch as you write for your site. Elaborate on the points that fit your product and what it delivers. As you start writing, new ideas will naturally emerge, but always keep them focused on your targeted customer so you won't go off the track of what your customer wants.

Based on the profile I outlined above, you may sell them products that help them lose weight, improve their health, look good, spend more time with their children and get wealthy.

4. Write your copy to sell - when you write the copy for your site, always stress the benefits. Develop a theme for your site that focuses on this benefit and don't stray from it. for more indepth information on this topic, read my article:

"How to Get Listed in the Search Engines Developing a Theme-Based Site"
(www.isitebuild.com/searchengine.htm)

5. Make sure each page sells. - each page should emphasize the benefits in the headline, to pull the reader into the contents of your page. It should ask the question:

What's in it for me?

Why should I spend my precious time reading this page?

6. Write as if you were talking to your friend - your copy should be conversational, friendly and personal, as if you are sitting next to the person. Write from the viewpoint of what your customer wants to buy, not what you want to sell.

7. Deliver the contents in a clear, crisp way - be careful not to stray from the central purpose of what you promised in the headline. Make sure your customer wants to click through to the next page or your order page. Don't be afraid of clearly stating the price of your product.

Clearly identifying your customers and writing copy tailored to solving your customers problems, places them in a buying mood. Converting these visitors into buyers should now increase the amount of sales from your web site.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com - Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting. Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles at subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

How To Generate Targeted Traffic To Your Website

2008-12-12T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Lyn Leckie

One of the most important questions is "how do I generate targeted traffic to my website". Ok so you have a new work at home business website and you are new to internet marketing. You see all this information available on the internet on how to generate traffic to your site and your buying this and that to try and increase your traffic to your site. In my opinion do not waste your money you can do it just by following these few steps.

Step number one is to ensure your website is optimised for your chosen keyword. Ensure your meta tags are correct for your chosen keyword. Dont under estimate the power of an optimised site. It is imperative that your site is optimised for your chosen keyword or phrase for the search engines.

Step number two is to then submit your site to the major search engines by hand and you can get some search engine submitters for free which will post to 40 - 66 search engines for you just do a search on google.

Step number three once you have submitted your website to your search engines you will find that it takes several weeks to be listed. Dont just sit around and wait to be listed there is more work to be done. Just submitting your site to as many search engines as possible will not get you the targeted traffic you want. You need to start creating backlinks to your website. The best way to do this is by writing articles and having a link to your website in the author box. I suggest minimum 1-3 article a week to be submitted to ezinearticles, ideamarketers, advertisingknowhow, these are the top article places to submit to.

Step number four is to also increase backlinks by doing some linking. I use link machine. It is where sites can place a link to you on their site and then you place a link to them on your site this is two way linking. I have a links button setup on my home page where people can add there website link to my website but they must first add me to their website. This is a hassle free way of generating links to your site. However you want to set some parameters as you mainly want sites which have your keyword as anchor text.

Step number Five Is Forum posting, Participate in forums and ensure you have your website in your signature file. I recommend atleast 5 posts a day. Make sure you add value in your posts dont just say oh thats nice or well done your posts must be relevant to what is said or it is considered spamming.

Once you have started to generate your links you can keep a check at how well you are doing by going to linkpoluarity.com where you can do a search for your website and it will show you how many links you have in google, msn and yahoo. Your aim is to continually increase these numbers because this will ensure you get on the first page of your chosen keyword phrase. You can also do a little test and put your keyword phrase into google and see who is the number one site and then do a link popularity check on them and you will see how much work you need to do to knock them off of the number 1 position.

Well you have now learnt on what I consider to be the best methods available to generate targeted traffic to your website. Set yourself up a daily routine and dont get to bogged down with anything else. If you maintaina routine you will benefit from targeted traffic

Lyn Leckie http://www.MoneyHomeBiz.com for your Work at Home Business Ideas, opportunities and Resources. Signup for my tips and tricks newsletter and recieve your BONUSES http://www.MoneyHomeBiz.com/subscribe123.html

Making Effective Use Of Traffic Exchanges

2008-12-11T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Brian Holte

What are traffic exchanges?

Traffic exchanges are used by 100,000 + people who are interested in the same goals as you are, marketing your product and services.

How do traffic exchanges work?

Simply put, a group of people (myself included) who agree to surf and view pages created by other people.

What benefits do traffic exchanges bring you?

The first way is in Traffic Exchange Programs, brings people who are interested in what product or service you have to offer.

What is a down line?

A down line is where you have the opportunity to increase traffic to you site by having others sign in under you and promote your service for you without any extra work on your part.

How to build down lines?

There are no magical ways to increase your down lines except by uploading your article and waiting for it to be spidered by the search engines.

Your best bet is to pick 2 traffic generating articles, and you also need a spider to crawl your site. It's always better to let the spiders find your pages on their own.

How many levels do you get credit for?

Most Traffic Exchanges have a down line of 7 or so, needless to say the possibilities are there for continued growth

What kind of traffic exchange programs works best?

Well, that all depends on your personal needs. There are 2 different types of ways you could go about it, continue to use the free version of the program you have picked until you have a big enough down line. Once you have a half decent down line under you, you might want to upgrade Pro so you receive more benefits than the guy who chooses the Free version (like money and freebies).

What can you do to improve traffic to your site?

Pick two favorite programs that you've come to trust and work them (don't get discouraged, keep plugging away), submit those articles to article announcement groups, send a notice out to your subscribers letting them know about your traffic exchange programs

Summary

Don't be a Rabbit by jumping from one program to another, decide on which programs you're interested in and stick with them, promote you business, continue to do what works for you. Traffic Exchanges can be a great resource if you put in just a few minutes extra a day.

Traffic Swarm or
Fly-in-Ads or
BOTH (recommended)

Test Your Headlines Using Traffic Exchange Programs Click on the link for more info. http://www.theebookking.com/tp.html

Brian Holte is the owner of http://www.theebookking.com and frequent user of both traffic exchanges listed above.

Free Tips To Increase The Number Of Visitors To Your Website

2008-12-10T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Steve Hill

If you are looking to increase the number of visitors to your website or increase your hits, I have a number of ideas that I hope will prove beneficial.

By far the best advice would be writing articles, just like the one you are reading.

If you search for:

The best way to promote your website
Stuttering and its effects

on Google and just look where these two articles are placed. As of July 2005 they were number one. This alone will create a good level of visitors to my websites as you are able to add a live link at the bottom of the article to your site.

When you have written an article you need to submit it to various article websites such as http://www.ezinearticles.com and just watch your hits increase.

To find other article websites you can search the internet, I also use a website called goarticles.

The other benefits are the fact that other webmasters or people are able to read your article and even use it on their websites, thus creating lots of additional backward links. These links are very important these days and in turn will increase PR ratings, which in turn will mean you are higher placed in search engines.

Ppc can also be useful as you drive targeted traffic to your website, be careful though not to spend more than you are likely to earn.

Link exchange programs are also of value as per the reasons above.

If you are able to find a cheap search engine optimisation company this may also be of benefit.

Stephen Hill is a webmaster from Birmingham, examples of his work are at http://www.gain-confidence.co.uk and http://www.debt-specialist.co.uk

The Swank Meter What Does Hilary Swank Have To Do With Page Rank

2008-12-09T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Mike Makler

Recently the wife and I were watching Million Dollar Baby. After we were done watching the Movie my wife went on the Internet to see which Karate Kid Movie Hilary was in. It turns out that doing an MSN search on "hilary swank" came up with 190,231 Web Pages, Doing an MSN Search on "mike makler" brought up 2,737 results. So 190,231/2,737 is 69.5. My Hilary Swank Rating or Swank Meter is 69.5

After Looking up other Popular Internet Figures who Brand there Name and calculating there Swank Meter's it seems that any Swank Meter under 19 is fairly good.

Name Branding is Important because it sets you up as an Expert in your Field, Lets Do a Word association if I say Golf, what is the first thing that Pops in your Mind. I Bet it is probably Tiger Woods. Likewise if I say Hotel Conrad Hilton or J. W. Marriott are 2 Names that have been branded to Hotels. For a long Time A. L. Williams was Branded with Life Insurance. Wouldn't you like to be Branded to your Niche Market Like Bill Gates and Computers.

The Best way to become branded to a Niche Market is to raise your Swank Meter. The More places online your Name appears the better your branding efforts. The Question now of course is how does one raise their Hilary Swank aka Swank Meter rating? The Power of Viral Marketing is the best way to raise one's Swank Meter. Below are 5 Viral Marketing techniques you can use right now to Brand Yourself

1- Article Submission

One Popular Author Claims by writing a few simple articles and submitting them to 20 or so popular Article Directories he Achieved a Swank Rating of about 10. For Over 50 places to submit articles go here. http://ewguru.com/article-submit

For Tips on Article Writing go here http://ewguru.com/write

2- Give Testimonials

Another Great way to go Viral is by giving Testimonials. Many of the places my name appears and often a link to my web page is in a testimonial.

3- E-Book Give Always

Free E-Book Give Always are Another great Viral Marketing Tool. You can Turn your article Collection into E-Book(s) and give them away as an Incentive for someone to subscribe to your newsletter. Of Course to make it Viral allow others to give them away too. It is fairly easy to convert an Article or set of article to a PDF (E-Book) Using this Free Online Tool. http://ewguru.com/freepdf

4- Software Give Always

Free Software is yet another Twist on Going Viral. If you can't create your own Software there are plenty of places on the Internet that offer Free Software for redistribution. http://www.ewguru.com/hbiz/freesw-top10page.html

5- Forums

Forums are also a great way to Go Viral. Simply find a few Forums on Topics that interest you and respond to posts with useful feedback. Some Forums will even allow you to post a Link.

As you have seen the Swank Meter is a Fun Tool to see how your branding efforts are doing.

For more Ideas on Viral Marketing look in the Various Article Directories. Here are a few I found recently http://www.ewguru.com/hbiz/viral-toc.html

Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001, When he built his first Sales organization of over 100,000 Members.

Subscribe to Mike's Newsletter here: http://www.ewguru.com/hbiz/list-sign-up.html

More Articles by Mike http://www.ewguru.com/hbiz/list-sign-up.html

[You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.]

Link Trading Myths Uncovered

2008-12-08T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Al Bert

Google has just sent the Search Marketing world into a frenzy of hair pulling and nail biting. Its latest shake up of its algorithm has put paid to unrestrained link swapping. It had gone overboard like Meta tag stuffing before it. Even before this latest revision, all signs indicate that the Search Engines were beginning to devalue reciprocal links and forum signatures in their SERP's .So what is a harried webmaster to do? Are backlinks still relevant to search rankings? If they still count, how do you acquire them without running afoul of the SE's

The answer to that is Link Trading. Link trading also known as Link Renting, is simply paying to have a link pointing to your site from another site, usually, with a high or higher page rank. In essence you are buying the linking site's traffic and, if your own site is related, its search relevancy.

Link trading came into vogue even before the current SE upheavals because it was often the only way a new or lowly ranked site could get any links from authority sites. Its principle advantage from a search rankings point of view is it is a one-way link the most valuable kind and thus constitutes a high quality link.

Secondly, link trading or renting if well executed can pull in significant amounts of traffic. If you target a site with relatively high traffic, you are likely to benefit from the overflow obtain traffic you would not otherwise have gotten.

Link trading also has a viral or branding effect leading on from its traffic-generation benefit. More web surfers get to see your link and if you properly optimize the link's anchor text, your site profits from the resultant visibility. You also profit from being associated with the site hosting your link, and if its reputation is good, this will yield a powerful networking advantage.

The downside is clear a site may have negative connotations for your visitors, so researching them thoroughly before buying your link space is critical.

As link renting becomes more popular, the number of sites willing to sell link space increases. Given that the purpose for most webmasters is to gain links from sites with relatively higher PR, you should consider only sites that rate as authority sites in your category. Over and above that, the usual factors for quality linking should be taken into account. Briefly these are:

Visitor Profile choose only those sites that get the type of surfer you are targeting.

Page Relevance make sure that the title and body content of the page hosting your link is relevant to the linked page on your site.

Optimized Anchor Text it is imperative that the text in your link is optimized for your web page, as well as being curiosity arousing.

Text Link Placement wherever possible determine the placement of your link you are paying for it. Links within body text (usually in your own distributed content) are the most effective. The rule of thumb is that the higher up the page the link is placed, the better its click-thru-rate (CTR).

Quantity of links on page in a link trade set up, the hosting site usually guarantees the number of outgoing links 3-5, and never more than 10. The fewer links there are, the better your CTR. Too many (6+) will erode the link PR you acquire as well as create distractions to your link.

Design again you may not have control over the design of the text link ad, but it is worth checking to see whether you have any options. A simple link will generally maximize your CTR. Dynamic urls are not spidered by the SE bots, so any ad tracking scripts will do nothing for your link popularity, only boosting traffic your site.

How to Buy Links

Many sites readily link sell space on their pages. Due to the fear of SE blacklisting, some sites are reluctant to openly advertise the fact that they will sell you link space, and with these, it is often best to approach 3rd party link brokers. This will generally not cost you more as the linking sites' pay the brokers' fees, but it will give you more options to choose from. The leading link brokers are Text Link Brokers and Text Link Ads. The caveats for quality linking still apply, and don't plunge in if you are not sure.

It is usual for linking sites to charge a monthly fee for each link with the possibility of getting site wide links or links on specific pages. However site wide links tend to be more expensive and may not achieve any higher PR than single page links although they may generate more traffic. Typical charges would range from $15/month for PR3's to +$400/month for PR7's with wide variation in between.

I do not think there is anything to be gained in linking with pages with less than PR5, principally because the PR they would pass on would be minimal.

Hosted Marketing Pages

A variation on the theme coming into fashion is Hosted Marketing Pages also known as Content Hosting or Pre-sell Pages. In this method you arrange with the site that you want a link from, to have a highly optimized, timely and relevant article that you provide, hosted on that site for a fee. You of course will have embedded all the relevant links in appropriate content that you control. Its main advantage is to allow you to advertise more links than a straight link trade, and with links that rate more highly in SE algorithms for relevance.
On the other hand you lose out on PR because the article would most likely be on a brand new page, and anyway you don't want your material competing with other similar editorials. Hosted marketing pages will I believe replace reciprocal linking as the leading SEO technique, especially to establish new sites.

HMP's are one way of paying to syndicate articles relevant to your web site or page. Paid article syndication is not a new SEO method, but as part of a link trading strategy, it takes on a new dimension. Like with HMP's you would distribute optimized articles, in order to acquire inbound links to your site. One can either issue press releases through agencies like PR Web, or have article directories do so. Either way you would pay for prioritization and for wider reach. Just as with HMP's apart from the exposure your site gets, you retain control of your links' anchor text.

According to recent research conducted by the Marketing Experiments Journal (http://www.marketingexperiments.com/see/1122), paid press release distribution has for traffic generation purposes, a better ROI than traditional PPC, with an added SEO benefit.

Link Trading or Link Renting differs from straight advertising in having an SEO focus that in the longer term obtains more valuable organic traffic from high SE rankings than the direct traffic generated by PPC or any other type of advertising. The latter is only effective for as long as you are shelling out money to fund it, and most advertising experiences diminishing returns, whereas an SEO technique like link trading gains momentum from its viral effect such that in time you can curtail the amount of link renting you are doing with only a marginal effect on your SE visibility.

It is debateable whether Link Renting amounts to SERP manipulation. By the reckoning of some, all SEO is just that Search Engine manipulation. However even the SE's are aware that SEO hones their own search results by forcing webmasters to focus more acutely the type of traffic their sites attract, based on existing search queries and extrapolating for future ones. In a hypothetical world, if all web pages were adequately optimized, even the most incomprehensible search query terms would return relevant and usable results. This is surely the holy grail of Search.

You need to decide before you start researching sites to buy links from just why you want to trade for traffic or PR. Some research suggests that PPC has better and more controllable returns than Link Renting for traffic conversion (traffic that buys or takes some other specific action). If your aim is to boost your own site's PR, be careful about how much you pay. Tony Simpson of Webpageaddons has written informatively about this in a two part article. He concludes that you are much safer bidding for link space on the basis of traffic generation than PR. Either way, buying links, if properly executed, enhances the prospects for a new site, and is set to become part of the internet marketing mix for most webmasters.

Happy Link Trading

Al Bert, a New Yorker, is a infopreneur, specialising in Search Engine Marketing, with a focus on links exchange as a traffic generation and web marketing strategy. Visit his site for a review of the latest Link Popularity Management Software

He enhances his productivity with SEO Elite 3.2, the leading Links Popularity Management Tool

The Insanity Of Page Rank And Linking Schemes

2008-12-07T13:00:00.001-08:00

Writen by Rick Vidallon

Page Rank Myths and Monsters

The Google Page Ranking system does not discriminate between novice and professional level websites. Nor does it award Page Rank where editorial decisions are concerned. Case in point: I've seen well conceived content pages with 10 to 20 out bound links fare no better in Page Rank than a web site with long lists of mismatched links. Both had Page Ranks of 4 even though there was a remarkable disparity in quality and content. Page Rank is a worthless.

True Value of a Web Page

When a large corporation purchases web-based ad space or banner ads, do you think they use the cute little colored Page Rank bar as a measurement? Emphatically no.

Media buyers look at a web site's log statistics for 'viewers and unique viewer's per hour, day, month and year. It's the same principle when companies do media buys for broadcast, radio and print. It's all about how many readers or how many viewers are attracted. Advertisers set their rates by the analysis of this web traffic to include stats for gender, demographics, click through rates, pages visited, length of visit and much more.

So how do you get quality visitor traffic and good search engine ranking?

Keeping It Really Simple

Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com like black text on a white background. So what are you going to do with all your Java Script effects, Flash, fancy graphics and great photography?

Balance your creativity and technology. Use CSS and good design while weaving in a fair share of text content into your pages.

Attracting Visitor Traffic

Many marketing websites promise they can get you tons of traffic or business inquiries by submitting your site to thousands of search engines. Other companies send out an email blast campaign to over a million plus emails. The problem with this method is that a surge in traffic to your website will be little more than a blip on Google's radar. Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com awards higher page position to a website with consistent visitor traffic.

If you are a mega-site like hotels.com with a gargantuan television advertising budget then you have the advantage of pummeling TV viewers with your web site name and commercials.

But what about the rest of us?

Doing Battle with Goliath

Whether you are a corner neighborhood ice cream shop or an online gourmet ice cream vendor, both have the same challenge of getting and keeping traffic. Plain and simple, you have to give people a reason to visit and to keep coming back. A website can accomplish this by using some of the following techniques:

* Offer something for free, maybe a download of some sort. If you are an online store, considering offering a free/discount coupon. If you are a logo design site you could give away a Photo Shop template or clip-art. A surf shop could offer cool screen savers and so on. If you are a loan company or realtor, perhaps you could offer a free document about, 'how to increase your credit score'.

* Visit Blogs and Forums related to your business. Share your ideas and talk up your website. Develop a reputation for being knowledgeable and helpful, and you will be regarded as an expert in your field.

* Place a link to your website on all of your outgoing e-mails. It sounds simple enough, yet very few people do it.

* Write articles about your craft or your business. There are hundreds of article directories where you can post your articles for free.

* Visit web directories and list your web site in all appropriate section.

* Set up an email list and send out weekly or monthly newsletters. Include links back to your website to entice readers to click and visit. This equates to increased traffic.

What about Link Trades?

99% of the websites that trade and post links have pages and pages of links that are completely useless to a website visitor.

SEO professionals, web site designers and marketers have extensively written and Blogged about how to achieve a high Google PageRank and 1st page position for targeted terms across major search engines.

Some think in-bound linking and out-bound linking with relevant high Page Rank sites is a key component to Google's secret sauce. Others believe that smart linking combined with keyword density and keyword page positioning earns you the magic ticket to the Google factory.

I would like to believe that the engineers at Google and the other search engines giants are not devoid of gray-matter. Google has hired and is still recruiting an army of PhD candidate programmers, developers, scientists and mathematicians. So sooner or later all the thousands of hours spent on creating useless link pages will go the way of the keyword meta-tag.

They will become useless and unnecessary.

Where Search Engines are Going

It can be said that, 'if you have nothing to say, then no one will listen'. Computer scientists are working towards building a semantic search engine, a search engine that will closely emulate, answer and analyze your search queries like a human librarian.

For example, imagine a user is looking for documents that mention an organization with "center" in its name, but is not sure of the full or precise name of the organization. A keyword search on "center" would likely produce way too many documents because "center" is a common and ambiguous term. Our semantic search engine supports a query language called XML Fragments. This query language is designed to exploit UIMA | IBM Research's CAS annotations entered in the search engine's index.

It's all about building a community. A web community connected by relevant links and great content which hopefully will garner you tons of traffic.

Black text on white pages!

http://www.visionefx.net - Visionefx President Ricardo Vidallon has been in the creative business of advertising, cable broadcast, animation and the World Wide Web for more than two decades. His work has been featured on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc., Fox News and NBC Entertainment. His career track in Web consultancy includes the global companies of Reynolds and Reynolds, CMGI Solutions, and Automark, Inc.