If you sell products or services over your web site, then traffic to your site is the name of the game. It’s simple: if you want more sales, you better get more traffic. To do that, make sure that you’ve covered all the bases of driving traffic to your site.

First, optimize. Make sure your search engine listings are all they can be. This means that you need to make sure that you’re on the key search engines and second that your site is associated with the best searching key words. Check to ensure you are included in Yahoo!, Google, MSN and the Open Directory Project. After that, look at some private or industry-specific directories. If you’re not listed, submit. But before you do make sure your keyword tags, description tags, and content have been optimized for being “find-able.”

Second, advertise. Tell people about your web site. You can do this by email, pay-per-click advertising, print advertising or almost any other means of advertising. Whatever it is, point it to your web site. Experiment with the linkage between your ads and your site – e.g. make different offers and see what the effect is on traffic.

Third, collateralize. Collateral is the paper materials you use to conduct business. Yes, include this in your traffic building efforts, too. Make sure your web address is on your signs, your stationery, business cards, brochures, invoices and any other material that goes to the public.

With every change or addition you make to your web site, just remember: Optimize, Advertise, Collateralize. Your web traffic is directly related to these three activities.

About the author: Mark Fortimer, Download the free ebook, Steps to Internet Marketing Success.

• 1 comments »

Jack had an amazing idea & started his online business with a vision of making it big someday. But few years down the line Jack is left wondering as to why his business isn’t turning up the way he expected it to!

Mark thinks that he has a better service than his competitors, but still fails to understand why their Balance Sheet figures are running into millions, while his are still in few thousands!

All these puzzling facts make one doubt himself. But my friend, the problem is not with the idea or the service! The problem lies in the promotion strategies. No matter how good an idea or a service is, it won’t be successful unless you put it to the right people in the right manner. Good Web Promotion can do wonders to an average idea; forget what it can do to a good one. Had Jack & Mark adopted the right kind of Internet Promotion strategy, they would have achieved what they wanted to.

Everyone will agree that today’s Web Promotion is dominated by Search Engines, or to be precise, Google. If your site is in the top thirty, for the right “Keyword”, you can be a winner. But how can one make it to the top & stay there for a long time? (Mind you, in this dynamic world called Internet, sticking to your position is as important as getting there!)

The best way to “optimize” your site is through a new “Organic Method of Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) that Google & other search engines just love, generating “Quality One Way Links”. One can generate quality back links by way of “Directory Submission” & “Article Submission”.

Online directories provide you with quality back links, which is precisely what you are looking for. Apart from this, you need to submit your site to the most appropriate category & with a brief description about your business. Thus, they also send targeted audience your way!

Another way of generating quality targeted audience & one way links is by writing quality articles & submitting them to Article Directories! By writing a quality article, you are not just informing your potential customers about your service, but are also sharing your knowledge with them. Again, Article Directories gives you an opportunity to inform people about yourself & also provide a link to your site. This way, people get to know about you & your site. And if your article provides a visitor what he came looking for, you have most definitely found yourself a new client!

Had Jack written an article about his idea & explained his service to his target audience and submitted his site to Hundreds of Search Engine Friendly Directories, he would have been on “Cloud 9” by now. Had Mark written an article informing his potential customers, how his service is better than his customers & also submitted his site to Online Directories, his Balance Sheet too might have run into Millions.

To summarize, when you submit your article or your site to various online directories, this is what you get -

1. You generate hundreds of quality back links to your site.

2. People who search these directories may find your article or your sites description interesting & visit your site. Thus you get large targeted audience.

The end result is that your site satisfies all the criterions set by various search engines to have a favorable Rank. You thus reach high positions in search engines & stay there for a long time!

About the Author: Rahul Rungta is a Professional Internet Marketer. Having done intensive research on Search Engine Optimization & Traffic Generation, he is now pioneering two new innovative tools in Internet Marketing - Article & Directory Submission. To know more about him, please visit http://www.submit2please.com

• 0 comments »

Experienced webmasters know there are special sources or places on the web which will send massive amounts of traffíc to your site. They also know, if harnessed properly, these mega traffïc sites will supply any web site with a steady stream of visitors.

Perhaps the best source of web site traffíc is Google. That's not exactly a Newsflash, but the key to getting massive amounts of traffíc from Google is to go wide and long. With this strategy, instead of targeting highly popular keywords which may be too competitive for your site to win, you create a whole multitude of lesser known long tail keyword phrases to bring in the traffíc.

This traffíc takes longer to build but because very few webmasters bother with these longer phrases, your keywords will be more stable and secure. Develop a whole líst of these traffíc generating keyword phrases and Google will reward you with a whole flood of targeted visitors stemming from these thousands of small dribbles of long tail keyword traffíc.

Turning these dribbles of traffíc into massive amounts is not a difficult task. One very effective way to tap into the entire search engine source of traffíc is to tag everything. Tags are just another name for keywords. As Web 2.0 or Social Bookmarking sites become more and more popular, tagging will become extremely important.

You must be especially careful of how you tag the content on your site or sites. If you're using a blogging system like WordPress, all your categories will be considered tags automatically. If you're creating URLs, be careful to place your keyword phrase in your links.

Another effective way to tap into the whole keyword traffíc system is to include your keyword phrase or variations of it in your articles while promoting your site. Place your anchor text in your links in the resource box at the end of each article.

Over time, as these articles become distributed all over the web, they will create a steady stream of targeted visitors to your site. Simple, effective and very powerful.

You are probably tired of hearing about Web 2.0 and the new Social Bookmarking sites but they are some of the best places for massive traffíc on the web. Any webmaster who has been Slashdotted already knows this fact all too well; if you get a listing on the homepage of Slashdot.com you will immediately start receiving thousands of visitors to your site. It can be somewhat scary.

A similar experience is getting one of your articles published in ezines run by Addme.com, SiteProNews.com, WebProNews.com, as well as others. These ezines go out to hundreds of thousands of readers and can produce massive traffíc back to your site.

However, much of this sudden traffíc is only temporary and most savvy webmasters know it would be wise to try and capture the contact information of these temporary visitors for follow-up targeting. Turn that temporary visitor into a patron of your site by offering a free ecourse or an email newsletter.

The same marketing technique should be applied to traffíc coming from all these social media sites. Don't think of your traffíc as just numbers in your website's stats, but rather as potential customers who will return to your site again and again.

Keep this strategy in mind as you target some of these Top Sources of massive traffíc on the web:

1. Digg.com
2. Netscape.com
3. Ezinearticles.com
4. Del.icio.us
5. StumbleUpon.com
6. Reddit.com
7. Slashdot.org
8. BlinkList.com
9. Furl.net
10. Squidoo.com

You should be actively promoting these social bookmarking sites by allowing your visitors to easily bookmark your content. You should be creating your own content on sites like Squidoo and placing links back to your site.

Of course, there are countless other sources of massive traffíc on the web. Press releases is another effective way of quickly drawing in massive traffíc to your site. Sites like PRWeb can deliver targeted traffíc very quickly and efficiently.

Another very effective and high converting venue you should try is Yahoo! Answers, a simple process where users post a question and other members/experts offer answers. Used correctly this can be a good source of targeted traffíc.

Don't forget other important search engines such as MSN Live. Traffíc from MSN has earned a solid reputation for converting very well. So optimize your web pages for MSN Live Search and you will probably see an íncrease in your salës as well as your traffíc.

Always keep in mind, the underlying key factor running through all these sources of massive traffíc is unique quality content. You must create good original content on your sites as well as in your articles and posts. Your content must be informative, useful or entertaining. For in the end, it is this quality content that will create the interest, the links and the massive traffíc to your site.

Don't ignore this factor or your quest for massive web site traffíc will be extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

About The Author:Titus Hoskins,The author is a full-time online marketer. For the most effective web marketing software try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com/bestsoft.htm . Want more traffíc? Why not try these excellent free training manuals and videos: http://www.marketingtoolguide.com/free_marketing_tools.htm . 2007 Titus Hoskins.

• 3 comments »

While watching a Toronto Raptor basketball game I saw T.J. Ford, one of the fastest players in the league, rush down the court like a man possessed and proceed to throw the ball behind his back to a trailing Andrea Bargnani. The trouble was the ball sailed over the head of the seven-foot Bargnani into the second row of seats. Ford, himself, ended up with a beer and popcorn facíal after landing in the lap of a front row patron. So what does this have to do with website design and marketing you ask? A lot.

As talented as Ford is as a basketball player he sometimes plays out-of-control, and his major asset, his speed, becomes a liability. When this happens in a basketball game the answer is to slow the game down and get back in control.

Website visitors are like the speedy T.J. Ford; they are so intent on getting what they want as quickly and efficiently as possible, that they often surf the Internet out-of-control.

How many times have you sat in front of the computer with your hand resting on your mouse searching for some desired product,service, or information, when all of sudden you find what looks like what you want, but before you even have a chance to discover exactly what it is, your hair-trigger finger decides it's time to move-on. It's like your finger has a mind of it's own.

Speed Kills Marketing Efforts

All the talk and discussion about short attention spans caused by people raised on video games and quick-cut-edited music videos is very misleading.

What website visitors won't tolerate are websites that waste their time, and many websites are guilty of exactly that. Contrary to popular belief, the job of a website designer, who understands marketing, is not to speed up website visitors, but to slow them down so they can absorb the marketing message.

If you want your audience to remember you, if you want to make an impression, if you want website visitors to understand why they should give you their business, then you have to slow them down long enough to absorb your message. And that message better be worth their while or they will nevër come back.

It isn't about how fast a page loads; it's about delivering an appropriate payoff for the wait.

Now I will admit there are people who absolutely, positively will not wait more than eight seconds for anything to load. You know who you are. And I say, the hell with them. These are the same people who won't wait their turn in a brick and mortar store either, they demand to be served before everyone else - it's just not possible to satisfy these people, so why design your entire website marketing around them. They are nevër going to hang around long enough to grasp your message and learn why they should be giving you their business, so forget about them.

The people you should be worrying about are the ones that really want to find out more about what it is you do, and are prepared to invest a little time and effort to give you a chance to explain yourself. These are the important people; this is your real audience, and you disappoint them at your financial peril.

The Reasons Why Web-users Are Impatient

The real reason website users are so damn impatient is not that they have such short attention spans, it's because most websites are designed to meet perceived company objectives, rather than audience needs.

How To Drive Traffíc Away From Your Website

Let's take a look at some of the reasons why your website visitors may be leaving your website before they've had a chance to hear what you have to say; or to put it another way, if you want to drive traffíc AWAY faster than you attract it, here are some of the things you should do.

1. Give Web-visitors Too Many Options and Choices

Social scientist and Swarthmore College professor, Barry Schwartz, has coined the phrase, "the paradox of choice." His studies have concluded the more choice you give people, the less likely they are to make a decision. Some choice is good, but too much choice creates confusion: it's a case of diminishing marginal utility.

A well designed website explains, directs, guides, and focuses visitor attention on the things that are of real benefit to your visitors and to your company.

Every business provides a variety of products, services, and information to their customers, but these things are not all of equal importance. Your website is a place to focus attention on your core marketing message, not a place to provide a shopping líst of everything you are able to do and every product or service you may be able to offër.

2. Give Web Visitors Too Much Information To Process

Architect, author, and information designer, Richard Saul Wurman, in his book, 'Information Anxiety' talks about,"the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand."

Good website design is about more than technology and aesthetics; it's about deciding what information needs to be presented and what information needs to be left out. If you are truly an expert in your field, you should know what information is important to your customers in order for them to make a decision. Too much information is like too much choice, it confuses rather than clarifies. Focus on delivering meaningful content or risk having your visitors hit the exit button.

3. Give Web Visitors Too Much Non-relevant Content

The only thing worse than overloading your website with more information than visitors can absorb is confusing them with useless and non-relevant content.

Non-relevant content is content that doesn't advance your major purpose: to deliver your marketing message in an informative, engaging, entertaining, and memorable manner. If it isn't relevant, dump it.

4. Give Web Visitors Too Many Irritating Distractions

Websites should be designed to direct visitors to the information they want and that information should be the content you want to deliver.

You cannot sell someone a product or service they do not want. A real prospect is one that needs the same information you want to provide; the art of salës is directing potential clients to relevant information,and presenting it in a way that visitors see your product or service as fulfilling their needs.

On the surface, third-party advertisements and banners may seem like a good way to make some extra cäsh from your traffíc, but these ads become so distracting, visitors either get fed-up or clíck on one of the links that takes them away from your site. Whatever few bucks you earn from these ads, you are loosing by chasing real customers away; this of course assumes you are a real business with something legitímate to sell and not a website that's an excuse to deliver advertisements.

Other nonsense like favorite links and silly fluff-content merely distracts visitors from investigating your site to find what they are looking for.

5. Give Web Visitors Too Many Red Flags

Website visitors are constantly looking for red flags that tell them that the site they are visiting should be skipped as soon as possible.

If you want to make sure visitors won't deal with you make sure you don't provide any contact information: no contact names, no telephone numbers, and no mailing address is a sure sign that you won't look after any problems that arise from a website transaction.

Your website must be designed to build trust and foster a relationship, not scare people away.

6. Give Web Visitors Too Many Decisions To Make

How many decisions do you demand from your visitors in order for them to do business with you?

Take for example the seemingly simple task of purchasing a new television. Do you purchase the inexpensive but old tube technology, the newer Plasma technology, or the LCD technology? How about all the various features to choose from like picture-in-picture, commercial skip-timers, and on and on? All you really want to do is relax with your spouse and enjoy a good movie - is that on a VSH, DVD, Blu-ray, or HD-DVD?

7. Give Web Visitors Too Many Stumbling Blocks

Do you make people go through the order processing system before they can find out how much something costs, or do you demand potential customers read a ridiculous amount of small print legalese that only a lawyer could understand?

If you want to drive traffíc away from your site make sure you build in as many stumbling blocks as possible.

8. Give Web Visitors Too Many Forms To Fill-in

Do you attract your visitors with special offers or free white papers and then demand that they fill-out complex forms, surveys, and questionnaires before you give them access to what they came for? If you do, you are probably losing a lot of people you attracted, and you are guaranteeing that your next email promotion will end up in the trash.

9. Give Web Visitors Incomprehensible Page Layouts

Good design, proper page layout, consistent navigation, and well organized information architecture that promotes serendipity, helps visitors find what they're looking for and provides a pleasant, efficient and rewarding experience for the website visitor.

Website designs that rely on technology, databases, and search engine optimization rather than focused content, coherent organization, articulate presentation, and a memorable, rewarding experience are designs designed to chase traffíc away.

10. Give Web Visitors Too Many Confusing Instructions

One of the most frustrating experiences website visitors encounter is confusing instructions and incoherent explanations of how your product or service works or how to order what you are selling.

11. Give Web Visitors Too Many Reason To Clíck-out

If you really are determined to fail, make sure you provide website visitors with as many reasons as possible to leave your site: irrelevant links to your favorite sites, links to your suppliers because you're too cheap to put their information on your own site, or any combination of the reasons mentioned above, all contribute to driving traffíc away from your site.

About The Author:Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

• 0 comments »

A great deal has been written about website promotion, yet many businesses fail in attaining visible results: increasing traffic, getting more clients and so on. Why? Because many online entrepreneurs do not exploit the proper website promotion tools at their fullest.

Here is a list of website promotion strategies you need to consider if you want a successful online business.

1. Search Engines Strategies

Probably the most important website promotion strategy is to ranking high for the relevant keywords on the main search engines. The most important search engines are: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and AOL. Each has a different algorithm to index a web page, but all still consider the following factors:

Page title – describe what a web page is all about. When the search engines index a web page is the page title that appears hyperlinked on their results. Use keywords not just your company name. And don’t ignore the importance of a good page title: this is your identity on the search engines.

Description – don’t use keywords you don’t have on the web page, as this might hurt your ranking. Not all search engines index the META description, but all “spider” it to determine the relevancy of your web page. Write a logical description: when indexed, it appears under your hyperlinked title in the search engine results. It is the second element of identity on the search engines.

Use header tags H1, H2 etc. Include the targeted keywords in these tags. Headers and sub-headers are as important for the search engines as they are for your visitors. Headers help both search engines and visitors to determine page relevancy.

Place your keywords carefully in your text. Usually place the most important keyword phrases in the first paragraph of your text. No stuffing. Write the as they come naturally to express an idea. And remember that Google might penalize you if you have a keyword density higher than 1,5%.

Use keywords in your links. Once again: no stuffing. Just write a short description of the web page you are linking to. This description has to be related to the topic of the page. Don’t try to mislead the search engines and definitely don’t mislead your visitors!

Submit your website to minor search engines as well. You don’t need to submit your site to Google or Yahoo: they will come to you. But you do need to submit your website to other search engines such as Scrub the Web, Subjex, Alexa, Aeiwi, ExactSeek, mamma, Burf, Dogpile and so on. Some are free, some require a submission fee. It really depends on what you need and what financial possibilities you have, but having your website indexed in as many search engines as possible cannot hurt.

Use sitemaps to help the search engines spider your web pages better.

Develop a separate web page for each of your services and optimize it for one or two of the most important keyword phrases. These are known as “content-focused” web pages and they will rank higher in the search engines results.

2. Linking Strategies

Links are really important: they bring traffic, boost site popularity, help your website rank higher in the search engines, increase your page rank etc. When a very popular website links to your website, that will boost your website’s popularity too.

Submit your website to the most important directories: try dmoz, Yahoo directory, Best of the Web, About and Business.com.

Submit your website to specialized directories or industry related directories.

Exchange links. Remember to write a different description and title for each link you submit somewhere. Link solely to complementary sites. Google doesn’t look for just any links, but for quality links.

Write articles and submit them in article directories or distribute them to editors as free content for newsletters or other websites. Remember to ask in exchange a back link to your website. This helps getting “one way” links, really important for increasing your rankings.

Host a business blog on your website. A blog will increase the PageRank of your website if you give people a reason to link to it: quality content.

Press releases could bring you very valuable links as well. Use a reliable news release service, such as PR Web.

Next you’ll learn what traditional strategies might help and why email strategies are so important.

About The Author: Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

• 2 comments »

Read A Guide To Website Promotion – Part one

Now that you are familiar with the most important search engines and linking strategies, you should not ignore other promotion tools that will enhance your website promotion efforts.

3. Traditional Media Strategies

Website promotion should be a mix of online and offline strategies. Traditional media tools apply successfully to increase traffic and get more visitors.

Promote your website URL on business cards, stationery and company documents.

Don’t ignore the importance of the traditional media. Include your URL in any display in newspapers, magazines and so on. Many people do use the yellow and white pages to search for services. Make sure your company is listed and provide the URL along your listing as well.

Send your clients business greeting cards on proper occasions. These will act as reminders and help maintain good communication channels between you and your customers.

Use your local TV and Radio to promote your website. Advertisements on national TV are really expensive, but do use them if you have the money.

Print informational brochures and periodicals. For periodicals don’t just ramble about a topic: make them worth reading. Send them free to business partners, clients, journalists and research centers.

Develop a free service (related to your business field) to attract clients to your website: a free online insurance calculator, a free e-book, free software, etc.

4. Email Strategies

Emails are virtual corporate letters. Email can be used to send out answers to inquiries, news, offers, advice and much more. The first and most important rule when it comes to business email is: DON’T SPAM! The rest comes naturally.

No matter what business email you send out, always use a signature: your name, position, company address and phone numbers, website URL. Always include the http:// in front of your domain name, as many email software programs fail to convert simple www. into links.

Publish an eNewsletter (“ezine”): this is a periodical electronic publication with useful information for your clients. You may include in the eNewsletter articles, press releases, news and special offers. But don’t forget to include a visible link to your website as well.

Send your clients special offers, discount coupons, product updates and so on. These should be personalized, clear and to the point. Once again: don’t spam.

There are email marketing companies that have developed lists of people who have agreed to receive commercial emails. You could use such a service, but if you do, make sure it’s not a type of “pay to read email” company. To pay for something like this will do you no good, as people who get paid to read emails don’t really care about your message, but just click on the links to get a commission per click.

Up to now you’ve learned the importance of search engine strategies, how to develop a solid linking strategy, how the traditional media tools boost site popularity and what email strategies work best to promote your website. In the third and last part of this short guide, we will show you how to use paid advertising effectively. We will also take a look at some miscellaneous website promotion tools.

About the author: Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes at: http://www.highpowersites.com

• 1 comments »

Profitable online business depends on great traffic to make money. Without these traffic visitors will not buy products. Therefore you will agree with me that great traffic is the main ingredient for a profitable online business. To be able to generate constant flow of great traffic, there a few concepts you will need to master. If you can master these concepts then you will be on your way of making money online.

5 unique ways to get great traffic.

1. Writing Articles. This is one of the cheapest ways to generate traffic. The bad news is that you will have to write the articles yourself and the good news is that articles’ writing is not as difficult as you think. To attract readers to your articles, you need attention grabbing title and easy to read content. If readers like your style, they would like to know more then you can direct them to your website.

2. Pay Per Click. Before you start applying pay per clicks concept make sure you understand the concept and all that is involved. It can be really expensive if you don’t know how to use it. Be specific and concentrate on your target traffic. Set your target budget and don’t go over. Have an effective tracking system for everything you do to be able to analyze what works and what does not.

3. Ezine advertising. If you are new to this start small with one advert. Track your success. This can produce great traffic if you learn from your success and implement it on a bigger subscriber ezine. The goal is to test in small ezine and apply your success to bigger ezines.

4. Link exchange. Exchange links that makes your website strong. Do not link your website any links just the purpose of getting links. Seek for links which will compliment your site and vice versa. Avoid links with your competitors.

5. Co-registration. Co-registration is when you offer your subscription with others so that when one opts in one subscription, he or she is given the opportunity to sign up for yours. With co-registration you can generate a great number of targeted traffic.

Getting traffic to your website is not as quick and easy as it may sound. It takes time so if you try these concepts and you don’t get the desired results. Do not quit. Making money online requires perseverance. Go back and analyze your result and make changes it will eventual work for you. These are some of the basics way to drive traffic to your website. For your Free Gift on traffic building checkout making money online.

About the author: Kwame Ofori-Atta is an experienced marketer, who has written a number of articles on internet marketing topics. For your free gift and more on Making Money Online click http://www.charlesclicks.com

• 2 comments »

The tens of thousands of internet “forums” that attract users who have common interests have recently become of interest to marketers – particularly niche marketers. There are forums for every imaginable topic. To see an example of the specialized nature of forums, look at www.big-boards.com. To be sure they represent a potent marketing opportunity and medium. But they can also be a negative force in marketing if used incorrectly. So before you invest in forum marketing make sure you understand the milieu.

An internet forum is a discussion room that operates via the internet. In a sense, they are an evolution of the newsgroups and email bulletin boards that were so prevalent ten to fifteen years ago. Topics get put on the collective forum table and discussion ensues via “posts” to the forum – essential via messages that get posted for everyone to see. Today, you can also consider chat rooms and interactive blogs as a style of forum.

There are two general styles of forum: moderated and unmoderated. Most long-lasting forums are moderated. That is, that all posts are reviewed by a “moderator” before being made public. In this way, the forum protects itself from undesirable spam, crazy people, and profane, obscene, or off-topic material. Unmoderate forums are just that, unmoderated.

Most forums have rules that govern the content that is acceptable to the forum. Violating these rules will draw the contempt of the entire forum. There is no better way to shoot yourself in the foot than to have your forum marketing efforts earn the disdain of the entire forum membership! In newsgroup days, this was called “flaming” (as in ‘shot down in flames’).

On the other hand, if used carefully, forum marketing can be a great way to boost website traffic. Many forums while banning overt advertising or self-serving posts, do not mind a little appropriate discussion or referencing of products, services or features. Many forums also do allow the author to include a link to their own site.

To make sure you don’t run afoul of forum policy be sure to check out their rules, avoid overt selling (forum members are very sensitive to even subtle selling), and make sure that your posts offer good reasons to refer to off-forum content in your site.

About the author: Sean Ray, Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘
Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion
Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Digg this - Post to del.icio.us - Post to Furl

• 0 comments »

When the Internet was new to me, I was fascinated by following links and going to new sites. It was like an adventure. And when I had my own website the first thing that I wanted to do was to place my site's links on other sites. I began reciprocal linking (trading links with other sites) way back then, but 11 years later things have changed and now I dread getting a "reciprocal link request" in my email inbox. I have a few pet peeves with reciprocal linking, as it is practiced today, and here they are:

1. Most of the Requests are Automated

It used to be flattering to get a link request, knowing that someone had visited your site and wanted to exchange a link. These days most of the requests are done with software and it means that no one has really visited your site. Automation in itself is not bad, but it leads to all kinds of abuses, and it prevents you from picking out the good links from the bad. Even if you have an automated directory to handle link requests, which is what I installed, you will still be swamped with tons of link requests.

2. Most Link Requests are of Extremely Low Quality

The original idea of linking was to provide your own visitors with quality sites where they could visit next. The links were provided as a resource. Today, many sites have been set up only to make monëy from Adsense and other advertising programs. In addition, driven by the need to acquire PageRank many webmasters went into a link gathering frenzy and sent requests to any and all sites whether they were related to their site or not. If a link is to be a resource to visitors of both sites, then the two sites should somehow be related and the sites should be of comparable quality. Most reciprocal link requests fail this test.

3. Links are Buried on Pages Where Human Eyes Will Nevër See Them

In addition to being a resource to your own visitors, you want to exchange links in hopes of getting some targeted traffíc back to your site. It used to be easier; a webmaster would have a site with say ten different pages and one of his pages would be a "links" page. On that page he would display 30 or so links. The link to this page would be prominent in the site's navigation menu. You could be assured of getting some meaningful traffíc if your link was placed on this kind of page.

That has all changed. People now build huge directories of hundreds of categories, stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory.

4. Many of the Link Requests are for "Three Way Links"

I find three-way links "creepy." They work like this, if I link to site A, then they will give a link to my site originating from site B. This is done because Google is supposed to value one-way links more than reciprocal links. I can understand this. If someone links to you without asking you and doesn't request a reciprocal link it means that your site is really good and this is why Google values true one-way links. However, the three-way links proposed by many people are just an attempt to trick the search engines; they are not true one-way links. Sooner or later Google will get wise to such schemes and this kind of effort will yield little benefit to the linking websites.

In addition, I dislike this kind of linking arrangement because you first have to chëck out who you are linking to, and then you are faced with checking another site that is going to link to you. Usually the site where the link to you will be placed is some kind of strange directory, a link-farm.

This is the state of reciprocal linking today. I delete most requests coming into my inbox, and do mass deleting on my automated systems as well. Now I don't want to end on a negative note so here are a few suggestions on how to get quality incoming links without adding another reciprocal link request to the flood that is already out there:

1. Make Your Site so Cool that People Will Link to You Without Asking

People come to the Internet to solve a problem, find a solution and get information. If you can make your website a true resource and a great place where visitors can get the information that they need, then it will not go unnoticed. Even if you have a commercial e-commerce site, it is possible to add reviews, articles and information. This additional information will help your own customers and will be a resource for the entire web. Who knows? Maybe one day you will chëck your referrer logs and see that Wikipedia is linking to you. This is the goal, but it will take some work to achieve it.

2. Get Involved in Blogs and Forums that are Related to Your Field of Expertise

You can learn something from forums and blogs and you can contribute something as well. You can usually leave your url when you make a comment or a posting. If you offer solid advice, you will get a good online reputation and become known as an expert in your field. This newfound recognition as an expert, combined with links from these blogs and forums will be worth much more than low quality reciprocal links.

3. Get into Article Marketing

Article marketing means that you will write articles about your field of interest and distribute them for publication on other websites, blogs and ezines with a link back to your site. Each time your article is published on a website you get a one-way link to your site. As with most good things, this method has been pounced upon by Internet marketers and the net is flooded with a lot of low-quality articles. However, if you produce meaningful articles, you can still get a lot of benefit by distributing your articles.

4. Do Judicious Reciprocal Linking

There is nothing wrong with the idea of websites trading links. However, if you are going to do it, then only link to a site that you think is a good one or has some value for your web visitors. Make sure that your link will be placed on a page that has the potential of sending you some traffíc. Make your request with an email that clearly shows that you are a living and breathing human being and not a robot.

So, instead of adding to the spam-like flood of reciprocal link requests, go about building your own content and start using more reliable methods of increasing the number of incoming links to your site.

About The Author: Donald Nelson is a search engine optimization specialist. His SEO company A1-Optimization provides affordable search engine optimization, website copywriting, article marketing and other website promotion services.

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If you want to get serious about driving more traffíc to your website and improving your search engine rankings you need to develop a linking strategy. There are three primary linking strategies:

1. Reciprocal Linking
2. Purchasing text links
3. Employing a link finding service

This month's issue of BizAtomic Advisor focuses on Reciprocal Linking – How it can help. When a trusted site links to yours, people follow that recommendation.

Reciprocal link means your website links to another website and that website links back to you. Search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Exchanging reciprocal links with other sites will build a great link directory that will motivate visitors to bookmark your website to get access to your link directory.

One of the factors search engines use to determine your relevancy to a search term is the number of websites linking to your website. This is an effective way to increase your search engine rankings.

Three key success factors for a reciprocal linking strategy are:

1. Quality of links should outweigh quantity
2. Link partners must relate to your site content
3. Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible

Linking is what the web is all about. It helps you move from one document to another and from site to site while maintaining your focus on a particular subject. The ideal situation is to have one way links from related sites without you pointing back to them. However, you would have to have a lot of valuable information, tips, tools, articles, resources, etc. in order to motivate people to link to your website. Unfortunately most sites don't fall into this category and reciprocal linking is a requirement.

Step 1 - Get people to want to link to your website. Generating quality inbound links to your website requires a systematic approach and hard work. But the payoff is worth it. To begin with you must have good content on your website. Step one is to analyze the value of your content in relation to competitors. You will also need a page of outbound links on your website that visitors will find valuable.

Step 2 – Research websites that are worth linking to and that will bring relevant traffíc to you. You need to identify the portals, directories, news sites, ezines, blogs, and other information sources specific to your industry. You can let your fingers do the walking across the keyboard or you can purchase one of the many software tools on the market designed to locate relevant sites. They also help collect email addresses and even prepare letters requesting that a site add a link to your site. Without making any recommendations you may want to look into the following tools:

• Arelis Reciprocal Link Solution
• Zeus Internet Marketing Robot
• Linking 101 Linking Management Script
• Duncan Carver's Link Management System
• Hot Links SQL V2.3
• LinkMaster Pro
• Links Manager
• Links4Trade
• PowerLinks.com

Make sure you at least visit the sites these tools generate. However, the best way to build long-term link popularity is to offer good content and features providing real value to your visitors. People will discover your website.

Google is a great help with your research because it ensures your partners are properly indexed. Look for sites closely related to you in terms of theme and keywords. Google's ranking algorithm takes into account each link's importance along with other factors like the proximity of your search keywords in the documents. In other words, it's not just about the number of sites that link to a given page, but also the importance of those sites (measured by the links to each of them). Google has given a name to its ranking algorithm for determining a web page's importance; it's called PageRank(TM) .

Human based directories like Yahoo and the Open Directory project have a lot of influence over search results. List your site in the correct category with a good description.

Next, make sure you are linked to and from topic specific and niche directory websites. These are sites that provide information that is an exact match for what you provide.

Don't forget partners and vendors from your business. Since you already have a relationship you are more likely to be able to request and receive a link from their websites.

Step 3 – Implementing your strategy. Like any marketing campaign you need a plan.

• Set business benefit objectives for your Linking strategy. Think about what you are trying to achieve and write it down on paper.

• Develop a content plan for populating your website with valuable content.

• Set linking policies, pages, and linking code you can give to link partners for your site.

• Monitor the progress of your linking strategy so that you can see what results have been achieved and adapt or tweak what you are doing to improve results.

• Benchmark your site's link popularity against competitors

A Reciprocal Linking Program will require that you manage the following:

1. The name of the site

2. The URL

3. The name and email address of the person who runs the site

4. The date you contact the person who runs the site and the date he or she responds

5. The resulting deal (Some will say yes, some will say no, others will not reply at all, others will want a link back from you, some may want monëy for links, some will be out of town and take weeks to reply, etc.)

6. The status of the deal

7. Verifying that the link is in place

8. Checking the site periodically for the link (Yes, some folks swap links and then pull yours for odd reasons.)

Remember the most important benefit of a link exchange is the traffíc resulting directly from these links. Search engines are highly unpredictable. They keep changing their algorithms every now and then. Your site is on the top 10 results today, but it may not be so tomorrow. Of course, you don't want to exclude search engine optimization but your main concern should be getting traffíc from direct links.

About the author: BizAtomic - http://www.bizatomic.com - 800-942-9475

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Traffic. It's the all-important piece of the marketing puzzle that faces all web owners. Your product may cure cancer but unless there are people reading your information it won't matter. And not just any traffic. You want laser targeted, highly motivated customers ready to whip out their wallets and input their credit cards. You are searching for El Dorado. You know it's there. You've read that others have found it. There is a path and it starts here.

SEO, JV's and PPC traffic will all deliver targeted customers. These techniques require specific knowledge too lengthy to discuss in one sitting. Below are five diverse methods that you start to use to drive targeted customers to your site with the knowledge you gain here.

1. Join the world and start blogging! Blogging is an online weblog or diary that can be easily updated. Your readers can even leave comments or answer polls. Blogger.com, a large server based blog, is owned by Google. Although there are great advantages to posting to a Blogger site you always want to have a blog hosted on your own site. Blogger will take down sites and sometimes for no apparent reason. You can lose all your data and traffic in seconds. Use Blogger to point to your primary site. This gives your site one more back link, another source for traffic and a reason for Google to spider and index your primary site following the links from Blogger. You can post the same content on both blogs and redirect people to pick up an RSS feed from your primary blog.

2. There are people talking about your niche on any number of forums and groups. Join several and provide accurate content rich answers to their questions. Be seen as a helper, someone who is truly interested in the topic and the people. Do not spam. Do not advertise but place your site in your signature line. You'll be pleasantly surprised at the number of good customers you'll receive. If people are motivated enough to join a forum or group to discuss their issue then they most likely are motivated to find good information.

3. Article marketing has been a topic of conversation for several years now. People seem to attempt this particular avenue and get discouraged easily. Although this type of marketing will economically generate targeted customers it is a time consuming job. The best technique to use is to post at least three to four articles per week to two or three of the top article directories. It's not necessary to post to 300 directories, just the ones with high page ranks like ezinearticles.com. These article postings do three things. You have back links from a site with a high page rank; you have access to publishers and your content will be found on organic searches based on the keywords and phrases you enter when you post to the directory.

4. Viral marketing has a mystique about it. The first site that accidentally took real advantage of this method was Interview With God. The owner of the site published a public domain poem on the net just a couple of months before 9/11. His site was ‘discovered' by many people who took solace from the poetry and began sending the site to all of their friends. The rest was history. The essence of viral marketing is sharing information with people you know. There are several avenues open to you and even more if you use your imagination. You can take advantage of social networking sites and social bookmarking sites where you can share your information with all of your new ‘friends'. Tell a friend scripts on your site can encourage your current visitors to tell their friends. You'll find that people will tell their friends if your site is funny, touching or if you offer incentive. Another technique is to offer free information through ebooks with links back to your site.

5. Do you have expert knowledge on a particular subject that relates to your website and business? You not only can share that knowledge in groups and forums but also by using answer sites through Yahoo Answers or eHow.com. In these arenas people post questions and others post answers. People who read the answers rate them. Your site gets traffic when people perceive that you are giving high quality answers.

You have the knowledge to drive traffic to your site. This may not be the flood of traffic that dreams are made of but they are targeted customers, the most important kind of traffic. As your skill using these techniques improves so will the number of buying customers visiting your site. And isn't that the point?

About the author: Rasheed Ali is CEO and founder of the Internet Coaching Academy http://www.InternetCoachingAcademy.com where he and his team of internet business experts are helping people from all over the world start, build and profit from their own internet business. He also offers a FREE newsletter and FREE video course on building a profitable home based business on the internet.

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In September of 1999, Brett Tabke wrote "26 Steps to 15k a Day" in the Webmaster World forum. A lot has changed since then, and now is the time to consider a new 26-step plan that meets the current needs of webmasters in 2006. Some of the old ones still apply (writing new content everyday, for example), and some don't (submitting to the search engines is no longer necessary), and we're here to tell you which is which! As you probably already know, bringing in traffic is not easy - it takes hard work, determination and lots of elbow grease. So if you're ready, roll up your sleeves and follow these 26 simple steps, and within just one year you will generate enough traffic to keep you busy for a long, long time!

A) Keyword Research
Before you do anything else, use a keyword research tool and do an extensive job researching the right keyphrases to use for your site. What keyphrases are your direct competitors using? Are there any keyphrases that create a potential for market entry? Are there any that you can put a spin on and create a whole new niche with?

B) Domain Name
If you want to brand your company name, then choose a domain name that reflects it. If your company is Kawunga, then get www.kawunga.com. If it's taken, then get www.kawungawidgets.com. No dashes, and no more than two words in the domain if appropriate.

C) Avoid the Sandbox
Buy your domain name early, as soon as you have chosen your keyphrases and your company name. Get it hosted right away and put up a quick one page site saying a little about who you are, what you sell, and that there will be more to come soon. Make sure it gets crawled by Google and Yahoo (either submit it or link to it from another site).

D) Create Content
Create over 30 pages of real, original content on your site. This will give the spiders something to chew on. It will also give you more opportunities to been seen in the search engine results for a wide variety of keyphrases.

E) Site Design
Use the "Keep It Simple" principle. Employ an external CSS file, clean up any Java Scripts by referring to them off the page in an external file, don't use frames, use flash the way you would an image, and no matter what, do not create a flash site. Do not offer a busy site with lots of bells and whistles to your visitors. Keep things nice and simple. Make it easy for them to find what they are looking for and they'll have no reason to look anywhere else.

F) Page Size
The less kilobytes your page uses, the better - especially for the home page. Optimize your images and make sure the page loads quickly. Most people and businesses in the Western world may have high speed, but cell phones and other countries might not. If your site loads slowly, you may have already lost your visitor before they've even had a chance to browse around.

G) Usability
Make sure that your site follows good usability rules. Remember that people spend more time on other sites, so don't violate design conventions. Don't use PDF files for online reading. Change the colours for visited links, and use good headers. Look up usability for more tips and tricks, it will be worth your while.

H) On Site Optimization
Use the keyphrase you have chosen in your title (most important), your headers (when appropriate), and within the text. Make sure that your page/content is ABOUT your keyphrase. If you are selling widgets, than write about widgets. Don't just stick the word widgets into the text.

I) Globals
Globals are the links that remain the same on every page. They are the reference for new visitors to keep them from getting lost. Sometimes they are on the left of the page, sometimes they consist of tabs at the top. Often they are in the footer of the page as well. Make sure that you have an old style text version of your globals on every page. I usually create tabs at the top, and put the text versions in the footer at the bottom of the page. Find out what works best for you.

J) Headers
Use bold headers. On the Internet, people scan they don't read. So initially, all they will see are the headers. If your headers don't address their concerns, they won't stick around long enough to read your content. Use appropriate keyphrases when you can.

K) Site Map
Build a site map with a link to each of your pages. Keep it up to date. This will allow the spiders to get to every page. Put a text link to the site map on the main pages.

L) Content
Add a page every 2-3 days: 200-500 words. Create original content, don't copy others. The more original and useful it is, the more people will read it, link to it, and most importantly of all - like it enough to keep coming back for more.

M) White Hat Only
Stay away from black hat optimizing techniques. Black hat optimization consists of using any method to get higher rankings that the search engines would disapprove of, such as keyword stuffing, doorway pages, invisible text, cloaking and more. Stick to white hat methods for long-term success. People who use black hat optimization are usually there for the short-term, such as in porn, gambling, and Viagra markets (just look at your email spam for more black hat markets). These black hat industry sites are usually around just long enough to make a quick buck.

N) Competition Analysis
Who is linking to your competition? Use Yahoo's "link:" service to see the back links of your competition. For example, type in "link:http://www.yourdomain.com" into Yahoo search without the quotes). Try to get links from the same sites as your direct competitors. Better yet, see if you can replace them!

O) Submit
Submit to five groups of directories:

1. Dmoz.org and Yahoo (local, such as Yahoo.co.uk, or Yahoo.ca, etc... if you can).
2. Find directories in your field and get into them. Pay if you must, but only if the price is reasonable.
3. Local directories that relate to your country or region.
4. Any other directories that would be appropriate.
5. If you are targeting the local market, make sure that you are in the Yellow Pages and Superpages (because search engines use these listings to power local searches)

P) Blog
Start a blog about your industry and write a new entry at least once a week. Allow your visitors to comment or, better yet, write their own entries. This will create even more content on your site and will keep people coming back regularly to see what is new.

Q) Links From Other Sites
Simply submit your website to appropriate sites, asking that they link to your site as a reference because it will benefit their visitors. Don't spend too much time on this, if your content is good and original, they will find you and link to you naturally. Remember that Linking is Queen (http://www.redcarpetweb.com/promotion/0409.html#feature).

Stay away from reciprocal linking, links farms, link scams, and any other unnatural links. They may not necessarily hurt you, but Google tracks when you get a link, how long you have had a link, who links to the site that links to you, where you live, what you had for breakfast, and more (not really... but kind of).

R) Statistics
Make sure your server has a good statistics program. Use it! If you don't have access to a good program, then pay for one. Without the knowledge of who is coming to your site, from where, and how often, you will be missing out on some essential tools to improve your site.

S) Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Sign up for Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Spend money getting people to your site. Use it for branding too. This will create a steady flow of visitors to your site, and will make your site more accessible to your potential clients. You don't have to be #1, you don't even have to be #5... just make sure you are on the first page of search results for most of your keyphrases, when the cost is right.

T) Look Ahead
Stay informed of what is coming up in your market. If a new product will be out next season, write about it now. Take advantage of being a first mover. The search engines, and linkers, will reward you.

U) Articles
Write an article once every week and get it published in as many online publications as you can (with a link back to your site). Include the article on your site. Not only will this create many links to your site, but it will also get people to click to your site, and most importantly you will become an expert in the eyes of your visitors. They may even begin looking for your site by querying your name!

V) Study Your Traffic
After 30 to 90 days you will have enough results to analyze in your statistics program. Go over them with a fine tooth comb. Get the answers to these questions:

• Where are your visitors coming from?
• Which search engines do they use?
• What queries do they type in?
• What pages on your site do they visit the most?
• What are the entry pages on your site?
• What are the exit pages?
• What path do they follow when they browse your site?

Use this information to tweak your site.

• Use the most popular page to encourage the visitors to make you money.
• Adjust the paths they use to send them where you want them.
• Figure out why they leave from the exit pages.

Also, see what search terms people use to find you, and fine tune your keyphrases. If you targeted "green widgets", but your visitors are finding you with the query "green leather widgets", then start creating content about "leather widgets"!

W) Verify Your Submissions
After 3-4 months, check that you got into Dmoz.org and all of the other directories that you submitted to. If you have not been included, then submit again, or better yet, write a polite email to the editor and ask why. Also, find any new directories that would be worthy of your submittal time and submit to them.

X) RSS Feeds
RSS (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is becoming a powerful tool for Internet marketers. You can quickly and easily add fresh content to your website. Article feeds are updated frequently, so you can give your visitors (and the search engines) what they want - fresh content! You can use RSS to promote any new content, such as new pages, articles, blogs, press releases, and more!

Y) Press Releases
A press release is a written communication that you submit to journalists in the media (newspapers, radio, television, magazines) which are used to make announcements that are newsworthy. Create press releases announcing publication of any new articles or new company information or products. If it is interesting/original enough, a journalist may pick it up and write an article about it. Before you know it, your website address may get published in the NY Times.

Z) Keep Your Content Fresh
Remember to write a new page every 2-3 days. I only mentioned it briefly, but it is probably the most important point in this article. Keep writing! Without fresh content, your site will gradually drop in the search engine results. To stay on top, your content has to be the most up-to-date, freshest, and most interesting and original content in your field.

Follow these 26 simple steps and I assure you that within one year you will call your site a success. You will bring in a massive amount of traffic from within your industry and watch as your business grows!

So start writing, and write yourself to the top!

About the author: Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the ecommerce marketplace, and co-founded Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.. He has been researching and developing marketing strategies to achieve more prominent listings in search engine results since 1998. Shawn is one of the earliest pioneers in the search engine optimization field.

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Many of you have heard of submitting your website, but what does this really mean? What places should you really submit your website? What about submitting to thousands of search engines and directories through some website promotion service?

What Pages To Submit:

At the minimum, you should submit your home page. Many search engines will promise to find and crawl the rest of your website automatically (in their own good time). But if they don't discourage you from doing so, I would submit several of the important pages in your site. For example, a site map is definitely something I would want to submit, since it should have direct links to the rest of your website.

Also, if I get another webmaster to link to my website, I like to submit that page as well. I want the search engines to recognize that this resource has changed - it has a link to my website and I want the credit for it.

What To Prepare:

For the search engines, I would make sure that the website is properly optimized. At a minimum, I would do double check the meta-tags to ensure that the title, meta-description and meta-keywords properly describe the web pages and have some of my desired keywords in it. I would also run a website validator on the pages I intend on submitting - to keep the search engine spiders from choking on my website. For more information on optimizing a website for the search engines, go to http://website-optimization-2.blogspot.com.

For the directories, I would normally prepare some commonly requested information. This really helps to speed up the process. I normally use a generic text editor like Microsoft Notepad and save the following data before I go and submit to the different search engines and directories. This enables me to use copy and paste.

This should have:

• Your email
  
• Your website url
  
• A good title for your website
  
• A description for the website

Since Yahoo will allow you to submit a list of URLS that are in a text document (or an RSS feed) I would encourage you to prepare one to help them out. These should be at the root directory of your website and be updated whenever there is a change to your pages. That way you can just submit the location of the RSS feed or the text file and let Yahoo use that to find the rest of your pages. It is a nice time saver. Personally, I like using an automated RSS feed since Yahoo can use it to determine when the last changes occurred and decide what pages to re-crawl first.

(If you don't know what RSS is, here is a great article on it: http://feedvalidator.org/docs/rss2.html.)

Google uses a similar technology to help it find all of your web pages. It is called a "Google Site Map". That is the subject of another article. I wrote one that has a lot more info on the Google Site Maps, for when you are ready to build one. Google also has a special way to submit these. Just follow their instructions. If this is too complicated, contact a webmaster or a SEO specialist who is familiar with this feature.

Where To Submit:

I would recommend submitting your home page to the major search engines individually, at least initially. However, there are several services that do groups of them for you - and is a big time saver for the rest of your site. The following is one of my favorites: FreeWebSubmission.com. I have always deselected Google, though, since I submit to them manually through the Google website. I submit my web pages to the following search engines manually (without a special tool) just to ensure that it is done.

You will need a Yahoo account to submit to the Yahoo search engine. And don't fret if you don't see immediate results. Your site should normally exist in MSN within about 6 weeks, in Yahoo in 8-12 weeks, and in Google within about 3 months. (You will not likely get much search results from Google for the first year though - but hold out and keep working on the other tricks. In the long run, Google will normally give you about 60 - 70% of the search engine traffic if you follow these methods.)

Also, if you have the Alexa toolbar installed, navigate to your website and click on the "info" button on the toolbar. Then you will have to fill in information about your website. Once this is registered, you will start seeing how your website's Alexa rating looks. There have been some rumors that Google considers the Alexa description in its searches - so make sure it is relevant to your website as a whole and has at least one of your keywords.

You should also submit your website to DMOZ. This is a massive directory that is republished in several other websites. It is managed by humans, and is therefore considered to be of special relevance by other search engines. I strongly recommend reading all their rules before submitting - and follow them closely. Make sure that you try to get listed in only one category - the most relevant one for your business. It can take a month or two to get listed, but it really helps with your backlinks and overall relevancy as a website.

After DMOZ, here are the most important list of directories to be listed in.

• Yahoo Directory website submission ($299 annual fee)

• Business.com website submission ($199 annual fee)

• Microsoft Bcentral Directory website submission ($49 annual fee)

• Best of Web website submission ($40 annual fee)

• GoGuides.org website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• Gimpsy.com website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• JoeAnt website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• Tygo website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• Skaffe.com website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• WowDirectory.com website submission ($25 lifetime fee)

If you haven't used directories before - try browsing these before you fill out the form to submit your site. They are organized by category. You need to find the most relevant category to put your website before you start to fill out the form for each of these. Have a pen and paper as you browse - and write down directory paths of where you want to be.

Being in some directories just adds some good backlinks. (When another webmaster links to your website, this is considered a backlink.) Others, like Yahoo and DMOZ, tend to get some special relevance to certain search engines. After you get familiar with these well-known directories, look for niche directories that are specific to the type of business your website is about.

There are specialized directories that focus on a particular category of links. These can be valuable - you will just have to do a bit of searching to find them. These may be considered as part of your overall strategy.

Being listed in a search engine doesn't guarantee that you will have a good ranking - this is just the first step - letting them know that you exist.

If You See An Offer To Get Listed In Hundreds Of Directories And Websites Automatically - Beware! Many of these will list you in hundreds of FFA (free for all) sites. These sites are considered SPAM by search engines and I would strongly encourage you to avoid them. Did I mention to avoid these? Check out what Google has to say about these. They may get you quick backlinks, but they are from the "wrong" type of site. These are just a list of sites - and they stay there temporarily. Only the latest 100 submitted or so are displayed there and you need to be resubmitted regularly to stay there. Few humans use this - it is just a linking game to trick the search engines about your popularity (and search engines don't like it). Don't bother.

To Wrap It Up:

Get backlinks - but avoid FFA sites. There are some important directories, but being listed in "Thousands Of Websites And Directories" is likely a promotional trick to get you listed in FFA sites. The most important backlinks are from web pages with content related to your website and those that your customers visit. If it isn't likely to draw your customers, it may not be very important for your website traffic.

About the author: Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites. SpiderwebLogic.com | SchoolAndTeacher.com

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There is a tactic out there embraced by bloggers but rarely used by typical websites. It is called Link Baiting.

In this article I explain what link baiting is and how everyone, not just bloggers, can use it to build quality links.

This is a topic that's been around for a while but I don't think a lot of people know what it is, or how to use it to their advantage.

I think the name "Link Baiting" could be considered a black hat technique which is why most people wouldn't consider it as a legitimate organic tactic.

However link baiting is merely link building with a twist: Rather than hunting out links, you are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content.

So how does Link Baiting work?

Link Baiting is just like fishing. You publish a new page on a topic (I'll cover those later) and set it free on the web. Hopefully others pick up on the content as fresh and interesting and link to it. The article is the bait, and the link is the catch.

A properly created page can capture huge links on its own with little to no effort from you.

For example, on another site, about a year ago, I wrote an article about the Florida Update. I spend the month or 2 after the initial update analyzing results and I then published my theory on what the update was.

That article has earned 88 links to date. And the best link, in my view, is a link from the ODP from the Google News category.

In fact my article appears in the top 10, and is linked to as a reference in many of the other top listings for a Google search for "Florida Update."

So what was so special about the article?

While I never intended for it to be link bait, it turns out it was a typical "hook" page. Performancing blog has a really good summary on link baiting which I will further explain here.

With link building there are essentially 5 types of "hooks" or pages built to encourage links. They are: News, Contrary, Attack, Resource and Humor.

A News hook is one where you report on industry news. But it's not just a rehashing of someone else's post. It should be unique – either a scoop that no one else has caught, or it could even be a summary of various viewpoints. A news hook could also be comprised of a story you have proved to be false.

Contrary hooks are when you contradict what someone else says. It should be someone prominent in the industry and it should be controversial.

For example, if I was to write an article that proclaimed that Danny Sullivan's latest theory was bunk, it would probably generate buzz. Especially if I could provide corroborating evidence backing up my assertion.

Recently Mike Grehan posted just such an article on Clickz in which he again pointed out that he doesn't believe in a Google Sandbox. He even refers to other posts in which the Sandbox has been beaten to death.

Soon after he posted this article (which, by the way was posted just one week ago) many other SEM's jumped on him purporting to have proof of the Sandbox.

And, if you use Yahoo's Site Explorer to look at who links to this article, you will see that Yahoo! Has already picked up on almost 80 links to this one article. I'd say that Mike has done a great job of link baiting!

Attack hooks take the contrary hooks a step further, by launching personal attacks on people taking the debunking of theories to the next level. The original post from SEOmoz was close to an attack hook, but after they edited it, it became less of an attack They reacted to the Mike Grehan article on the Sandbox with some haste and turned it personal. To their credit they did tone it down some, but it's pretty close to a flame. Who knows, maybe this article will be considered an attack on SEOmoz and will generate similar buzz.

A Resource hook is more of an informational page. It's one that aggregates a bunch of information and distills it for visitors.

In fact this site is much like that. We take a bunch of news, distill it to its most meaningful and then provide our interpretation of what it means. Then, others pick up on the article and either repost it, or at least link to it.

Finally is a Humour hook. With this link bait you post jokes, funny stories, weird or funny pictures that you've found or anything else that will warrant a review from others and hopefully a link.

There are tons of blogs devoted to this such as the Obscure Store & Reading Room and Small Town Misfit which scour the web for weird and funny stories and then display them, encouraging others to link to them.

And it must be working – Small Town Misfit has over 1,600 Yahoo! Links while Obscure Store has over 1,700.

So, if you were ever worried about the amount of link building you'd have to do to become an "authority", consider link baiting in your arsenal. It can be a very effective way of building links quickly and easily. Also, it's an effective way to build your reputation and brand online as more and more people learn about you through these links.

About the author: Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com.

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One of the best ways to generate free traffic is via the search engines. If you have some prior SEO knowledge, then you know that the best way to improve your rankings in the search engines is by establishing relevant links to your website. So building link popularity is indeed important.

But very few webmaster know how to build link popularity the way Google loves it.

So how do you generate a link building campaign that all the search engines will love?

Well, before I get into this, let me first explain what link popularity is.

Link popularity, in simple words, refers to the number of websites that post a link to your website. Some SEO experts believe that the more links that post a link to your website, the more your rankings improve in the search engines. But this is not always the case. Link popularity is a little more complicated than this.

When building link popularity you want to take into account a list of things. But for the sake of this report, I just reduced the list down to 2 important factors that will affect the way Google and the rest of the other search engines list your site.

1. Choosing the Right Websites

Selecting the right sites to request a link partnership from will be responsible for the great part of your success. Your main objective, when launching a linking campaign is to establish links on sites that are truly related, or in the same theme of your website. If you are trying to build links for a site that discusses potty training for dogs, then you do not want to request a link partnership from a site in the make money niche. These two topics are completely unrelated. The Google search engine has an algorithm that recognizes unrelated linking patterns and they will penalize your website if they find them. Therefore, study the websites of your potential link partners.

2. Grow Your Links Slowly

With the way the search engine algorithms are acting right now, it is much more safer to slowly grow your link popularity day by day. It will be a lot safer to gather about 4 or 5 link partners per day rather than 20 a day. You should never blast a link request to an email list with a bunch of people looking for link partners. Any type of irregular, or excessive link growth will trigger the search engines and cause them to penalize your site. Never grow your link popularity too fast. Just be patient and you’ll be much better off in the end.

That is it for my 2 important rules for developing link popularity. Just adhere to these link building rules on a daily basis and you’ll see great traffic improvements in 3 months time.

A key rule is to try and continually build your link popularity until Google lists at least 100 links pointing to your website. This is a small rule of thumb for us SEO marketers. Any website with 100 link partners listed in Google is known to pull some pretty decent traffic.

About the author: Melvin Perry is an internet entrepreneur that specializes in list building and SEO. He is offering over 200 minutes of SEO list building videos that you can download and view for FREE at SEO List Building Videos

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This article is about a free website which has a great text analysis tool, that is very useful for anyone in the internet marketing game or who optimizes their website for search engine rankings. The sites address is www.textalyser.net this tool really does the job when it comes to analyzing either all the text on a website or just a certain portion of your choice. Giving you all sorts of great information about the keywords used in the site.

When you first enter the site you can either paste in a certain portion of text into the designated area, or you just type in the URL of the whole website you would like to have analyzed. Then you can choose as to what analysis options you would like to perform. Such as the minimum characters per word, whether you would like it to ignore numbers, and a few more. After you chose your options then you simply click analyze the text, thus returning you a complete very detailed analysis.

At the very top of your analysis it shows some basic text information like the total word count, number of different words used, sentence count, a readability index ranging from easy to hard. That little function comes in handy, because you definitely want the text of your page to be easy for the viewer to read.

The next and perhaps most important feature, shows you the occurrences and frequency at which the top keywords for your page show up. It ranks them from the number one word to whichever number you would like it to stop at. That is set at the options you chose before you analyzed the text. This particular feature is very nice to SEO’s, seeing as that it lists the top words on a site and the density/frequency of which they appear. So an example of how this might help would be if you were targeting to have a certain keyword density for a particular keyword on your site. Thus enabling you to figure out whether to add more or less of that word to meet the density at which is required for the search engines to list you for that keyword.

Not only does this tell you your top ranking keywords it tell you the top word phrases, ranging from 2 word to 5 word phrases. It gives the count of how many times that phrase was used and also shows the frequency compared to the rest of the text on the page.

Anyone who is in the internet marketing field especially marketers who optimize their websites for search engine traffic can make great use of this free tool. I personally find great use in this tool for the process of my keyword research, which is essential for any search engine optimization campaign.

About the author: Search engine specialist Steve Bis, is the author of the free search secrets newsletter and owns a unique web search tool that will help you find anything on the internet in 60 seconds, eliminating your search frustrations. http://www.ultimatesearchpro.com.

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When building websites there are two main options: large content site or small mini-sites. Large content sites normally focus more on providing "information". Mini-sites, however, normally have one purpose only, to sell. Given what search engines want, large content sites are much better for getting search engine traffic. Most of the time (unless you're excellent at optimizing) it's hard to get mini-sites to rank well for competitive keywords. This is why most do NOT rely on search engines for traffic to their mini-sites. In all honesty, the best strategy is to combine the two types of sites by having a large content site to rank well with search engines that feeds traffic to your mini-sites. However, not all of us have the time or know-how to easily build large sites that do well with search engines. Most of us just want to put up a small site and start making money. Here are the 3 traffic generating techniques I use everyday for traffic to mini-sites. #1: Forums/Discussion Boards I have made more than $6,000 from one mini-site just by targeting it to the right forum in my signature file. All I did was leave a nice statement in my signature file; in 1 month I attracted over 5,000 targeted visitors that converted to over $6,000 for me. The basic strategy here is that you need to find related forums and become active in them. Get yourself known, find out what those members talk about and find an affiliate product to fit their demand. Then, make a nice, simple, yet captive site with a great headline followed by a review of the product. Test it and if it pulls well, you have a winner. If not, choose another product. #2: E-zine Advertising I would rate e-zine advertising at the second best way to gather traffic to your mini-sites only because this technique can cost some money. Forum promotions have no cost (typically). However, e-zine advertising can provide much better results. Forum marketing requires you taking the time to make sensible responses or asking good questions. With e-zine advertising, however, you just write a good promotion and let the publisher send it out. An advantage of e-zine advertising is that you know before you promote that you have a targeted audience that has already expressed an interest in your topic. Also, the subscriber and the publisher most likely have a good relationship (considering the subscriber has not left) and so your promotion comes with credibility and may get more attention. One of the keys to doing well with e-zine advertising (for me) has been repeated ads in the same e-zine. I have found that my results are best in the second of third promotion. However, if I get no results on my first mailing, I do not repeat that e-zine again. Warning: Not all e-zines are the same. Some will be major winners and others will be major flops. #3: Directory Sites Alright, here is the controversial technique that I use very successfully. I know some of you will think that it is "wrong" - but in the end, my job is to teach you how I get my traffic; that is exactly what I am going to do. Directory sites are sites created by software that automatically build you a site which is 500 or more pages. These sites are just simply uploaded to a domain name. Most (if done right) tend to do well with search engines. That traffic is then forwarded to your mini-sites. As you can see, we're holding fast to our policy of building a funnel system where we use the large sites to bring in the "no cost" search engine traffic (which is also highly targeted). However, all the "selling" takes place on our mini-sites. Large sites = Traffic Gathering Mini sites = Conversion Into Sales Obviously there are many more techniques to use to attract traffic to your mini-sites such as banners, pay per click, link exchanging, etc... I just wanted to discuss the top 3 that are the easiest to implement and require the least learning curve (in my opinion) About the author:Anik Singal became a successful internet marketer at just 21 with a unique affiliate marketing system that helped him earn over $10,466 in just 60 days using mini-sites. Sign up for his free e-course at: http://www.amclassroom.com/cmd.php Copyright 2006 Anik Singal.

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