Traffic Exchanges & Online Opportunities

Free Blogging Course. Mark Joyner Does It Again

2007-12-20T17:07:00.000-08:00

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

LinkScout

2006-03-22T18:11:00.000-08:00

Linkscout is a complete traffic generating suite. It didn't take me long as a free user to recognize the value of this resource and upgrade my account. I am continuously shocked at the amount of traffic that comes from this outstanding program.

There are many ways to build traffic to your websites and affiliate links. It has excellent Clickbank integration.

Your own Featured Links Page to Advertise your Websites on over 41,000 Sites!
Your own Linkscout Link Exchange Page.
Your own Linkscout Matrix Replicator Page.
Your own keyword targeted Search Engine.
Your Own Affiliate Programs Directory with 3 Programs!
Post Unlimited Website Listings to your Search Engine.
Post Unlimited Opinions for your Website Listings to Attract attention!
NO SPAM will ever be sent to you, the only emails you will receive is from Linkscout Admin!

Join Now. It's Free!

3 Necessary Tools for the High Rolling Affiliate Marketer

2006-01-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

By Anthony White

What does it take to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory? All these questions play around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big in this business.

Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. He should also maximize the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a successful Affiliate Marketing business. Having researched some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business, listed below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.

Important Tool #2: Incentives

Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free softwares, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.

Important Tool #3: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important entities in the internet world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.

One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles, with your website's link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.

These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.

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Anthony White: I am always thirsty for knowledge & eager to share it. Please visit me at http://zenblanco.blogspot.com & http://atraffic.blogspot.com or check out my favorite online earning opportunity at: http://www.CashMoney4You.com/pips.html
You may reprint this article, provided that no changes are made and this resource box is included.
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Renew Your Desire to Make Money Online With This Free Ebook Download

2006-01-07T12:09:00.000-08:00

If you have the desire to make money online, and gain the freedom of earning a steady passive income from the comfort of your home, I encourage you to visit CashMoney4You to download a complete transcript of a recent teleclass given by Stone Evans and Ewen Chia.

In the ebook there is also a link that will enable you to download an mp3 of the teleclass. I strongly suggest you do that so that you can hear the passion that Stone Evans has for his PluginProfit System, and realize that he is a sincere individual who is committed to earning money online by helping others earn money from the internet.

Download it HERE

Ever since I first joined the PluginProfit System I believed in its potential to help me earn a passive monthly residual income. I now look forward to the monthly checks and email notices of commission payments. I was fortunate enough to earn back my initial investment within the first month. I have since begun making this my primary program to promote. I am confident that if you give the PluginProfit System a chance and make your own commitment to success, you will succeed.

Path to Online Success (Download teleclass ebook)

Dotcomology is another incredible marketing tool Stone has provided his members. In keeping with his philosophy of helping himself by helping others, Dotcomology is packed with vital and useful information to aid anyone who seeks to earn an online income. Click on the banner below to get your free ebook download.

Click Here to Discover "Dotcomology" Now!

To our mutual online success,

Anthony White

P.S. Be sure to join my newsletter in the righthand sidebar for useful tips to grow your online income. I despise spam as much a you do, and will never sell, trade or give your information away.

Search Engine Ranking - Anchor Text Is The Key

2006-01-06T15:38:00.000-08:00

By John Schwartz

Try an Experiment

If you have a web site, try this experiment when you have some spare time. Pick a nonsense phrase, like “bed happy meatball” or anything equally silly. Make sure it’s something very unlikely to appear on a web page anywhere, and make sure it’s a phrase (not a single word). Also, make sure it does not appear on your own site.

Next, get a few friends or co-workers with web sites of their own to post a link to your site using that exact phrase (without the quotation marks) as the anchor text. What’s anchor text, you ask? It’s simply the word or words that form the clickable part of a link.

Now, wait a while. Make a note to yourself to check your web site’s ranking in the results for a search of your chosen nonsense phrase at a major search engine in a month or two. Unless you picked a phrase that actually appears on other sites, you’ll find that your site is #1! Moreover, that’s in spite of the fact that the chosen phrase does not appear anywhere on your actual web site. Think about that.

An infamous, large-scale example of this same test involved the phrase “miserable failure.” Some enterprising bloggers got together a few years ago and decided to link lots of sites to the official biography page for President George W. Bush at the whitehouse.gov site. The goal, of course, was to make that page show up in the #1 position whenever unsuspecting (or in this case, many suspecting) searchers typed in that phrase. It worked. (Side note: at last check, Michael Moore – famous film maker and Bush detractor, was in the #2 position at Google for this same search). Again, keep in mind that the phrase “miserable failure” does not appear anywhere on either man’s web site.

Is There a Point?

OK, so why bother with this seemingly asinine experiment (that’s actually been dubbed ‘Googlebombing’)? Ahh, Grasshopper, for the lesson it imparts. Which is? Well, it points to the power of anchor text in determining search engine ranking. And it has definite relevance to your activities as a webmaster.

Many of your fellow site owners - including a lot of them who run sites in direct competition with yours – have never heard of anchor text. Some of you reading this may be unfamiliar with it. But, as should be clear now, anchor text plays a major role in search engine ranking positions.

In basic terms, it works like this…

Search engines rely on links to help them ascertain both the theme of a given web site and its popularity. Knowing that, consider two scenarios. In the first, your site has built up a lot of links pointing to it, and each one has your domain name as the clickable part of the link (anchor text). Let’s say your domain name is your company’s name, JoeSmithBakery.com – and you sell baking supplies. OK, great – now your site will show up in the #1 position at the search engines whenever anyone searches for your domain name! Hmm. Think that one through. If they know your domain name, why would they need a search engine to find it?

In the second scenario, you have lots of links pointing to your bakery site, but instead of the domain name as the anchor text, you wisely chose a phrase that lots of people search for, like ‘baking supplies.’

Easy question: which would you prefer – being #1 at Google when people search for your domain name or being #1 when people search for bakery supplies? This is why the anchor text you choose for the links you build is so important.

A Plan of Action

Now, here’s a simple plan of action to improve your site’s link situation and search engine ranking going forward from this day…

Step 1 – Research Keywords

A great service is provided by the folks at wordtracker.com. They catalog search activity at the major engines, and then make available those numbers to the general public. You simply type in a word or phrase related to your site’s theme, and wordtracker shows you the number of times that entry is being searched at the major search engines. Cool, huh? The service will also give you a list of related terms, so you can look for other important search words to target.

Step 2 – Pick a Few and Get Some Links

Compile a list of several search terms that are most closely related to your site’s theme and that get searched for often. It’s up to you, of course, but you should pick those phrases that get a few hundred to several thousand searches. These will be the terms you use in the anchor text of the inbound links you build from now on. Doing so will really increase your site’s search engine traffic - once all your new links begin to boost your rankings.

Nothing Else Changes

Now, just carry on with your usual link building activities: reciprocal links, one-way links from directories and article distributions, etc. The only change is to make sure you choose a phrase from your list to use as the clickable part of the link you ask for (the anchor text). If you rotate your choices, your site will move up in the rankings for each phrase. The only downside is that you’ll be getting fewer links per phrase, so it may take longer for any single phrase to rank high.

Keep in mind that the phrases you pick will be popular, unlike those in the examples that began this article. To score high rankings, you’ll need to be diligent and get lots of links. Never stop! Over time, this strategy will really help your site’s traffic, but it does take time. As the famous poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, famously wrote: “All good things come to those who wait.”

© John Schwartz

About the Author: John Schwartz is a professional writer and web site publisher. He owns and operates http://www.web-article-writer.com - offering high quality, original web site content and articles for clients needing to improve link popularity, traffic, and search engine rankings.

Source: www.isnare.com

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Content & Links Share The Kingdom

2006-01-05T14:25:00.000-08:00

By John Schwartz

If you run one or more web sites, you’ve probably heard it said many times: “Content is king!” The thinking goes something like this: if you provide lots of high quality content on your web pages, it will attract lots of visitors who will buy from you and spread the word to others. You’ll end up ‘king of the hill’ in your particular niche.

Let’s examine that notion a little more closely. For existing sites that already have listings in search engines, links on related sites, directory listings, etc., content is the thing that brings visitors back for more. If, however, you have a brand new web site, using a domain name that has not been previously used, what’s wrong with this picture? Simply put, it’s this: the best content in the world won’t get you visitors if people don’t know your site exists.

The Power of Link Popularity

That’s where the equally important power of links comes into the picture. The web’s foundation is the interlinking of web sites. Without links, every site would be a tiny island in a huge ocean that isn’t on any map. At no time is this fact more starkly evident than when you unveil a new site on a new domain. We’ve all been there. Not only does your new site get zero traffic, you can’t even hear crickets chirping – even they don’t know it’s there!

The solution, of course, is to let people know you’re out there by building link popularity. What’s ‘link popularity,’ you ask? It is the sum total of external web pages with links pointing to your site. This includes all the sites most webmasters target: search engines, directories, related sites, and unrelated sites.

As your site’s link popularity grows, two great things happen. First, all those links on other sites begin to drive visitors to your site. If most of those links are on sites in the same niche as your own, most of those visitors will be pre-screened. In other words, they will be people with an interest in your niche’s subject matter – not random visitors.

Second, link popularity plays a significant role in determining where your site will rank at the major search engines for searches related to your site’s theme. As you amass more inbound links, and depending on the words used in those links, your site will move up the rankings and you’ll see more and more traffic. Just as with links on related sites, this ‘organic’ (i.e., free) search engine traffic will consist of people who are actively seeking out your site’s information. Those are the visitors you must have to succeed! Best of all, you get those visitors without having to pay one penny for them!

The Power of Great Content

Once you have a steady flow of visitors surfing in to your site, the focus changes to the quality of the content they find there. Why? Because you want as many of those first-time visitors as possible to be impressed enough by what they find on your web site to bookmark it and spread the word to family, friends, and co-workers. You can’t buy better advertising than word-of-mouth from trusted sources like that!

Of course, great content will also encourage a higher percentage of your visitors to buy from you – your products, services, paid memberships, etc. Put it all together and it’s clear that excellent content will both make you more money and get your site more link popularity. It’s like an endless feedback loop that builds and builds as your site ages.

Why Successful Site Owners Concentrate on Both

But, the key in the beginning, when you’ve got a brand new site on your hands, is growing link popularity. Get that trickle of traffic started with those links; then let your great content do the lion’s share of the work to close the deal.

The growth of your site will constantly revolve around its dependence on content and links. Those who have made the comment, “Content is king!” a widely known catch phrase have really done a disservice to new site owners. A much more accurate (but less catchy) phrase is this one: “Content and links share the kingdom.”

© John Schwartz

About the Author: John Schwartz is a professional writer and web site publisher. He owns and operates http://www.web-article-writer.com - offering high quality, original web site content and articles for clients needing to improve link popularity, traffic, and search engine rankings.

Source: www.isnare.com

Click Here to Discover "Dotcomology" Now!

Web Site Content Is A Balancing Act

2006-01-04T16:22:00.000-08:00

By John Schwartz

One of the raging debates among web site publishers and SEO types is the tug-of-war between writing web site content for actual human visitors vs. the search engine spiders. Basically, it boils down to a question of impressing readers or making search engines happy so they’ll send you more traffic.

Well, here’s a novel concept: DO BOTH!

It’s really not difficult to walk the tightrope if you do some research first. We all want to write compelling content that will grab a reader’s attention and hold it. But, to get any readers in the first place, you need to provide content that people actually search to find. Hate to be the one to break it to you, but if you’re an expert on a rare bird that maybe 100 people in the world have ever heard of, all the writing you do online about it will go virtually unseen.

That’s the conundrum, in a nutshell. Fortunately, there’s a pretty simple solution. It’s called keyword research. Sounds boring, doesn’t it? Well, does it perk you up a bit to learn that spending a couple of hours doing it can be the difference between having a web site that collects dust and one that collects bucks? Thought it might.

What you want to do is build a list of keywords (single words and phrases) that are closely related to the theme of your site, then write a page of content full of information about each keyword. One keyword per page.

Now, here’s the key to it all. Don’t just pull a list out of the air (or, in this case, your own brain). Why not? Because the keywords you come up with may or may NOT be words that are actually searched for at the major search engines. You need to know for sure. In fact, knowing for sure is what separates a lot of successful niche web site owners from the masses of others who scratch their heads in puzzlement when their sites get very little free traffic.

Wordtracker is a Godsend

So, how can you find out which keywords that are related to your site’s theme are searched for and which are not? Suffice to say, there are several options, but the best is a service found at wordtracker.com. These fine folks compile massive amounts of data about the words searchers at the major engines type in when they search. Then they present this data in a straightforward, easy-to-read format that you can check quickly as you build your keyword lists.

You simply go there, armed with a basic idea of which keywords to check out, and wordtracker will give you a thumbs up or thumbs down on each one by telling you how many times each keyword has been searched. It can be very eye-opening. You’ll likely discover that some of your most cherished keywords are virtually worthless from a search engine traffic standpoint. You’ll quickly learn to check your assumptions at the door when you enter wordtracker’s site!

OK, once you’ve built a working list of keywords that you now know get used a lot by searchers at the major search engines, you’ll be way ahead of most of your competitors. The only remaining step is to write some high quality, informative, useful content about each keyword in your list and post it on your site. Remember: one keyword (which can be a single word or a phrase) per page!

If you make your content easy to read and chock full of interesting information, you’ll satisfy both elements mentioned at the beginning of this article. Your visitors will get great content, which will bring them back and convince some of them to link to your site. And, you’ll have built that content around keywords that are actually being searched for at the big engines. More searches = more traffic. It’s that simple.

You’ll have a web site that pulls in more and more free search engine traffic as you continue to add content built around your keyword list. Once on your site, your visitors will find information that interests them and, hopefully, compels them to bookmark your site, tell their friends and co-workers, and maybe even give you a link on their own sites!

That, my friends, is how you win at the web site game. As logical as this all sounds, very few of your competitors understand it, let alone actually do it. So, get to it! They’ll be eating your site’s dust while you collect all the bucks!

About the Author: John Schwartz is a professional writer and web site publisher. He owns and operates http://www.web-article-writer.com - offering high quality, original web site content and articles for clients needing to improve link popularity, traffic, and search engine rankings. Visit us today for more information.

Source: www.isnare.com

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Link Exchange: A Better Way For 2006

2005-12-29T16:18:00.000-08:00

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 as 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

About the Author: 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.

Source: www.isnare.com

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Three Little Known Tips For Keyword Optimization

2005-12-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

By Alden Smith

When a user enters a search term, or keyword phrase, at a search engine, regardless of whether it is Google, MSN, Yahoo! or AltaVista, the engine runs through the billions of pages in its database and awards each page a "relevancy score". The higher the score, the higher the listing will appear on the results page. If your site doesn’t contain the keyword used by the searcher, the only score it’s going to get is a zero. Your first task then is to make sure you know which keywords are most relevant for each of your sites.

There are three ways to figure out which keywords work the best for your particular site:

1. Check Your Competitors
2. Check the pay-per-clicks
3. Use specialized tools

Checking your competitors is the easy way to find out what ranks them higher than you for your particular niche. Simply do a search on one of the search engines for your best keyword, and go to the top five sites on the results page. When visiting, check the page source by going to View-> Page Source. This will open up the HTML file of the site you are visiting. In the head portion of the page (it'll be the first thing you'll see) look for the phrase "meta=keywords content="their keywords here" (It will be enclosed in ) and this will give you a list of their top keywords. Keywords should be listed in this meta tag with the highest ranking keyword first. One very big advantage of doing this research is that it gives you an idea of how your competitors have optimized their pages, and if not done properly, you have the advantage in doing your own pages in the proper fashion.

Checking the pay-per-click sites such as Overture or FindWhat will also let you see what keywords people are bidding on. The downside is that they require you to open an account, and it may cost a few dollars, but it is worth the extra expense to be able to check bids on PPC. Googlefight is also a good resource to find which of two keywords are more relevant. Although limited in use, it is rather fun to play with, and gives relevant reports.

Specialized tools are the best way to check keywords for popularity and competition. Wordtracker, a paid subscription site, is an invaluable resource for researching top keywords. At $250 USD a year, it is not cheap, but the time saved and excellent returns are worth the investment. Wordtracker has a free trial search that can be used, although it is somewhat limited in return of relevant keyword phrases. You can also purchase a subscription for monthly, weekly, and daily. Daily fees are about $8 USD, and is a worthwhile investment. A lot of research can be done in 1 day, and if you are prepared with basic keyword brainstorming, you can get a lot done in a day's time.

As you build your keyword list from your root keyword, be mindful that when people search for product to buy, they generally use two to three phrase search terms. If they are doing research, they will search with the root word. For example if I wish to research "flowers" then that is the term I will input into the search engines. If, however, I am looking to purchase, I would use the term "buy red roses" or "buy cheap bouquets". With careful planning and taking the proper amount of time to research root keywords, you can be successful with the proper optimization of your web pages.

About the Author: Alden Smith is an award winning author who has been marketing on the internet for over 7 years. His site, http://www.for-the-record.biz, is loaded with articles and information for the beginning blogger and internet marketer.

Source: www.isnare.com

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Eight Simple Steps For Enhancing Your Website

2005-12-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

By Alden Smith

To be successful with your online business, whether you are selling your own product, services or are selling for other merchants as an affiliate, you need a Web site that focuses on that subject alone. The site must be easy to build, maintenance-free, low cost, credible, and a powerful traffic-builder and customer-converter.

Having the right tools or product alone will not insure the success of your website. There are many factors to be considered when designing your site. And unfortunately, most of these are usually ignored by Internet business owners. Here are eight simple steps to enhance your site and make it profitable.

1. Build It for Speed

There is no denying that in this day and age that people are in a hurry. You have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customer's attention. To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible. Use flashy technology (JavaScript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is imperative to your presentation.

2. Target your Market

Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers. Is your market mostly business professionals? If so, the site must be clean and professional. Is your product aimed at teenagers and young adults? Then your site could be more informal and relaxed. The key is to know your market and build the site to their preferences.

3. Focus the Site

Make certain your web site is focused on the goal of selling your product or service. If your business offers many products, dedicate a unique page for each instead of trying to sell them all from one page. This can easily be accomplished through the utilization of subdomains.

4. Build Credibility

The most professionally designed site won't sell if your customers don't believe in you. Become an authority in your chosen niche. The internet is all about information, not just marketing. People go to the internet to find information on a particular subject. Providing clear concise articles focused on the subject of your site makes you an expert in your field. Providing a clear privacy statement is also away to build your credibility. Provide a prominent link to your privacy statement from every page on the site as well as from any location that you are asking your visitors for personal information. Provide legitimate contact information on line, including your mailing address and phone number. Don't hide behind a computer!

5. Keep navigation simple

Make site navigation easy and intuitive. Simple and smooth navigation adds to the convenience of the visitors. Add powerful search and catalog features. Many times a lot of visitors do not have the patience to navigate through the whole website to find what they are looking for.

6. Keep it consistent

Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design. Nothing is more jarring and disturbing to a customer than feeling as if they have just gone to another site. Keep colors and themes constant throughout the site.

7. Make your site interactive and personalized

Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your prospective customers to ask you any questions they might have pertaining to a product. Personalization of your website is another key element that can lead to customer delight and can increase your sales. Personalization technology provides you the analytic tools to facilitate cross-selling and up-selling when the customer is buying online. It would give you an idea of what products to cross-sell and up-sell. For example, when a person buys a CD player, a disc cleaner can also be offered.

8. Content is King

Good content sells a product. Ask yourself the following questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your visitor through the sales process? Have others review, critique and edit your copy to insure it is delivering the intended message. Always double check your spelling and grammar.

These eight, simple rules will go a long way toward the improvement of your website and most importantly, turn visitors into customers.

About the Author: Alden Smith is an award winning author who has been marketing on the internet for over 7 years. His site, http://www.for-the-record.biz, is loaded with articles and information for the beginning blogger and internet marketer.

Source: www.isnare.com

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7 Easy Secrets To Understanding Web Statistics

2005-12-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

By Alden Smith

Understanding what your visitors do on your site is crucial information. If your visitors proceed to purchase a product but then a large majority leaves the site when they get to a specific page in the order process, you need to know about it. It could be that this page is confusing or hard to use. Fixing it could increase your sales by 200%. This is just an example; there are many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of your site visitors.

Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you can study. If you're not sure where this is, call up your hosting service and ask them. Statistics are a vital part of tracking your marketing progress. If you don't have access to website statistics get a package that can help you in this area. Do not get a counter that simply shows how many visitors you've had. You'll be missing out on vital information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your site.

A good website hosting service offers traffic logs that provide an invaluable insight into the traffic being referred to a web site from various sources such as search engines, directories and other links.

Unfortunately traffic tracking provided by web hosting services is often in the form of raw traffic log files or other difficult to understand cryptic formats. These log files are basically text files that describe actions on the site. It is literally impossible to use the raw log files to understand what your visitors are doing. If you do not have the patience to go through these huge traffic logs, opting for a traffic-logging package would be a good idea.

Basically, two options are available to you and these are: using a log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely hosted traffic logging service. A remotely hosted traffic logging service may be easy to use and is generally the cheaper option of the two. WebTrends Live and HitsLink are two good, remotely hosted, traffic-monitoring services worth considering. However, WebTrends Live is a more complicated system and is suitable for larger ecommerce websites. "SuperStats" is another recommended traffic logging service.

These services do not use your log files. Typically a small section of code is placed on any page you want to track. When the page is viewed, information is stored on the remote server and available in real time to view in charts and tables form.

Log analysis packages are typically expensive to buy and complex to set up. Apart from commercial packages there are also some free log analysis packages available, such as Analog.

A good traffic logging service would provide statistics pertaining to the following:

1 How many people visit your site?

2 Where are they from?

3 How are visitors finding your site?

4 What traffic is coming from search engines, links from other sites, and other sources?

5 What keyword search phrases are they using to find your site?

6 What pages are frequented the most - what information are visitors most interested in?

7 How do visitors navigate within your web site?

Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions is essential for making informed decisions that maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your web site investment.

The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your website is analyzing all the statistics you get from your tracking software. The three main statistics that will show your overall progress are hits, visitors and page views. Hits are tracked when any picture or page loads from your server on to a visitor's browser. Hits, however, can be very misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your website.

The statistic that is probably the most important for a website is Page Views/Visitors. This gives you a good indication of two things. First, how many people are coming to your site, and secondly how long are they staying on your site. If you have 250 visitors and 300 page views you can figure that most visitors view one page on your site and then leave. Generally, if you're not getting 2 page views per visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's content so your visitors will stay around longer.

If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as well as the number of page views per visitor increasing then keep up the good work! Always look for this stat as an overall barometer of how your site design is going and if your marketing campaigns are taking hold.

Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a person visits your site they will not be added to the unique visitors' category if they visit again. This is a good way to track new visitors to your website.

Page views are a good indication of how "sticky" your website is. A good statistic to keep is Page Views divided by the number of Visitors you have. This statistic will give you a good idea if your content is interesting and if your visitors are staying on your site for a long time and surfing.

Some people are intimidated by web traffic statistics (mostly because of the sheer volume of data available), but they shouldn't be. While there are many highly specialized statistics that can be used for more in-depth web traffic analysis, the above areas alone can provide invaluable information on your visitors and your website performance. Remember- this data is available for a reason. It's up to you to use it.

About the Author: Alden Smith is an award winning author who has been marketing on the internet for over 7 years. His site, http://www.for-the-record.biz, is loaded with articles and information for the beginning blogger and internet marketer.

Source: www.isnare.com

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Easy Tips To Avoid Google Click Fraud

2005-12-24T12:19:00.000-08:00

By Alden Smith

Many web site owners are getting their Google Adsense account terminated. I read on the forums almost daily posts from people who are bemoaning the fact that Google has terminated their account when they feel they have done nothing wrong to deserve the punishment. In almost every case, click fraud is the reason for termination.

Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many website owners are aware of this fraud, and share the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

How do you prevent yourself from being involved in this fraud?

The majority of web hosts offer access logs. If you are notified of click fraud and possible termination of your account by Google, it is necessary that you hand over these logs to them to clarify your situation. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is a show of good faith that you want to help Google in any way you can to attempt to solve the problem.

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. There are many good programs available, but it is important that you get a program that has no limitations. there are free programs available, but I would suggest that you get a script from a certified expert in this field. I highly recommend using William Bontrager's script, available at http://bontragercgi.com/programs/clickwatch. Mr Bontrager will install this script on one site for you after the purchase of the software, and will show you how to add the script to other sites. Free scripts are also available on the Internet if you are limited in funds. Remember, you get what you pay for. As usual, all the information you will receive from your tracking software should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it.

Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing. Look for large spikes in traffic, and suspicious activity in files and folders where people would not normally have access to. Remember, that when working on your site, that you will access these files and folders. It is suggested you track these by noting the time of activity. A little work on your part will save you a lot of grief in the long run.

You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through the htaccess file on your web site. the process is too detailed to go into further here, but if you do a search on the engines to learn ways to access and disable portions of this log, a lot of information is readily available. By doing this, and showing Google that you have done so, you protect yourself against any possible threat from Google.

Keep your Adsense off on pop ups and pop unders. Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business. Included in this are the content that is considered adult or gambling in nature, or promote firearms, tobacco, or drugs of any kind. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or Adsense from the web page.

Be truthful and confess up to Google about times when you might have clicked on your own ads, whether accidentally or intentionally. Be honest about anything that you may have done that is wrong. Confessing is way better than Google learning about it eventually. It would mean eventual termination and no getting back what you have worked so hard for.

Do not tell your family or friends about Adsense on your website. Chances are they may start clicking on them to help you make money without you knowing it. They may be doing more harm to you than help by trying it in the first place.

Most pay per click networks have different measures in hand to protect website owners against click frauds. Other search engines can track more than 50 data points, IP address, browser’s information, user’s session info and pattern recognition. They also have “systems” available that detects fraud, not to mention the specialized teams monitoring how things are going and helping advertisers stop click frauds. Google has some of the best brains in the business, and it does no one any good to try to "fool" them. In addition to the algorithms that Google has in place, they also employ regular people to surf the net to find illegal sites.

Google offers suggestion on how to avoid click fraud. Using “negative keywords” can be used to keep your Adsense showing on products and services that are in no way related to yours. Add tracking URLs to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google.

Don't be caught in the Google click fraud. The opportunity to make a very decent income is readily available if you use common sense, do not try to cheat Google, and follow their Terms of Service. If you do these things, maybe some day you too can be a member of the FedEx Club!

About the Author: Alden Smith is an award winning author who has been marketing on the internet for over 7 years. His site, http://www.for-the-record.biz, is loaded with articles and information for the beginning blogger and internet marketer.

Source: www.isnare.com

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Search Engine Marketing: Coping Wih The Aftermath Of Google Update 'Jagger'

2005-12-23T20:33:00.000-08:00

By Damon Lightley

Dealing with the aftermath of Google update Jagger

OK I know I’m not the first to announce this but let’s face it boys and girls SEO (search engine optimisation) as we currently know it is dead. It’s time to ditch those antiquated techniques that all SEOs cling on to and focus your online marketing efforts on 'online brand optimisation' – OBO for short!

So what’s the difference between SEO and OBO?

Think about the searcher not the search engine!

From a strategic perspective online brand optimisation (OBO) is all about optimising your site and online marketing efforts for the searcher, the end-user that seeks out your site via whatever means he or she chooses. Whether it is via a search engine, a content portal or even a forum. Your goal is to deliver what you’ve promised and help that searcher fulfil his or her online goal. If you don’t do that then you’ve failed in achieving your key online objective.

Ranking’itis!

SEO for most seasoned optimisers is about getting to the top of Google. The vast majority of SEOs become obsessed with checking their rankings in the SERPS (search engine results pages) on a daily basis and even across every possible Google data centre (DC). Checking rankings soon becomes an addiction for many SEOs and believe you me I know, I have been there. But I did come to my senses and I’ve realised that there is more to life than being no 1 in Google for a plethora of key phrases. I’ve also realised that in today’s search environment you can’t rely on the search engine to always deliver you targeted prospects that convert.

You may have read about the multitude of search marketers that have recently been hit badly by the Google ‘Jagger’ update. For many, their site has completely dropped out of the rankings and as a result they are now in an extremely vulnerable position. They solely relied on Google to drive visitors to their site and with no new prospects coming in; their business is starting to feel the strain of being dumped into the harsh terrain that I like to call the ‘Google Desert!’ As we all know no one ventures out onto page 127 of the search results!

Build a brand (a bit of a no-brainer!)

So what can they do to help rectify this? The best solution for many of them will be to clean up their site, create new compelling content, get rid of any unrelated link partners and focus their strategy on building a respected brand, not on building top positions in search sites. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that good search engine visibility isn’t an important element of any online marketing campaign. I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be the only one and it should not drive your overall strategy, it should just simply support it.

For your organic search engine market efforts to work they need to be interlinked with other non-search related activity. Search engines like Google are complex beasts and they analyse your site in so many different ways. They not only look at what content you have and who you link with but there is also evidence to suggest they measure other off-site factors such as how many mentions your site gets on other authority sites, how people interact with your site when they land on it and so on.

The simple fact of the matter is that if you want to do well in Google you need to build a strong online brand and that involves promoting your site using a multitude of online and offline channels not just search. Like I said everything is interlinked and if you have a site with a strong brand behind it then it will make its way to the top of Google.

Don’t get banished to the online desert

Building your business model around a search engine is very risky and not a smart thing to do. Why? Because you have no control over the search engine. If you solely rely on the search engine to provide you with leads and customers then you’re doing far worse than putting all your eggs in the one basket – you’ll end up in the online desert with tumbleweed blowing through your site. Remember search engines don’t owe you anything; they don’t care how great your site looks. What they do care about is what your target audience think and we all know that weak brands never make it to the top!

About the Author: Damon Lightley is a search engine marketing consultant at Site Visibility Ltd. Site Visibility is a UK based search engine marketing company >> http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk

Source: www.isnare.com

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Adsense Or Yahoo Publisher?

2005-12-22T20:06:00.000-08:00

By Chuck Crawford

Lately many of my customers have been asking me this question:

"Which program is better? Adsense or Yahoo Publisher?"
It sounds simple, but the answer is not. The reason being is that both programs work well, but both also have different places when considering whether or not to use them for a specific website.

Here's why.

Adsense has been around for a while now, and at the moment has the lion's share of the market in the PPC (Pay Per Click) game. But anyone who has been promoting them on their websites will tell you that the payouts have also gotten gradually smaller as time has gone on. Why? Well it's easy, they are still the best game in town, so they aren't worried about losing their publishers to another PPC.

But then came Yahoo Publisher. Which unless you've been living under a rock for the past ten years, you already know the name, and know how big that company is. And with the purchase of Overture, Yahoo is coming into the game well equipped and ready for a fight.

So, what's the difference between the two?

Here is what I've been able to learn from my own websites. Yahoo, overall, is paying more per click then Adsense. But before you jump from this article and start changing your code, read on a bit more.

Yahoo Publisher seems to be paying more then Adsense on similar content, BUT... Their ads are not nearly as contextually targeted as Adsense. So this can present a problem for website owners. For example, if you have a website that it's primary topic is 'HOME MORTGAGES', Adsense will display ads that only link to mortgage sites. But that's not true with Yahoo Publisher. Yahoo Publisher might display some mortgage ads, but also might display a Payday Loan ad (BTW if you need a payday loan, check out this page http://www.thegiftedone.com ), Vonage ads (Vonage must pay them some big money, as they seem to be the default when the script doesn't know what to do), or some other ad that does not relate to the content of your website.

How do you choose which program is right for your site? This depends on the site itself and the type of surfers that frequent it. If you have a site that is highly targeted for a certain keyword, then I would suggest you stay with Adsense. This will keep the ads focused and targeted to your customers, presenting them with content that they will click. If they came to read about cooking recipes, they probably won’t click the Vonage ad. Here’s an example of a content targeted website: http://voip.magicanswers.com

However, if your site is more of a surfer hangout, where people go when they are bored, or if your site covers a multitude of topics, then you might be better off loading it up with Yahoo Publisher ads. This type of surfer is more likely to click an ad that’s off topic, which in turn would pay you better.

At this point what it comes down to is the click thru ratio. If monitored closely, you can determine what your surfers like and what they don’t like. What they click and what they don’t click. If one program is not performing well for you, then try the other.

I’m sure that as time goes on, Yahoo Publisher will become more targeted, and surely will be more competitive. With Google’s Adsense as an adversary they have quite a fight on their hands. My advice to you is this. If you have one website, then optimize your PPC links for YOUR website surfers. If you have many, optimize each site accordingly, but do take the time to test each program. Find out which one will pay you more. Whether you own a giant corporation with hundreds of websites, or a home based business branching out to the internet, the bottom line is always the bottom line. Which comes down to the paycheck. A simple test might lead you to more money, which is always the goal.

Till next time,

Chuck Crawford

About the Author: Chuck Crawford is an established expert in web design, traffic development and website financial analysis. He has been helping people design and develop their internet business since 1996.
This article may be reprinted freely as long as all links remain active.
http://www.affiliatewebsitedesign.com
http://www.magicanswers.com
http://www.thegiftedone.com

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How To Build Your Opt-In Mailing List

2005-12-21T22:05:00.000-08:00

By Donald Nelson

“The money is in the list.” This is one of the slogans of internet marketing experts who say that it is very important to build up an opt-in list and then make regular mailings which will enable you to sell your goods and services.

If you doubt this slogan, then you should consult with one of my close friends and colleagues. He has been quietly building his mailing list over the best three years. Recently he sent out a mailing to all his subscribers, asking them to help out with Hurricane Katrina relief work. He was astonished to see that immediately following the mailing the traffic to his website jumped ten-fold over a period of three days and counting. Not only did his traffic increase, his e-book sales and subscriptions to his new course went through the roof. And, there was not one word of a commercial pitch in his message to the list.

What is the secret of his success? Even he is scratching his head. But, really it is not a mystery. He runs several free auto-responder courses from his website, delivering high quality information on health and well-being, topics that are important to all of us. Because the content of his mailings is of a high standard, he has won the trust and confidence of thousands of people. This is what electronic marketers call “pre-selling”. Now, whenever he has something to say, his readers are eager to listen.

If you run a website and do not already have a mechanism for building up a list of interested readers, then you should consider doing it now. Here are a few ways to build your list.

1. Start a periodic newsletter with a subscription form on all the pages of your website.

However, if you want the kind of success that my friend had, you should write good articles, or get quality material from other writers and send it to your list on a regular basis. If you don’t know or don’t already have a mechanism for collecting addresses and mailing a newsletter, you can get a free or paid service from http://www.bravenet.com . More robust newsletter services are offered by Aweber, http://www.aweber.com and from www.topica.com .

2. Offer an auto-responder tutorial course on your website.

People come to the web to find solutions to their problems or answers to their questions. Write a series of how-to articles or information articles and offer them as a series that is sent automatically on a periodic basis whenever people subscribe. You can use an auto-responder service hosted by commercial companies or can, as my friend did, use a simple auto responder script installed on your own server. You can get cgi auto responder script for installation on your own server or if you don’t like installing scripts you can get one from Aweber.

3. Write a small e-book in PDF format and offer it as a free download in exchange for an email address

PDF documents are the industry-standard these days, and if you supply good information that is related to your field of activity, your web visitors will be more than happy to trade their email address for a free download. PDF downloads are also viral; people pass them along to their friends and if your information and links are in the e-book, you are likely to get a wide readership and generate sales from the circulation of the e-book.

4. Publish your articles on other websites and newsletters, mentioning your mailing list in your “resource box.”

One of the best ways to build your list is to get your articles published on other websites and in the electronic newsletters published by web masters in fields related to yours. At the end of these published articles you should put your author information (this is also known as a resource box) and include a hyperlink to your website and a mention that more of your articles are available in your newsletter and give a url where people can sign up for it.

One important thing to consider about list building is that whenever you are offering something, even if it is for free, you must sell it to your readers by describing what it is and how it will benefit them. You can’t succeed with a one-line sentence saying, “Sign up for our free newsletter.” If you have a newsletter, you should give a list of past articles. If you have satisfied subscribers, publish some testimonials.

Every day many people are visiting your website and some of them would like to know more about what you have to say and would like to hear from you on a periodic basis. Give them a chance, by using some of the list-building methods that I have described.

About the Author: Donald Nelson is an editor, web developer and social worker. He is the director of A1-Optimization and provides search engine optimization and other website promotion services from his website http://www.a1-optimization.com .
Source: www.isnare.com

Make Your Website Talk: How To Install Streaming Audio On Your Site

2005-12-20T16:32:00.000-08:00

By Donald Nelson

One of the most important tasks in online selling, and indeed in all selling, is to convince the prospective buyer that you are someone who can be trusted. A nice picture of yourself in your “about” section is helpful, but even more convincing would be a heartfelt audio message in which you explain yourself and introduce your product or service.

If you are thinking that installing a sound capability on your website would be beyond your technical or financial means then I think you will change your mind after you finish reading this article.

There are some online services that provide full audio support but they charge monthly fees and this may be more than you want to invest. However, if you want to add sound with flash buttons to your site on a limited budget then there are several moderately priced downloadable software packages that allow you to do everything, without any technical know-how. They range in price from $40 to $100. Visit the websites of audiomakerpro.com, flashaudiowizard.com or soundstreamer.com, and you will see how these programs work.

Now, if you are like me, a real cheapskate, and you don’t want to spend any money at all but would like your website to talk, then you can use the following method to install a streaming audio file on your website.

First you have to record your message. I was able to use an old software package (CoolEditPro) to record an mp3 message directly on my computer. If you have an MP3 player with a recording capacity you can just record your message and then save it to your computer.

Suppose the message is saved as myintroduction.mp3. If you just upload the file to your server and make a link to that file, it will not stream but will download when someone clicks on the link. In order to make it stream you have to do the following. Open a text file and type one small piece of text: http://www.yourwebsite.com/myintroduction.mp3 (give the location where this file will be) then save this text file with a name such as audiointro.m3u . It is only a text file but it has an extension that makes it look like a sound file. Now, upload the actual audio file myintroduction.mp3 and the text file audiointro.m3u to your server.

In the place where you want someone to listen put a text link or a graphic button linked to the file audiointo.m3u . When someone clicks on this link they will hear the file myintroduction.mp3 streaming from their speakers. It will be played on the default MP3 player of that particular computer, such as Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.

This is poor-person’s streaming audio, but it works. The advantage of the moderately priced packages or the higher priced audio services is that the buttons are nicer and have pause, stop and start functions.

Some audio services claim that adding audio to a website increases conversion rates by 300%. Audio is a tool, if you use it correctly it may indeed be just the thing you need to improve the performance of your website. So choose the method that is convenient for you and try it out.

About the Author: Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor, and social worker. He is the director of A1-Optimization, http://www.a1-optimization.com and provides search engine optimization, copywriting and reciprocal linking services from his website.

Source: www.isnare.com

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Linking Strategy In The Post-Jagger Period

2005-12-18T19:31:00.000-08:00

By Donald Nelson

“Please take down my link.” I never thought I would live to see the day that I would get an email like this, but the latest Google update has caused some people to panic. This particular person thought that his site would be penalized if he had a link coming from a site in an unrelated field. Well, following the Jagger update how should we approach linking? Should we “nuke” our reciprocal links directories altogether? Or is there a sensible way to continue linking?
Google doesn’t explain the details of their updates and algorithm changes. It is widely thought they made moves to crack down on spamming and techniques designed to fool their indexing efforts. And possibly sites that added lots of irrelevant links in a short period were penalized. Google representatives have also stated publicly, in forums, that if you link to a “bad neighborhood” you could be penalized.

I can’t get inside the Google algorithm anymore than anyone else, but I strongly believe that linking should go on in a “natural” way, in a way that predates the linking craze which Google itself helped to create. Here are some elements of a natural linking strategy.

1. Link to the kinds of sites that will provide good resources for your web visitors.

This is actually the very idea behind Google’s system of Page Rank. Sites that are “cool”, that are informative and interesting will get “votes” or links from other sites on the basis of their value as a web resource. So, link to those sites that are worthy of being in your link directory.

2. Don’t link blindly just because someone is willing to give you a link in return.

Check out any site that is proposing a link exchange with you. Are they a possible spam site? A site that has no content and only ads, or a site in fields such as online gambling, pornography, or similar areas would be suspect. If the site has a page rank of 0 and also has none of its interior pages indexed by Google, then it may have been penalized. You can tell how many of its pages are indexed by making this search: site:www.suspectsite.com .

3. Link to those sites that cater to your target audience.

In the early days of the Internet, the main incentive to link was that it would provide you with some targeted traffic. This concept is still valid. If you have a site about yoga, then find sites whose visitors would likely be interested in yoga and propose a link exchange with them. You may or may not raise your page rank with this exchange, but you will get the kind of visitors that you are looking for.

4. Get One-Way Non Reciprocal Links

There are two primary ways to get these valuable one-way links. The first way is to make your site so informative, so useful, so authoritative, that people will mention it or list it without you having to do anything at all. This is of course not an easy task, but it should be a target. You should strive to be the best in your field and if you can approach this goal then you will be noticed and you will get links without even asking for them.

Another way to get one-way links is to write articles and get them published on other websites. You are probably an “expert” in the field covered by your website. Share your expertise with others in the form of 600-800 word articles. You can distribute your articles in the article distribution groups of Yahoo! Go to http://groups.yahoo.com and make a search for article publishing or free reprint articles and you will find a number of places where you can place your article. Remember to include a link back to your site in the resource box at the end of the article.
So, don’t press the panic button. Keep your link and resource directories but build them up in a way that adds value to your site and helps you to get an extra flow of targeted traffic. If you have the skill to get non-reciprocal links, then by all means get them.

About the Author: Donald Nelson is a web-developer, social worker and editor. He is the proprietor of A1-Optimization, http://www.a1-optimization.com and provides search engine optimization, copywriting, reciprocal linking and other web promotion services.

Source: www.isnare.com

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Website Optimization: Bring More Traffic To Your Site The Right Way

2005-12-17T18:30:00.000-08:00

By Donald Nelson

Search engine optimization is not difficult to understand. You don’t have to be a mathematical wizard to get the basic idea. Website optimization is simply the art and science of building web pages that provide the most relevant answers to the various queries that people make when they use a search engine.

The person who is making a query wants an answer to her question, and the search engine is trying to provide the best answer. Your job, as a website manager, is to provide web pages that will satisfy the person making the query and the search engine as well. Search engine optimization is not about tricking the search engines. You can get away with a trick for a short time, but if you are in business for the long run it is better to base your success on solid procedures. Here is what you can do to satisfy the end users and the search engines.

1. Find out how your would-be customers use a search engine.

What terms do they use when they are searching for your products? This is the $64,000 question. If you target the right words you will get the kind of traffic you want, the people who will buy your product or service. If you target the wrong words you may not get any traffic at all. This part of Internet optimization is known as keyword research. Find out all the different combinations that people use when they look for a website such as yours. The overture.com search term suggestion tool will provide some help or you can use the paid service at www.wordtracker.com

2. Build Web pages based on your keywords and Key Phrases.

It is a mistake to think that you can just sprinkle your keywords in the meta tags of any old web page and then get a high position in the search engines. If your page is only tangentially related to the query it will not get a high ranking in the search engines. However if you have written a web page that provides solid information directly related to the search term, then any surfer who ends up there will be satisfied. And, if you present your information properly, this is the kind of page that the search engines want to deliver to their users.

3. The last step in optimization is to present your material properly.

The best website promotion tip that anyone can give you is not to cheat in this process. Don’t stuff your keywords into your copy unnaturally or write them in invisible text on the bottom of your web page. If your copy is really about a particular keyword or key phrase, then simply place it in the title tag, the description tag , the headlines on the page and in text link on the page. You can use a keyword density checker to see if you have used your keyword enough. You can also just read your copy aloud to see how you are doing. If it doesn’t sound right, you may have overdone it.

If you do your web page optimization in this three-step way everyone will end up satisfied: the web visitor, the search engines and you.

About the Author: Donald Nelson is an editor, social worker and web developer. He has worked on the Internet since 1995 and presently runs A1-Optimization http://www.a1-optimization.com , a firm providing affordable search engine optimization, website copywriting, reciprocal linking and article publishing services.

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Six Reasons Why You Should Jump Into Article Marketing

2005-12-16T20:41:00.000-08:00

By Donald Nelson

If you are working to become a successful online entrepreneur then you have probably already tried to increase traffic and generate sales through search engine positioning and pay per click advertising. Have you also tried article marketing? Article marketing is the strategy of writing articles related to your business and publishing them on other websites and in the ezines of complementary companies with a link back to your site. This form of online promotion is a very effective way to build traffic and boost sales. Below you will find the main ways that article marketing can benefit you.

1. It is your best way to get known as an “expert” in your field.

Why should someone buy from you and not from one of the thousands of your competitors that are also online? The few lines that you write in your “about us” section of your website may not be enough to set you apart from the others. However, if your potential customer sees your name on well-written and informative articles appearing on several websites around the Internet, then she will regard you as an expert in your field. The more you publish, the greater your recognition will be and the more your reputation will be enhanced.

2. Informative articles build trust in your ability to provide a good product or service.

If you are selling online your most important asset is to be seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy. When one of your articles is selected by another publisher and placed on a website or included in an ezine, that publisher is in effect endorsing you. This kind of endorsement will impress the readers of those articles and they will feel more confident in doing business with you, especially if your article is published in an ezine or on a website which they already respect.

3. Your articles help to “pre-sell” your products and services.

It is the quality of website traffic that counts, not necessarily the quantity. The best kind of traffic you can get is from people who have read one of your articles, and have liked what they have read. These web visitors come into your website with an eagerness to know more and are much more likely to buy something from you then someone who comes onto your site “cold” or without any introduction to your ideas.

4. Article writing is a great way to generate content for your ezines and your own website.

Although you can look at article marketing as an outreach activity designed primarily for publication elsewhere, you can also use these articles in your own newsletters and on your own website. Keeping in touch with your customers and clients through a regular newsletter is an important part of doing business online. However, you need a steady flow of good material to really be successful. If your articles are good enough to be published on someone else’s website, then by all means publish them first in your own newsletters and on your website.

5. Articles published on other sites help to build one-way links to your website.

Link building is one of the keys to making a website successful, but, as with traffic, it is the quality of the links that matter, rather than the shear number. Each time one of your articles is placed on another website, you will get a link back to your site. These are one-way links because you did not have to trade links to get them. Usually these links come from pages with fewer outbound links than the standard link pages where your link is usually placed when making a reciprocal arrangement. One-way links coming from pages with few outbound links help to build Page Rank more effectively than reciprocal links.

6. You can generate a lot of money from articles that are published elsewhere.

I am conducting an online business from one of the most unlikely locations on the Earth, Albania. Despite this handicap, I have had people call me up on the phone and go on to order thousands of dollars worth of services. All of this has been the result of articles about website promotion and search engine optimization which I have written and published over the past few years. If I can do it from Albania, think of what you can do from your place.

About the Author: Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He is the proprietor of A1-Optimization, http://www.a1-optimization.com and provides search engine optimization, website copywriting and article writing services.

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Counters: The Importance Of Tracking Your Visitors

2005-12-15T21:56:00.000-08:00

By Tim Querrey

When trying to optimize your website, you will need to gather all the information about the few visitors that you now have. This will help you make improvements to your site and increase your traffic. One of the best ways to gather this statistical data is through the use of a counter.

Some of you may not know that dropping a counter onto each page of your website will not only show you the number of hits to that page, but also logs tidbits of important information too.

The following is a list of some of the data that is collected from a stat-counter.

Screen Resolution:

Knowing the screen resolution tells you how the majority of visitors view your web pages. For example: If your design is based around 800 x 600 screen resolution, and the majority of you visitors use a 1024 x 768 resolution, you may want to redesign your layout.

Keyword:

If a visitor was directed to your site by a search engine, then knowing the search term used will help in optimizing your page around important keywords relevant to you sites topic.

Length Of Visit:

This is important that if everyone is showing up to your site, but doesn't seem to stay, then check for slow loading of you page or some other reason that might turn away visitors.

Enter-Page/ Exit-Page

If your visitors are leaving from the same page they first come to, then you will need to figure out why they are not visiting other pages. Maybe the links to the other pages are hidden by are toomuch clutter, too small or non-descriptive.

Returning Visitors:

This will help you determine which pages your visitors find important. You can then concentrate more effort on those topics.

There are many more tidbits of statistical data a stat-counter can provide, and best of all you can get them for free. Theses services are provided for the benefit of building back links, and in hopes to sell you upgrades.

If you think that a counter looks tacky, you have the option to make it invisible. This will still enable you to collect important statistical data without your visitors seeing the counter itself.

Conclusion:

So if your serious about getting more traffic, you must first learn all you can from the traffic you already have, and a free stat-counter is one of the best places to start.

About the Author: Visit the authors informational site about Home Based Businesses

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So What's So Special About Private Label Articles Anyway?

2005-12-14T21:01:00.000-08:00

By Allan Wilson

For many years now there has been a select group of smart individuals using articles as content on their websites which has resulted with them achieving the following things:

1. The ability to create lots of websites in different niches

2. Recognition as an authority in those specific niches because of quality content

3. Websites that endure the test of time and rate well in the search engines

4. Big profits from affiliate programs and/or Google Adsense

Of course the big secret is that these guys have not written the content themselves. Think about it... It would be an impossible task to write hundreds of pages of quality content for so many websites.

So how have they been doing it?

By paying Ghost Writers to write articles for them. There are a few places online where you can hire Ghost writers for anywhere from $5.00 to more then $25.00 per article.

Up until now these guys have pretty much had everything to themselves because let's face it not too many people can afford to hire ghost writers to consistently write articles for them. For every 200 new pages you would be facing a bill of $1000.00 on the lower end of the scale.

However times have changed...

Enter Private Label Articles.

There have been a number of private label article membership sites appear in recent times which now has provided the opportunity for the average person to create quality search engine friendly websites at a fraction of the cost.

Think about these membership sites as a sort of co-op where the owner pays the up front cost of hiring ghost writers to create articles and the members pay a small monthly fee to that owner to cover his or her costs and make a profit.

The beauty of private label articles is that there is no copywrite that comes with them so you can change the articles in anyway you wish.

You can create new titles, add more keywords, add more paragraphs, mix and match articles, link to affiliate programs and the biggest benefit of all you can create your own resource box which links back to your website.

Thanks to private label articles finding website content is now just that little bit easier.

About the Author: Want 200 private label articles every month? Then visit Allan Wilson's
http://www.nichehomeimprovementarticles.com and get started today.

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Using Private Label Articles To Create Profit Pulling Article Directories

2005-12-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

By Allan Wilson

By far one of the easiest and most rewarding ways to profit from private label articles is to use them as the foundation for creating your own article directory however NOT in the way the general crowd are doing it.

I'm talking about NICHE article directories such as Home Improvement Article Directory, Health Article Directory, etc.

Why Niche?

Because everyone and their dog in recent months have tried to start their own article directory and almost all of them are struggling to make them work.

They are all making the same mistake. There are already plenty of big successful article directories online and competing against these guys is always going to be tough work.

But going niche gives you the edge.

My reasoning behind this is the same as in any over saturated market.

Take the popular field of online dating. There are already very established and successful dating sites online that have virtually cornered the market and any newcomers struggle to even make a dent.

But those who have gone Niche are succeeding. Dating sites have sprung up for Christians, Jews, Gays, Horse Lovers and so on.

Some have succeeded going what I call sub-niche: For example within the Christian niche there are sites for Catholics, Pentecostals, etc.

I hope you see what I mean by going niche and with this concept in mind when using private label articles to create your own article directories go niche.

By joining a private label article membership you receive 200 brand new articles every month that you can expand your article directory with. If you stick with it in one year you would have an article directory website consisting of a minimum of 2400 pages.

Every one of those pages earning income from Google Adsense, or from affiliate programs or capturing email addresses for your list.

An even more important advantage of an article directory with your private label articles is in the fact that you can add your own resource box to each and every article.

What does this mean?

It means everytime another webmaster uses your articles they are linking back to your websites increasing your search engine exposure and in turn your profit potential.

About the Author: Want 200 private label articles every month? Then visit Allan Wilson's http://www.nichehomeimprovementarticles.com and get started today.

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Stephen King, Radio Plays And Online Marketing

2005-12-12T20:48:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Titchmarsh

What do these 3 things have in common? It might seem a bit of a jump right now, but there is a link between the writer Stephen King, Radio plays of the fifties and internet marketing.... Words

Let me start from the beginning, I was reading "Danse Macabre" by Stephen King, a book in which he gives his take on horror fiction. In one section he is writing about the radio plays of the early 1950's, and how they gripped the listener by not giving you all the details.

The plays would have a background sound of a plane and the voice actors would set the scene they were in. The listener would build his own image of the plane and the problems the actors had, building his own sense of fear, and place himself there, that made it all the more scary, and built the drama for the listener. The main thing was, as radio is an aural only medium, the listener filled in the visual side for his or herself. The result was that they got a great thrill ride, just from words and sounds.

So that's Stephen King linked to the radio plays, so how do we get to internet marketing?

As I was reading about how successful the plays were on radio, because of the listeners imagination filling in the detail, I realised how we are trying to do the same as online marketers.

When we try to sell a product, we are using words to try to entice the website viewer into our little world, just like the radio plays did. We have to get the potential customer on our website to fill in the blanks, and visualise how our product will help him.

In the same way the best radio plays left out the complete description of what was happening and the listener filled in the blanks, we need to leave out some details, and let the viewer fill his own mind with the picture of how his problem will look from his particular perspective and how he'll feel when it's solved by our product.

Our sales pages need to draw the customer inside our world, but fill in the blanks from his own one. We need to pique his imagination just like those radio plays, and just like Stephen King does in his books, the most scary of which are the ones where the reader is left to make the monster real. In our case that monster is the perceived problem, and the hero, is you coming in the nick of time to fell the monster and save the day with your world beating product.

About the Author: Douglas Titchmarsh is the owner of several websites including http://www.cashinonline.info and http://www.thediscountebookstore.com He also publishes the DEWDigest e-zine which you can subscribe to by sending an email to dewdigest-44@bizgoldhosting.com

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Useful Traffic From Traffic Exchanges

2005-12-11T18:13:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Titchmarsh

There are a lot of negative comments made about traffic exchanges, but is it all justified?

Probably the most common negative people give about using click exchange, or traffic exchange programs is that the traffic from them is useless. In many cases this is due to the way people try to make use of the traffic from these exchange programs.

Most of the webmasters who sign up for traffic exchanges are trying to use a direct sales page and consequently make no sales from the traffic they get. When you look at how these exchanges work it's not hard to see why.

After you have surfed to earn your credits, or paid for your page views with cash, your page will be shown to other people in the program. When your page is shown though, you will only get a short time to make an impact on your prospect, and many of them are going to be only scanning for something of immediate use as they will be trying to get as many views as possible to get their site seen. Many of them won't even be looking for the information your site offers either although some of the better traffic exchanges like Traffic Swarm will have categories so you can target the audience who will be most interested in your site, so these are the best ones to make use of.

So how can you make better use of the traffic from traffic exchanges?

As we already stated, the use of more targeted exchanges is a good start, so that the people seeing the pages you put up are actually interested in them to start with. That will improve the chances of action being taken in the first instance.

The second thing you can do to make people notice your site, among the hundreds they will surf during a traffic exchange session, is to be different. Many of the users of the traffic exchanges will be in the same programs and using the same pages to display. You can get more even from these same sites by making your own leads page for it.

Your pages in traffic exchanges will also need to be fast loading, as if it isn't loaded in time, it can't be seen before the prospect moves on.

So you need a fast loading, unique page with a short reading time, but what to do with the prospect on the page is the main issue.

Get them to sign up for an email list, be it a course, newsletter, announcement or whatever just capture their email address while they are there. This way instead of getting one shot at the prospect you will get as many as you can email them. Instead of just the time they pass through your page while they surf a traffic exchange, you can send them to your page several times, and also to other pages later. As always a fr.ee offer will make the deal more tempting to sign up for too, so offer a bribe to get the email address.

Summing it all up, there are negative points to traffic exchanges, but by using them in a different way to most other users, they can be made to work in your favour. You can get useful traffic from traffic exchanges.

About the Author: Douglas Titchmarsh is the owner of several websites including http://www.cashinonline.info and http://www.thediscountebookstore.com He also publishes the CashInOnline Chronicle
e-zine which you can subscribe to by sending an email to douglastitchmarsh@getresponse.com

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Profit Quickly From Content You Didn't Write

2005-12-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Titchmarsh

Content, without it your website, your e-zine and your profits will suffer. With good quality content, all three will benefit you and your customers much more.

The trouble with good quality content is the time it takes to produce it. Content takes time to write and many of us find it difficult to even start writing our own content for sites and e-zines. Luckily it is possible to use other peoples content for your site or newsletter, and they will be happy to give you the right to use it freely, or sell you it at a knockdown price.

Finding quality content can be as easy as going to one of the many article directories where people submit their articles for others to use. The drawbacks of this kind of content is that the author usually requires a link back to their site or newsletter, and as they are easy to get the content may be used by many other websites and ezines.

If you feel you can make use of these articles, then search for your desired subject by keywords at the article directories such as www.dir.com or http://www.debsarticlesite.com Remember to check the terms before you use an article but most can be used as long as the authors resource box remains intact, and kept with the article content.

Another method of getting high quality content to use on your site, newsletter or other places is to join a content site such as Ready Made Content http://www.cashinonline.info/recommends/rmc.php or Your Own Articles at http://www.cashinonline.info/recommends/yoa.php each of these sites offer private label content you can re use in a lot of different ways, but as always check the licensing terms for the content you wish to use.

So now you know where to find quality articles and content, but how can you profit with it?

There are several ways to profit quickly from the content you just found, one of the easiest is to use Google Adsense http://www.google.com/adsense to add small adverts to webpages. Using the content from article directories or other sources above, you can make a themed website around a subject, add the Adsense code and upload and submit the site to search engines. A good subject will start to pull in some money via Google Adsense quite soon after traffic starts flowing.
While you are making your content site you can add some affiliate links to related products. A quick and easy way to make some affiliate profits from the content is to add links to products sold at ClickBank, although their site doesn't have a search facility, there is one available at http://www.cashinonline.info/clickbank/cbsearch.htm so you can research products by keyword and add your ClickBank id as an affiliate and add related products to your content site.

The next tips don't relate to Articles from directories but will work for the ready made content from the article and content Private Label suppliers.

If you have private label rights to the content then you can change it around and re-author it into a special report around a theme. This report can then contain affiliate links to products related to the theme. You can even pick one product and make a series of reports around it using the content, and give the reports away. Using an autoresponder, you could setup several reports to be sent over a few days, and start an email list to which you can post other offers later.

Private label content can also be used as the basis of a complete book. By using selected articles you can create a high quality ebook which can be sold, used as a giveaway to attract subscribers to a newsletter, or even contain adverts which other companies pay you to put into your book.

These are just a few of the ways quality content could be used to make a profit. Using these as a starting point, you should be able to use content in many other profitable ways. All the resources for profiting from content are available, from article site builders such as the one at http://www.articles4sitetraffic.com to ebook creators and autoresponders, use your imagination and profit quickly from content you didn't even have to write.

About the Author: Douglas Titchmarsh has several content sites which pull in revenue linked from http://www.thediscountebookstore.com/extras
as well as running 2 email newsletters you can join at http://www.cashinonline.info/subscribe.htm
and http://www.thediscountebookstore.com/gep

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