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How To Select The Best Keywords For Your Site

07 2008 Thursday

By Jennifer Horowitz in Featured

As more websites compete for valuable search engine “real estate,” Search Engine Optimization is becoming much more complex.

And *keyword selection* remains one of the most important (yet least understood) pieces of the puzzle.

“Why keyword selection is so important and how to select the best keywords for your website”

To clear up the mystery, let’s break it down into bite-sized pieces by answering our most frequently asked questions about keyword selection:

“What’s the difference between a keyword and a keyword phrase? And which should I use?”

Put simply, a keyword is a single word, like “Maui.” But a keyword phrase is a more descriptive string of two or more words, like “Maui vacations.” Your approach to keyword selection will vary, depending on your industry. For certain niche markets, using single words can be a good strategy (as long as they are specific to your product or service). But regardless of your industry…

Well-researched keyword phrases will attract quality, targeted visitors to your website who *specifically* want what you are selling.

Let’s assume you sell Maui vacations, and your website is listed at the top of the search results for the keywords “Maui” and “Maui vacations.” Let’s look at the characteristics of two groups of visitors you’d attract.

Those who perform a search on “Maui” are searching for a wide variety of topics. Such as Maui’s history and culture, snorkeling, botanic gardens, hiking trails, sailing, golfing, and yes - some will be looking for Maui vacations. But only a small percentage of the people who perform a search on the keyword “Maui” are qualified prospect for your vacation packages.

Now think about the prospects who find you by searching for “Maui vacations.” Every prospect who performs this search is a qualified prospect for you. And by getting a top ranking with this more descriptive keyword phrase, you attract people who are more likely to become paying customers!

You see, someone who wants to take a vacation to Maui is not likely to search for “Maui.” They’re not going to search for “Vacations.” And they’re not going to search for “Hawaii” either. They’re much more likely to enter a keyword phrase like “Maui vacations.”

Today, more than ever, your ideal prospects are going to enter precisely what they want to find, rather than general, open-ended terms. Which means your keyword selection must target your ideal customer with laser-beam focus.

At the same time, the search engines and directories themselves are also becoming much more strict with the pages that they’ll accept and index. They’ll be watching your submissions like a hawk to make sure that they’re completely relevant to the topic reflected by your keyword phrase.

In a previous article, we weighed the pros and cons of doing your search engine positioning yourself versus hiring a reputable company to handle this time consuming task for you. Many of you have wisely realized that it can be much more time-effective and cost-effective to leave your search engine placement in the hands of experts, so you van focus on your core business.

So the most important question of all now becomes:

“If I hire a company to do my search engine placement for me, should I be expected to provide my own keywords and keyword phrases, or do they have a responsibility to advise me?”

Frankly, any company that doesn’t provide hands on consultation in this area is not helping you to maximize your search engine rankings. Keyword selection is the entire foundation on which your search engine campaign is built. Can you imagine hiring a contractor to build your house… only to have him say, “Okay, YOU lay all the bricks and pour the concrete - then I’ll do the rest?”

It’s senseless.

Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

How To Create Profitable Back Links For More Web Traffic

07 2008 Thursday

By Carl Davidson in Featured

Back links are really important in the world of Search Engine Optimization. If you want your site to do well in search engine listing results you have to have a good page ranking. If you want a higher page ranking you’re going to need to create lots and lots of back links.

It takes time and talent to do this but it will be worth it. Google receives 3,000 search inquiries a second. That’s 180,000 per minute. If you want your share of this avalanche of free business, you will need to work hard and work smart.

Back links are simply a link from somewhere else to your site. It sounds easy to create them and it is easy, but you will need thousands of these links and you will need new ones every month. They may only take a minute to create but to create hundreds or thousands take lots of time and talent.

How Many Links Do You Need?

Lots and lots. You need more than the competitor that is ranked number one with Google. If you do that, you will be number one. Let’s take a look at a few areas and see how many we would need to dominate that field. - Top company in “search engine optimization” had 52,100 links - Top company in “web site design” had 54,200 links - Top Company in “custom T-shirts” had 72,000 links - Top Company in “Tiffany Lamps” had 825

As you can see, the more competitive the area, the more links it takes to be number one. Plan to add as many links as you can every month for as long as you stay in business. Remember that your competitors are adding new links every month too, so the number of links you need keeps growing.

Beware Of Short Cuts To Success

As you surf the web, you will see sites that advertise short cuts to link creation. They offer to sell you hundreds of links. As you evaluate these services, realize that the quality of your links is important to your success. The sites you link to must concern themselves with similar topics to your site or they may be disregarded by the search engines. Also, the quality of the linking site is important. If the site is known for spam or porn, you may be seriously penalized search engine rankings just for being associated with it. Buying back links is fraught with danger. Choosing the site you link and actually creating the link to is a much better alternative.

Using Articles To Create Links

Writing informative articles is a great way to create back links. You can use the articles on your site and publish them to article directory sites. Every site that publishes your article will create a back link to your site. Other sites may pick up your article and publish it creating “viral” publishing and more links. You should assign someone to write one or two articles every month without fail or hire an outside source to do this for you.

Using Video To Create Links

Another great way to create links and sell as well is to create video clips that tell your story or sell your product in an interesting way. You can use these clips to sell on your site and you can publish them to video sites like youtube.com, metacafe.com, viddler.com and many others. These get great rankings in the search engines. You should assign someone to write one or two articles every month without fail or hire an outside source to do this for you.

Using Social Networks To Create Links

Social networks like myspace.com are great ways to create quality links. Myspace is one of the most visited sites on the web, so links from it make your site rank as very popular. To create links from social sites, open an account , link to others with similar interests, and make comments that include a link to your site.

Using Blogs To Create Links Blogs want comments from readers. Visit blogs on similar topics to yours and on any popular blogs, leave a comment on a posting. Your comment can contain a link to your site. This should not be just self serving but should continue the dialog. For example, if your site deals with web marketing and you see a blog article on meta tags, you might make a comment like, “excellent article with good points. I also found good meta tag tools at www.yoursite.com” One great way to find good blogs is to set up a Google alert for all keywords you use and you will be notified anytime a post is made with those key words. Then, you simply visit the blog and make a comment.

That Sounds Like A Lot Of Work

It is a huge amount of work but just keep remembering those 180,000 inquiries per second. If you do not have the time to do this kind of work, there are micro ad agencies on the web who can do it for you. Outsourcing this work is very cost effective as it allows you to keep selling and managing while someone else creates the links that drive your site to the top of the inquiry list.

Carl Davidson - This article discusses how to create profitable back links for generating web traffic through content creation. It disucsses using artilces, videos, blogs and social networking to create web traffic and successfully create web traffic though mweb marketing that does not cost time. Many companies outsource this work to firms like ours. Visit http://www.proto-sell.com . This article was produced by Sales And Management Solutions Inc.

Blackhat SEO: Protect Yourself by Recognizing The Bad Guys

07 2008 Thursday

By Bill Platt in Featured

Over the years, webmasters have been told that they should want to avoid Blackhat SEO techniques in connection with their own websites. In general, I agree with this statement. But, by obtaining a deeper understanding of Blackhat search engine optimization, one could actually learn a bit about how to better his or her own positioning in the search engine results.

White Hat vs. Black Hat Search Optimization

Whitehat and Blackhat SEO is a comparison that is a take-off from the old cowboy westerns, where the good guys always wore white hats and the bad guys always wore black hats. So, in theory, we can assume that Whitehat practitioners are the good guys of SEO, and Blackhat practitioners are the bad guys of the industry.

Google Share Their Ranking Philosophy

07 2008 Thursday

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

In an official post on the Google Blog called Introduction to Google Ranking, Amit Singhal, Google Fellow in charge of the ranking team, has revealed some fascinating insights into the way Google search results are collated and ranked. In the process, he’s also busted a few common myths surrounding their elusive algorithm.

Here are some of the tidbits from Amit’s post that I found most interesting:

While web search is the most used Google search service, the same ranking algorithms are also used, with modifications, for other Google search services, including Images, News, YouTube, Maps, Product Search and Book Search.
Amit claims there is no manual intervention of search results, meaning that the final ordering of the results is decided by their algorithms using the contributions of the greater Internet community, not manually by Google.
Whenever Google return less than ideal results for any query in any language in any country, they use that as an inspiration for future improvements. In Google’s opinion, a broken query is just a symptom of a potential improvement to be made to their ranking algorithm.
Google make about ten ranking changes every week and their engineers understand exactly why a page was ranked the way it was for a given query.
Google stand by their clear written policies for websites and do take action on sites that are in violation of those policies or for other reasons (e.g. legal requirements, child porn, viruses/malware, etc).

Impulse Surfing, Click Triggers and Keywords

07 2008 Wednesday

By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

Since no two people think or surf alike, the keywords each employ are susceptible returning search results and click triggers that can either promote impulse surfing (much like impulse shopping) or settle in to a relevant result that encourages conversion.

Since you never really know where you will end up when you use a search engine, as a site owner, the daunting task of second guessing to identifying keywords that convert can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, unless you know where to look or where and how to focus your research.Since there are no rules of search, prospective customers can type in the most obscure long-tail terms to identify an objective query. As a result, considering how to position your pages, either laser like and precise for competitive keywords or broad and nebulous to funnel and convert broad match or related traffic.

Regardless of your best effort, semantic word stemming occurs over time when you create enough content about a topic. As a result your site starts to appear for numerous related phrases (where potentially any two words on your pages are keywords). The more supporting information you have on a topic, the higher you can rank for other semantic variations.

Keep in mind that over 30% of all searches are unique (which means that even search engines have never seen the combination before) so broad match and keyword stemming are excellent tools to find keywords that hang in the balance. Not to mention a prospect used to finding results through PPC (pay per click) sponsored advertisements searches differently than someone who understands search engine semantics and is used to being specific enough to evoke the appropriate keywords in a query for organic search.

The distinction between those who type in “search engine optimization company” than those who try to find the same result using “make my site rank higher” are two different personalities. Both have subjective mindsets that cognize and perceive context, words and concepts differently and each is unique to their own comfort zone, exposure and life experiences and as a result. Just as no two people are alike, no two people search alike which is a good thing if you take that in consideration when optimizing your pages.

Both individuals are susceptible to their own unique emotional triggers that could occur at any time as a result of skimming the returned search result snippets. Just like impulse shopping when you go into a store with one purpose in mind and come out with 40 additional items that mysteriously jumped into your shopping cart, much in the same way impulse surfing can take you to the most obscure pages and websites as a result of an inkling of an impulse or search.

The snippet for those unfamiliar with the term, are the 255 characters under the main link of the returned search result. This information is consistent “if you use the meta description tag” or if you opt not to, search engines will piece together a description of their own extracting content from the page or the site to match the query.

Surfing prospects can be hooked by any one of the keywords or associated “call to action” from the search results, that alone may be enough for a prospect to abort the original intention long enough to investigate your page to determine if it is a relevant result.

If enough of the factors they seek are present, or you have clearly delineated a clear path to a target that does chime in with their intent, then chances are you will have one more visitor perusing about with the intention to purchase (if that is your objective).

On a side-note, where they are in the sales cycle also can influence which modifiers you should focus on (using gap analysis) to find related searches you may not have considered. Keywords like pricing, rates, on sale, discount, affordable or other modifiers all come into play under this premise.

Now for the application:

If you have an analytics program, check your server logs or keywords that delivered traffic to your pages for the past 90 days, look at keyword instead of key phrase. From there, look at the highest combination of broad match terms to find the keywords delivering the most traffic to your site.

For example we created a post called “Using Related Search to find Google’s Most Searched Keywords”, and prior to that one month before we did a tandem two part post for called “Optimizing your Site for the Most Search Keywords” and the same title with a slight variation “Optimizing the Most Searched Keywords to Target your Niche” (using pages in tandem is an excellent SEO strategy).

As a result we gained more “broad match” traffic than most competitive keywords day and night from the links and keywords arching across the semantic bridge to create relevance (not to mention a double listing in search results for a 200% increase in conversion).

Using another post as an example about “Action Words” titled; “How to Use Action Words To Increase Traffic and Reader Response” created to work in tandem with another post about “Creating a Clear Call to Action for Conversion” had the same effect, topical relevance which is a precursor to website authority for those keywords.

The fact they are linked through the blog and have an RSS feed are enough to push it through for the first 30-60 days, after that you should go back to your server logs or analytics software and look for the phrases or pages that are dropping back a page or so, create a related post and freshen up the keywords again to set off a chain reaction / traffic stampede for anything remotely related in your website.

This is a process based on virtual theming, the process of using related keywords to deep link to pages specifically about the keyword. When used properly not only can you squeeze more traffic from a page than ever thought imaginable, but you can keep content lively and active in search engines while creating multiple double listings along the way to dominate search results. The good thing about it, you control the content, depending on what your write about.

So it is through the process of analysis, such as the basic technique outlined above that puts you in the driver’s seat of how you target competitive keywords and everything in between.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Five Organic Website Traffic Tips that Work

07 2008 Wednesday

By Billy Baker in Featured

Now your website is up and running, don’t think you can just sit back and get traffic to your website without lifting a finger. It is not that easy; well, it can be if you know what to do. Think of your website as organic, something that continually evolves and grows into the future. So how are you going to get website traffic? I will give some tips here in principle.

Then, I will take you to more detail and then I’ll give you access to traffic knowledge you possibly can’t get anywhere else on the internet or in a book. Let’s take it one step at a time.

You have done everything right. Now you need to let people know you exist. Maybe you are wondering if you should buy website traffic or, maybe, if there are things you can learn to get more website traffic more quickly and easily.

Some ways to improve your website traffic include content and article marketing, in-bound linking, Web 2 strategies, free website directories and search engine optimization. If you do nothing, you will likely get very little traffic.

1. Content and Article Marketing

To get traffic you need top quality content on your website. If you don’t, any visitors you do get will click away from your website immediately and move to the next one in the list.

Support your content with article marketing. Write good quality articles relevant to your website’s content and submit them to online directories.

This will help get you noticed and listed in the most popular search engine directories. Remember to stick with quality. Check places known for their stringent approach toward quality such as ezinearticles.com to get an idea of what you should be doing.

2. Creating Links

Start a link campaign. The best way is to get in-bound links commonly known as back-links from similar or complementary website owners. Another way to create links is to make informed comments on blogs and forums that allow you a link to your website address. This is effective and many will click your link simply out of curiosity, especially if you have interesting things to say in your field. But remember, it is not the quantity of external links that is important; it is the quality of them. Keep away from reciprocal linking, it is most often not worth the effort.

3. Web 2.0 Strategies

Web 2 strategies, often known as social marketing, have become a huge online marketing tool. YouTube, Flickr, Reddit, Propeller, MySpace, Facebook, Stumbleupon and Digg are all examples of social marketing tools that have come to the forefront in recent times. There are many ways to use these communities to promote yourself and improve website traffic in an ethical manner.

4. Free Website Directories

Promote your website to online newsgroups and free directories. These can be invaluable for getting your name out there quickly. Take care with directories and make sure you’re not submitting to a link farm. Search engines don’t take kindly to link farms. Make sure the directory offers significant traffic. Google themselves promote Yahoo directory and niche directories as good places to list your site. Yahoo charges a hefty fee but you have to decide how much credence you place in your site.

5. Search Engine Optimization

Make sure your website is optimized so search engines list you. Once you are listed your web address will come up when people type in your keywords. To optimize your website use keywords in your content, the same keywords in you meta keyword tag, a sensible and relevant meta description, headlines and page titles. Don’t cheat! You need to learn a little more about On-page and Off-page optimization. You can Google these terms and find out more in detail later.

No longer do we live in an age where we can expect people to come to us. We have to target our audience and encourage people to visit. Usually with quality. Remember, that in the end, real people will decide the future of your site so don’t be in a rush.

Copyright Billy Baker, an SEO and internet marketing coach has provided a review on a remarkable source of website traffic knowledge. It will only be of interest if you plan to increase website traffic.

Men (and Women) with Hats

07 2008 Wednesday

By Robert Cerff in Featured

SEO is so easily divided into two categories, the good and the bad, the yin and the yang… the light side the dark side. Okay so it’s not all a battle between good and evil, but the Star Wars analogy is closer to the mark. SEO is often broken into two camps those that practice safe optimisation (White Hat) and those that prefer to break the rules for immediate results (Black Hat).Much like Darth Vader, a black hat SEO will use all possible weapons at their disposal, often sacrificing a ship (site) or two on the way to gaining victory (top ranking). This dark side of SEO breaks the “terms of service” set out by the search engines by any means they deem necessary. The only thought is immediate results. Sometimes these sites may show lasting results, but this is rarely the case.

How To Create Your Own Perpetual Traffic Machine

07 2008 Tuesday

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

The Internet is such an unknown commodity anything is possible. One of the most intriguing questions concerns the idea of a perpetual traffic machine. Create a website and design a system of automatic programs (both interior and exterior) that delivers content and backlinks to a site that updates itself automatically and keeps growing without any help from the creator. In the process you build a flow of traffic that never stops, even if the site is abandoned or not touched for a couple of years or never again.

Is such a perpetual traffic system really possible?

Before you conjure up pictures of HAL and creepy talking computers in distant space… realize that question may carry more weight than it would seem at first glance. But is it like its predecessor, the perpetual motion machine - just more an illusion than actual fact?

For curiosity’s sake if for nothing else, the idea of a perpetual traffic machine does require further investigation. Such a system would have special interest for millions of webmasters whose main task is acquiring traffic for their sites, not to mention the potential for monetary gain a PTM (rhymes with ATM) would produce. Some credence was given to the idea recently when Tinu Abayomi-Paul, a well-known online free traffic expert, produced with the help of Marlon Sanders an info-product entitled “The Evergreen Traffic Machine.”

Tinu’s story is very interesting. Tinu had built up a whole array of sites and optimized them successfully for countless keywords in all the major search engines. She had built up a steady flow of traffic, resulting in thousands of visitors “a day” to her sites. This in itself is not that extraordinary, but that’s not the full story.

Because of a personal illness she abandoned or left alone most of her sites for over a year or more - only to discover the traffic systems she had put into place didn’t just dry up, they still kept producing tons of traffic even though the sites weren’t being updated.

The traffic was still coming. The traffic was still fresh.

Tinu basically built her perpetual traffic system around three major areas: High Profile Article Marketing, Exact Keyword Focus and Blogging/RSS Feeds. Tinu’s system proves you can create a traffic system for a year or two, but the real question is will it still produce traffic five years from now? Fifty years from now? How about a hundred years?

The real question: how long will such a system work without fresh input of unique content like the viral articles and blog posts now feeding it? This question is even more tantalizing when you consider it is now possible to create fresh content on your sites with RSS feeds, blog comments and user contributed content.

What’s more intriguing is the fact that all aspects of a website can be automated, including payment for all renewals: domain, hosting, autoresponders… as well as the collection of revenues such as affiliate commissions and advertising fees.

Are we at the stage where the Internet will be filled with these automated human-less web sites drawing traffic/visitors and slowly building and expanding on their own for eternity? Many cynics would argue this is already the case with the majority of sites on the web.

In case you like that idea and want to fully embrace this brave new automated perpetual Internet, here are a few tips to create your own eternal traffic machine:

Build lists and pre-load your AR system with follow-up messages to keep visitors coming back to your site. You can rotate these messages and ask your subscribers to opt-in to different lists on related subject areas. Always ask your readers to recommend your content to others.
Use social bookmark software or links so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content which brings in both new links and new traffic. Simple programs like the one offered by Addthis.com will get your visitors building your backlinks for you, bringing in fresh visitors who in turn will also bookmark your content.
Write viral articles, reports and ebooks that have your backlinks in the resource boxes. Likewise, viral software programs can help bring a constant flow of traffic to your site. If your content is of a high quality and your themes universal… new sites will pick up your content and build your backlinks, creating fresh traffic. The search engines will also index these new links and your rankings will increase, bringing in more traffic.
Use blogging and RSS feeds to get your content out there. You can also use these RSS feeds to bring in new fresh content to your site. Creating new content will be your main obstacle to creating perpetual traffic… you can get new content from feeds but will it be unique? Comments in your blogs could bring in unique content but if you’re not monitoring them, you must have solid software in place to fight against spam.
Have “Tell a Friend” forms on all your content. This will bring new traffic to your site, which can be self-refreshing as new people discover your content.
Encourage user generated content such as articles, comments, posts… you can even have a community monitoring system where your site’s members monitor this new content.
Form JV alliances with webmasters in your related field. Do co-registration so that you help build each other’s lists and traffic.
Likewise, if you have products to sell, create an affiliate program to get your affiliates to build your traffic for you. Affiliates are an excellent source of permanent traffic.
Automate all aspects of the running and managing of your website. Set up automatic payments for your AR system, hosting, domain renewal, PPC payments… thru PayPal or credit card. Likewise, receive affiliate commissions thru PayPal or direct deposit. Many advertising programs like Google Adsense offer direct deposit.
PPC Traffic - While we have mainly looked at free traffic systems, don’t forget creating a PTM is relatively easy with Pay Per Click advertising if you know what you’re doing. Target less competitive keywords to keep your costs down, tie this traffic into a good squeeze page for feeding your AR system with leads and have a good landing page that converts. You can create a system that delivers perpetual traffic and pays for itself from your affiliate commissions and advertising fees.

In summary, the argument for the existence of the PTM mainly relies upon the quality of your content or site. Is it unique enough to draw in new visitors? Does your topic have universal appeal that people never tire of? Does it solve or offer advice on a common human problem? Will or does it have a viral “word of mouth” element to it?

As we move to a more and more automated world, all the automated programs and hardware are in place for the creation of such perpetual traffic machines.

Computers, autoresponders, content management software, RSS feeds, viral marketing, direct deposit, automatic payments… and the list goes on. If we haven’t already created the perpetual traffic machine - we are getting tangibly close to doing just that.

Titus Hoskins - The author is a full-time online marketer who practices what he preaches. Get a Free Perpetual Desktop Calendar: http://www.bizwaremagic.comFree_Desktop_Calendar.htmRead a review of Tinu’s Traffic Machine here: http://www.bizwaremagic.com/evergreen_traffic_review.htm

Successful Brands Are Based On Great Themes

07 2008 Tuesday

By Jerry Bader in Featured

A true brand is a metaphor for desire, a container for aspirations and the promise of fulfillment. We are all the same, each of us searching for the same things and they aren’t keywords. Most businesses think way too narrowly; too focused on the concrete instead of the psychological. Branding like history is based on enduring themes, the universal hardwired predilections that form our basic needs and wants, whether for business or pleasure.

Quintessential Brand Themes

Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman have come up with what they call the ‘Seven Giants’ in their book ‘Marketing Metaphoria.’ They describe seven classic elements that they see effecting consumer behavior: balance, transformation, journey, container, connection, resource, and control.

Balance is about maintaining or reestablishing normality; Transformation is about the metamorphosis from unsatisfying to fulfillment; Journey is about personal growth; Container is about physical and emotional constraints; Connection is about relationships; Resource is about acquiring and using tools and knowledge; and Control is about creating a sense of security, well-being, or mastery.

These themes have a marked similarity to the classic storytelling scenarios used by every novelist, screenwriter, and successful brand strategist.

The Brand Story

Effective brand strategies are based on delivering a story, a tale that embeds in the collective consciousness of an audience and becomes a metaphor for some deep-seated psychological human need.

We are taught to maintain a positive outlook, and it is definitely a more healthy approach to life than the opposite, but stories are based on tension, disruption, and overcoming obstacles. If your audience is self-satisfied, if they’re happy with the way they look, the way they feel, and the stuff they own, why would they be interested in buying your product or service? The fact is most people and businesses want more, more of everything, and the promise of more is what you’re selling.

It may not be popular to say, but the negative perspective is the more powerful. If branding is about making a memorable impression you will be more successful if you tap into your audiences’ insecurities and neediness.

Even seemly positive commercials like Dove’s ‘real beauty’ campaign is really about highlighting the audiences’ flaws: it places a mirror in front of the viewer and says, ‘look in the mirror, this is what you really look like, and girl you need makeup’ - cynical perhaps, but this marketing strategy was able to hit consumers from both sides of the psychological fence: great positive PR because of the apparent positive message, while at the same time subliminally saying, you really don’t want to look this natural do you? It’s what we call the Law of Dissatisfaction.

It All Boils Down To Creating Discontent

Archetypical stories all boil down to motivating sales by getting your audience to think your stuff will make their lives better; and in order to do that, you first have to get your audience to accept the fact that their current situation is not as good as they thought.

What good is a forty-two inch flat-screen when you could have a sixty inch one; what good is a headache tablet that takes twenty minutes to work when you could have one that works in five; and how can anyone really be happy with their face or body when just a few injections of some magic elixir will turn them into a beauty queen or matinee idol? Is there really anything wrong with wanting to reach your maximum potential? It is after all the driving force behind our economy and the ultimate motivation behind innovation.

Stories Are Content, Advertising Is Irritation

We all know the Web is about content, and the future of successful Web-marketing lies in the ability to turn marketing messages into content, and meaningful content is about storytelling. We need to stop looking at television advertising as the prototype format; the people running television have their heads buried deep in the sand beside the same people who run the music and movie industries - they just don’t seem to be able to adapt to the new Web-environment and it’s inherent nature, capabilities and demands.

Mind numbing, number crunching study after number crunching study, filled with misleading statistics, complicated graphs, and pretty PowerPoint charts don’t tell the real story. Wasting money on ineffective banner ads and irritating, over-used TV spots, while obsessing over search engine optimization and technical solutions won’t get you where you want to go.

Companies need to learn how to connect to an audience and build a relationship with that audience by delivering content in ways that people have used from time immemorial, through telling a story told by a real person with a real voice: something the Web is not only capable of doing, but is superior at delivering.

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

The Hottest 5 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Site with Minimal Cash

07 2008 Tuesday

By Robert Hanna in Featured

There is one tried and true cliché` in getting income for your website: That is website traffic. Bottom line. If no one visits your site, it hardly stands a chance of producing an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and this results to the sites demise. In other words, it takes money to make money. Another cliché.

But, it does not take a lot of cash to generate website traffic to your site. Have you ever wondered how big hit sites drive traffic to their site? Just about all of them are spending obscene amounts of money to get the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different ways of marketing. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now…huge earning, big hitting websites.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you cant afford. Many people have tried the high cost methods and have ended up going belly-up because of it.

Let me show you the Top 5 Ways to produce low cost website traffic that could help your site in the long run. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in, compared to client ratio, it still works, especially if you get a large number of people to your site.

Exchange Links

This is a proven method. You will hardly ever see a site where there is not a link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so they can produce more public awareness about their sites. You will soon see and be aware of the sudden increase of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in trading links with other sites is that they should have the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is stability in the providing of service and information for what interests your targeted traffic.

Exchanging links will also enhance your chances of getting a high ranking with search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high, sites that have inbound and outbound same-niche links. With a good ranking in the search engines, you will produce more traffic to your site without the high costs.

Traffic Exchange

This is basically like exchanging links but on a different elevated level. This may cost a little more than trading or exchanging links but could be more cost effective because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when you view others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are basically viewing of someone else`s site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you, to his or her site.You will both benefit from each others labor to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as their own. Once again the public consciousness of your sites existence is elevated.

Write and Submit Articles

There are truly many e-zines and online encyclopedias as well as article directories on the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save money, you can do the articles yourself. [One of my favorites by the way!] There are a lot of freelance writers who are willing to write an article for you for a miniature fee, but to save costs, you would be better off writing those articles yourself.

Try to write articles that go along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can see your knowledge about the subject and will be enthusiastic to go to your site. Write articles that convey tips and procedures to the subject or niche your website has.

Don’t forget to include a resource box at the bottom of your article that can link them to your website.Write a little about yourself and also your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they should go to your site for more.

Make a Newsletter

This might sound like to much work because of all the articles you may need to use to create a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not true. There are many writers and sites that will want to provide articles as long as they can get their name in your newsletter. This will also grant free advertising for them as well. As your newsletter gets passed around, you can expand your public familiarity and build an opt-in list that can frequently visit your site.

Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing more. You can impart your wisdom and know-how with many online communities as well as your own website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche as your site.

Share your opinion and let them see how well-informed you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the status of your site, making it a reputable and sincere business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

And now I would very much like to offer to you fre, a very powerful e-book just for taking a look at my site! You can get instant access at http://www.massivewealthforever.com Thank You, Robert Hanna

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