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There is only one real secret to getting a lot of visitors to your website. That is merely figuring out where lots of your ideal visitors are, and standing in front of them.When you think of it in those terms, it’s really simple.

There are also only three real ways to get in front of the traffic flow. You can buy traffic, borrow traffic, or create traffic.

You buy traffic using pay-per-click search engines. It’s very dependable, and can give you a steady flow of consistent traffic.

The big drawback with using pay-per-clicks to generate traffic is that it can be very risky. Those who use pay-per-clicks to generate 100% of their traffic, and are considered the best of the best, will tell you that as many as 7 out of 10 campaigns that they set up will lose money. The professionals very quickly shut off the losers, and their winners more than make up for the losses, but it’s really not a game for someone not properly trained.

You can also buy traffic using an affiliate program. Since you only pay for the traffic when a sale is made, it’s a very low-risk method. Since your affiliates are sending you their best customers, you can also think of it as borrowing traffic.

I love the affiliate program model, and have numerous products sold via affiliate programs. I also sell a lot of others’ affiliate products. It’s win-win.

You can also create traffic by putting things on the Internet that people are attracted to. You can create content by writing articles or blogging for example. I love content creation and have written over 1100 different articles. My articles teach people how to solve pressing problems, and at the same time point them to me (my sites) as a great resource.

When you create content your big challenge is to get it noticed and indexed by the search engines, so that people can follow links from there to your site. It’s actually fairly easy - but time and labor intensive.

If your content is “viral” it will be something that others will happily share. Examples include in-depth articles, essays that touch people on a deep emotional level, or humorous videos that you post on YouTube.

Of the three methods of getting traffic (buying, borrowing, and creating it) my favorite has to be borrowing it… with creating it second. I generally only buy traffic when I need a really quick surge to test my website’s conversion process.

The key to generating an absolute flood of free traffic is getting noticed, getting backlinks, etc., from high traffic websites such as Google, Craig’s List, Yahoo, YouTube, and the various bookmarking and social networking sites.

This can be as simple is searching through Yahoo Answers for questions on your area of expertise, and then posting a great answer - along with an appropriate link to your website or product.

It can be as simple as searching through YouTube for videos on your area of expertise, and then leaving a comment along with a link sharing that they can find more information on the topic at your site.

It can be as simple as using the search engines to locate dozens or even hundreds of blogs and forums in your niche, and then interacting with these communities.

There’s only one problem with most of the methods that I just mentioned. They can be time consuming and labor intensive. Just locating active communities in your niche can literally take hours.

I do have a secret. I use automated software to monitor and notify me of active blogs, forums, and communities in my niche. I use automated software to notify me when they are discussing my area of expertise or there is a new video posted pertaining to my area of expertise.

When I discover a new resource, I then analyze it, and if appropriate, I interact with that high traffic site, and leave a link back to my site, which is a perfectly acceptable practice.

So there you have my secret for generating literally hundreds of thousands of free hits to even my newest sites. Of course, your site has to be about something that people are interested it.

I do strongly advocate using software to automate many of the mundane processes such as just finding these sites.

Many webmasters really struggle with website traffic generation, and there is absolutely no need to. You merely find the huge pools of traffic interested in your topic, and then you stand underneath the waterfall, and enjoy the cool, refreshing flow of new visitors.

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Willie Crawford has been marketing goods and services online since 1996. With very busy websites in dozens of niches, he teaches that the secret is automating the flow of traffic, since without traffic you don’t really have a web business. His favorite traffic generation software is at Stealth Traffic Tools: http://IncredibleWebsiteTraffic.com

Tags: free website traffic, webstie traffic

Online marketers frequently struggle with the question of how to compete when Google fails to look positively upon a particular website. In this article, I will focus on how to build rankings and drive traffic to your website, using Google and the other search engines.

What Motivates Google’s Algorithm

Over the years, many have tried to claim, even in court, that Google was unfairly keeping their website out of the top of Google’s search results. But, the truth is that Google is not beholden to the needs and desires of the webmasters who want to be on page one of Google’s natural search results.

Instead, Google is beholden to its stockholders and its need to earn profits. Google has determined that the best way to keep profits high is to keep Internet users flocking to its websites. Google accomplishes that by giving its users the kind of information they are looking to find, and Google weights its search algorithm towards what Google believes its search audience wants to see in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

It is important for online marketers to understand that it is not always in Google’s best interest for our websites to rank well in Google.

How Important Is Google In Search?

Worldwide, Google is currently providing 78% of all searches (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=4).

But in 2007, Google only provided 52% of my website’s total search traffic. Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask, and MSN provided the next 42%. The remaining 6% of my website’s search traffic came from another 55 smaller search engines.

On my website, only 48.8% of my 2007 traffic actually came from search engines. The remaining 51.2% of my website’s quarter million visitors came directly from article placements on other websites, recommendations from other people, forum posts, and from people who have bookmarks for my website.

Tips For Ranking Well For Specific Keywords

It has been my experience that it is easier to rank in 1) MSN / Windows Live, 2) Yahoo, and then 3) Google, in that order. Quite frankly, I have always ignored the role of Ask in the search market. While MSN is the easiest search engine to rank in, it only delivered 4.6% of my total search traffic in 2007.

I read a question in a forum, where the poster was asking how he could get his website to rank well in Google for the search term, “software”.

The truth is that it is nearly impossible in nearly every search engine to rank well in the natural results for such a singular keyword, such as “software”. In a nutshell, if you want to rank well in Google, you need to build inbound links (IBLs) to your website with your targeted keywords in the links.

But, you don’t want to put all of your links together with one keyword phrase. One of Google’s red flags is when they notice a link to a particular website appearing more than 60% of the time with one specific keyword phrase.

Utilizing a variety of long-tail keywords will actually serve you better in the search-engine ranking puzzle, in more ways than one. After all, when I do a search for software, I don’t type in the search word, “software”. I type in search phrases like: “accounting software”, “small business accounting software”, “windows software accounting small business”, “windows image editing software”, “windows software image editor”, “windows xp photo album manager”, etc.

People searching the keyword “software” have yet to figure out that they are looking for specific kinds of software. Once they do an initial search, they are going to type in more specific search terms to find what they actually want. So, once you start targeting a variety of long-tail keyword phrases, then you will start seeing more success in your search marketing efforts.

How To Start Your Search Engine Optimization Journey

If you are wanting to get into the natural search results of Google and the other search engines, you must know before you dive into the project that getting good rankings in the search engines for your chosen keywords can take a really long time, before you begin seeing results.

While inbound links to your website, targeted to your chosen keywords, will help your website climb in the search results of your favorite search engines, it may be a frustrating journey.

Your competitors want to rank well for the same search terms you do. And since only ten of you can be on page one of the search results, you may have to work really hard to topple those guys already on page one of the results, and you will have to fight to keep your ranking once you get it.

There are some keyword phrases that are nearly impossible to rank for, even if you have really deep pockets. For example, most every keyword phrase for the financial industry will be extremely difficult to rank for in Google. Competition in this industry is fierce, so achieving top search rankings will be tough to say the least.

This is the reason why so many SEO experts encourage marketers to target “low-hanging fruit”. It may be fairly easy to rank well for a four- or five-word search phrase, and extremely expensive to target a two- or three-word search phrase.

My personal approach has always been to rotate through a list of more than 100 target keyword phrases, over a longer period of time. In doing so, I capture a lot of low-hanging fruit quickly, and at the end of the loop, I am a bit closer to snagging the fruit in the upper branches of the tree. At the end of my list, I analyze my keywords again to see where I am strong and to see where I am still weak, and then I begin the process again. (According to SEOdigger.com, I have better than 950 keyword phrases in the top twenty results of Google.)

How To Get Links

The challenge most people face when they begin building links to a website is where to get those essential links.

Article marketing is my chosen method for getting inbound links.

Because of Google’s news feed strategy, the initial placement of your article might appear immediately in the SERPs, but then it will disappear. During the news cycle phase of the Google algorithm, new materials are given an added boost in ranking. Once the news cycle is done, any new pages will sink back down to where they would be based on the general Google algorithm.

If you are honest with yourself, you know that every page on the Internet started life with a PageRank Zero, but given enough time, many pages will gain in PageRank, as they begin to be linked. For a more detailed look at the process of how reprint articles gain value for a website in Google’s search index, see my article about “Fishing for Links in Google“.

Utilizing article marketing as a link building method, I have put one website on the map in as little as eight weeks, with only three articles. This website has one #1, one #2, eight results on page one, and twelve results in the top twenty listings of Google. Most of those keywords also rank well in Yahoo and MSN.

On the other hand, on my main website, I started looking at the keyword phrase “article marketing” just eighteen months ago, when my website sat at #79. Today, my website sits at #12 in Google for that keyword phrase.

I believe that given enough time, investment and commitment, I can use article marketing to elevate any web page on the Internet to multiple page-one listings in Google. But, not everyone is willing to make the kind of investment and commitment one needs to get to the top of Google’s search results…

What To Do When You Need Results Now

If you simply cannot wait as long as it takes to build top rankings naturally, then you need to look seriously at Pay-Per-Click advertising models, such those offered through Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

About The Author:

Bill Platt offers Article Distribution and Article Ghost Writing services through his website at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com He has written an ebook that has been designed to help people create more effective articles. One customer said of his ebook, “I’ve read almost every ebook out there on article writing and article marketing and this one tops it all.” To learn more about Bill’s ebook or to get your own copy, please click this link.

Tags: website ranking

In today’s highly competitive online world, the importance of attracting highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be overemphasized. Directing web traffic to your site can be your only means of survival. Getting a high search engine ranking can be very difficult though fortunately, there is plethora of website promotion strategies you can use to drive traffic to your website.

There is a wide variety of strategies you can adapt to drive traffic to your website, from advertising to affiliate marketing. However, most of these techniques require some form of payment. However, there are ways to promote your website and increase your web traffic without spending anything. Writing articles is one of the best web site promotion strategies you can use, and they can be very effective. How, you may ask, can writing articles help improve your web traffic?

Here are the top six ways in which it can help explode your website traffic.

1.Larger potential audience

When you write good articles, it is a disservice to you and your website not to share them with other people. You can post your articles in your website or you can submit them to other sites such as e-zines and online publishers. By submitting your articles to these sites, you give exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website and thus increasing website traffic. Simply include a link back to your site or include your information in the resource box. With this, you get exposure and free advertising as well. Submit your articles to popular e-zines and take advantage of their popularity. Other sites who find your article relevant may also link back to you. Thus, you increase your link popularity, which is one of the most important strategies in the internet world for high webpage ranking and more website traffic. Remember that most people are looking for information online and by filling this need with your quality article, you may reap the benefit of more exposure and thus higher web traffic.

2.Free Advertising

By submitting your articles to other websites presents an opportunity to advertise your website without paying fees and increase your website traffic. Although you should avoid marketing language in your articles and make it informative and useful to your readers, you can always include your site’s link in the resource box. In addition, by making your article relevant and helpful to your readers, you are making a good impression for your website, which could ultimately lead to a visit to your website and hopefully a purchase. Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space. You have a very special opportunity to presell your product or service to your prospective customer.

3.Gain High Search Engine Ranking

Another easy and free method of gaining website traffic is to create a new web page for your article in your website. Optimize your article to make it search-engine friendly. Use top-ranked keywords and Meta tags that can give your website a high search engine ranking. As soon as you upload your new webpage to your server, search engines will spider through it and you can gain an increase in search engine ranking. Remember that search engine optimized content is a very effective strategy to gain a high ranking in search results.Relevance and quality is still the most important things to consider when writing articles and it will be doubly useful to your site if you make these articles search-engine optimized.

4.Increase Link Popularity

Instead of looking for other sites who would want to establish reciprocal links with your website, you can simply submit an article to other sites. Just do not forget to include a link to your site in your resource box. When these websites pick up and publishes your article, you automatically get a link partner. Try to get as many link partners as you can. Link popularity is one of the factors used by search engines in determining search engine rankings.Higher search engine rankings will most definately lead to higher website traffic for you. Make your article especially useful and appealing, so that more websites will be encouraged to publish it.

5.Establish a Good Impression and Reputation

By writing excellent, original and relevant articles, you not only give your site exposure and increase traffic, you are also creating a good impression on your prospects. Encourage more people to visit your site and do business with you by establishing an impressive reputation through your articles. Be seen as an expert in the field and your will ultimately gain more customers eager to do business with you.

6.Enhance your credibility through references and testimonies

Certainly, your articles are going to receive feedbacks and testimonies when you publish them in e-zines and free article sites. Record these positive feedbacks and comments and use them as promotional material in your website or in any of your advertising efforts. Your credibility will be greatly enhanced by these feedbacks, as it will create a good impression on your prospects as well as your existing customers. In this highly competitive world, excellent credibility and trust may be the only things you need to attract new customers or make loyal patrons out of your existing customers. Original, relevant, useful and pertinent articles are important tools you should utilize to improve and explode the amount of traffic that visits your website and ultimately becomes your customers.

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Michael Tasker started his information product business last year and it has now expanded to various websites plus direct marketing channels as well. He learned by utilising the extensive quality references that he sourced plus following the advice of those that had already succeeded. He was mentored as anyone who has ambitions to succeed with online marketing should be. Simply put, he followed a tried and tested formula that others had used to succeed. www.yourworkathomejob.com

Tags: article writing, increase website traffic

During a recent radio interview, one of the callers asked for several ways to get fast, cheap, sustained website traffic. She added on top of that “tall order” that she didn’t want to use pay-per-clicks!

Digging deeply into my toolkit of traffic generation techniques that had actually work beautifully for me, I suggested joint ventures and article marketing. Then I had to admit that article marketing often doesn’t produce an immediate flood of traffic but that it can be sustained and highly targeted.

Joint ventures get you fast and cheap traffic because you’re arranging for those who already have the attention of your ideal customers to send them to you. You’re convincing those who already have the trust and respect of your ideal customers to point out to them that you can help to solve their pressing problems.

My “answer” to the question of the quickest way to generate sustained, inexpensive website traffic still is joint ventures. As a joint venture broker, and Executive Director of The International Association of Joint Venture Brokers, I’ve seen first-hand how large, successful joint ventures with just the right partners can deliver 7-figure days.

However, the joint ventures that so typify product launches in the Internet marketing niche often miss delivering real “sustained” traffic. They are mostly “flash in the pan” launches where the traffic flow dies-off even faster than it builds up.

A better option for generating inexpensive, sustained, targeted website traffic is an affiliate program, or strategic partnerships. The strategic partnerships can even BE an affiliate program, where the partners have agreed to promote certain products within that affiliate program contributed by various members of the alliance.

In ultra-competitive niches, such as Internet marketing, where you often see dozens of new product launches per week, strategic alliances are almost a “requirement.” It’s sometimes so difficult just to get noticed that the secret to breaking through the clutter is TEAMWORK.

You often need to find a group of likeminded individuals, and then work to jointly develop, launch and promote group products and projects.

An example of a product launched using this model is the ebook “20 Ways To Make $100 Per Day Online” (http://20Ways.org). This ebook was written by members of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle (http://TIMIC.ORG), then group members created the buzz that got the product noticed and eventually started other affiliates promoting it.

The “20 Ways” ebook had a viral twist to it too though, and that’s what created and will sustain it’s growth. That viral aspect is the customer-only affiliate program. A customer is eligible to register as an affiliate, and then use their affiliate link to sell the ebook at 100% commission.

The 20 Ways Ebook was indeed launched via a strategic alliance, an affiliate program, and viral marketing. It’s a launch formula that you could easily model, and use to generate a steady stream of quick, inexpensive traffic.

Some would look at the “20 Ways” ebook though and ask “What’s the point - if you then give away 100% commission?” The answer is that you need to build-in backend sales. Add links to your product that drive repeat customer back to you, or offer additional products to those customers on your download pages.

When I further contemplate the question of the fastest, easiest, cheapest ways to generate sustained website traffic, I would still have to say joint ventures… and an affiliate program. An affiliate program fits the “inexpensive” criteria because you only pay for performance. If the traffic doesn’t convert to sales, it costs you absolutely nothing. Any costs involved in an affiliate program comes from revenue that you wouldn’t otherwise have anyway.

The only twist missing from the “20 Ways” model that I would incorporate in hindsight… is to perhaps make some part of the ebook rebrandable. Perhaps use software such as Viral Document Toolkit to allow customer who buy resale rights (as an upsell) to change links within the ebook. No kind of resale rights are offered for the 20 Ways ebook, but it is a twist that you might want to consider for one of your products.

Anyway… joint ventures, an affiliate program, and releasing viral rebrandable products are all proven methods of quickly, easily, and cheaply setting in motion a sustainable flow of traffic!

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Willie Crawford is an Internet marketer with over 11 years of experience at generating massive website traffic, and sales using viral marketing techniques. Viral Document Toolkit is his favorite tool for creating rebranded PDF ebooks in minutes. Checkout the demo video at: http://ViralDocumentToolkits.com

Tags: Website Traffic

How do you know what type of content is really going to attract the right searchers? In this article I wanted to cover a few very basic tips that you can keep in mind when building high-performance strategies. Remember that good search engine marketing is not about trying to manipulate or “fool the search engines.” Good SEO skills are more about creating genuine relevancy for well-written content that deserves to be found because it is truly the most relevant and useful to your audience of readers.

What students quickly discover in the 5-Day classes is that the optimization skills are not nearly as hard as many people make them out to be (even for the most competitive phrases,) once you’ve been trained and understand the full scope of influences that are at work. The biggest advantage that we have had is all about the “accuracy of information.”

1. Write content that your audience is already looking for within the last 90 days.

True keyword research is not about “guessing at keywords” but its all about researching actual data. How are your SEO research skills using Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery? At the SEO Workshops we teach much more than the traditional “keyword research” methods. We help students learn “Keyword Forensics” and how to quickly tap into the hidden niche trends that 99% of most Webmasters never even notice.

2. Does your Web copy speak to the reader or does it speak about yourself?

Remember that your Web site should be focused on your audience first and appeal specifically to a niche interest. When writing your Web copy, you need to dialog in an appropriate tone and format for the right audience. Some of the most interesting content will have more appeal if it speaks to your audience in terms of “you.” You can, you might, you will, yours, your and youâ€^TMre INSTEAD of we, ours, weâ€^TMre, we will, we can, etc.

3. Focus on writing for the human audience first and search engines second.

While search engine optimization is important to your visibility, try writing your content first. Most people donâ€^TMt write their best when trying to optimize and create content at the same time. Focus on creating highly useful content that is extremely focused on one topic per page. Once you have completed your writing so that you are pleased with it, then go in to do a mild re-write for the search engines.

4. Tips for triggering idea generation and giving your strategies a unique twist.

While many people seem to spend time exploring their competitor’s Web sites, we encourage you to lead the way with new ideas. Try not to be obsessed with what the competition is doing, but be creative and start your own new trends. Spend just a little more time working on your projects this week than you did last week. Setting yourself apart from the competition is easier than you might think and gives you a huge advantage over others.

5. Creating your content so that it “speaks” to a specific audience of visitors.

Think of how your Web copy reads and ensure the dialog flows smoothly. Read your work out loud and see if you can improve the tone of your message With natural expression. Keep your specific audience in mind. How you write for senior citizen (in tone and in format) may differ considerably from writing for an audience of for example “new parents.” Always ask yourself “what is important to these readers?” Rely on researching accurate data to eliminate guess work.

6. Remember strong calls to action

Without a firm call to action, donâ€^TMt expect the reader to naturally guess at what you want them to do next. Plain ordinary dialog that asks the reader to take the next action will usually work best. Dialog that is written for voice (similar to the way a broadcaster writes to project their personality.)

7. Build your search engine optimization skills in the beginning with the “stress free” approach.

If you are new to SEO, you may want to focus on the long tailed niche phrases since most searchers are doing fairly descriptive and intelligent searches these days. Ideally You want to attract those who already know what they are looking for and just need to find your pages more easily. With practice and the right training you can go after highly competitive phrases too but youâ€^TMll find that the best conversions nearly always come from the niches. Also remember that it is the basic SEO skills that carry you through and must come before any of the advanced strategies. The result will be stable top rankings that stand the test of time with minimal fuss.

8. Give your readers a non-threatening reason to respond right now.

What is the objective for your page and does your Web copy work effectively at fulfilling that objective? It may not always be about trying to sell a product or a service. It should not be about fulfilling your needs first but it should be about meeting the needs of why that searcher first conducted a search. Meet their needs and deliver up something that satisfies their search first and then give the visitor a non-threatening reason why they might respond to you. Do you want their e-mail address? or do you just want them to pick up the phone and call? Never lose sight of the fact that the Web is a marvelous two way interactive experience, if you want it to be. Make your Web site a vehicle for relationship building and remember that many readers may actually have the desire to interact and participate through Blogs or other “User Generated activity.” Give your visitors something that involves their participation.

9. Remember that your readers always want to feel like they are in control of their Web experience.

People often use the Web for researching topics of interest or doing preliminary price comparisons or for looking up information. While most people explore the Web for their own purposes, the more that you put them in control of their experience the better. If appropriate, you may want to consider adding addition tools or functionality to your Web site in order to enhance its usability for your specific audience.

10. Did you know that if you write your content so that it naturally “reads very well.”

You will naturally gain some bonus for having created content of quality. By this, I mean content…that reads well to a human being. Don’t stuff keywords all over the place. Instead, use moderation in everything you do. One of the things you need to understand is that “theme based” search engines like Google, are actually using a measure of artificial intelligence (AI) to measure how well your article “reads” based on all of the overall context of your body text (other than the keywords) based on data that a search engine has gathered concerning a specific topic. This is great news for writers because if you are making a transition to writing for the web, you’ll find some search engines are literally rewarding pages that are “well written.”

John Alexander has taught live SEO Workshops since 2002 at http://www.SearchEngineWorkshops.com as well as Online Webinars at the SEO Workshop Resource Center at http://www.SEW-WRC.com

Tags: seo traffic, Website Traffic

Now, going up the list in terms of quality, you will have PPC traffic generation (this isn’t really next long-term, but if you don’t know what you are doing, you can lose your shirt in a hurry with these, so be careful).

There is also ezine advertising, and article marketing, which, when done correctly, can be very profitable.

These are two forms of traffic generation that generally produce a much higher quality visitor than the ones mentioned earlier. Ezine advertising is more costly per visitor, and article marketing, although it can be done on a budget, is time consuming.

Now, everything is relative. You see, you will be spending more per visitor for these visitors, but when they come to your site they already have an interest in your type of product. They are a much more targeted visitor, and as such, are much more likely to purchase from you.

There is not much to say here about ezine advertising, except to try it out and experiment with various ads in various ezines. Again, it is important to track all your traffic and the source of your sales. You see, if you advertise in 10 ezines and receive 10 sales, it is very unlikely that each ezine produced one sale each. One ezine producing 8 sales, and another producing 2 sales, with the other 8 ezines producing nothing is probably much more realistic. For this reason, you must track, and it is also advisable to advertise in several at one time. For example, with the case just mentioned, if you had only advertised in some of the ones that didn’t produce, you would have a bad feeling for ezine advertising, and if you had gotten lucky and advertised in the one that produced the most sales, you would have become over-zealous regarding ezine advertising. But by purchasing several ads and tracking your results, you have a much more realistic picture of what ezine advertising can do.

Article marketing. This has recently become a very popular area of advertising, although it has probably always been effective.

What it entails is writing short, informative articles on the same topic as your book and including a link to your website at the end of the article. You then submit the articles to the various article submission directories. When they publish the articles, ezine directories pick up your article and use it as content for their ezine or newsletter. So, in a sense, it reaches the same market as the ezine advertising, but with a different cost. I say different, because although you are not paying for the article to appear, you also have no control over where it appears. The idea is that if you write a good article, the ezine editors will include it because they feel it is good information for their readers. It is also time consuming to write articles and submit them to the various article directories.

Now, just like everything on the web, there is an answer to that, but now you are spending money again. There are several article submission services out there that can submit your article to the various directories, for a reasonable fee. The advantage here is that you aren’t spending a ridiculous amount of time submitting the articles, but keep in mind that some of the better article directories won’t accept the automated submissions. The key here is to track what you, and check up on your articles to be sure they appear with all your links intact. This goes for whether you submit them yourself, or you have a submission service do it for you.

Ok, now for PPC click campaigns. These are pay-per-click campaigns that work exactly as the name implies. You pay when someone clicks on your website. They also have their good points and their drawbacks. They are wonderful for testing aspects of your web site, because in some campaigns you can have every other visitor go to a different version of your site, and track the conversion rate of different qualities of your page. They are good at simply bringing targeted visitors to your site. The drawbacks, however, are many, and I am not going to cover them here.

As you can see here, there are many different methods for generating traffic, and in some sense they can probably all fit into your strategy for generating sales. It is important, though, that you tailor each sales page or sales letter or squeeze page to the type of advertising you are running. You can have a great source of traffic but if you are ineffective at capturing either email information or the sale, you will not be productive. And each form of traffic requires a little different approach.

Another point here. Since there are so many different ways to generate traffic, which should you try, and should you try all of them? I suggest you choose a couple or three that you might feel comfortable with, or at least understand how they work. Also, do not try to use 25 different types of traffic the first month or two into this project. It is far better to choose two or three and focus on getting good at selling to that customer. It is so easy to get caught up in trying something new every single week, and never really making any money. Stick with a few, and master them.

Westly Lager is a success mentor and coach helping teach people how to work online. With Westly’s experience and expertise you can’t go wrong. See how Westly can help you today by visiting My Internet Business also checkout this My Internet Business Review article

Tags: quality traffic, traffic, Website Traffic

Websites have become far more important for an individual or a business as compared to a few years ago. Today, they have become the company’s or the individual’s online presence. Many of your goals and deadlines may depend on the traffic of your website. Here are 5 ways to increase traffic to your website.

Article Marketing: Probably, Article marketing is one of the cheapest ways to propagate your website if you have flair to write along with all the other qualifications and talents you have. Article Marketing simple means that you have to submit original and factual content about your website and product on the various Article Marketing sites with a short link to your website. This type of internet marketing has been known to borne excellent fruits for anyone who does it seriously. These links, called as link backs in the Web 2.0 parlance, will also ensure that your neighborhood increases, thereby working good for any Search Engine Website.

Advertise: For the initial stages, you may have to go into a tie up with the many affiliate marketing options available to you. Of course, with the course of time, you may have no need to go for affiliate marketing, but it is one essential investment that you may have to do to increase traffic to your website.

Use Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization is another excellent way of increasing the traffic of your website. More than eighty percent of web users today land up on websites via some search engine or the other, and the rest twenty percent are still to get a respectable browser. Therefore, search engine traffic plays a major role in the over all traffic of any website. To make your website search engine optimized is a bit complex, and may require the help of a qualified search engine optimizer. To make your website search engine friendly, you first have to do away with anything that makes it heavy. Secondly, you should cut away all those parts of your website which are not search engine friendly and cannot be read by the search engine crawlers. This includes Flash and Graphics. If you do insist on using graphics, try to get a description of the graphic into the website.

Index and Sitemap: Everyone likes system, and Search Engine Optimizers actually love any site with a sitemap. Also, having a sitemap makes it simpler for the user to access and move around on your website. This will surely increase your chances of being remembered by the web user who came across your website and play an important part in any change to your web traffic, be it good or bad.

Upgrade and Enhance: Once you have your website ready and launched, be sure to add something or the new to it almost every week or month. Of course, this may pose a problem to many webmasters, but the best way of countering this is by at least keeping something new or making something new for the homepage.

Colin Meunier is a Successful Home Business Coach and Mentor!
To learn how you can use a breakthrough marketing system to become more successful in your home business online visit: MLM Lead Generation Tips

Tags: Website Traffic

The tactics I’m going to show you won’t cost you anything but your time, BUT - they are not a quick fix. To get a genuine steadily growing stream of targeted visitors takes time.

Reciprocal links

The search engines look to see how many other websites have links to yours. The more links coming into your site, the further up the rankings ladder you will get.

Find twenty websites that are in the same business as you. Not direct competitors ones that deal with related products or services. Check to see if they have a ‘Links’ page. If so contact them, tell them who you are and what your site is about, and ask them if they would exchange links. It will help if you put a link to their site on your ‘Links’ page first.

Usually they will do so, as they will know the value of incoming links as well. Vary the wording of your email for each site you contact and point out something you like about it. Make it personal.

Articles

Many Internet marketers run away from article writing because they think it’s too difficult. The truth is it’s much easier than you think once you’ve got the hang of it.

Writing articles about your business is easy because you know the subject and are enthusiastic about it. It should be a pleasure to talk about the products or theme of your site.

So here’s the plan:

1. Take one aspect of your product or theme.

2. Think of three pieces of information that people would find interesting and informative, and write these down on paper.

3. Now take each one of these in turn and tell your readers what is so interesting, fascinating and instructive about each.

4. When you’ve done that add an introduction at the top and a concluding sentence or two at the bottom.

5. Finally, compose an ‘author’s bio’ which says who you are what your website is, and include a link to your site. This is a one-way link back to your site.

That’s your article done! Now you need to submit it to some article directories such as EzineArticles.com. Google ‘article directories’ and you will find lots more.

Write one article a week and submit it to a handful of the best high PR directories.

Make your site a search engine magnet

Take time to find the right keywords for your site. You can use a tool like the free GoodKeywords.com keyword finder or online resources like the Google Keyword Tool.

Find ten or twelve high volume keywords and put these on your home page. Don’t be tempted to put dozens. It won’t work.

Now go to each page and put no more than three keywords related to the subject of that page on them, making sure that the page name, the page title and the page description include at least the main keyword for that page. The search engines love this.

Once you’ve got these basic strategies in place you should see a steady increase in visitor numbers. And keep plugging away at all three to get a cumulative effect.

Mervyn Love writes articles on various aspects of Internet Marketing, and his website - fortresspublishing.com - has a wealth of resources and information on all aspects of starting and running an online business. Join his newsletter here: http://www.fortresspublishing.com/MPNsplash.html

Tags: Website Traffic

Think about the path that people take when they hit your site. Perhaps the visitor enters from:

Keyword Search -> Blog Post -> Another Blog Post

or

Direct Search -> Home Page -> Products Page

Regardless of the scenario, they all have one thing in common. It’s a linear relationship that ultimately leads to a dead end.

Enter the Loop Strategy

The premise of the loop strategy is that we never want to leave the visitor without telling them what the next step is. There are no dead ends because each page leads to another page.

Maybe they follow the planned path, more than likely they don’t

But the point is that we keep the visitor engaged in the site’s content until they find something that they want to buy.

In the scenario pictured above, your visitor could enter on any point. Let’s say they landed on an article that was relevant to a long tail keyword search. In a linear relationship, once they read the article, they usually leave.

In this case, the article points them to a related blog post. They read the post and decide to register for a newsletter. Upon registration they’re asked if they’d like to take a brief survey. If they do we’ll give them a white paper. In the white paper we reference (link to) other articles. And away we go.

Your traffic isn’t stupid.

They just aren’t as familiar with your site, business, or products as you are. Consider the experience of a first time visitor. They happen to find your site through a keyword search, social media, maybe even because of an off line advertisement.

The visitor may be interested in your content/product/service but they have little or no loyalty at this point.

The propensity to exit is high. I entered your site. I enjoyed your content. I’m done.

unless

you tell them where to go (not there).

How do I employ the Loop Strategy?

1) This strategy is not for every website. A content rich site is necessary to successfully employ this strategy.

• Enjoyed this post? try this one
• Like this article? look at this white paper.
  
• People who like this topic love this product/article/paper (whatever your call to action is).
  

Always tell your traffic where to go next. Keep them in a perpetual loop.

Content doesn’t have to be articles though. Let’s say you have an electronics site. So long as the site is content rich with product descriptions, testimnials etc, you can employ this strategy.

• Like this iPod? try this carrying case
• Need a carrying case? what about external speakers?
• Which external speakers are best? here’s what other consumers had to say…

2) Think about the most logical path for the consumer to take. If I enjoy this content then I’ll probably like that too.

3) Build the next step into your template. Don’t add new content without thinking about what it relates to. Link it to the next step.

Is this just usability and calls to action?

maybe

But it works.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

The title tag has to be, in my humble opinion, the most important on-page factor when it comes to high rankings in the search engine results pages. Found in the head tag of a standard html page, the title is the first place that you can start placing your keywords. Surprisingly some pages don’t define this tag. Worse yet, some overlook it and omit it altogether. Here is a basic example of where the title tag fits into an average HTML page.

Web page content goes here.

Here are five points I always consider when constructing a title.

Limit the length of the title.

Google currently displays approximately 63 characters of a title. The total number of characters displayed varies from engine to engine. While it is not the end of the world to exceed this by a slight margin, (I don’t believe there are any penalties for having a long title) remember that the search engines will cut off anything that goes beyond that which they display. This would leave you with a “…” instead of a complete title.

The title tag can be useful for branding your traffic.

By adding your website or company name to the title tag you can build brand awareness and increase returning direct traffic. While many suggest doing this I would only recommend adding your company or website name to the end of your title tag. While I don’t think it makes much difference to the order, your keywords are placed in the title tag, I suggest that you ensure your keywords are towards the beginning of the tag as it reads easier. Once again don’t forget that the title tag is the first thing that is displayed from each site by the search engines.

Divide your title tag.

When branding your site, break the title tag so that it becomes obvious which is the page title and which is the site name/title. I find that by using the pipe break “|” (that’s the funny symbol above the “\” key) I am able to do this quite neatly. This is also a great way keep your titles consistent. For example:

Instead of:

As you can see it makes it a lot clearer when considering which part of the title labels the page and which part labels the website.

NEVER, I repeat never, repeat your title.

Each page should have a unique title. By giving each page a unique title you are telling the search engines that each page is indeed unique. For exactly the same reason that you don’t name every file the same, (Well, apart from the most obvious reason which is that you just can’t!) as it is easy to distinguish the contents of a file by simply scanning the title. The same principal applies to web pages. This also goes a long way to indexing the priority of each page. If every page had the same title, which page would be ranked more relevant than the next?

Keywords in the title.

I have spent a lot of time optimising websites for real estate agents. While their stock standard pages have targeted keywords in the title, headings and content, it becomes a little more challenging to do the same for each listing. This is usually where the developers come into play. With a little effort the Title can be dynamically created. In my case, it drastically changed the titles I could offer from something such as:

To a far more specific title that really does describe the listing perfectly:

Okay, so I usually go a little further than that, but as you can see the title not only makes perfect sense and describes the page but also is keyword rich for the search phrase “house for sale in suburb” or even area in this case. While this works well for this kind of website, the principles can be applied to any other dynamically created web page.

I have noticed that time and time again the search engines return results with the search phrase in the title. I think we can all agree that if a web page has been titled correctly then the page will be accurately described. However search engines will discount a title that is no more than a list of spammed keywords. I think we’ve all heard the mantra, “create pages for real people not robots,” too many times. I would prefer to change that statement:

“Make well structured, informative web pages that are relevant to what you are doing.”

When you apply the above, search engines have little option but to regard each page highly and rank it accordingly. While there are so many other factors to consider when optimising a page I believe the title to be a crucial element.

Robert Cerff is a search engine analyst and marketing consultant for Prop Data Internet Solutions. He has ten years experience in e-commerce, online marketing and web development. http://www.propdata.co.za

Tags: title tags, Website Traffic