A Rare Think

Creating a simple links page to exchange links for the purpose of higher search engine ranking is a bad idea. Now you’re probably saying to yourself why else would I make a links page? The answer is simple. You want to offer your visitors good quality content. Following this line of logic will help you go a lot farther in rankings and traffic than just throwing a links page together.

You see, search engines, especially Google, are trying their best to only rank sites that have quality content in a specific area. When you throw together a links page that has 150 links ranging from household goods to zoos in Australia on a single page, you have just created a worthless page to a search engine because you just created a worthless page to a web visitor. No one is going to take the time to sort through all those links in the slight chance that there could be something of value to them.

Let’s say your trading links with someone. Ask yourself, “If there was no such thing as a search engine, would anybody find my site on this links page?”. If the answer is no, you probably don’t want to exchange links. You’re only wasting your time. That’s why so many webmasters today barely read link request emails anymore. I’ve gotten a link on a related site that sometimes equals as much traffic as a single search on Google for that topic, so it is important where the link is located. I expect no traffic if my movie poster site is stuck somewhere between car insurance and real estate sales amidst 100 other links. However, if the page is entitled posters and every link on the page is related to posters and art or movies then I can expect some visitors coming from that site.

The best way to go is to make a links page that offers sites that are similar to your own site’s content, and don’t put 150 sites on one page with a title tag that says the exact same thing as your homepage. If you plan to list hundreds of site links, put them into categories. For example if your site is about cars or anything to do with the automotive industry, then you have a gold mine of content ready to mine and tons of sites that can and will exchange links with you – if you have a good directory. You should categorize your links section into cars, trucks, automotive parts, racing, etc. and each category breaks down into more sub-categories like automotive parts leads to tires, brakes, and on and on. Before you know it you’ve got a great addition to your site that your visitors will like to visit, and others will want to be listed on. The search engines will even list your links pages, and every listing helps.

I turn down sites every day because it’s a complete waste of time to get their listing. Linking to them could even harm my rankings. Sites that have 25 pages of links in no other order than alphabetical or numerical are not going to help you. They can only hurt. Links sections or directories should have a logical categorization with a descriptive title tag at the top. Title tags that run on forever and have no keywords relating to the page’s content are worthless. Some people think they are doing great by repeating their company name and product over and over again, but it makes the page less useful to search engines and web visitors.

It seems more and more that the organized directory is dying out. New webmasters come and go without knowing the tricks of the trade, while search engines are getting more strict on just about everything. You must organize your directory and link only to sites that relate to yours or you are wasting your time and the time of those that you want to exchange links with.

The author has been a webmaster for over 6 years. Check out webmaster tips for more tips from the author.

If you’ve got a web site then one of your biggest marketing challenges is how to generate traffic without spending a fortune. Whether you’re trying to build your ezine or prospect list or get potential customers to contact you or buy your products or services, getting people to your web site is a must and can be a challenge.

Especially if you don’t have a big budget to spend on online marketing, and if you’re having a tough time getting your site to show up in the search engine rankings. All of this was (and continues to be!) one of my biggest marketing challenges.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m not one to back off from a challenge. In fact, give me one and I’ll do whatever it takes to overcome it. I’m going to share with you one marketing technique I’ve used to immediately get my web site to the top of the search engine rankings and to triple my web site traffic in just a couple of months.

Getting qualified traffic to your web site

If you’ve got a web site then one of your marketing tasks is generating qualified traffic to that web site. What exactly is qualified traffic? Qualified traffic consists of people who are looking for what you are offering. They’re in the market for what you’re selling and they are actively searching for it.

Does your site show up on page 10 of the search results, or perhaps doesn’t even show up at all?

If you’re like many small business owners, you don’t have the technical knowledge, expertise or time to do what it takes to get your site to naturally achieve a top-ranking in Google and the other major search engines.

You can move your site to Number 1 in less than a day

Take my web site, www.10stepmarketing.com, for example. There are tons of web sites on marketing. Achieving a number one Google ranking, or even a top 10 ranking could take a very long time to achieve even if I do everything right. But I want web site traffic NOW!

I want people who are searching for information on “marketing plans” and “how to market” to find out about me now, not months from now or a year from now (well I want them then, too, I just don’t want to wait until then!)

I did it and it works!

Did you know you can buy your way to the top? That’s exactly what I did, and you can do it, too. A text advertising service available through Google, called Google Adwords, enables anyone to have a text ad and a link to their web site show up as the top-ranked site for their selected keywords (keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines when they’re looking for information on the web).

These text ads show up on the right hand side of the results page when searchers type in your selected keywords. You’ll see them on any page, under the title “Sponsored Links.” Google even offers a keyword tool to help you pick the best keywords for your site.

You can spend as little or as much as you want

Depending on how much you want to spend, you can determine the ranking and page your ad shows up on. You can very easily garner the number one spot. You select your maximum daily budget so you’ll never spend more than you can afford and you can easily test different ads to see which ones work best.

You only pay for those who click

And the best part is, you only pay when someone clicks on your link. The other plus here is you’ll know if your ad is working by watching what percentage of those who see your ad actually click on it. And if its not working as well as you’d like, you can easily change it.

It’s all tracked so you know whether it’s working

Google offers excellent tracking reports so you know exactly how many people saw your ad and how many clicked on it. You can send them to any page on your web site (for example, you might want to send them directly to your products page, or the page where they can register for your free ezine or special report).

The quickest way to boost your web site traffic

I used Google Adwords to start generating web site traffic and ezine subscribers my second month in business. My results were so good I maxed-out my budget in a matter of weeks and had to put my ad on “pause” (stop running it for awhile). The way I look at it that’s a good problem to have, considering all those clicks led to new subscribers and customers.

3x the traffic in less than 3 months

Between this technique and the one I’ll tell you about next week, I was able to triple my web site traffic in less than three months. And you can bet I’ll continue using both of these marketing techniques to keep growing my web site traffic. I love them because they’re simple enough for anyone to do and they don’t cost a lot.

Get the qualified traffic you want

If you want to generate qualified web site traffic quickly, Google Adwords is an excellent way to do it. If you want to learn more, visit https://adwords.google.com

(C) 2005 Debbie LaChusa

20-year marketing veteran Debbie LaChusa created The 10stepmarketing System to help small business owners and solo-preneurs successfully market their business, themselves without spending a fortune on marketing. To learn more about this simple, step-by-step program and to sign up for her FREE audio class and FREE weekly ezine featuring how-to articles, tips and advice, visit www.10stepmarketing.com

I remember when I created my first web site. I designed it, published it and then waited expectantly for Google to list it in their page rankings. Of course, I didn’t expect to be up at the top of the listings but I did think I would be there somewhere.

After several days the disappointment began to set in. I had a great web site but no one was going to see it because Google wasn’t including me in their listings! All that work for nothing. So I started looking around the net, trying to find out why I wasn’t being listed. It was now that I discovered that it can take Google up to 8 months to include your site on their search engine. This was a devastating blow. I couldn’t wait 8 months before people saw my web site!

My next plan of action was to get some traffic to my web site, maybe that would help get me noticed. I designed a banner free of charge from a site on the web, this was really easy, even as a beginner it was done in 5 minutes. I then bought some banner impressions from a seller on ebay. Typically this involved displaying your banner 1,000,000 for a fee of say $4.99. So I signed up for this and expected the traffic to come flying to my site. Well, if I got 1 person clicking on my banner from every 1000 times the banner was displayed I was lucky. And then there was the people that just view the banners in order to get paid. When I looked at where the hits were coming from it was evident that most of them were coming from China and other non-English speaking countries.

So, having discovered that paid for banner advertising does not work, I finally discovered how to get noticed by Google….

Back-links. Yes, that was the secret. What are back-links? There are other web sites that have a link to your site on them. Google determines the popularity of your site by how many other sites link to it. So how do you get back links? You can list your site in the free directories that proliferate the web, but these are low quality links.

The best way of getting links is to create your own links by writing an article like this. There are dozens of article directories on the net, you submit your article, simply ensure you include a link to your web site and hey presto, you have created a back link to your site. Google will take notice and you will move up the search rankings. The more articles you submit, the more popular Google will think your site is.

Article directories are free to use and can also be a good way of advertising your site. Write about a subject that relates to your site, people see you have some expert knowledge on the subject and follow the link through to your site.

Adrian Soden is webmaster for an article directory – The Oracle 2006 and is helping thousands of people get FREE links to their own website.

http://www.theoracle2006.com

We all know that the secret to success on the Internet is getting your website noticed and producing massive amounts of unique traffic.
Even better still is producing this traffic on a consistent basis and for free.
So how do we go about this task and what is the magic formula that will do this for us on a constant and ongoing basis.

Here are my 7 tips that will certainly in crease your website traffic flow and also increase your websites revenue potential.

1) If you think logically about the internet there are millions of websites and pages available and so you have very little chance of getting significant amounts of traffic if you only have one web page online, so in order to take the first step to gaining more traffic you must produce more websites and more web pages on subjects that are of interest to the general internet viewing public.

2) Having decided to produce more websites and web pages it is of the utmost importance that you research your subjects and look for the niche areas of interest that give you a better than fighting chance of getting your websites listed in the top few listings of the major search engines, These listing are the key to where your free traffic will come from.

3) “Content is king” and so always aim to provide fresh content that is of interest to your visitors and of even more importance ensure that the contents you provide is regularly updated, certainly on a weekly basis or better still on a daily basis.

4) Make sure that your web pages are keyword rich regarding the subject matter that you are aiming to attract your potential visitors. Analyse your web pages and ensure that your pages have a keyword density of around the 5 to 10 percent mark.

5) Do not populate your web pages with too many advertising or affiliate banners links etc as this will destroy the image of your web page as a truly informative page and give the impression of just an advertising billboard, which will certainly turn off a lot of your visitors.

6) If you are trying to monetize your web pages with adsense or some similar program experiment with the placing of such adverts. Top centre just below the header and before your body text is usually the optimum position.

7) If you produce different websites and web pages track the activity each one produces and then try to produce further sites that mirror to some degree the most successful sites, certainly this will lead to your optimum success online.

I hope that these tips will be of help to you and your online success.

Terry Till

Learn more about increasing your website traffic generation.

http://www.trafficgt.com/7tips.html

“How can I increase traffic to my website” has got to be the biggest question of the new Internet age. Whether yours is a one man/ woman show or a large corporate website, traffic is the need of the day. Most websites fail for lack of adequate traffic, but you can avoid this fate if you follow sound Internet marketing methods. Here are five methods that you can use to increase traffic to your website

1. Optimize your existing site. If your site is already up and running and you are not getting any traffic, one of the possible reasons for this is that your site is not adequately optimized. In order to get a good search engine ranking in queries related to your site, your web pages must be focused on your target keywords, and these keywords need to be placed strategically in the meta tags (title, description and keywords), in the headlines of your page, in the opening paragraph of text, in the anchor text of links on your page and even in file names. Thorough and proper placement of key words and phrases is what optimization is all about.

However, one thing to remember, if you target the wrong keywords you may not get any traffic. Do some keyword research and find out how people actually search when looking for products or services such as yours. What words or word combinations do they use? Your pages should be optimized to highlight these proper combinations. You can see which key words and key word combinations are used by visiting Overture’s Search Term Suggestion tool located at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

2. Add more content to your website – This is the method of increasing traffic that is most ignored by website owners. Many people don’t realize that each of the inner pages of any website functions like a mini-website, in that they are doorways through which the site will be found in search engines and through which people will enter. If you add more pages with optimized content you will increase the chances of being found in search engines for a wide variety of search terms, and this will result in an increase in traffic.

3. Increase the number of inbound links to your site – If other sites around the Internet link to your site this will increase traffic to you directly and indirectly. The direct boost is given because surfers who see your links may click through and visit your site. The indirect traffic boost given by link popularity is that your site will get a higher search engine ranking in search engines which measure link popularity as an index of a website’s value. The search results in Google are based in a large part on this factor. You can increase the amount of inbound links by engaging in reciprocal links campaigns or by looking for directories where you can add your url, usually through a form on the site.

4. Publish your content on other websites with a link back to your site. This method also works in a direct and an indirect way. Whenever an article by you is published somewhere, with a link back to your site, you can expect that some people will click through and visit your site. Many webmasters and ezine publishers are hungry for good content and if you provide it, then you have a good chance of being published.

Suppose you have a website promoting your ebook entitled “A Step by Step Guide to Internet Marketing”. If you write a 600 word article on “The Basics of Search Engine Optimization” and get it published in high volume ezines or on a well visited website, then you will get a stream of targeted traffic, people who are already predisposed towards buying your product.

This method also helps indirectly in that it builds up the amount of incoming links, and boosts search engine ranking. You can get your material disseminated to other webmasters and ezine editors by posting your articles at http://www.articlecity.com, http://www.ideamarketers.com or through the many free article groups at Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/)

5. Don’t forget Offline Advertising: Most people still spend most of their time offline. Put your url in your print advertising, TV advertising, on your stationary and in your brochures, on your vehicles, in your shop window, on T-shirts and other apparel and any other place where it will be seen. When it comes to offline advertising, an easy-to- remember url is an advantage.

6. Try Pay Per Click Advertising: Search engine optimization, reciprocal linking, content creation, and publishing all take time to deliver traffic to your site. If the main sections of your site are ready for public viewing and you want to see how well you can do, then buy some traffic. The most popular and probably most effective pay per click advertising program is Google’s Adwords. It only takes a few minutes to set up an Adwords account and you will get traffic immediately. But remember, your site has to be good enough to convert this traffic into orders if you want to recover the cost of the advertising.

So, roll up your sleeves and start working. Choose the website promotion methods that are most appropriate for you and you will be well on your way to providing the answer to your own question about how to increase website traffic.

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He has been working on the Internet since 1995, and is currently the director of A1-Optimization http://www.a1-optimization.com, a firm providing low cost search engine optimization, submission and web promotion services.

Internet marketing promotion serves two main purposes: 1) Driving
traffic to a website; 2) Ensuring that the traffic is targeted
traffic.

It is really crucial that your promotional efforts fulfill both
of these purposes. Without traffic, a website is nothing more
than a piece of art that is taking up space on the World Wide
Web.

Like an incredible, decked out building that is vacant, it
is simply decoration that accomplishes nothing. On the other
hand, a website that has loads of traffic and tons of unique
visitors per day is no more effective than the website that has
no traffic if the traffic visiting the website is not targeted
traffic.

Thus, if either of the two main purposes of internet
marketing promotion is not fulfilled, your business likely will
not benefit from your promotion efforts.

In order to drive traffic to a website, getting the website
listed in the search engines, either through search engine
optimization or through pay-per-click advertising is pretty
important.

Search engine marketing is undoubtedly one of the most
effective forms of internet marketing promotion in existence. The
majority of internet users who seek information via the internet
us the search engines to gather information, so a search engine
listing can be extremely fruitful in driving traffic to your
website.

In order for that traffic to be targeted, your search engine
marketing campaigns have to be carefully designed.

Keyword

research to determine the popularity of certain keywords and
keyword phrases among your target audience is essential to
designing an effective search engine marketing strategy.

Using

the right keywords for your target audience will increase your
website’s potential for receiving targeted traffic. The titles of
your web pages and their descriptions that show up in search
engine results also play a large role in getting internet users
to click-through to your website and to view what you are
offering or displaying on your website.

In addition to search engine marketing, there are other internet
marketing promotion techniques that have potential for driving
qualified traffic to your website. These include:

• Link exchanges
• Banner advertising
• Publishing of expert articles
• Email marketing
• Starting your own affiliate program
• Listing your website in directories
• Listing your website in portals
• Buying advertisements in ezines
• Participating in newsgroups and online forums
• Using shopping bots

In addition to these internet marketing promotion ideas, you can
also attract visitors to your website through more traditional
marketing methods.

For instance, you can issue press releases to gain media
exposure; place classified advertisements in newspapers or
industry-related magazines; deliver advertisements or coupons
through direct mail; advertise on radio stations or television
stations; engage in telemarketing; put up billboards; participate
in trade shows; or even hold seminars in which you share your
expertise and promote your internet business.

There are many different ways to drive traffic to your website.
Opening your mind to the possibilities of both online and offline
advertising for the purpose of driving qualified, targeted
traffic to your website is the first step to devising an internet
marketing promotion strategy that will be wildly successful.

Both modern internet marketing tactics and traditional marketing
methods can be used to promote your internet-based business.

Conducting market research to clearly define your target market
and to learn about the characteristics of your target market is
crucial to successfully promoting any business through marketing
or advertising efforts.

For some people, designing and administering their marketing
program for their internet business is something they can do
themselves.

Others may benefit from professional services from expert
marketers who know how to market an internet-based business using
both state-of-the-art and traditional marketing methods.

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

As any experienced webmaster will tell you the search to increase traffic to their website is a never ending one. Acquiring backlinks to your website is a great way to increase your traffic but as webmasters gain internet marketing experience they quickly realize that getting someone to provide a quality link to their website is no easy task.

There are a number of link building services on the internet geared towards “automating” your link building campaign, or promise “1000’s of backlinks to your website instantly”.

I have tried many of these services during my first steps in online advertising and have made a few conclusions about what these sites actually provide:

• Sites in these exchanges are generally brand new or of low quality. Ask yourself, do you see CNN or Google available for a link exchange at these sites?
• Links pages for the sites in these exchanges are uncategorized search engine SPAM. Ask yourself, how valuable is a link from a page with 100’s of other un-related links on it to your business? There are exceptions to any rule but my experience has shown that there are very few “valuable” links to be gained from a link exchange site. The time you spend searching for these few golden nuggets would be better spent adding content to your website.
• Links pages are either not linked from the home page or are buried so deep in the site linking architecture that they are virtually unfindable. You aren’t going to see very much traffic from that.
• A massive burst of backlinks to your website is a red flag with the search engines and may cause you to drop in the rankings actually reducing the traffic to your website, the exact opposite affect you originally wanted.
• Your email inbox is full of link request SPAM from the link exchange site. More often than not it is a waste of time to even view the site requesting the exchange. People seem to be more concerned with page rank in a link exchange than the actual traffic potential or content relevancy of the link and that’s misguided at best.

It may be a good idea for a brand new website to join a link exchange to get a few relevant backlinks to their site if other quality sites from the same industry are available for an exchange but for an established business I would steer clear of this strategy.

Remember, Nothing is Free

Nobody is going to give you a valuable link on their website for free. It is like taking money out of their pockets and handing it too you just because you sent them an email asking them too.

A webmaster that has built up their website to the point where you would like to see your link on their site has done their homework and hard work to be the desireable link partner that you see.

If you are not working diligently at making your website link worthy through original content, a unique tool, or a valuable service then I’m afraid you are going to have a hard road building quality backlinks. If you really want to climb to the top of the search engine rankings you will have to have people link to your website unsolicited.

Ask yourself, should I be spending 8 hours a day mining up and sending link requests just to have them rejected because my site is no good? Wouldn’t that time be better invested in improving your website so that you are the one being solicited for exchanges?

Fact: High quality, high traffic websites (ie. where you want your link to be) have no need or desire to trade or silicit links to their site.

While they may purchase a few strategic links to boost their search engine rankings or increase their overall site traffic you will not find too many information hubs that seek out reciprocal links. The fact is they can sell that “linkspace” as advertising so why would they reduce their earning potential to help you out?

Great Ways to Get Unsolicited Backlinks

The good news is that it is not all doom and gloom building links. You simply need to arm yourself with the right tools and then actually do the work.

• Write articles in your field of expertise and publish them in article directories with a link to your site in the author resource box.
• Directory Submissions
• Post in Forums in your industry. A great way to build relationships, links and referrals.
• Write a Blog about your industry and run the blog from your domain. Suggested Blog Software – Wordpress
• Run a Topsites or Banner Exchange in your industry. These types of exchanges have a small banner that must be placed on member websites to track statistics. You can include a link to your site in this button code. This method is not applicable to all industries and may hurt your credibility in some.
• Offer a unique tool or service from your website. Preferrably a free one. Provide HTML form code so webmasters can insert your tool into their websites if possible.
• Run a niche links directory with categories related to your main website topic and link it to your home page with the name “partners” or “resources”. You will get a lot of SPAM from unrelated sites that you will have to reject but you will get a few golden nuggets. You will also find that many sites will place the reciprocal link on their site and not remove it even if you reject them since most links manager scripts will check for your reciprocal prior to accepting a link request into the database for approval. I have worked out a number of side deals with websites after they solicited a reciprocal links request. I may not have liked the links page they offered to place my link on, but I know they are interested in an exchange and if they have a webpage that suits my site better strategically I will send them an email. They may reject your request but it sure beats “cold calling” webmasters through email. Remember to make your links directory attractive and easy to find with some form of built in search if possible.

You will notice that all of my suggestions for ways to build quality backlinks require work on your part to implement. Sorry there is no way around this, as it should be.

About the Author:

Michael Lawrence is the webmaster for SEO Web Guide. Providing professional Search Engine Optimization services.