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.

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During this last year I have given a HUGE amount of thought to the subject of search engines. After a lot of thought, I have determined to distinguish a single factor that will increase my bottom line more than any other factor. Aren't we all looking for new and interesting ways to get more free traffic from search engines? I am I can tell you that.

So I had to consider all different kinds of factors. I thought about my product selection. I considered my domain names. I considered my page content, and the overall look of my sites. I thought about my selection of keywords. I thought about on-page optimization. I couldn't distinguish any of these as the single most important thing that I did this last year.

If there is one thing I did this last year that raised my rankings and increased my traffic, it was the development of one way links. Now I'm not talking about trading links with other sites. I'm talking about getting sites to link to mine WITHOUT linking to theirs. I think we've all noticed that search engines are giving a lot of credit for this, and I've noticed it 'big time'.

So I figured out this last year that there are really easy ways to make this happen. At first, I heard about an article directory from a friend that would publish articles for free. I like writing articles, and have always written the content for my sites, but give away free website content? I decided to take one of my articles and have it published. Sure enough, the article directory let me add some information in a resource box that appeared at the bottom of my article, and I placed a link back to my site using the anchor text of one of my keyword phrases.

Sure enough, I had made a nice one way link to myself. I had no idea that this was only the beginning. I then started searching for more article directories where I could publish my article, and was able to find a list of about 100. I spent a day and submitted my article to all of them, and checked a few days later to find out which ones accepted it. Almost all of them did, and so I had created about 100 one way links back to my site.

It wasn't until last week that a friend told me about articlesender.com. They are a service that will submit your article to a bunch of sites. They will even do it for free. I donated to tell about $20 and they submitted my article to around 200 article directories. Submitting my article to that many directories would have taken me about 2 days, so $20 to me is nothing.

I would pay a lot more than that to get a few hundred one way links to my site. Are you kidding me? I love it. Not to mention that I get to use whatever anchor text I want, and write whatever content I want for the page that it appears on.

My friends; harness the power of articles. Right now, one way linking is the way to the money.

Tags: get more blog traffic, increase blog traffic, Targeted Traffic
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Every home business owner should know that your WEBSITE TRAFFICS will determine the life span of your work at home online business. As suggested by many motivation expert, your best bet to be successful in ANYTHING you do will be to study and learn from those WHO are already successful.

What are these online experts doing to attract the necessary traffics to their work at home online business?

What online strategy are they using and what can you learn from them?

One of the most frequently used online strategy is writing and submitting free articles to ezine. Over the years, as I read over many website marketing strategy, it seems that article writing remains the TOP method that webmaster has been using for many years. The only problem is that there are so many free articles floating around these days that you need to build a solid reputation before you can GAIN any reasonable click through to your site via your free articles.

Reciprocal links is another popular method which you can used to gain traffics to your home business website. Before starting your reciprocal links strategy, make sure you determine the keywords you want to used for your main index page. During the link exchange make sure you put your KEYWORDS in your hyper text link. Search Engine will recognize them as your site keywords. Remember also to include them in your title and the first 80-120 words of the index content page. Please do not just reciprocal links, SEO experts recommend that you should add at least 60-70 pages of contents in your NEW site so that your site will not just be a LINKS only website which score a LOW RANK in the algorithm of Search Engine.

Finally, have you noticed that successful online master also make used of discussion forum wisely. Discussion forum are a great online marketing tools that you should not ignore. It can bring IMMEDIATELY an increase in your website TRAFFICS which can result in increase revenue for you. Forums allows you to create your own signature file which you can write a few lines of your own business information including your URL. Each posting you made will automatically include your signature file. However, you have to show your expert knowledge when answering questions as people who read your postings will associate it with you. Frequent forums that get lots of online traffics so that each posting by you will get the maximum exposure.

In whatever business, the initial learning may be tough, but if you believe in yourself and persist in LEARNING and taking the necessary ACTION to apply what you learn, one day, you too will become an Online Expert and SUCCESS will follow YOU.

Wishing you success in running a Successful Work At Home Online Business.

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The recent bloodbath among online content peddlers and digital media proselytisers can be traced to two deadly sins. The first was to assume that traffic equals sales. In other words, that a miraculous conversion will spontaneously occur among the hordes of visitors to a web site. It was taken as an article of faith that a certain percentage of this mass will inevitably and nigh hypnotically reach for their bulging pocketbooks and purchase content, however packaged. Moreover, ad revenues (more reasonably) were assumed to be closely correlated with "eyeballs". This myth led to an obsession with counters, page hits, impressions, unique visitors, statistics and demographics.

It failed, however, to take into account the dwindling efficacy of what Seth Godin, in his brilliant essay ("Unleashing the IdeaVirus"), calls "Interruption Marketing" – ads, banners, spam and fliers. It also ignored, at its peril, the ethos of free content and open source prevalent among the Internet opinion leaders, movers and shapers. These two neglected aspects of Internet hype and culture led to the trouncing of erstwhile promising web media companies while their business models were exposed as wishful thinking.

The second mistake was to exclusively cater to the needs of a highly idiosyncratic group of people (Silicone Valley geeks and nerds). The assumption that the USA (let alone the rest of the world) is Silicone Valley writ large proved to be calamitous to the industry.

In the 1970s and 1980s, evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake developed models of cultural evolution. Dawkins' "meme" is a cultural element (like a behaviour or an idea) passed from one individual to another and from one generation to another not through biological -genetic means – but by imitation. Sheldrake added the notion of contagion – "morphic resonance" – which causes behaviour patterns to suddenly emerged in whole populations. Physicists talked about sudden "phase transitions", the emergent results of a critical mass reached. A latter day thinker, Michael Gladwell, called it the "tipping point".

Seth Godin invented the concept of an "ideavirus" and an attendant marketing terminology. In a nutshell, he says, to use his own summation:

"Marketing by interrupting people isn't cost-effective anymore. You can't afford to seek out people and send them unwanted marketing, in large groups and hope that some will send you money. Instead the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."

This is sound advice with a shaky conclusion. The conversion from exposure to a marketing message (even from peers within a consumer network) – to an actual sale is a convoluted, multi-layered, highly complex process. It is not a "black box", better left unattended to. It is the same deadly sin all over again – the belief in a miraculous conversion. And it is highly US-centric. People in other parts of the world interact entirely differently.

You can get them to visit and you get them to talk and you can get them to excite others. But to get them to buy – is a whole different ballgame. Dot.coms had better begin to study its rules.

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Natural linking, what is it and how do I get it? More importantly, do I need it? If you run an Internet web presence that you want others to find in the search engines then the answer to the latter is YES!

What is natural linking? That is an easy question to answer. Natural linking occurs when someone places a link to your site from another site. The reason that someone might link to your site is not really important, the fact that they placed the link is the only thing that matters.

Some of the reasons that someone might place a link to your site or to a page within your website are:

* Your site offers some information that supports a fact or reinforces a position contained within another site. * Your site offers some tools or resources that would be helpful to others.* Your site contradicts a common misconception that others want use to validate their own views on that topic.* Your site represents a controversial viewpoint that others might want to showcase for their own purposes.

* Your site is just so very cool that others need to be made aware of it and seeing as my website links to your site, my site must be cool too!

Regardless of the reasons why someone might be linking to your site, these natural links are very important. Even if someone is linking to your site because they think it is a sad joke and they want others to see how bad your site is, it really doesn't matter.

Knowing that these types of links are important the next question is, "How do you get people to link to your site?" There are several ways you can get people to link to your site with the easiest being, make a useful site. Easier said then done you are thinking eh?

When you think about it, creating a useful site isn't that difficult, it just requires time. Time to find helpful tools to share with others, time to find sound advice regarding your site's topic of interest and time to make your site ooze the "It" factor. The amount of time it will take is solely dependent upon how much effort you want to put in to it.

OK, so you finished your site, now what? How do you let people know that your site is ready to amaze others? There are several ways to let people know about your site. If you have a budget set aside you could set up a PPC campaign that may bring in some traffic. You could join groups or forums that share your interest or even better, that are totally opposite to your site's message or theme. Perhaps one of the best ways is to write articles that others can use on their sites that are seeded with a few well placed links pointing back to your site.

One of the next big trends that is about to take off is, the "Bartered Link". Bartered links are where you offer space on your site to host an article written by other webmasters, which contain text links to their sites in exchange for a one way link back to your site. Are bartered links considered to be natural links? If they aren't then they sure do a fine job of mimicking them.

Regardless of the motivation behind someone linking to your site, even if it is because they think your site is bad or your opinion is wrong, just remember this… the fact that they did is all that truly matters as the link is the thing.

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If you have a website then you already know the importance of web traffic. Web traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive web traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating web traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) web traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to web traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted web traffic to your site…after all, isn't that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively. This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, web traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords. When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites. How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website. Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing. Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text. You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong…. Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.

This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same. Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting. Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site web traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements. Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net web traffic will increase.

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Most webmasters are aware of the importance of backlinks and any experienced webmaster will definately work very hard to get as much as possible backlinks to his / her site.

While backlinks are very important, it is not all backlinks that carry weight. What I mean by this, is that not any backlink will increase your traffic. The important thing about backlinks are that they must be relevant links. Thh simply means that the sites that are linking to your site, must be about the same topics to let that backlink count.

Say for instance that you have a website about "SPORT", it will be of little use to you if a site about "FINANCE" links to your site. Sports and Finance are not related to each other. But if you have a website about sports and five other sites are about tennis, rugby, golf, cricket or boxing, it will be relevant links if they are all linking to you, but your site must at least cover all these different topics.

Please avoid link farms at all cost, cause these sites only spam the search engines and is of zero value to its visitors.

One of the things you can do if you want relevant backlinks to your site, is to search for websites in your niche and kindly ask the webmaster for a reciprocal link. Or if you want one–way backlinks, and your website is maybe about adsense, write a good quality article about adsense and put it on quality article directories with high pagerank. Such links are also relevant.

One other thing you should not overlook, is to pay great attention to your anchor text.. The achor text is that little yellow balloon which pops up when you hover your mouse cursor over a live link. If you place it in the URL of your backlink, it will look like this title='Adsense for BLA BLA BLA' or something similar. Experiment a little. Just remember that no method is the best method and something which might work for somebody else, does not neccesarily mean it will also work for you..

Just follow the basic rules of the search engines and in no time you will notice a fair amount of traffic coming your way.

One more thing. You are free to use this article on your website provided that it stays unaltered and the links in the resourcebox is live, search-engine friendly links.

DO NOT STEAL. IT IS NOT WORTH IT.

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I can't tell you how surprised I am that so many people who are new to promoting their product or service online, that don't know the importance of keyword marketing. Believe me, your keywords are one the most important aspects of your website, even more so than content, and I'll explain why in a minute.

If you came to do an interview with me, a renowned dog expert, about dog shows but I never mentioned dogs ONCE in our conversation, would you think I was an expert at all? Would you tell ANYONE I was an expert after that experience? So, if someone you knew asked you if you knew anyone they could talk to about dogs….would you refer them to me? Probably not. That's how search engines work.

Let me ask you something. Go take a look at the keywords (just after the tag in your home page's source HTML. Let me guess what they say. They have in it the name of your web site, the name of your product, and a few, very broad keywords such as "golf" or "pets." Right?

So, when someone you meet on the street asks you what your website is about, what do you tell them? Let's go with the golf example. You tell them, "Oh, our site is all about golf. We have a whole section on Ping and other brands of golf clubs, a section on the best golf courses in the US, golf clothing, and great novelty golf items!: Now, go check out your keyword marketing phrases: golf, golf clubs, clothing, Great American Golf Source.

Well, those few words are what the search engines are looking for when they come to check out your site. They come and find your keywords. You're telling them your site is all about things like golf, clothing, American, Source, Great, clubs……So, these engines are going to start giving your site the reputation for those words.

A reputation? How does something like a web page get a reputation? This sounds like I'm back in high school!

Yep. The search engines take note of what you are saying are the most important words that describe your web page. Then, they categorize you so that when someone is searching for those same words; your page will get served up with any others that have those same keyword marketing phrases too.

So, here I get online, and I'm looking for a golf gift for Father's Day. I go to Google and do a search for "golf gifts." Do you think Google serves up your page to me at all? You told the guy on the street you have great novelty golf gifts, but did you tell the search engines?

No.

You told them your site is about Source, golf, clothing…..

So the chances of me ever finding your site is pretty close to zero.

Here, let's do a Google search for the phrase "golf" right now. Go ahead, pull up another browser and let's do this exercise together. Right as I write this article, there are a total of 689,000,000 pages that have "golf" as one of their keywords. Yikes. That's a lot of pages to compete with! And yours is just a little site.

So, now, remember what you told that guy? "Novelty golf gifts." Let's do a quick search for that. Oh wow, only 9,000,000 pages have that more specific keyword phrase in their . What are the chances that I will be able to find your page if you are competing with 9 million pages versus 689 million pages?

Um, sorry to say… both are millions and millions of pages to compete against!

So, what do you do?

If you are new to your niche market online, the best keyword marketing strategy is this:

1. Pick about 8 keyword phrases that describe what your site offers, but don't have a bazillion competing pages. Just do a search in Google and see how many pages you would be competing with.

2. Go to overture.com and do a search for the phrases you have chosen, and make sure they have enough people actually searching for those phrases! If you have a great keyword phrase that doesn't have a lot of competing pages, but only 2 people per month search for that phrase, you aren't going to get many visitors to your site! A good amount to shoot for is phrases that get about 2,000 searches per month at overture.com.

A general rule of thumb is that you can double the overture search counts (which are by month) and that is about how many searches there are per month in Google (Google doesn't have a way for you to find out how many people are searching for exact keyword phrases each month).

That's why a phrase like "Great American Golf Source" is a terrible keyword to have in your list. Unless you are a household name like McDonalds or Q-tips…putting your business name or product as a keyword marketing phrase is not as valuable to you as using a more descriptive word such as "novelty golf gifts"

3. Next, once you have put your keyword phrases, it is imperative that you actually use those words in the content of that page! If you are telling the search engines that you want to be known for "novelty golf gifts" but never mention that phrase EVER in that page….will you get a reputation for being an expert in the area of novelty golf gifts? Chances are slim to none.

So, search engines look for what you say your site is expert on, and then looks through your content to see that you really ARE an expert in that field because your page talks all about things relating to your keywords. They take note, and the next time someone does a search for your keywords, your site makes it into the list of pages that are served up to them.

There's a lot more you need to do now that you have your keyword marketing list set up correctly. In my next article, we'll talk about some optimizing you should do to your pages to ensure that when you are served up in that list, that you make it up high enough (like in pages 1-3…of 9,000,000) so that people will actually find your link, click on it, and go visit your page!

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Every time I release a free e-book to my subscribers, I get great feedback about how awesome I am and how they could NEVER create anything so cool.

((sigh))

I have a confession to make. You see … it is really really simple to make a short, viral e-book. It's not rocket science, I promise.

If you know how to use Word for Windows, you can create an e-book. Now, as far as doing market research to find out if anyone will *buy* your e-book — that's a whole 'nother ball game. But, if you want to make a nice little giveaway for some viral marketing, it's easy as pie!

Step 1: Write your e-book in Word for Windows.

As you write it, keep the following in mind:

* This e-book should serve a purpose, either to generate traffic to your website or to make affiliate sales. However, it should also be informative and useful to the reader. This e-book will represent your company. Make it quality.

* Double check that all links are active before you save your final copy in Word.

* Keep your images and pictures small, because you don't want the final product to have a large file size. When you're saving your images, test the file types. I find that saving an image in .jpg is smaller than saving it in some other file sizes. Test yours, too.

Step 2: Go to my favorite tool, http://convert.neevia.com/

See where it says "Select the file"? Browse to your Word for Windows file and click Upload and Convert

That's all there is. Like I said, EASY EASY EASY.

Now, it's your job to get your ebook into the hands of people.

1. Send it to your mailing list or newsletter.2. Allow your friends to give it away.3. Submit it to free e-book directories.4. Use it as an enticement for people to sign up for your mailing list (You can say "Sign up and receive this cool e-book – free!")5. You can even give it away as a free gift to people who win your auctions on eBay to make your auction stand out from others.

So, if you'd like to have viral marketing working for you, too, get started today on your giveaway!

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There are many advantages to writing articles and distributing them to online article directories. Driving more visitors to your web site is just one of the benefits.

Article directories allow you to include a resource box at the end of your article with a link back to your web site. This translates into more visitors and back links to your web site.

Most likely, these links will help your search engine ranking because major search engines count back links as a factor to rank web sites. So be sure to add the URL to your web site using anchor text with your key words.

Writing articles on a specific topic and submitting them to article directories can establish you as an expert. And online credibility counts a lot!

Hundreds of web site owners are looking for fresh online content. Your articles will help other web masters to add valuable content to their web sites. It is a win – win situation!

It is totally free. Submit your articles to article directories for free. You will only need to invest some of your time to write a nice article and a little more time to submit it to article directories.

You can submit your articles manually but it can take a lot of your time to do so, especially if you plan to submit your article to many article directories.

Another option is to use an Article Submitter. This software submits your articles to one or two hundred article directories almost automatically saving you time and efforts.

I know, writing a nice article takes time, but it can become very rewarding. Keep your articles short, about 400 – 800 words. Do not copy from other writers. Check your grammar and spelling. Write a title that makes your reader want to read more. Include a call to action like click here. Believe it or not, it can make a difference! Add a link back to your web site in your resource box.

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