Ten Top Web 2.0 Sites For Generating Free Blog Traffic!

©2009 Doug Champigny. All Rights Reserved.

There’s no doubt about it – you can’t be truly successful online these days without your own blog, or blogs. While websites are still viable, blogs are much more quickly indexed by the search engines, have a greater number of places to be found in, benefit from interaction with your blog readers, etc, etc.

But of and by itself, a blog isn’t necessarily successful. As with any virtual real estate, you have to get targeted traffic to it – that is, you must attract an audience of people who want to know the information you’re sharing, and who want to buy the resources you’re promoting.

Fortunately, there are a number of new Web 2.0 technologies in use at various Web 2.0 sites to make that easier these days. Armed with a bit of knowledge, you can flood your blogs with traffic at little or no cost!

Here are our Top 10 Web 2.0 sites for driving blog traffic:

StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is a sort of hybrid site – it has all the value of a search engine, and many use it that way. But it also has a random site feature – users can hit the link in the StumbleUpon toolbar and be shown sites they may not know about, sites that match the keywords set by that individual surfer. Personally, I’ve had as many as 550 visitors in one day to a blog post I had told StumbleUpon about. Ranked by any SU user who visits the page, results vary but can add up fast! Doug Champigny at StumbleUpon

Technorati: Think of Technorati as a great big search engine for blog content, organized by tags instead of ‘keywords’. Really, the tags ARE keywords, but content here can include your posts, your photos, your videos, etc. Here’s an example of the content users can find at Technorati about any given blog: My Internet Marketing Blog Listing at Technorati

MyBlogLog: In some ways MyBLogLog is similar to the other sites, but in some ways it’s vastly different! Yes, it lists your blogs, and automatically displays your last few posts. But then it goes so much further! It tracks not only your posts, but displays the comments you leave on other blogs too. Visitors to your site can choose to follow you through a widget on your blog, and you can message those following you at any time. Unlike other services, though, those direct messages not only go on their website, but get e-mailed to your followers as well. Use it sparingly for this, so you don’t get disabled for spamming.

For about $25 a year you can upgrade to pro there, and then access great stats for your blog – how many people visited each day, where your traffic came from, what pages they visited, and what links they followed to leave the site. That information lets you fine-tune your traffic generation, spending more time on what’s driving traffic to your blog and less time on the less-effective methods. Check Doug Champigny at MyBlogLog…

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a professional networking site where you complete your profile and then connect with others you know or know of. While not specifically designed to drive traffic, you do have live links to your blog from your public profile there, and a small area to update what you’re currently working on, recommending, etc. Also, your connections there can see a synopsis of your most recent blog posts, bringing more traffic in through there as well. Doug Champigny’s Profile on LinkedIn

iTunes: Yes, this is the same iTunes your kids get their music from – maybe even you yourself load your iPhone apps from the site. If so, you probably know they have a major podcast directory there, so if you’re using audios on your blog (podcasting) you can have them appear there for the 4 million+ users of iTunes to find should they search for your subject. Here’s our Affiliate Marketing Podcasts in the iTunes Directory.

Squidoo: Squidoo is an information site built by the online community, who create pages called ‘lenses’. You can create one on any topic you like, and add articles, photos, links, etc. By building a strong, informative lens on a related topic that links to your blogs, you can drive a lot of traffic that keeps building over time as you update and add to your lens – and again, you can have your most recent blog posts linked to from your lens automatically. Here’s our PLR lens on Squidoo.

HubPages: Similar to Squidoo, HubPages also let’s you create our own pages – but they prefer you do more linking to a variety of sites and become a true ‘hub’ for whatever topic you’re covering. Our PLR Hub at HubPages.

Google Knol: My favorite of these types of sites is the Google Knol – Google defines a Knol as ‘a unit of knowledge’. Readers can comment on your knol, review your knol, etc, so it becomes a community unto itself in some ways. Recently we were awarded a ‘Top Pick Knol Award’ for our Internet Marketing Knol.

FaceBook: One of the biggest and best known Web 2.0 site, the FaceBook community is huge and can bring a lot of curious people to your blog once you start interacting and building a community there. Be sure to use the FaceBook Updates regularly, as they show up in TweetDeck for those who are connected with you at FaceBook. Here’s Teri’s FaceBook community…

Twitter: And speaking of TweetDeck, it’s a free tool you should be using for marketing on Twitter. Twitter is my favorite Web 2.0 site these days, a micro-blogging platform that lets you post ‘tweets’ – notes, comments and/or links of up to 140 Characters per posting. I’ve left Twitter til the end of this list because I want you to sign on to follow Teri and I there, and watch what we do and how we do it. There will be some additional posts on here about Twitter, and an Advanced Twitter Marketing report will be forthcoming in the coming weeks. For now, be sure you’re following these 3 accounts:

- @Champigny
- @SuperAffil
- @CaptnAffiliate

There’s so much more you can do to drive Web 2.0 traffic to your blog, but time will always be your limiting factor. For now, concentrate on those above, and after every blog post be sure to ping the directories – use iPings after one post, then Pingoat after the next one, and Ping-O-Matic after the third posting, then repeat that sequence with each set of posts you do.

All 3 are free to use, so bookmark those three pages and hit the next one in the sequence after each post. Each does some the others don’t, with overlap on the bigger sites, so don’t use more than one for each post, but don’t skip any in the rotation either.

The 10-site recipe above will flood your blog with free, targeted traffic over time – but please, take a moment right now and leave a comment to let us know what you thought of the list, and of other Web 2.0 sites you’ve found helpful. We do follow, so the link is spidered back to your blog for a bit of PR love!

Technorati Tags: Blog Traffic, blog traffic from Web 2.0 sites, blog traffic strategies, Web 2.0 strategies, Web 2.0 sites, Google Knol, Twitter, FaceBook, HubPages, Squidoo, iTunes, LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, Technorati, StumbleUpon

You may have heard of Joint Ventures, but have you ever heard of Joint Venture Giveaways? Joint Venture Giveaways have lots of benefits, for the people that are giving gifts away, as well as for the people who are receiving them.

The people who are receiving free gifts are getting – well – free gifts. These gifts are usually quite valuable, and the recipients get a lot of use and/or joy out of them. But the people who are giving the gifts away gain even more in the way of benefits.

First, by participating in a Joint Venture Giveaway, you can build a very large list in a very short amount of time. That is the main reason that most people create products and give them away for these events. But there are other benefits as well, such as increasing website traffic.

Joint Venture Giveaways are held throughout the year. Here is how they work:

1. You learn about the event well ahead of time. You may be able to find events in the search engines, or you may be a member of an Internet Marketer’s opt-in list and learn about it that way. You may also join a site such as Ken McArthur’s JVAlert and find out about these events through that media.

2. You register for the event, as someone who will be giving something away. The better events will have requirements that you must meet, such as a list of a certain size, but as long as you meet the requirements, if they exist, you can take part, free of charge.

3. You create your free gift. This may be an ebook, a series of articles, a report, an informative video – or something of that nature. The important thing is that you make sure that it has some value and worth to the people that download it, that it hasn’t been used elsewhere (like at other JV giveaways), and that it contains links to your website inside the product.

4. You upload the product to your website, preferably in a zipped folder, and then you create an opt-in page. The opt-in page should be short (the reader shouldn’t have to scroll to read the entire thing), it should have a good headline, a little bit of text that tells the person what they are getting, and a form that they can fill out with their name and email address.

5. You create a thank you page or an OTO (One Time Offer). This is the page that the visitor sees after they submit the form with their name and email address. These is a great time for an OTO, but if all you want to do is provide a thank you page, that works well also. Make sure that you tell the visitor to check their email, and to confirm their email address.

6. You set up your autoresponder. Once the visitor submits their name and email, they should be sent a confirmation email. After they confirm their email address, the autoresponder should send them an email that tells them where to go to download their free gift.

7. You submit the URL, the name of your gift, and a graphical book cover or CD/DVD cover to the site where the Joint Venture Giveaway is being held.

8. On the day that the giveaway starts, you send out an email to your list, if you have one, telling them to go pick up their free gifts. All of the participants who have donated gifts for the event do this as well.

9. People come to your download site & sign up and download your gift in droves!

So as you can see, Joint Venture giveaways boost your traffic in two different but equally powerful ways – first you get that initial surge as they flock to your site from the giveaway, and then you can use your newly-created opt-in list to bring them back to that site, to your other sites, to your blogs and to any affiliate marketing links you may be promoting. That’s what makes JV giveaways one of the most powerful tools in your targeted traffic generating arsenal!

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Doug Champigny is a well-known Traffic Master with over 100 websites and a number of blogs under his control, including the Top Traffic Tips Blog and the Top Traffic Tips Bootcamp. Doug has also authored numerous e-books on increasing traffic for Internet, niche and affiliate marketing. Be sure to bookmark his sites for the latest in targeted traffic generation to bring a flood of traffic to your web sites and blogs.
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Note to Webmasters & Bloggers: You may use any article from this site provided you do so without altering the text, and that you include the author’s resource box with the links fully operational on you sites or blogs.

Technorati Tags: web site traffic, blog traffic, targeted traffic, joint ventures, joint venture giveaways, using giveaways for traffic, JV’s, Doug Champigny

In the ninth century Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian mathematician, introduced algebrac concepts and Arabic numerals while he was working in Baghdad. During the time Baghdad was the international center for scientific study. Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi’s process of performing arithmetic with Arabic numerals was called algorism. In the eighteenth century the name evolved into algorithm. Algorithms are a finite set of carefully defined instruction. Algorithms are procedures that are used for accomplishing some task which will end in a defined end-state. Algorithms are used in linguistics, computers, and mathematics.

Many people like to think of algorithms as steps in a well written recipe. Provided you follow each step of the recipe to the letter you will have an edible dinner. As long as you follow each step of the algorithm you will find the proper solution. Simple algorithms can be used to design complex algorithms.

Computers use algorithms as a way to process information. All computer programs are created with algorithms (or series of algorithms) that give the computer a list of instructions to follow. Computers usually read data from an input device when using an algorithm to process information. In order to be successful algorithms need to be carefully defined for a computer to read them. Program designers need to consider every possible scenario that could arise and set up a series of algorithms to resolve the problem. Designers have to be very careful not to change the order of the instructions; computers cannot cope with an algorithm that is in the wrong place. Flow of control refers to how the list of algorithms must start at the top and go all the way to the bottom, following every single step on the way.

Some terms that are used to describe algorithms include natural languages, flowcharts, psudocode, and programming languages. Natural expression algorithms are generally only seen in simple algorithms. Computers generally use programming languages that are intended for expressing algorithms.

There are different ways to classify algorithms. The first is by the specific type of algorithm. Types of algorithms include recursive and interative algorithms, deterministic and non-deterministic algorithms, and approximation algorithms. The second method used to classify algorithms is by their design methodology or their paradigm. Typical paradigm is are divide and conquer, the greedy method, linear programming, dynamic programming, search and enumeration, reduction, and probalictic and heuristic paradigms. Different fields of scientific study have different ways of classifying algorithms, classified to make their field as efficient as possible. Some different types of algorithms different scientific fields use include; search algorithms, merge algorithms, string algorithms, combinatorial algorithms, cryptography, sorting algorithms, numerical algorithms, graph algorithms, computational geometric algorithms, data compression algorithms, and parsing techniques.

Internet search engines use algorithms to aid in search engine optimization. Google’s web crawler’s use a link analysis algorithm to index and rank web pages. In an attempt to prevent webmasters from using underhanded schemes to influence search engine optimization, many internet search engines disclose as little about the algorithms they use in their optimization techniques.

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Doug Champigny is a well-known Traffic Master with over 100 websites and a number of blogs under his control, including the Top Traffic Tips Blog and the Top Traffic Tips Bootcamp. Doug has also authored numerous e-books on increasing traffic for Internet, niche and affiliate marketing. Be sure to bookmark his sites for the latest in targeted traffic generation to bring a flood of traffic to your web sites and blogs.
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Note to Webmasters & Bloggers: You may use any article from this site provided you do so without altering the text, and that you include the author’s resource box with the links fully operational on you sites or blogs.

Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, search engine algorithms, search engine info, web site traffic, blog traffic, building traffic, Doug Champigny

Search engine optimization is the art and science of making web pages attractive to internet search engines. Some internet businesses consider search engine optimization to be the subset of search engine marketing.

In the middle of the 1990s webmasters and search engine content providers started optimizing websites. At the time all the webmasters had to do was provide a URL to a search engine and a web crawler would be sent from the search engine. The web crawler would extract link from the webpage and use the information to index the page by down loading the page and then storing it on the search engines server. Once the page was stored on the search engines server a second program, called an indexer, extracted additional information from the webpage, and determines the weight of specific words. When this was complete the page was ranked.

It didn’t take very long for people to understand the importance of being highly ranked.

In the beginning search engines used search algorithms that webmasters provided about the web pages. It didn’t take webmasters very long to start abusing the system requiring search engines to develop a more sophisticated form of search engine optimization. The search engines developed a system that considered several factors; domain name, text within the title, URL directories, term frequency, HTML tags, on page key word proximity, Alt attributes for images, on page keyword adjacency, text within NOFRAMES tags, web content development, sitemaps, and on page keyword sequence.

Google developed a new concept of evaluating internet web pages called PageRank. PageRank weighs a web page’s quantity and quality based on the pages incoming links. This method of search engine optimization was so successful that Google quickly began to enjoy successful word of mouth and consistent praise.

To help discourage abuse by webmasters, several internet search engines, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask.com, will not disclose the algorithms they use when ranking web pages.The signals used today in search engine optimization typically are; keywords in the title, link popularity, keywords in links pointing to the page, PageRank (Google), Keywords that appear in the visible text, links from on page to the inner pages, and placing punch line at the top of the page.

For the most part registering a webpage/website on a search engine is a simple task. All Google requires is a link from a site already indexed and the web crawlers will visit the site and begin to spider its contents. Normally a few days after registering on the search engine the main search engine spiders will begin to index the website.

Some search engines will guarantee spidering and indexing for a small fee. These search engines do not guarantee specific ranking. Webmaster’s who don’t want web crawlers to index certain files and directories use a standard robots.txt file. This file is located in the root directory. Occasionally a web crawler will still crawl a page even if the webmaster has indicated he does not wish the page indexed.

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Doug Champigny is a well-known Traffic Master with over 100 websites and a number of blogs under his control, including the Top Traffic Tips Blog and the Top Traffic Tips Bootcamp. Doug has also authored numerous e-books on increasing traffic for Internet, niche and affiliate marketing. Be sure to bookmark his sites for the latest in targeted traffic generation to bring a flood of traffic to your web sites and blogs.
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Note to Webmasters & Bloggers: You may use any article from this site provided you do so without altering the text, and that you include the author’s resource box with the links fully operational on you sites or blogs.

Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, search engine rankings, search engine help, web site traffic, blog traffic, targeted traffic, Doug Champigny