Your e-marketing strategies for getting traffic to websites should include as varied a mix as possible. In driving web traffic, as in many things in life, putting ‘all your eggs in one basket’ can leave you in a precarious position. Yet many online marketing plans do just that – less-savvy marketers and a great many offline businesses spend the bulk of their traffic generation time and their online marketing budget focused strictly on SEO, or Search Engine Marketing.

But while it’s obvious to more experienced online marketers that SEO should only be one aspect of your efforts to build web traffic to websites, is SEO even the BEST method of promoting the site you’re trying to drive traffic to?

For example, let’s compare article marketing to on-going SEO activities. (On-site SEO is done when the site is built, and it’s only natural to consider the best SEO practices at that point as it takes no additional time. What we’re discussing here is the ongoing time spent on SEO after the website is complete and you’re trying to increase your visibility on the Search Engine Ranking Pages, or SERPs.)

Effective ongoing SEO activities require online marketers to be true specialists. This is because, in effect, SEO companies are engaged in what is almost guerrilla warfare against the search engines. The search engines want to list sites based on their content, their originality and whether the site is truly helpful to search engine users who are searching for information that’s relevant to them. Effective SEO requires search engine marketers to try and manipulate those results in favor of their clients or their own websites and blogs.

This has led to search engines not disclosing their ranking algorithms, and to changing those algorithms regularly as they find SEO efforts affecting their results or they come up with better ways to evaluate each page. For example, one of the methods used to evaluate a page is the number of sites linking to that page, the assumption being that the best content gets linked to the most. Online marketing programmers then created automated reciprocal linking sites called Free-For-All links pages, which flourished just long enough for the engines to catch on, at which point they dropped the rankings of the sites using them. Software was developed that spawned hundreds of sites almost instantly, all linking back to one site. Again, once the search engines had the ‘footprint’ of sites built that way, they dropped those using them. As an additional step, at least one large search engine also starting rating links lower if they come from within the same ‘sub-net mask’ (basically, the same server or servers located in the same vicinity since they may well be owned by the same website owners.)

And so the battle continues, with SEO firms trying to get more website traffic to their clients and the search engines trying to send their website traffic to the most deserving sites based on original, helpful content.

By comparison, top article directories work to help the search engines to achieve those goals. At EzineArticles, the biggest of the online article repositories, it’s now mandatory that articles submitted be unique, hither-to unpublished, properly written and not on subjects most commonly used for spam. Further, in an ongoing attempt to ensure that each article is helpful to its target market, submissions must be 400 words or longer – anything less and there’s usually not enough content to properly discuss a topic.

That being the case, the links from the bottom of the articles are completely legit, as article marketers write their content to attract readers targeted to the niche of the sites they link to. For the article writer that’s important because it means the website traffic generated is much more likely to be interested in the products or services their sites provide, and it’s of value to the readers as its a way to get more information or help in a topic that’s of interest to them.

As you can see, already article marketing is ahead of SEO vis-a-vis attracting web traffic to websites – each provides backlinks to the target website for the search engines to spider, but popular article directories also have their own audience that can be targeted through article submissions. But it doesn’t end there…

As an author builds up a collection of article submissions in the article directory, their target market starts to recognize them as an expert in the niche they cover when writing articles. That name recognition and added credibility is known as ‘branding’, and once again it leads not only to more web traffic to websites promoted by the article marketer, but often to higher conversion rates on the target sites due to being perceived as an expert in that field.

And as if that weren’t enough incentive to spend your time writing articles and submitting them instead of just doing SEO marketing, published EzineArticles authors have one additional benefit – their RSS feed. When you go to the profile page of any EzineArticles author, you’ll see the orange RSS feed notifier appear in your browser’s address bar. Savvy article marketers will take that RSS feed and submit it to the RSS directories just like a blog feed, potentially drawing that much more website traffic to their articles, with the resultant additional web traffic to their websites as well.

While both SEO efforts and article marketing have their place in your online marketing plans, they represent just the tip of the iceberg for generating web traffic to websites. Fortunately Marlon Sanders has not only detailed 16 different ways to drive web traffic to websites, but has built them into point-and-click online software that takes you step-by-step through the correct procedures for all sixteen methods. If you’re not getting enough website traffic yet, follow the steps he lays out in his Traffic Dashboard to achieve the targeted traffic levels you desire.

Technorati Tags: website traffic, web traffic to websites, search engine optimization, web traffic, article marketing, SEO

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1. Marlon Sanders Releases Traffic Dashboard – 16 Ways To Drive Web Traffic To Websites!

These days, the most intelligent way to build your affiliate marketing web site is with a self-hosted WordPress blog, since much of your design and ongoing maintenance are automated on affiliate marketing blogs. But just as with static web sites, it’s vitally important that you properly manage the search engine optimization (SEO) on your affiliate marketing web site.

First, pay particular attention to the title of each post you make, being sure your target keywords or keyword phrase are prominent in the title itself. This is especially true for affiliate marketing blogs, since the title of the post is usually also used as the URL for that page and you’ll want the search engines finding those keywords both in the title and the URL to give you the best possible shot at high search engine rankings. Remember that Google, Yahoo, Bing and the smaller engines rate pages, not sites, so it’s important that every page be optimized for the keywords that particular page is targeting.

Next, using appropriate plugins be sure you’ve chosen the right tags and description for the page. Again these can affect your affiliate marketing blog’s position on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Further, many engines display your description of the page, so you want it to be enticing to your target market in the hopes of having your prospects click through and visit your blog.

Understand and utilize the current SEO practices when writing your content – most search engines provide plenty of information on how they rank the pages they index. And while it’s important to use your keywords or keyword phrases in your copy for each post, never lose site of the fact that you’re writing your posts for your prospects, not the search engines.

When you’ve gone to the effort to bring targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing web site you want them to be pleasantly surprised at the amount of quality content, ease of navigation and the gentle flow of ideas that leads them merrily along their way to buying the products at the other end of your affiliate links. Your affiliate marketing pay will be negligible or non-existent if you’ve written your posts strictly to rank well in the SERPs and your target audience find it difficult to read or follow.

Finally, make sure you’ve also included your page’s target keywords in the alt tags of any images that accompany the text, in the links to that page from other pages on the blog, and in any description or summary you offer of the page for your index and/or RSS feeds. Get in the habit of doing at least this much SEO for each and every post or page on your affiliate marketing blogs.

Trying to remember and incorporate all of this while still keeping your pages strong for your targeted viewers may seem like quite a trick at first, but with regular practice it can become second nature and can result in a powerful and profitable affiliate marketing web site for you as it builds over time.

About The Author

Affiliate marketing mentor, coach and speaker Doug Champigny has been teaching companies new marketing strategies since the 1970′s, having owned and operated his own retail advertising agency before transferring to marketing online full-time since 1996. A recognized expert in how to market a product online or offline and master of these new online marketing strategies, Doug Champigny is the creator of the PowerStart Marketing coaching program and the Affiliate Marketing PowerStart coaching program, and is occasionally available for private 1-on-1 consultations and mentoring as well.

Doug is a regular speaker at many of the live marketing events and conventions around North America – watch for him speaking live onstage in your area soon! In the meantime, for more help getting started as an affiliate, see the Affiliate Marketing 101 lens on Squidoo and the Start Affiliate Marketing info at WetPaint.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing blogs, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing web sites, marketing blogs

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Web 2.0 Beats Search Engines For Faster Internet Marketing Success

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://top-traffic-tips.com. All Rights Reserved.

Internet marketing continues to grow by leaps and bounds, with more and more people turning to it as a means of creating additional income, replacing their full-time jobs or in an attempt to get rich. Concurrently, more and more people are turning to the Internet for their purchasing, so the two growth trends are nicely balanced.

But for someone just starting out with their first online business, it can be difficult to ascertain the proper promotional methods to achieve the quickest success online. Because the industry is evolving so rapidly, much of the available information is outdated or less important now than it was when published even 6 months or a year ago.

For example, until recently the keywords tag on each web page was very important and worth spending a fair bit of time tweaking. With most of the big search engines now skipping that tag, the importance of keywords has more to do with your page titles and domain names than it does with your meta-tags.

Similarly, the amount of time spent tweaking the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site, while still important, is no longer paramount to your Internet marketing efforts. The emergence of the Web 2.0 interactive sites has seriously challenged the search engines as the ultimate way to drive targeted traffic, especially immediate traffic.

Don’t misunderstand – it would be foolhardy to totally ignore the search engines as they drive so much of the traffic online. Do what you can to achieve great results within the search engine ranking pages (SERPs), but don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on it, especially when first launching your site.

Still do your initial keyword research within your niche to choose your domain name, page titles, etc, but then get the site online and start actively promoting it using the power of article directories, podcast directories, video directories, blog posts, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, Squidoo, Google knol, HubPages, etc.

Each of these promotional avenues is free to use, so learn to use them both individually and in concert with each other to create almost instant targeted traffic. Traffic from search engines usually takes longer to build, unless you’re purchasing ads on the site which can bring in immediate visitors but can also be extremely expensive in popular niches.

While this formula will probably change again down the road, for the present time your focus for building your traffic and your lists should be on using the Web 2.0 properties for the fastest visibility, and the search engines as part of your long-term strategy. Taken together, this should be your best recipe for success with you Internet marketing!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet marketing coach, mentor and speaker and the creator of the PowerStart Marketing 4-week Internet Marketing Crash Course. To learn more about Doug or to book him to speak at your next event, contact him through his blog at http://DougChampigny.com.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, internet marketing success, targeted traffic, search engine optimization, Web 2.0

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

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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

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