You can also get targeted traffic from sources and higher search engine rankings to your website, blog or sales page by creating free sites or pages at web 2.0 sites.

Examples of web 2.0 sites are squidoo, hubpages, weebly, zimbo (more below).

If you are targeting long tail keywords or niche related keywords from 100,000 to 500,000 results in google, then this may be a good, low-cost alternative for you, if you want to see some results relatively quickly with minimum effort.

However if you are targeting keywords like “real estate”, “mortgage”, “home insurance” and the likes, then you need to be prepared to constantly feed each of your web 2.0 websites with new, fresh content over a large period of time in order to be effective.
So if you are targeting those competitive keywords and you just want to add an article or 2, then your efforts may be wasted.

The first task is to create the sites or pages:

- Squidoo.com
- Hubpages.com
- Weebly.com
- Zimbio.com
- Vox.com
- WordPress.com
- Blogspot.com
- Quizilla.com
- Xanga.com
- Tumblr.com
- Sampa.com

I generally start with Squidoo and Hubpages, then work myself through to Sampa

Once you have created your pages, submit an article (preferably unique) to each of your web 2.0 sites. The article should consist of 1 link to your website, blog or sales page with the keyphrase you are targeting in your article and 1 link to any of your web 2.0 pages as reference. I don’t like a-b-c-d linking. Link independetly and randomly, from weebly to zimbio, from vox to blogspot and so on but make sure that each web 2.0 site is covered somewhere.

Once you have added the articles, take note of the URL where they are published. Bookmark these URLs in social bookmarking engines like digg, mixx and others using free tools like socialmarker.com or onlywire.com. Also post them to your twitter and facebook accounts.

You will also want to add rss feeds of your web 2.0 sites to news aggregators, here is a list of rss feed/news aggregators:

- blogdigger.com/add.jsp
- blogpulse.com/submit.html
- feedage.com
- 2rss.com
- blogstreet.com/bsibin/add.cgi
- publisher.yahoo.com/rss_guide/submit.php
- plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp
- feedbite.com
- rssfeeds.com
- feedraider.com/
- feedsubmitter.com/
- purerss.com/addfeed.php?catid=
- unclefeed.com/rss/addfeed.html
- feedsee.com/submit.html
- feed24.com
- feedfury.com/
- goldenfeed.com/AddFeed.aspx
- feedooyoo.com/ref.htm
- feedest.com/feedAdd.cfm
- rssmad.com
- feedbase.net/Add.php
- rssmicro.com/?m=fs#theForm
- rssmotron.com/feed_eater.php

Rinse and repeat. Publish more articles, remember one link going to your website and one link randomly as reference to your web 2.0 sites.

The more unique content you publish, the stronger statement you are sending to search engines, that your web 2.0 sites are serious and reliable resources and will reward your links with more weight.

admin Article Marketing, Link Building, Web Traffic

The most important aspect in marketing using search engine optimization techniques is to build backlinks which are created properly so as to avoid problems.
Back link building does not have to be expensive or a time consuming occupation. It can be done with the use of some effective methods which will save you confusion and wastage of time. Here are 5 free ways which you can go through and use to build links for your webpage to get both direct targeted traffic and traffic through search engines.

Online forums are an ideal source to start your link building process. This means that you must participate in writing on these forums as your back links gets developed every time you sign in to write a new thread on forums or reply to posts through your forum signature. If you would like to boost your search engine rankings, post on forums with do-follow links mostly. However I suggest to post in any forum as long as closely related to your business niche, regardless of their no-follow or do-follow link policies, as forum posts can send targeted traffic to your site, once you have established yourself as authority in your field.

Blog commenting is a straightforward way of creating links and increasing your search engine rankings when posting comments on do-follow blogs. If you would like to get any link boost from do-follow blogs, make sure to post your comments early. Fresh comments are more valuable than older ones. However, the same things that apply to forum posting also applies to blog commenting, I recommend to blog on any type of blog as long as its in your niche, not only for search engine love but also for targeted traffic you may receive from the blogs.

Social bookmaking of your website, blog and article pages or external articles will not give you much link boost from search engines as most social bookmarking platforms have no-follow policies, but you can get your page ranked high in the bookmarking engines if you provide quality content and receive targeted traffic through social bookmarking sites to the pages you bookmark there.

Article marketing or blog posting to niche blogs is another popular method of creating good back links for your website. It is cost effective, easy and free for the purpose of marketing your product. Articles written by you are picked up and published by other webmasters on their websites or ezines and may help to increase your backlinks because the links are always embedded in the article body and no matter where it is published, they will lead back to your website.

Reciprocal links between quality and internal pages are those links you can exchange with other social marketers. Make sure that you use efficient reciprocal link checking tools which check the links on a frequent basis otherwise your efforts may be wasted if other webmasters remove your links once you established theirs on your site.

Search engines have to be fueled with one way links which get you high page rankings so that you can get targeted traffic to your website and thus boost your business.

admin Link Building, Web Traffic

Are you looking for some improvement in web traffic to your website through article marketing, are you looking specifically for returning visitors? The root of every article marketing campaign and the basis for returning visitors are solid written articles. If there are flaws in your article, all your article distribution efforts may be a waste of time or even money, depending on where you plan to publish your article.

Here are some effective tips which may be already familiar to you but can not be emphasized enough. If you follow these basic but effective rules, your article marketing efforts will be worthwhile.

I had my best results with articles that are short, simple in structure and to the point. Try to avoid any kind of long speeches or exotic expressions which will bore your readers. Each article should provide specific information and some facts related to the subject. Try to include these in short paragraphs and your article becomes more attractive to your readers. The big question is how short is too short, how long is too long? What should be the optimum word count in the article to be short and simple, yet effective? Generally, 350 to 750 word limit is considered very sufficient. Some article directories require 450-500 minimum words. Regarding blogs, according to my experience, blog posts that are just 100-150 words are already substantial for google.

Make your article informative but also add an element of entertainment too. Some people write informative articles and at last they end up with informative yet boring articles. If you can present valuable information in an entertaining way your readers will surely come back for more. A good balance should be maintained between information and the entertainment.

For each piece of valuable information in your article, provide quick tips whenever and wherever they fit in. Readers always love to learn something from articles and tips or hints are effective ways to make a long lasting impression on your readers.

Try to avoid over-promoting your brand or your product in your articles, because articles are not advertisements. Articles are meant to provide a wealth of information rather than product promotion. If readers sense that they are being pushed into products or services, they may exit before they have finished reading your article.

Once you have written a valuable yet entertaining piece, proof-read it at least twice. Now is the time to fix spelling and  grammatical errors. An article becomes lousy and difficult to read when it has a lot of faulty grammar. Before you submit the article to article directories or other niche-related sources, make sure it is in a tip top condition.

So next time when writing articles, follow these tips and present your articles in rock solid condition to increase your readership and returning visitors gradually.

admin Article Marketing

Some of us may have experienced writing comments on somebody’s blog only to regret later on that they had come across as rude, insensitive, or just plain vulgar. Planning to visit someone’s blog to drop a couple of comments? A word of advice: Take blog commenting seriously. Many bloggers put a lot of effort into writing and designing their respective blogs so take it easy on the criticism. Constructive criticism given with tact may be well and good. But coming up with wisecracking insults or just unrelated remarks will not only anger the fellow on the other side of the comment box. It will also make you look bad in the eyes of other readers who read your comment. Try following Confucius’ Golden Rule, “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you.” For all else, here are ten basic DON’Ts when commenting on other people’s blogs.

1. Do not be an opportunist by posting any affiliate referral codes in blog comment boxes to receive commission. It is absolutely unethical and yet people still go on doing it.

2. Do not plagiarize by copying a comment you found in another blog or forum and pasting it into other comment boxes.

3. Do not drop simple remarks in comment boxes such as “Nice article.” If you really found the article nice, explain in a couple of short sentences why you thought so.

4. Try to comment with correct grammar and correctly spelled words. By doing so, you make keep the blog professional. Spare the poor author from spending more time in correcting all the language mistakes.

5. Do not place forum links or signatures connected to other webpages in comment boxes. Should you insist on placing a link, make sure it is worthwhile for the readers and related to the blog post.

6. Do not make posts that are out of topic. Be intelligent enough to relate your comment to the blog article. Nonsense comments irritate other commentors.

7. Do not be a liar when commenting and express phony opinions. Flattery does not flourish in a blogging community. Here, visitors actually read posts and someone will bust you for pretending sooner than you think.

8. Do not post obscene language that most likely will anger other readers. Profanity may be cool to you but to others it may be offensive.

9. Do not use another person’s blog to sound off your grievances from a service. Don’t copy and paste private conversations or emails. Legitimate or not, blog communities don’t appreciate such out of topic antics in comment boxes.

10. Do not wage war in the middle of a comment box by writing personal attacks against the blogger. Be civilized.

By following these simple rules, you are establishing yourself as valuable commentor and expert in your area. Someone people want to know more about. As a result, you will receive more visitors to your website through links in your comments.

admin Blog Marketing

Quite a few webmasters make use of articles from free content sources like article directories, article or ezine groups to get visitors to their site and trying to earn money from adsense or affiliate products. This is one way for them to earn money especially if they are just starting out with affiliate marketing for a number of sites and are on a budget. They are required to create small niche websites to direct traffic to their main site for them to raise profits.

Sad to say, even if this is their only alternative due to a small budget, this method is not effective when building revenue for your site. It can even harm you in certain ways.

First Problem: Search Engines

Search engines will not prioritize your website if the majority of your content is already indexed in their database. The more websites that share the same content you are publishing, the less it will help you achieve good search engine rankings.
Search engine rankings are important in getting targeted visitors to your website who click on your adsense or affiliate links. Working on optimizing your sites for search engines, so that your content will eventually rank high enough in the results to attract visitors, should occupy a top spot on your priority list.

Second Problem: Convincing people to click

Although getting your pages ranked high on search engine result pages and acquiring website traffic is hard work, unfortunately there is more to come. You must also be in the position to persuade your site visitors to click on your affiliate links. If your visitors see the exact same content they already read on another related website, they will have not much reason to return to your website. This is because most people want to buy stuff that is recommended by people who they trust as experts on any given subject.
If your content is just duplicated from other related websites, you will be recognized as someone who is not really a trustworthy expert on this subject. They won’t put much weight on your product recommendations because of this. This will diminish the quantity of visitors who will be enthusiastic about clicking your affiliate links.

Third Problem: The author bio links

The majority of free content can be published in another site only if you retain the Bio Box or Byline of the author under the article. Unless you follow this rule, you could get into serious trouble so you have no choice but to agree to the policy. Now in the bio, authors include links to their own websites which is why they agreed to distribute their article for free in the first place. The problem arises when after a particularly intriguing article, the reader chooses to click the link in the author resource box instead of your affiliate links. You stand to lose a whole lot of potential worthwhile site visitors using free articles.

In conclusion, once all 3 issues have added up, you are looking at a serious decline in revenue simply because you have chosen to publish free website content from article directories. Although it may be the only option for some, if you have the skills to create your own unique content or have the funds to buy your own exclusive content, then this route is highly recommended in order to feed the search engines with fresh, unique content and to build long lasting relationships with your readers.

admin Article Marketing, Web Content

You have heard a lot of things about link building and ranking higher in search engine sites, but what exactly is link building? Link building is said to be the process which helps increasing your website’s link popularity by exposing your links to search engines through various channels like link exchanges, newsletters, directory submissions, article submissions to directories and niche blogs, press release submissions, forum posting and blog commenting etc. This means that if you would like to have your pages appear in search engine results, you should apply link building techniques.

In this post, I’ll talk about 2 popular link building methods: 1) reciprocal link exchange and 2) three (or n)-way link exchange. You’ll learn what they are, how they used to work before and what you have to do to make them work for you effectively.

1. Reciprocal Link Exchange

One of the most popular link building methods is to exchange links with other websites, preferably related to your business niche. Link exchanges generally are very cost-effective (usually free) and you are getting targeted traffic from relevant sites as well. However, effective link exchanging has changed a lot over the years. While several years ago, it was enough for high search engine rankings just to drop your link on link exchange pages crowded with links to other, unrelated sites, it is not sufficient anymore. If you are going for link exchanges, you need to find pages that are related to your content and request an exchange with a similar related page on your website (it may be your index page or any internal page on your website). Links build this way between individual pages are still highly effective in search engines but obviously also much more difficult to get because there is usually more manual work required on both sides.

2. Three (or n)-way Related Link Exchange

Once traditional links on crowded link exchange pages became less effective, webmasters started to offer 3-way link exchanges which include three websites that link to each other in an A-B-C-A format (Site A links to Site B, Site B to Site C and Site C links to Site A). Again, also in this scenario, it depends on the environment in which your link is placed. If your link is placed on a page that is not related to your website with no information or content except dozens of outgoing links, then this format is as uneffective as the traditional, reciprocal link exchange from link exchange pages. Ideally, the page where your link will be placed should have as less outbound links as possible and your link should be embeded within as much relevant content as possible to the page you intend to link to.

admin Link Building, Link Exchange

Article marketing and social bookmarking is proven to be a very effective combination if you aim to get targeted traffic to your website. Visitors who arrive through articles and social bookmarking sites on your website are really interested in your products, services or at least curious on what else you have in store. Thus, this combination of article marketing and social bookmarking is one of the most profitable and cost effective ways to market online.

Here are some steps you can implement instantly and start getting targeted traffic to your website:

1. Write Quality Articles

The first step anyway is to write quality articles yourself or hire a professional freelancer to write articles for you (be careful though, only select freelancers who can provide samples and references of earlier work). Make sure that these articles are related to your niche and that your keywords appear in these articles. You should also incorporate links into the article that will redirect the reader to your website or page.

2. Submit Articles To Directories, Blogs And Web 2.0 Properties

The next step is article submission to a) major article directories, b) blogs within your niche that accept guest posts and c) web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages, Livejournal. Examples for major article directories are ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, articlesbase.com. Do not submit only to article directories or only to blogs. It is important to diversify your link sources and you can also test what works and what doesn’t work for you in the process in order to optimize your traffic strategy. Search through blog directories for blogs within your niche, connect with fellow webmasters and ask them if you can publish guest posts on their blogs. You will get visits from people who browse through article directories and blogs, however we are aiming for visitors from search engines where your blog posts appear in search results (if indexed, more below).

3. Social Bookmarking

The power of article marketing can be boosted through social media sites like Digg, Technorati, Mixx and Stumpleupon. Once you have submitted your articles to article directories and blogs, make note of the page URL of your article. Submit this page URL to social bookmarking sites. You can use free  services like onlywire.com or socialmarker.com that help you with the time consuming social bookmarking task.

4. Test and Review

You have to constantly keep track of your site’s traffic and your content URLs in search engines so that you can test all the different ways of article marketing, article submission, article distribution, social bookmarking, etc. Maybe you’ll notice that some article URLs are not indexed in google while others are indexed nicely. Focus on submitting your content to sites, blogs and web 2.0 properties where you are certain that your content will be indexed in search engines, as this is what we are looking for in order to get targeted traffic from search engines.

admin Article Marketing, Social Bookmarking, Web Content