This article will discuss what Twitter is and how you can use it to help you network and promote your business.  Twitter is an effective, powerful free marketing tool that could be of great help to your business if used properly.

Basics of Twitter

Twitter is a micro blogging site.  You use it as you would a blog but your posts are limited to 140 characters.  But before you can finally tweak Twitter, you have to sign up for a free account.  Once done, you can sign in to your account, go to “Settings” and enter your information.  I suggest you add your photo so others can identify you.  Additionally, you can also tweak the background of your home page to make it more attractive.  You can use the Twitter custom backgrounds or you can use your custom images as background.  To do this, you can go to “Settings”, click “Change Background Image”, “Browse” and upload an image from your computer.  Alternatively, you could Google Twitter backgrounds and choose one for your Twitter account.

Your Tweets and Your Network

When you post to your Twitter account, you call it a “tweet”.  To build your network, you have to follow people (and see their tweets appear in your homepage) and have people following you (and see your tweets in their homepage).

You can follow your friends, family, a celebrity or your idols.  I have found out that many celebrities, musicians and authors are on Twitter.  It’s kind of cool to know what they tweet about.

You can tweet anything under the sun.  If you are tweeting your friends and family, you can just simply tweet what you’re up to for the moment or share with them links of videos or any interesting information.  However, please remember not to over-tweet.  Some post their tweets every ten minutes.  Please note that for every tweet that you post, it appears in your homepage and the homepage of the people following you.  It could be annoying to see your tweets occupying the whole home page of your contacts.

Twitter and your Business

Twitter can be an effective tool for your business if you know how to do it properly.  You can just imagine the network it will create once you get the hang of it.  Below are tips on how to optimize Twitter for use in your business.

1. Optimize your profile – To achieve the retention you want from your prospective followers, your profile should be attractive enough for them to remember you.  Add a photo so they’d know that there is a face behind that logo of Twitter, which is the default picture if you did not upload your picture.  Additionally, change your background into something memorable as well.  Getting it from Google will be good enough.  A lot of backgrounds are out there for the grabbing.  It’s free.  It’ll make your home page attractive and unique.  It also projects an image that you are a serious Twitter user.  I personally get messages from my followers about my background.  That’s the start of a conversation with your, who knows, probable customer.

Aside from your picture, you must also include a link to your website.  You can simply go to the Web settings of you profile.  Remember not to put a generic bio by simply saying you are Internet Marketing.  Add some spice by putting your hobbies and interests.  When I placed those in my profile, I began receiving messages from my contacts asking me details about it.

2. Optimizing your tweets – As mentioned earlier, posting tweets every 10 minutes is annoying.  There is no a minimum or maximum count but make it a point to tweet everyday.  Tweet something interesting and not just simply say that you’ll be taking a hike or something.  Tweet something that would arouse their interest and curiosity.  An interesting marketing advice or a link to an interesting YouTube video will do.  This way, they won’t misconstrue your tweets as hard selling.  Minimize but do not at all eliminate self-promoting.  However, make it a point to outnumber your interesting tweets versus your self-promoting tweets.

3. Get people to follow you – You naturally would want leads that would lead to better traffic to your website, right?  You can do this by letting people follow you.  An easy way to maximize this is through Tweet Later.  It’s a small tweak, which can be found, at http://www.tweetlater.com. Visit their site and register your Twitter account.  After creating and registering your account, go to the Accounts portion, then to Edit Accounts, then click on Edit.  Scroll down and select “Auto Follow”.  This option will make people follow you once you follow them.  Most people in Twitter follow this option that’s why they have a lot of followers.  I personally get at least 200 followers per day because of this tool.  You can actually double that if you have the time and patience.  However, I do not recommend having more than 400 followers per day as Twitter will notice this and you would not like to think that you are abusing the system.  Another great alternative is to target other prominent marketing people as well.  Follow them, and eventually follow the people they follow.  It does not take that long to accumulate followers.  It only takes one click to follow someone.

You can additionally add “Auto Welcome” to your Twitter account through the Tweet Later tool.  In the Edit Account portion of your Tweet Later account, click on the “Auto Welcome”.  This will send message a customized message you make to your followers.  I strongly recommend not to advertise with your message.  Add a casual “how are you” message and much that you will not receive answers frequently, they surely will follow you as well.  I personally received messages, though, in reply to my query in my welcome message.  My personal message includes the usual how are you and I added where is your location question.  When they reply, that’s a great way to start a conversation, which may eventually turn into leads.  Exchanging messages with all sorts of people from around the world is pretty exciting.

4. Unfollow those who do not follow you – It might not be ideal to unfollow someone just because he does not follow you back.  But Twitter system dictates that your followers should at least be 10% of the number of people you are following.  Otherwise, you won’t be able to follow people anymore once this limit gets beyond 10%.  To unfollow people, click on the “Following” button at your Twitter home page.  If people is following you back, you can see a direct message button under their name.  If there is none, that means they do not follow you.  Click the “remove” button at the right side portion to unfollow them as well.

There you have it.  Above are my tips for optimizing your Twitter account to help you with your small online business. These tips have proven to be effective based on my experience. Try it. You’ll never know when a lead comes and soon converts into sales.

admin Social Media, Twitter

A strategic relationship’s weight in link building is undeniable. In order to broaden your website’s reach, relationship building should be carried out. It’s like when a site links your website, it is endorsing it. Online success is determined by the solidity of putting up a huge network of website which link back to your own site. There is enough evidence that illustrates the importance of strategic relationship on behalf of the accomplishment of link building campaigns. Quality link building is more about nurturing strategic relationships between other sites that aim to present your links to be “organic” and not just simply referring your site.

Start Building Relationships The Right Way – The proverb, “A good start is a half done,” means a great outcome is always produced by making a good start. A good start is needed to begin relationship marketing. For link building, you must follow a recommended chronological approach as below:

Relevant website investigation – The foremost step is picking a link partner. For link building campaigns, it can be carried out by searching for websites of the same category, requiring a comprehensive research of websites in primary search engines with pertinent keywords.

Note: Take heed regarding the website’s interest when it comes to content quality and link partnership, as well as check for link partners’ pages or resource pages.

Thematic site list – As you make a research, also create a list of websites that may have link partnership interests. You can sort that list you have made either by page rank or by geographical region.

Note: Good resources over large ones are highly recommended.

Link building proposal emails – The most decisive move during link building campaigns is sending out link building requests through email. Also set up an email template specifically for this. When you are doing this, you must bear some points in mind.

You should be assured and have good knowledge about their website and have dropped by it saying something about the site.

Be delicate. It must sound like a personal request, not like it was just generated by some software or an automated program.

Always remember offer them something valuable like pointing out what advantages they have in link building.

On that note, add a line describing the significance of link partnerships.

Note: Do not send duplicate link building requests to one email ID because it can annoy the recipient.

Follow up – Do this with a weekly interval just to check for persistence of links.

Note: Do not get agitated when following up should you not get your links as it messes up the relationship you have with the partner. It would be better to just ask him/her to add the link again. Also do not forget to cite the mutual link partnership agreement signed previously.

Relationship Building With Brand Reputations – Did it ever occur to you that recommending brands to customers directly mirrors your brand reputation? For instance, you would never recommended a brand that you are not familiar of when someone just asked you to recommend it, wouldn’t you? However, if you have tried it and positive about it then you will absolutely recommended it to friends who need the same thing. Such is the instance with link building. You must concentrate on the attributes of the links you will be recommending so that you can build a relationship.

A strategic relationship demonstrates how lucrative your link campaign is launched during link building, and all the way through the strategic relationship both partners can benefit from link building.

admin Link Building, SEO

Others out there who think that niche bloggers can’t earn respectable earnings from advertising income are definitely wrong.  Unlike other bloggers who make money online through affiliate links, niche bloggers can’t outrightly do just that.  Majority of niche bloggers’ readers are not buyers and thus do not want receive everyday spiels.  It is not a great idea to sell high end products on a frugal living blog, is it?  Another thing that I have learned from this blog is that readers don’t just buy things especially those from affiliate links unless those products provide them with great value. They buy if it has something to do with conferences, books, eBooks, courses and other teaching products.

With that said, I’d like to give some tips to niche bloggers on how to make your niche blogging profitable than you can ever imagine.

7 Tips on How Niche Bloggers Can Make Money Online

1.    Community & Traffic is top priority – Trust is the ultimate way of earning through advertising and gaining traffic.  You can put lots of ads in your site from the start for monetization.  But your community of readers would not just buy anything from your site without gaining their trust first.  Trust is built up over time and it is important that you establish this first before gaining the traffic your site truly deserves.

2.    Know your readers/market – As in any business endeavor, niche blogging included, it is important to know who your audience is.  You can diversely offer products and services if your blog is a tech blog or perhaps any make money online blog.  With niche blogging, you have to acquaint yourself to the habits of your readers.  You have to know what they like and what they don’t like.  You can do this through surveys, reading the comments they put on your site or emails they send you or perhaps a trial and error with some revenue generating products or services.  This way, you will be able to determine which products or services are they more inclined to buy.  Over time, I have learned that my readers are not into gadgets.  They would buy if what you offer are learning or teaching materials that would help them further their career or anything of that sort.

3.    Patience is a virtue – You have to have lots of patience in moderating your niche blog.  Success does not happen overnight.  Frustration is not an option in niche blogging.  Give your readers time to get to know your site better.  Earnings do not come in after you put up your blog.  Your must earn the trust of your readers before they start purchasing what your site has to offer.  Give your ads some time and if you find your ads are not working after a month or two, try to put on other ads.  This is the time you’ll be able to know what makes your reader tick.

4.    Content is king – Despite what others are saying, content is still king.  It could make or break your blog.  Timeless or evergreen content can make you earn for a lifetime.  Relevant posts that can be of use to your readers five years from now are effective.  That is not to discount that of course, you should be putting some posts regarding current news and events.  And do not forget to discuss topics that will appeal to web searchers.

5.    Explore passive incomes – Do not solely rely on advertising to make money through your blog.  Darren Rowse has proven that there is income in selling products like eBooks, books, webinars and even membership forums.

6.    Find more advertisers – Advertisers won’t go out looking for you if they do not know you.  Look for them and introduce your blog through press kits.  Provide them your statistics such as page views, bounce rates, traffic and a lot more.  Sell your blog like other offline businesses out there.  Convince potential advertisers to come on board.  Aside from my Adsense revenues, my private ads are the most lucrative source of revenue of my blog.

7.    Don’t stop, keep looking – Do not solely rely on your existing advertisers.  Look for more.  Keep a lot in your pipeline.  If sales start to lag, they will definitely look for more viable options.
Admittedly, niche blogs are hard to monetize.  However, with a little creativity and yes, hard work, there are a lot of profitable solutions.  If you know your market by heart, and your traffic patterns, you can find a viable solution to beef up your earnings.  But definitely, once you got the magic formula, your blog will hit and the next thing you knew, you never have to blog everyday after all.

admin Affiliate Marketing, Blog Marketing

To help you obtain relevant backlinks, here is a list of free link building tools and tips that compliment the Linknami link building system nicely:

1.    Backlink Watch – My favorite tool in checking a website’s backlink URLs, anchor text and outbound links (OBL) on the same page as that of the link.
Quick Tip:  You can use Backlink Watch to a particular website if you think its ranking for a particular keyword.  You can browse through the outputs for all anchor texts links for that particular keyword so you will have an idea to what sites they are linked.

2.    Analyze Backlinks – Goldmine tool for analyzing competitor’s backlinks.  This tool provides more options such that it allows you to filter out same domain URLs and target keyword mentions the surrounding list.
Quick Tip:  Generally similar to the Backlink Watch tool but can identify other surrounding keywords within the content which sometimes can be as valuable as the link itself.

3.    Yahoo Site Explorer – Not a typical linking tool but can help you check a site’s backlink count and its top 1-1000 backlinks.  Although not as detailed as the other two, it can be helpful as well because it shows the title of the linking pages and allows you to track your own site provided it’s signed and ownership is verified.
Quick Tip:  You can export the top 1,000 results it generates to a CSV/TSV file and filter based on keywords in titles and URLs.

4.    Google Search – Similar to Yahoo Site Explorer except that they differ in the number of backlinks.  Yahoo almost always has lower numbers compared to Google for the same search.  Additionally, the links that made it to Google’s results affects the search rankings.

5.    Alexa Backlink Checker – Gives you the total number and what domains are linking to a website.
Quick Tip:  Alexa offers data far beyond which domains link to you.

6.    Bad Neighborhood Text Link – Gives you what type of links a website accumulates whether it’s yours or a probable link partner.
Quick Tip:  If a probable partner wants to exchange link with you, this is a good tool to determine whether their backlinks are legitimate.  One search engine search factor is links associated with illegitimate links.

7.    SEO Link Search Tool – The easiest online tool that could give you relevant links that are easy to obtain.
Quick Tip:  Some of my favorites are:

•    list keyword site
•    recommended links keyword
•    favorite links keyword
•    favorite site keyword
•    title post keyword
•    keyword guest writer
•    keyword guest blog post writer
•    keyword submit content
•    keyword submit article
•    keyword submit post
•    keyword add article
•    keyword suggest url
•    keyword suggest site

8.    Web Confs Backlink Tools – With over 20 SEO tools to offer, they are my favorite link building tools:

9.    Backlink Anchor Text Analysis – Compares your text links to the top ranking sites.  Check the difference

10.    Backlink Builder – Simply enter a keyword, copy the whole list of results, paste it to Excel, then filter.

11.    Backlink Summary – Similar to the results given by Analyze Backlinks and Backlink Watch.

12.    SEO for Firefox Plug-in – It highlights “no follow” links in red and on demand.  When you’re online and you want to check immediately the site you are into as regards which links count and don’t, hit on the SEO Firefox plug-in
Quick Tip:  Always keep it on so you’ll see the web differently when all no follow links are highlighted in red.

13.      Google Webmaster Tools – Shows you the links and the anchor text they found aside from showing you your website according to Google’s perspective.
Quick Tip:  Ensure that your top linked pages are live and optimized.

14.      Link Harvester – Considered as an old tool but nevertheless provides you with the data far beyond the basic link builder needs.
Quick Tip:  Record all the “edu” and the “gov” links and make an effort to actually link with them.

15.      Recip Links – Spiders a site or list of sites and checks if there are links to a specified domain.
Quick Tip:  Export all your links (like the way we did in WordPress SEO to Be a Top SEO #3), then copy the same to Recip Tool and see what sites don’t link back to you.

16.      Link Appeal Tool – This tool determines the value of your website based on several factors.
Quick Tip:  Once determined, aim for more valuable sites than yours.

There you have it.  A total of 16 link building tools and tips for better linking.  If you have suggestions or additions to the list, please feel free to contact me or comment below.

admin Link Building, SEO

As most of the readers have a vague overview of SEO, let me first explain some of the terms I am using before proceeding. SEO is search engine optimization. It is the process of optimizing your website for search engines and customers to find your site through search engine results. Alternatively, SEO companies are search engine optimizers, individuals who do SEO, they are usually called short: “SEOs”. Backlink building, on the other hand, is link building as well. This is what you gain when some other site links to your site.  Let’s now proceed.

Backlinks are of extreme importance to search engine optimization because it is the measure whether a website is great or not.  Although most people know its importance and why, only a few understand how.  I will explain to you why I say that most SEO (search engine optimizer) really stink at backlinks.  Before you spend another cent, get comfortable and read on because this information will benefit your business.

SEOs, Link Building and Backlinks

Sad to say, most SEOs fail at this single most important task they do for their customers: Link building. Link building can make or break your website. It makes the difference in customers finding your website and then eventually lead to website conversion. The problem lies when SEOs do not tell you about it and what’s worst, they, too are clueless about why they are awful at it.

SEO is a whole lot more than just ensuring that your website is at the top of the search engines’ list and people would be able to find you for what you offer.  It’s more than that and its got something to do with another misunderstood word – conversions!  You’ve heard the term, right?  Simply said, conversions are searchers turned into clickers, clickers into buyers, and buyers into loyal customers who would take what you have to offer to another level.  Conversion is not just simply converting a clicker into buyer and hurray, you sucked another individual into buying your product.  Conversion is tantamount to turning your business into an entity that would lead the race, so to speak.

Link building, on the other hand is not as simple as asking your cousin Sally to add a link to your golf site from her website about insurance and thus, leads that back to your site which offers information about golf.  Link building is something precious and a sustainable proof that you are serious in your business and other people recognize that.

Backlinks as well are very important.  It simply means, somebody links to your site.  Period.  Simple, right?  Even jokers who send you an email offering and selling a backlink for $49 would know that.  Most SEOs would explain that it’s your way of selling stuff at your site before you finally raise your price.  Yeah?  Well, NO!  Why do you think they are sending you an email making that offer?  Why can’t they just do it to their own website?  Well, I actually think that they just have a couple of backlinks to boast of and they see a huge market for these business owners and wants to grab their earnings but does not want to learn before they earn.  And worst, the customers are often times victims.

Talent & Trust – Foundations of Building Backlinks

Quality backlinks are Google’s way of determining whether you site is authoritative and trusted by other sites and people as well. It is a democratic process.  However, there are those who fake this quality thing but nevertheless, what sets you apart is that you can still go through re-election today, tomorrow and everyday.  Fakes can be banned in this democratic process, and your business cannot afford to do just that after spending a lot of money.  And what’s worst is the portion of the money you did not earn because your competition got your business.

Given a little of creativity and well-considered approach, backlinks are easy to do.  I never asked anybody to link to this site.  Not once ever since.  I know I did not have to because I know that I am giving the right information that people want and that can be of benefit to them.  Because of that, other sites connect to my site.  This is the kind of backlink that is quality, relevant and underwent the real democratic process.  SEOs who see you as a meal ticket never do it that way.

Backlinks are made because of trust and familiarity.  Similarly, branding takes the same route and thus takes time.  When done right, it creates relationships.  Here is a link that explains trusting relationships make in SEO and social media marketing – How the Big Dogs Get Paid.  Trust me, I would not link to it I know it won’t benefit you.  It will and a whole lot.

How SEOs Sucker People:  A Simple Explanation!

It actually is another blog post but simply put, SEOs suck out their clients because they knew that the client’s nature of need, greed and fear of not spending money for their business. Some businesses want to make money but do not want to spend money.  They want the best without spending. Businesses take the services of SEOs who claim would give the same result as an expensive one at a fraction of the cost gets the business.  There is an old saying that goes – you only get what you paid for.  And that’s that.  Don’t go rushing to me and complain because I do my job marketing your business seriously.  Until you finally have accepted the fact that Internet businesses are no quick-rich scheme, then you are not ready for SEO performed correctly. However, if you take your business seriously, then believe me, backlinks will come effortlessly.

SEO Rates

These practices of SEOs are a revelation, right? When people approach me and asks me for my hourly rate, I tell them SEO is not just about hourly rates or how much you can afford to give upfront. It’s about asking yourself where do you plan your business to be? Do you plan it to exist up to tomorrow or you plan to dominate your race. Because if you just want to know my hourly rates, you can Google for it. Similarly, if you would want SEO lessons, the Internet is filled with information. Doing SEO does not mean doing it cheap.  Real SEO means that your business can withstand swimming with the sharks and not just test the water.

admin Link Building, SEO

Manage small businesses with websites or one-man website owners engage in website promotion and marketing to promote their products. When questioned about web analytics, it comes as a surprise that many of those companies and website owners do not have any idea what it is all about. This may not be applicable to mature online marketers, but happens frequently with blogs and websites that are new.

If you are a novice when it comes to online businesses, the idea of web analytics, finding useful information, and the thought of digging in can be intimidating. Although measuring what you have to market is a common marketing sense, making sense out of analytics data is not a top priority when it comes to the responsibilities of new website owners or small businesses.

It may be because the amount of information found when an analytics package is delivered is quite difficult to deliberate on and be turned into business decisions. Keeping it simple or starting with the basics is what those who are beginners in web analytics should do.

Every analytics package differ in learning curve, price, and features. My suggestion is to start with Google Analytics because it is free, not that complicated to be learned, has a rather intuitive interface (or at least they try to lol) and is feature-rich. Take a look at the following below.

1. Unique Visitors (also referred to as unique hits/pageviews) – An important metric because this will count everyone as one for a period of time. If you have had 250 people visiting your site even just once, it means you have got 250 unique visitors. Now when your unique visitor number count it low, it simply means that your site may have issues with search engines or you might require more content for your site.

2. Total Visitors (also referred to as total hits/pageviews) – This is the total number of times your website or any internal page of your website has been accessed. If the same person accesses your website 50 times within a specific time frame, it counts as 1 unique visit and 50 total visits.

3. Traffic Sources – For example, it shows you are getting traffic from Twitter, Google, Yahoo, or other sites. This referring information gives you an idea where your traffic comes from and also helps you make a decision on how or where to promote your content and products in the future.

4. Referring Keywords – Such are phrases that people use or the words they type into search engines, which lead them to your site. Ideally, these are keyword phrases in relation to your business. If not, it could indicate either you are not optimized or might be optimized for incorrect phrases.

5. Top Content – Regardless of the size of your site, the knowledge of what pages get most traffic will help when you build new pages. So using similar format or writing content about that topic will help in driving more traffic. Pages that contain CTA or call to action buttons must be included if you would like your visitors downloading white paper or doing something specific.

6. Location – For business who want strong local presence, analytics can give you location area like a city, state, or country where your visitors come from. It would be good to know if your visitors are actually local.

7. Campaign Tracking – Simply to track your visitors from sources marketed by you to a specific goal page or conversion.

Once you have grasped the idea of what Google Analytics is all about, you can now check out other actionable data such as trends, features, and conversions like the most frequently used search terms found in internal search engines.  Features like top entrance/exit pages, goals, time on site, and bounce rates are good metrics as well that you can use to understand your visitors’ interaction with the content that you have provided. You can visit the Google Analytics Help page to figure out all that you ought to know so you can maximize the use of GA.

There is plenty of information needed to be analyzed as well as decisions needed to be made, thus, web analytics may be overwhelming. Take it slowly but surely instead of jumping in and consuming it all.

admin Web Marketing, Web Traffic

SEO or Search Engine Optimization should be a main component of all online business marketing plans. Every day people ask me the same question time and time again regarding the importance of SEO nowadays.

Actually, it is perhaps more significant now than ever, so my answer is: yes! Don’t just agree with me but have a look at these figures.

The Use of Search Engines

As per eMarketer.com, 81% internet users around the world use search engines to seek for information as reported by TNS Global. Simply put considering approximately 230 million internet users are in the US, then 186 million people use search engines to look for products and information

Let me give you an example: Let’s create a hypothetical company by the name of Health Shoes Inc. and see how SEO affects them and if it is worth the investment. In order to determine the potential market for Health Shoes, they have conducted a research and found out roughly 5.6 million consumers use the internet. Now it is safe to assume that 3.76 million of Health Shoes potential and current clients in a given year will use the internet to perform a search.

Should Sport Shoes disregard search engine optimization as unimportant in their online marketing plan, then there would probably be 3.76 million prospective clients who will never know what Health Shoes has to offer.

Let me give you some more facts to make my point.

Position Matters

More than 89% of the clicks arise from the search results’ first page while less than 10% clicks happen on the second page as determined by researchers, even though search engines necessarily do not reveal click percentages on the basis of position. It goes to show that under 1% of clicks take place on the second page of any given search result. This fact only proves that if you can’t be found within the search results’ first two pages, then this simply means a thousand of missed opportunities.

Let’s try to consider this. More than 42% of the clicks take place at the very first position of search results. Clicks drop to below 12% at the second spot and that already gives you traffic that is three and half times less. 8.5% for the third spot, 6% for the fourth spot, and down to 2.99% for the tenth position which is 14 times less already compared to the first spot.

Now this means, for example, according to Google Adwords that a targeted term like “kids playhouses” gives you roughly 22,200 searches a month. So if you have your site appearing on the first spot when this term is searched, then you could garner just about 9,300 clicks for your site each month.

What To Do Now

The answer to our question originally regarding the importance of SEO to a profitable online marketing campaign is an absolute yes. If you don’t optimize your site with terms that potential customers search for, it greatly diminishes the chances of your site being found by customers when they perform a search for products and services that you have to offer yet all because your site can’t be found.

Basically it’s like making a great brick and mortar store complete with everything out in the middle of nowhere. Only luck will play its part if anyone would chance upon finding you.

admin SEO

Although considered as one of the most powerful social networking platform in the web, LinkedIn is not used often.  Others may not know but LinkedIn generates free, organic traffic to your blog.  Whether you just created your blog or you’re a popular blogger, you would naturally want more traffic for your site.  Additionally, you would want qualified traffic too, people who are genuinely interested in the content you produce.

But isn’t LinkedIn just a site for posting resumes for people looking for a job?  Absolutely No! Although LinkedIn has been a great help for job seekers looking for a job in this economic crunch, it’s more than that!  Individuals and companies have considerably been achieving their goals through LinkedIn.  LinkedIn can help you sell products, find new clients and employees, generate leads, receive funding for your company, get sponsorships, sell tickets for professional events, get national and local press coverage, and most of all, drive ridiculously high traffic to your blog!

But of course, all of these things do not come naturally.  You have to work with the LinkedIn system and experiment with various methods.  I have outlined below tips to achieve these goals and ways to drive enormous traffic to your blog.  Read on.

1. Profile – A lot of people complain that LinkedIn do not work for them.  When asked how much time do they spend using LinkedIn, the answer is the same – a little.  Remember that if your profile is weak, people will lose interest and won’t even dare clicking your link to your website.  If you want your profile to be read and your links clicked, you have to make your profile concise, compelling and value driven throughout.  Fill it up 100%, add your picture and take the process seriously.  If you want people reading it and visiting your links, make it compelling and complete.  The same goes with driving traffic to your blog.  If someone would look for your name using Google, chances are your LinkedIn profile will come up first (if you have one, of course).  Personally, my LinkedIn profile is number 3 at the Google search.  Darren Rowse is 7th, before Facebook and Twitter.  Try searching for your name and see for yourself how much you fair in terms of ranking.  The more compelling your profile is, the higher your LinkedIn profile will be.

2. Increase Your Connections – Each time you take action with your LinkedIn account, your 1st degree connections are updated with the change.  If you only have 100 connections, your potential clicks for your profile and your website is limited.  Constantly increase your connections.

3. Customize your Website Links – When you initially created your profile, your website link looks like this:

blog links

Boring, isn’t it?  It is not compelling and does not give readers that “call to action” thing that would make them click and visit your website.  If I were Darren Rowse, I would insert this to his profile:

The second image is more compelling and gives a synopsis of what the reader would see when he views your link.  If you want to change your website link with a custom headline, click on the “edit” button next to one of the websites.  Take a look at the one I made below:

Linkedin Blog

4. Answer Questions – One of the great ways to increase your credibility and authority is to answer questions.  When someone rates your answer as one of the best, your thought leadership will improve.  As it moves up the rankings, you will be a “featured expert”.  Readers then will feel intrigued and compelled to click on your link and view your blog and at the same time check what else you have to offer.

5. Update Status – LinkedIn is similar to Twitter when updating your status.  The only difference is that Twitter permits you to post up to 140 characters while LinkedIn allows for 148.  Just like Twitter, whatever update you put in that box, it will appear in the home page of your connections.  If you are smart, you would include a link to your blog  (something that I do to drive traffic to my site) and see what your blog has to offer.

6. Join Niche Groups – There will always be people who share the same interests as you do in LinkedIn.  To find groups, click on the Search Group tab and type in some keywords that pertains to your blog.  Like I have a sports blog that focuses mostly on social media with an audience of professionals who works in sports.  I joined all the sports group I can find:

If you are not a member of any group in your niche, then you’re missing out a lunch.  Take advantage of that because it creates traffic – new readers.  Join as many group as you can.  For starters, check out the Professional Bloggers Group.

7. Post Comments in Groups – For every comment that you put on those discussions, it gets posted on every home page of the members of that group.  If a group has 100,000 members, can you imagine the potential of your traffic?  You are getting the attention of those members.

8. Add RSS Feed to Group – Groups at LinkedIn allows you to add a link to your website with the latest news of what’s relevant to the group. It also allows you to add RSS Feed to the group so that they get notified every time you have new posts in your blog.  These feeds are automatically posted to each members’ home page.  Can you imagine the opportunity you have for people clicking on and visiting your blog?

9. Create Your Own Group – This move has helped me a lot to attain the traffic my blog has right now.  I created the Sports Industry Network Group at LinkedIn with over 19,500 members now.  When someone joins the group, they see a brief description of the group, the owner (that’s me) and my website url (www.sportsmaker.com).  My group gets over 100 new members each week excluding the existing 20,000 members who are actively engaging in the group and clicking on my blog links.

10. Add the Blog Application to Your Profile – An obvious suggestion as it is, but I can still see some top professional bloggers leaving this out.  This application posts the title and first paragraph of the most recent articles that you published on your LinkedIn profile.  It’s one way of showing readers a sneak preview of what they will see and read on your blog.  To download, go to Applications and choose either WordPress or Blog Link Application.  You then add your URL for your blog.

The power of LinkedIn does not stop there.  But these 10 tips have brought exponential traffic to my blog.  What other tips have you found using LinkedIn to increase your traffic?

admin Blog Marketing, Social Media, Web Traffic

Once you have established your online business, it should not only be running though but should be way ahead of any competition (if you should want to quit whatever day job you have as well). Competition becomes another story considering the hundreds, if not thousands, competitor pages found on the Internet. The audience is the key as well as a snazzy website, quality products, and competitive prices if you mean business and being serious about generating traffic and sales. If not, then your efforts only amount to nothing. So here are a few web 2.0 techniques worth a try when you are looking to increase web traffic.

Leave Trails

Back links that are of high quality is just one key for web traffic surge. These links are posted on sites that would direct the visitors to your site. Online bulletins and community forums are places where you can add back links. But before execute this, you must know your niche. You must consider that while this is more often than not free to do, you are doing this to try to generate sales.

Posting a link somewhere won’t take long, but remember you need a solid understanding about your niche. For instance, you can’t promote game-hunting equipment in forums of an animal-welfare community because that could be regarded as an insensitive thing to do giving your company a bad image as well a kind of exercise in futility.

You can also post your comments in authority blogs, using Google’s blog search, blogcatalog.com or technorati.com to figure out bloggers that could be in your niche. Just make sure that the blogs are reliable and is not just a made-up blog by someone for people to post back links to. Bear in mind that when you leave back links, they are dofollow links because otherwise, search engines won’t be able to follow that link you posted.

Social Bookmarking

Sites like Delicious.com allow people to bookmark URLs on their site as a way to promote websites for free so that other people will know such a website exists and they can drop by or pay a visit. Should they like the site you posted, which is quite possible if your website is attractive containing informative content, they will bookmark it also. Such sites have tagging systems. Your position increases as more people like and bookmark your site, contrary to SEO-type ranking. As you go higher in rank, more people and search engines will notice you. Did you know that a high rank in search engines increases web traffic by a mile? But in doing so, you must have good and useful content. Although it is easy to have a group agree to promote your website in a social bookmarking site, making them do it even though there is nothing essential on your site is just really deceiving, and customers do not like having to deal with shady enterprises. Also when posting links, competitive keywords are vital in text links when you are posting information on forums.

Social Networking

Most people including yourself might already be familiar with sites like Multiply, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Sites like these, specifically Hubpages and Squidoo, are powerful marketing tools, and being an internet social butterfly isn’t a requirement in order to utilize it. Think of it as your online business website’s interactive leg where communication among customers can be done in an informal manner and where they can do product reviews, share suggestions, etc. There is always the temptation to use the content you are using on your website; however, you must never duplicate it. You may rewrite it or make video version of it, but do not repost it because reposting is acceptable only for highly literary articles such as poems or short stories.

Social media is a power tool when it comes to internet marketing and can be put to good use for your online businesses to increase traffic. But whatever you do, you must make sure your site does fulfill what is being promised, according to the link text and bookmark descriptions. To stay in business, that is the way it should be.

admin Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Web Traffic

The easiest part when you want to have a blog is to set it up at first. Then time will have to be spent on blog marketing, which could be the difficult part. If you do not do any marketing, your blog will not be found and you won’t be able to make any money with it. Here are useful blog optimization and marketing tips to make sure you will receive a steady flow of traffic to your blog:

1. In order to have a successful blog, do not opt for free hosting. Low cost hosting from providers like hostgator.com will work well. Also of use a sub domain (i.e blog.mywebsite.com) or use your very own domain name (i.e www.mywebsite.com) if possible.

2. Install an excellent content management system like WordPress. Why WordPress? Because aside from being the most customizable and preferred blog platform, it has a variety of different plugins, which are intended to help with SEO, content management, customization, and marketing.

3. It is essential to make the right professional-looking theme for your blog and for you to make your blog stand out with its uniqueness from all the other blogs. WordPress offers a lot of premium themes as well as free themes to suit your taste.

4. Whenever you start writing content for your blog, do a keyword research. Free and excellent services such as Keywordindex.com are available for example.

5. You can add an RSS feed, Google compatible sitemap, and social bookmark links to optimize the template for your blog. Plugins like these are ready-made for WordPress.

6. To increase traffic for your blog, you can enable feed tracking, pinging, and automatic trackback.

7. In your niche, observe those authorative blogs and pay attention to how their content is written, how their blogs are marketed or how they use ads in them. Technorati has a list of Top 100 blogs in different categories.

8. Google Analytics can be used to track your blog if you want to monitor inbound links or your blog’s traffic. Figure out the kind of content that gets the most comments and views. Once you have that information, then you know what your audience want to read.

9. Your RSS feed may be submitted to top 55 sites for RSS submission.

10. Link building campaigns can be started through making comments on related blogs, by joining popular social media sites, and writing for Hubpages.

11. Making marketing videos and uploading them to Revver, YouTube, and similar video sites (“how to” videos works best) is recommended.

12. If you have money to burn then by all means submit your articles to authority blogs in your niche.

13. You can also submit it to PRWeb.com or do your own press release.

14. Join forums in your niche, such as The Warrior Forum for the internet marketing industry, then be active and participate regularly. In your profile, you can also add a signature with links to the sites of your choosing in order to get even more links aimed at your blog.

15. Update your blog by posting daily content is the most indispensable tip I can share. It must be of quality content. You may add videos occasionally just to keep your audience for a while on your blog site.

16. Always respond to people when they leave comments on your blog. That way there would be interaction on your blog while giving it more content also.

17.  Enable guest posting so you can give people the chance to write blog posts and publish them on your blog. It will garner you fresh content while it also gives the writer link backs to their site plus it gets you new readers also. This works vice-versa and is the perfect way to obtain new blogging contacts and friends.

admin Blog Marketing, SEO, Web Content