With the many free ways to gain additional traffic, one thing that you can consider is indulging into the realms of social networking. Social networking can be regarded as ‘the hype’ these days and website owners should take advantage of these social networking sites fully.

1. Identifying Top Social Media Sites

The first step that you should take is to look for the most efficient social media sites available on the internet. For instance, you can sign up to bookmarking sites like reddit.com and digg.com among many other sites. The more websites you sign up on, the bigger the chances that you will be able to drive larger audiences to your website by bookmarking your content.

2. Setting Up Profiles

The next step is to setup your profile with as much detailed information as possible including your photo and links to your websites. Once this step is completed, you can bookmark and submit all posts that you have created to these social networking sites. Whenever you have to share another person’s blog entry or anything of his interest, you can also bookmark it to these social networking sites with just a few clicks. Bookmarking other user articles will increase your authority and perception on the social media sites.

3. Active Participation

When you sign up to social networking websites like facebook, you are expected to participate. You can do this by means of actively commenting to the posts of other people as well as rating what they have to say. Do this on a constant basis and you see your traffic increase. The more content you submit to social networking sites, the better the chance of your website being viewed by a great deal of people.

4. Microblogging

Other social media sites that you can utilize in the same fashion are Twitter.com and Plurk.com. These two websites can be considered as the two trending microblogging websites where individuals can say what they want easily and quickly. Another plus is that it is free! You can also add people on your profile and interact with them through tweets and plurks respectively. Whatever you have to say through your Twitter and Plurk account, you can include the web address of your website and see for yourself how this can draw more traffic to you for free. However, don’t just post your own website url there. The same rule that applies for social networking and social bookmarking sites also applies to microblogging sites: Sharing is caring. If you care for your friends and followers you will post mainly quality relevant content there from all over the internet and just advertise your own stuff occassionally.

Microblogging and social networking sites can be your ultimate path to networked traffic. Just imagine sending a message with link to your friends which forward it to there friends and so on. It is like a branched tree where every branch benefits.

If you are determined to draw more traffic to your website, you can conveniently do this by means of engaging yourself in several social networking sites. Do not be afraid to conquer those sites because you can end up increasing your traffic. And who can’t use more traffic, right?

admin Social Media, Twitter

Guest blogging on relevant niche blogs can send you a lot of targeted traffic your way. Directly through links on social media, bookmarking and networking sites as well as through search engine rankings.

Did you know that Twitter can help you find and track those guest posting opportunities?  Below are practical tips that will help you find those opportunities and perhaps could help you to increase your social media visibility and improve your traffic driving strategies.

1. Search Traffic Tool of Twitter

Twitter offers a great search tool where you can use the following queries to assist you in finding whatever it is you want. Since we are on the topic of guest posting opportunities, you may include the following keywords in your search query:

[guest bloggers]
[looking for writers]
[looking for contributors]
[interested in contributors]

Additionally, you could use a question mark in front of your queries to limit your search and concentrate on the particular topic you would like.  Examples would be:

? guest blogging
? looking for writers

2. Seesmic Application

Seesmic is actually a Twitter tool that can easily be installed in your desktop, in your phone (i.e. iPhone, Android & Blackberry) or you can simply use it via the web.  Aside from getting your tweets out there, it informs you of emerging trends in Twitter.  As I am a user of this application and have proven it’s value, I am strongly recommending that it’s really worth the download.  And did I mention that you can get it for free?  Below are the simple steps you can follow so you would know what’s in and what’s hot in Twitter:

a. Configure Seesmic to notify you of new tweets based on the filter you want.  To do this, navigate to Settings and then tick the Notify box for search results on.

b. Now, search for “guest blogging (in your niche)” using Seesmic search box:

c. Your search query will then be saved and you will be notified of future information regarding the search query you used:

3. Twitter List of Twitter

Aside from the search box of Twitter, you can also use and organize your Twitter list so you could easily keep track of your keywords (i.e. guest, guest blogging, etc.).  How do you do it?  Follow the simple steps below:

a. Are you following respectable bloggers?  If not, why don’t you?  They are a great source of information and of course, guest blogging opportunities as well.  If you already have a substantial list of respectable bloggers on your list, sort them and form a separate list for them.

b. Use the Seesmic tool to inform you (follow steps outlined in #2) for keywords guest, guest blogging, etc. based on your Twitter list which will look like this:

c. Once any member of the list you made on Twitter tweets about the keywords you indicated, you will receive an email.

It’s that easy.  Three valuable tips that may increase your chances of getting guest postings opportunities and eventually giving you the edge over others in terms of visibility and authority.

admin Social Media, Twitter

Most internet marketers agree that content is still king, even in 2010. Creating compelling content that makes readers come back for more is one way of building your visibility and authority online. Much that creating unique content is tedious work, majority of bloggers, webmasters or internet marketing experts would say that in addition to compelling content, there is one magic formula that would help you boost your credibility and visibility, online. That magic formula is through effective search engine optimization (SEO). Below are some of the best tips I have compiled for newbies out there that are valid in 2010:

1. Concentrate on home page – Most new bloggers make the mistake of optimizing their landing page and waste their time on it. Unless your landing page is a sales page, having at least one to three long-tailed keywords on your homepage that would attract links, is good enough for the blog as a whole.  This does not mean that you should skip landing page optimization ever. As a beginner, your goal is to build your traffic. And building traffic through link building is a proven strategy.

2. Site Maps are a must on your blog – WordPress is one platform that has built in site map tools that even newbies will find easy customizing. An effective and successful blog must have a site map in order for search engines to find new content instantly.

3. Robots.txt is a must on your blog too – Equally important is the use of a robots.txt file that tells search engines which pages to crawl and which to leave out. Especially when you are using a content management system that utilizes dynamic pages, like Wordpress, duplicate content pages are occuring everywhere, in archives, in categories, in tags, in date etc. Robots.txt is a must if you want your new articles to be indexed instantly by google and also a fix for me when I wondered why my pages are not indexed by google.

4. Optimize more than one keyword in a single post – Optimizing your article for 1 keyword is so 2003. Optimize your post for multiple keywords!  The secret?  Google’s Wonder Wheel. If you have not realized the functionality of Google’s Wonder Wheel, well, you are missing a lot. For one, Google would not put it where it is right now if it is not helpful. The Wonder Wheel is located on the left side portion of the Google site. When you use it, it gives you and idea of what other long tailed keywords based on the original keyword you placed searchers are looking for. These long tailed keywords can then be used in your post instead of mentioning your original keyword, thus, creating redundancy. Nice tool, right?

5. Use your own images –  It is advisable to use your own pictures on your blog.  However, if you need to use images other than your own, always indicate the source of your picture.  Also remember to change the caption and the size of your pictures so that the infamous crawlers of the google world would consider it unique.

6. Use Flash, if needed –  With the technology we have, using Flash in your blogs is no longer that much of an obstacle like before for those crawler bots!  They do crawl despite the Flash in your site.  Technology is changing, thus, search engines continue to evolve as well.  However, please remember that although flash may look aesthetically pleasent for your blogs, it substantially decreases the loading time of your web page.  And this slowness may not only scare away your readers in favor of your competitor’s site but google recently introduced site speed as one small part to their algorithm.  So, use it sparingly!  And by the way, if you opt to use Flash, be sure to change it every now and then so as not to bore your readers.

7. Google Page Rank – It is common for all bloggers, of course, to achieve the top of a Google Page Rank.  However, Google has already said that your page rank will not at all affect your rankings in the Search Engine Results pages (SERP) from 2010 and beyond.

8. There is NO best SEO Company (yes, you heard right, not even an ex-google employee ) – Who else would be an authority on search engines other than Google? And according to Google, there is no such thing as best SEO company.  Although Google considers their Pay Per Click and Adwords as the best search engine advertising strategy there is, endorsing an SEO as being the best is tantamount to accepting that this best company outsmarted their algorithms.  So, friends, never believe an SEO company when they say that they are Google Certified.  Google never certifies any SEO company.

There you go, bloggers. Outlined for you are eight blogging tips in 2010, keep on blogging for fun and profit!

admin Blog Marketing, SEO, Web Traffic

If you want to generate traffic to your blog, there are several ways that can be considered. One of these is through the use of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. This is something that many internet marketers are engaging on these days because of its powerful results. More and more are getting into the trend because social networking sites serve as homes for online users who want to socialize.

You can basically take advantage of the way social networking users interact through these websites by means of having an outstanding presence. The rule of the thumb is this: the larger your network is, the better the chance that your product or website will be known to the public. In turn, the more internet users stumble upon your product or website, the more the traffic you get.

There are three simple methods that you can utilize to increase your social media following:

Automatic adding and following of social networking users, posting trending contents, and manual searching and adding of social networking users. Let us look into each of these methods.

1. Automatic Active Following and Adding Social Networking Users

There are tools available that you can use in order to automatically follow or add friends to your social networking profiles. You just need an automation software and set the keywords that will be looked for, and voila, you will balloon the number of friends or followers you have. The good thing about this is that it uses the keywords you have listed in looking for pertinent profiles, topics, and contents. The downside is that your account may get banned if you add too many users within a very short period. Use automated software tools with caution and add friends and followers in moderation. Combine it with manual additions for best results.

2. Manual Active Searching and Adding of Social Networking Users

This may sound old-fashioned but this can be considered as an error-free method especially if you want to make sure that you only look for the social networking users you are targeting. In such way, you can add or follow as many friends as possible without the doubt of machine error that is prone with programs that automatically add or follow users. You can manually look for your target audience and add them based on your criteria.

3. Getting Social Networking Users Passively By Posting Trending Contents

Your social network can also be expanded passively through by posting trending contents. This usually refers to the trends, topics, tags and categories related to your industry, niche and expertise. You may not be a friend or a follower of other users who posted something related to your trending content, but you’ll still learn about their posts. This is like categorizing every possible topic depending on how social networking users defined their trends, topics or tags. When you post about a trending content, there is a high possibility that a great deal of users will see your post and follow you or add you as friend.

Through the use of these simple techniques, you can surely hit the bullseye on getting the traffic you deserve to have. It just pays to maximize these techniques for best results.

admin Social Media, Twitter

Do you have a lot of sites or blogs and want to add all to Linknami to benefit from free content or to make money by publishing text links, contextual links, sponsored articles and reviews but do not have the time to add all your sites manually by hand?

Introducing: Bulk Import

Just send us an email with your username and attach a text or excel file with following columns:

website URL
title
description
preferred category
rss feed url
tags (keywords comma separated)

optional fields (allows you to publish articles and posts with a single click without logging into your blog application and doing everything manually):

blog type (blogger, wordpress, movable type or drupal)
blog username
blog password
blog api url
blog id

The import should be completed within 24-48 hours and you will receive a notification email once the sites are available in the Linknami user area and you can proceed with publishing fresh content or setting up ad rates for your pages.

admin Linknami

Everybody likes to have targeted traffic. Even more when its free. One method to generate targeted traffic is by running contests on your website or blog. Contests are nothing new on the internet, but still are very effective in sending targeted website traffic your way. In order to get more website visitors, try this technique and see if it is worth your time.

To run a contest on your blog, the first task is to find a suitable prize that would draw the attention of your blog readers. Since this is called a blog contest, you obviously need to have your own blog. This even doesn’t have to be expensive. There are free platforms that you can utilize in order for you to have a blog. You can go for Blogger, WordPress or LiveJournal among many other blogging platforms. Each may differ from the layout to the management of content but it all boils down to the functionality you ask for from your blogging site.

If you blog about your products or services, you can offer a product or membership as your prize. You will advertise your product and generate buzz at the same time. You can also ask other people or other affiliate websites if they can donate a certain product for your blog contest. What matters most is the sense of having a prize that appeals to your blog audience.

The next task is to come up with a solid set of contest rules. It is very important that all instructions are followed by all participants of your blog contest. If only a certain part of your audience is eligible to participate in your contest, you have to specify in your terms that only those who are qualified will be allowed to participate.

Now set the actual contest task. There are many options you can consider, such as posting comments, while the user who posts the best comment will be awarded with the prize. You can also let them complete a survey and you will select a random participant as winner. Another fun thing that you can do is to let participants blog about your product or the contest itself on their very blogs. Through this, you can drive traffic through incoming links.

Also, you can come up with your own unique way of having a contest. The more unique your idea is, the more chances that your readers will bite. However, make sure that you let them understand your contest rules. Your terms must be clear enough for them to easily do what you want them to do for the prize while avoiding problems or misunderstandings later at any point in time. The underlying compensation here is that you are actually driving more traffic to your website for free.

admin Web Marketing, Web Traffic

When visiting your bank, does the bank manager greet you personally by name and take you into his office, passing all people waiting in queue and provide first class service?

Introducing the new Linknami affiliate program, which potentially can make your bank manager smile

Our new affiliate program enables you to earn money by promoting a wide range of online marketing, blog advertising and search engine marketing products from Linknami on your website or blog as well as on and other websites like forums, blogs, your social media accounts like twitter, facebook and all the others.

You can earn money in a wide variety of ways and since most products sold on a recurring subscription basis, you will cash in as long as your referrals subscriptions are running, every month!

Here is an overview on what you can make:

Referring Advertisers

You earn 25 US$ flat whenever someone you have referred spends more than 100 US$ on Linknami products (buying image/text ads, text links, contextual links and content snippets)!

Referring Publishers

You earn 50% on a monthly recurring basis for each account upgrade (advanced 9$/mo., pro US$ 19/mo, premium accounts US$ 29/mo.) each month as long as the subscription is active.
These accounts enable users can get more contextual links and content snippets as well as post articles on niche blogs!

You earn 10% on a monthly recurring basis for each sold text link, contextual link and content snippet as long as the subscription is active.
Typical prices start from 5$ per link and can reach 200, 500 US$ or more per link per month!

You earn 5% on a monthly recurring basis for each banner and text ad as long as the subscription is active.
Typical prices start from 5$ per link and can reach 200, 500 US$ or more per banner or text ad per month!

You earn 5% on a one-time basis for each sponsored article posted.
Typical prices start from 5$ per sponsored article and can reach 100, 200 US$ or more per article per month!

You earn 5% on a one-time basis for each sponsored review written and posted.
Typical prices start from 5$ per written review and can reach 100, 200 US$ or more per review per month!

You can withdraw your earned money fully flexible at any time form your user area via paypal, check and bank wire. You are not bound to any payout periods. Alternatively, you can invest the money you have earned into buying account upgrades or advertisements yourself.

This is all possible with our all-in-one combo-account, you can use advertiser, publisher, free tools and affiliate tools all conveniently from one central interface.

At Linknami, we offer online marketing and blog advertising tools from free to any budget. Which means that anyone can signup with and existing sites, grow their traffic using our free tools then make money publishing advertisements and so on.

Register now for your free combo-account and login to get your affiliate links, banners and other promotion material!

admin Linknami

Why do webmasters and most Internet marketers make such a big fuss about link building? Why do they link to other similar websites, mostly competitors, in fact? Many online markets will tell you that link building is important for both SEO and direct traffic. Below are 6 reasons why inbound and outbound link building works like magic for your website or blog:

1. Builds Traffic – When you create a link that goes to another website with a similar theme, you create a reciprocal benefit. How? If I am a reader of your blog and would like to find out something else from the site you have linked to, my needs are satisfied. Similarly, if a site links to you, the readers of that particular blog would visit your site and check out your blog. Thus, more visitors to your blog are expected thereby increasing your traffic.

2. Boosts Search Engine Ranking – Popularity of sites is one factor search engines consider for ranking. If your site gets a link from another site, the probability of your site getting the search engines’ thumbs up is high. Thus, the more links are pointed to your website, the more popular your site becomes. And the more popular your site becomes in search results, the more traffic it gets.

3. Step-Up Site’s Informative Nature – When you provide links to your readers for in-depth information about topics, your site’s informative nature is enhanced. Readers would want information possibly at an instant and providing them with reliable links would not only increase your popularity as regards viable information but will also increase your authority on your niche.

4. Builds Up Credibility – And when you provide reliable and in-depth information to your readers through the links you build, you gain their trust and thus increases your authority and credibility on the topic you are talking about. Additionally, because of the backlinks you’ve been getting, your readers would then consider you as an expert in your field. This credibility goes a long way on the worldwide web. It would definitely increase your traffic. And you know the benefit you get from increased traffic, right?

5. Authenticates Connections Within the Internet Arena – Not all webmasters gain the trust of other webmasters from the same niche. When other sites link to your site, it authenticates your connections within the Internet arena. By establishing your link building strategy, you do not only increase your connections with like-minded people, you also increase your traffic and eventually boost your credibility.

6. Amplifies Affiliation With Other Websites – Creating links to other websites amplifies your affiliation with that site you are linked to. Readers would think that you are affiliated with the site and thereby increases your authority in the niche you are working with. This link building strategy is especially important if you link your site to more popular and credible blogs. The affiliation you suggest creates an illusion to your readers that indeed your site is an authority.
These link building benefits are far greater than you think.

The benefits that you reap are linked in itself. The traffic you get, the ranking that is given to you by search engines, your credibility, affiliation and visibility all relates to your link building strategy. This is the reason why webmasters work hard to get the backlinks they need. Indeed, link building strategies work like magic.

admin Link Building, SEO

Search engines love everything unique. Unique content, unique text and even unique sentences (thats why I try to write as unique as possible lol). This is because they are always looking to provide new, fresh and most relevant search results to their users.

Employers love search engines. In the future, resumes will be less and less important when it comes to applying for a new job. Employers will find more information about you in social media, social networking sites and search engines that they could write a biography about you when you are sitting in front of them for the interview, and the most important part is, in the majority of cases, this information is usually closer to the truth than your resume would ever be.

After opening your job application letter, the employer will find your name as quickly as possible (if a brief glance over the credentials convinces him that its worth researching you further), open his web browser, access google and search for THE NAME.

If your name is ‘John Smith’ and you are not an extremely famous person, your employer will most likely not find any information about you out of 80 million results, which means that all credentials in your resume can not be backed up by third parties at that point and the employer may move on with the next application letter.

Even a search for ‘John Smith AT&T’ or ‘John Smith Walmart Green Bay Wisconsin’ may not produce fruitful results and the more the employers drills down the less possible information on the internet they will find about you.

However if your name is ‘Tarika Smith’ there is a good chance that your employer will find a lot information about you online right away, out of 180,000 results.

Here is where you can search engine optimize your child. Give your newborn a unique name!

However giving your child a unique name is not enough, also make sure that you teach him/her the right values along the way, otherwise a search for your child’s name may easily backfire and search engine results will appear that may negatively affect your child’s job application (which employer wants to read ‘Tom Brown is a scam artist…’?)

Currently employers are already researching applicants online and imagine the situation in 20-30 years from now when your child is ready to start his/her job live or trying to find a better job, names will be vital!

So think ahead, your child may land a great job in the future just because he or she got SEO by mom and dad

admin Misc Stuff, SEO

The “big three” search engines, namely Google, Yahoo and MicroSoft Network’s Bing are keen to index backlinks from sites and pages that end on .gov or .edu. Such websites are seen as trusted authority sites, thus they can provide quality backlinks. Getting a backlink on those government and education websites is easier than it sounds and just a matter of finding them, however, of course as with all “free things”, there is time involved (that’s why you may outsource this task if you are not on a tight budget)

To find those edu and gov link opportunities yourself, visit a search engine, preferably Google. Use following specific search parameters to find edu and gov pages. Results should lead you to what you are looking for.

The results would appear like this: site plus the domain name ending on .gov or .edu.
List down every site that Google shows in results, sort them by category or search queries used.

For links on government (.gov) websites, find them through their footprints (footprints are snippets or pieces of text that recoccur in a similar pattern on one or all pages of a website). For example, on site.gov/forums (search query: “site:.gov inurl:forums”) you can create user profiles which may include backlinks to your website.

Other opportunities include Wikipedia-ish sites (site.gov/wiki), which enable you to create as well as edit (search query: “site:.gov inurl:wiki”)

You can also post backlinks on forums, also known as discussion pages (site.gov/discussion). (search query: “site:.gov inurl:discussion”) You can use .edu as well.

You can also take advantage of website’s footprints on those sites as well, examples of these are vbulletin, powered by vbulletin, phpbb, invision power board, wordpress and the like.

Actually, we haven’t even started yet. Following the same system you can establish much more footprints. To be sure that you have hit the jackpot through a footprint, your search query should closely resemble this format:

Powered by vbulletin site:.gov or site:.edu inurl:forums

Targeting government and education websites in your niche also works.

For example:

site:.gov inurl:grants*wordpress

Using this syntax, putting a gap between queries and an asterisk (*) is important, because this specifies a certain Content Management System. Regarding wordpress, you can use other blog sites or something else you are searching for.

Another thing to remember is to have CMS platform types in mind, those where you can normally post, adding either site.gov or site.edu. Use these parameters in your search queries. The more you can think of, the more backlink prospects you’ll get.

Two more things to keep in mind, make sure that there is no spam on these pages (100s of viagra links, skip these pages) and if you find a suitable page, please post a relevant message or comment so that these opportunities persist for others that come after you.

admin Link Building