Guide to make money online!

Want your local business to thrive online? There is an abundance of information about how to target local search terms and become an online leader in your local area and niche but it’s easy to experience information overload with all the advice that’s available out there. Here are the 5 essential components of local search that will help you rank and dominate in your local market.

1. Add Geographical Information to Your Page Titles

Make sure to use both your target keyword term and location name in your page titles. This allows search engines to determine easily what your site is about and search engine users are more likely to click on your site if it contains relevant geographical information and keywords.

2. Get Your Business Listed on Prominent Websites Directories

Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and MSN Live Local are all websites where you can have your business listed in order to make it easier for potential customers to find you. By claiming ownership of your business listings on these prominent sites, you allow both search engines and potential customers to get correct information about your business. Sometimes unscrupulous competitors may claim your listing on these sites to undermine you. Make sure you’re the first one to claim your listings in order to build trust between you, the search engines, and potential customers. There are also several local search directories that get significant traffic where you can claim your listings. Click2connect.com and Citysquares.com are examples of local search directories with good traffic.

3. Provide Plenty of Information about Your Business in Your Listings

When search engine users stumble upon your website through clicking on your business listing, you want to be sure that you give them as much information as possible about your service. In addition to including the basics such as your address, contact information, and operation hours give potential customers plenty of reasons why they ought to choose you over your competitors. For example, mention exactly which towns and neighborhoods you service, what credit cards you accept, what your guarantees are, and anything else that is pertinent.

4. Use Your Target Keyword Phrases as Anchor Text in Your Hyperlinks

Link reputation is an integral component of search engine algorithms. When possible, make sure that the links pointing back to your site use your best target keyword phrase and variations of your location as anchor text. Your internal links also contribute to link reputation so be sure to link to pages within your site using good link text. This link text can be used in your site navigation, HTML sitemap, and links within your content.

5. Monitor Reviews about Your Business Online

Thanks to the internet, consumers can submit online reviews of businesses to customer-controlled review sites like Yelp and share their experiences, whether good or bad. This could be highly beneficial to your business if it gets great reviews but it could also hurt you if you get some bad reviews. Monitor the reviews your business receives on a regular basis so you can spot bad reviews when they arise and dispute them if necessary. Sometimes customers don’t always give fair reviews so make that if you do get bad reviews that are unjustified, the potential customers who see them can get both sides of the story at the very least. Using Google Alerts is a convenient way to keep track of what is being said about your business online.

Focus on these 5 strategies in local search to boost your business’ online presence. There are several tactics you can use to increase targeted traffic to your business’ website and improve its ranking but these are some of the most effective ways to give your business a solid footing in local search.

In practically every major marketing teaching, course, or seminar I’ve come across, I have found that almost all successful marketing on the Internet really boils down to two essential factors: traffic and conversion.

Visitors and sales.

In fact, I’ve been to two-day Internet marketing seminars and workshops, where the first day focused on generating traffic and the second on building sales.

That’s all well and good. However, I believe there’s one more key component. It’s one that’s growing not only in popularity, but also in need and importance. It’s the one factor on which the other two hinge. And it’s one that seems to be the least talked about.

Incorporate this third element in your business model and chances are significant you’re going to see substantial, continuous growth in your business - and with a lot less effort than you’ve originally thought possible.

What is it? What is this third, missing element?

First, let’s talk about traffic for a moment.

One of the most common sources of traffic is, without question, the search engines. It’s the largest source of traffic online for almost every website.

But when I hear marketers talk about search engine strategies, optimization techniques, submission software, etc, it befuddles me to see there are still some marketers out there who rely heavily and strictly on them.

Don’t get me wrong. Search engines are important and they are an essential part of a marketer’s strategy. Learning and applying SEO are undoubtedly crucial and necessary.

But search engines (or any other traffic-generation strategy) are not, and should never be, your sole source of traffic.

While marketers must never discount the search engines, a savvy marketer’s portfolio must go beyond them.

Since marketing requires an investment of time, money, and energy, and like all other investments, you should look at managing your marketing just as you would manage your investments in the financial arena.

A well-balanced marketing portfolio consists of a combination of diversified strategies that are executed synchronously, diligently, and intelligently.

Look at it this way: many reputable entrepreneurs state that the surest way to achieve wealth is through multiple streams of income. Online, the surest way to achieve success is through multiple streams of both visitors and sales.

Your traffic must originate from different sources. The adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” applies just as much with your traffic as it does with your income.

Whether you write articles, buy classified ads, advertise with banners, bid on keywords, publish fresh content, interact in social media, or submit to the search engines, your marketing efforts must never rely on a single source.

An individual traffic source may generate just a small stream of visitors. But when you invest in multiple traffic sources and add them together, the total equals a high and consistent stream of visitors.

Of course, a single source may be more rewarding and effective than others. But like prudent financial investing, the key is to diversify by investing your marketing efforts into multiple sources in order to reduce your risks.

Sales are no different. If your business consists of only one website, or if it sells only one product, diversify your sales and develop additional streams of income.

In addition to looking at multiple ways to increase individual streams of income (e.g., through split-testing, list-building, adding upsells, etc), you should also look at building various streams of income, too.

For example, join third-party affiliate programs to sell related, non-competing products. Sell back-end products to your current clients. Monetize your opt-in subscriber list with special offers. Sell ad space on your blogs. Develop joint-venture alliances to bundle products or traffic sources together. Create continuity programs and membership sites.

The list goes on.

In short, develop additional streams of income and traffic, as well as different streams of traffic for each stream of income, too. Just be careful not to overextend your core funnel, dilute your brand, or lose sight of your target niche.

In other words, don’t be a jack of all trades and a master of none.

Diversify, but stay focused.

Nevertheless, if you only have one stream of income and it slows down to a crawl, for whatever reason (e.g., the economy, the industry, the competition, etc), you’re dead. Similarly, if one source of traffic slows down, dries up, or depletes entirely, the loss is minimal when compared to the whole picture.

However, earlier I said there’s a third element that has become an essential process to building a successful online business. Why? Because visitors and sales are not enough.

While everyone on the Internet extols the virtues of driving traffic and increasing conversions, this one element seems to have slipped off of many people’s radars. It’s the one element that probably deserves more attention than the other two.

And that’s credibility.

With its vastness and lack of one-on-one, face-to-face interaction, the Internet adds this third dimension to the mix that’s often not as apparent. It’s the need to develop credibility, as well as to look at multiple ways to communicate it and boost it.

Don’t just be credible. Look for ways to increase credibility and maintain it, too. There are a great variety of ways for doing this, from adding seals of approval to your website and adding elements of proof to your sales copy, to interacting in social media.

However, one of the easiest ways to improve your credibility…

… Is to develop and nurture relationships.

You may have some traffic and it might bring in some sales. But if you don’t have credibility, you have nothing. Nothing will grow your traffic and your sales, let alone your business, more than the relationships you create and keep.

And relationships are built on trust.

So to that end, look at every relationship that’s tied to your business as a partnership - whether it’s with your subscribers, your referrals, your affiliates, your joint-venture partners, your suppliers, your service providers, and of course, your clients.

Every person connected with your business, regardless of how they are connected to it, is, and should be considered as, a partner in your business. And every relationship deserves the attention, care, and concern that a partnership typically requires.

When compared to traditional offline businesses, online people are more important than ever before. Why? Because the Internet is cold and impersonal, and takes away the human element from the sales process. So people are easier to forget online.

Too many marketers nowadays look at their clients not as partners or even as people, but as hits, clickthroughs, and conversion rates - or, as my wife Sylvie Fortin would say, as “nameless, faceless wallets.”

Therefore, it goes to reason that we can use the Internet to supplant what is often easier to do offline, such as meeting people and interacting with them.

It’s one of if not the key reason behind the rise of social media.

(It’s also the reason why I spend some time on social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, or any other social website. I don’t use social media marketing as a way to drum up traffic or sales, but to create trust and build relationships.)

Trust is also the area on which the other two highly depend. Why? Because it is never enough to simply attract visitors. And it is never enough to simply sell visitors, either - as strange as that may seem. If you don’t believe me, ask the following:

Are your visitors highly qualified or simply curious? Are they impulsive and trusting, or leery and skeptical? Are they only buying once, or buying again and again? Are they silent, or telling the world about you, good or bad?

All three (i.e., visitors, relationships, and sales) are essential in the development of a successful online business.

So regardless of the marketing tactic, a successful marketing portfolio consists of numerous strategies focused on three core elements, and on developing them equally:

1. Building Traffic
2. Building Trust
3. Building Sales

Solid, long-term, sustainable-growth businesses rely on those three key factors. It is no longer enough to simply build traffic and converting that traffic. Today, it is just as important to build and maintain credibility.

Therefore, keep in mind that every single marketing activity you perform, from search engines to social media, must revert to, result in, or improve upon all those three.

Look at the successful marketers out there. Many will tell you their success is not based on a single source but on many. They are focused on all of the above three areas in some way, shape, or form. You should do the same.

Unfortunately, the web is also replete with marketers who rely on one area alone, or on a mere handful of tactics that amount to meager results. If they do produce results of any significance, they’re short-lived at best.

In other words, if you work with only one traffic-building source, one income-building source, and one credibility-building source, your business will do poorly - or it will be built on a shaky foundation that could crumble at any time.

So, think like a savvy investor.

Expand, balance, and diversify your online marketing portfolio. Focus on multiple ways to build traffic, trust, and sales. If you do, you will multiply your chances of online success.

Most of us are well aware that the search engines frequently change their algorithms to improve search results for users (and foil spammers), which can make it challenging for small businesses just to keep up. But as web technology continues to evolve, it also creates new opportunities for small businesses to improve their SEO strategies and boost their rankings as well. Social media (sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg, etc.) provide an excellent opportunity for small businesses to not only promote their products and services online, but also to gain significant ground in the search engine results.

One of the most critical components to getting top search engine rankings is the number of inbound links and link popularity a web site is able to build. Although there are several existing link building strategies available to small businesses (e.g., press releases, directory submissions, article syndication, etc.), social media can help create additional high-value, on-target inbound links that are essential to achieving top placements in the search engines.

For example, each time you use Twitter to publish a link to new content on your web site, that link gets “planted” on the Twitter page of each person following you, and has the potential to spread even further as your followers share that information with their own network of contacts.

Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)^TM
If you have properly integrated your social networking profiles together, that same Twitter “tweet” could then be fed via RSS to your Facebook business profile, your corporate blog, your LinkedIn account, and any number of other social sites that you have set up for your business. It’s not a far stretch to imagine the link you broadcast on Twitter could reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other places on the web, all pointing back to your web site! By integrating your social networking profiles with each other, with your web site, and with your existing marketing initiatives, you can easily make one single marketing action (such as a tweet) show up in multiple places online, each containing a new, relevant inbound link to your site.

Quantity AND Quality
In addition to the sheer number of inbound links that are created through social marketing, the value of the links that are created is another important criterion that search engines consider. To be valued by the search engines, inbound links must be from relevant, “quality” web sites, and search engines today give social sites like Facebook and Twitter great value. These sites are highly visible to the search engines, and are constantly taking updates from users. Links tend to be shared according to subject matter, which means the search engines will see them as being relevant and on-target. All of these factors combine to create high-quality inbound links in the eyes of the search engines.

Online Visibility and Branding
Creating visibility for your business and your “brand” is really key when using social media for building links. The power of social media is realized when other users see your links or content, then share that information with their own network of contacts. Simply adding a bunch of links to your social profiles is not enough; you need to have a strong reputation and a brand that users trust so they will feel comfortable sharing your content with others. Brand recognition typically leads to natural link building anyway, which means your inbound links will end up coming from bloggers, colleagues, customers, and other people who are exposed to your links and find them useful enough to share with their own contacts.

The Proof is in the Rankings
A recent example from Website Magazine explained somewhat surprising results when they searched for their publication’s name in Google. As expected, their web site came up as the number one listing on the results page. But what was not expected was the number three listing on the results page was the magazine’s Twitter page. They then performed a number of Google searches for the terms “Chicago Tribune,” “Chicago Public Golf,” and “Daily Career Tips,” all with similar results in Google - the Twitter page for each of these terms came up near the top of the search engine results every time.

The conclusion was that given these results, Google must be giving serious weight to Twitter content, and I happen to agree. The search engines of course keep their ranking algorithms top-secret, so there’s no way to know how much weight (if any) is really given to Twitter or other social media sites. But results like those in the example above are hard to ignore!

A Great Opportunity
Social media is here to stay, and small businesses are beginning to use it to effectively promote their businesses, reach their customers, find new leads, keep customer mindshare, and instantly communicate with customers. But maybe one of the biggest benefits of adding social media to your marketing mix is the creation of high-value, on-target inbound links that can help improve visibility in the search engines and boost your business to the top of the search engine rankings.

What makes the difference between an under-performing article and one with a drastically higher number of views?

Many times it’s something as simple as an awesome title that pushes an article over the edge from so-so to spectacular!

Here’s why your title is crucial:

Most of the time readers will discover your article through:

a) a Google search b) looking through an article directory

In both of these instances, your headline is one of the few bits of information the reader sees before they decide to click through to read your entire article.

When a reader is looking through a long list of articles on a directory or on a search engine results page, they are quickly scanning a long list of titles, and the title plays a huge role in which article they decide to read in its entirety.

So, don’t take your titles lightly–really put some thought into them and be willing to do some experimenting to see what types of titles work best for you.

Want headlines that generate more traffic? Try these 5 tactics:

1) Be short and sweet.

Put yourself in the shoes of a reader–when you’re scanning a long list of article titles, you don’t necessarily take the time to read each and every title in full. You’re just glancing over each line, trying to get the gist of what the article offers, and sometimes a very clever, long title can be overlooked simply because it doesn’t scan well.

Shorter titles tend to be more direct and focused, and this also helps search engines determine what your article is about.

Now, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t ever write long and clever titles–experiment, but be sure to try submitting articles that have short and punchy titles as well.

Then look at your article statistics and see if you can tell a difference in performance between the short titles and the longer ones.

2) Be direct.

Remember, Google does not understand irony, humor or puns. Search engines take things at face value. A more direct and straightforward title can help your article get higher ranking for your keyword terms.

3) Put your most crucial words at the beginning of your headline.

Again, this pays off when people are scanning your titles, but it also helps Google and the other search engines classify your article. By putting your most important words at the beginning of the title (possibly your keywords or variations of your keywords), you are making it easier for readers and Google to determine what your article is about.

Not sure how to make that work?

Here’s an example:

How To Write Article Headlines: 5 Tips for Clickable Titles

The first few words state specifically what the article is about, and the part after the colon gives additional information.

4) Your title should indicate the topic of your article.

Kind of obvious there, but when you become aware of your keywords, you may be tempted to put your keywords in your title even when the keywords are not appropriate for the article.

For example, your keywords may be “New York Dog Walker”, but in order to use those keywords in your title your article would have to be about some aspect of New York dog walkers. If your article is just about dogs or dog walking in general and not specifically about New York, then it wouldn’t be appropriate to include ‘New York’ in your title.

Your title should always describe what your article is about, and sometimes it’s not appropriate to use your keywords in your title.

5) Your title should make readers want to click through and read the entire article.

Remember, you’re writing for human readers, not just search engines. Even if it is appropriate to use your keywords in your title, you’ll want to put some thought into the phrasing of the headline so that it invites/inspires the reader to click the title and read the entire article.

Your title is the first thing a reader sees when they’re introduced to your article, and you can drastically improve your article submission success simply by paying attention to how you phrase your article headlines. Try these 5 tips and then watch your article stats to see which types of titles work best for you.

The most common reason why articles are declined by publishers is that the article is considered “promotional” or self-serving.

What is a promotional article and how can you submit articles that have the greatest chance of being accepted by publishers?

It helps to know that the purpose of the articles used in Article Marketing is first and foremost to educate and inform, and not to promote yourself, your website, your products or your business. The information conveyed in your article should be for the benefit of your readers and not written with the intention of making sales for your products.

Here’s where the confusion comes in–the reason why people love article marketing is that it’s a great tool for driving traffic to a website which in turn can increase sales. So, the reason why you started submitting articles may have been to increase sales, grow your customer base, or simply get people to visit your website.

This does not, however, mean that you would use the article body to accomplish these goals. To increase website traffic you do not need to say anything about your website in the article itself.

Article marketing is more subtle than that–increasing traffic to a site is an inherent side effect of submitting articles:

You submit an article to an article directory, then website owners see your article, like it, and decide to reprint it on their websites. Each time your article is republished, your resource box containing a link to your site is also republished. This builds links, and an increase in links can elevate your search engine ranking. An increased search engine ranking for your major keywords can of course build traffic dramatically for the long-term.

So, what causes traffic to build is the accumulation of links, rather than a direct plea in the article body for the reader to do something to benefit you.

Always, always, always–your article body should contain information designed to inform and educate the reader. The appropriate place to toot your own horn and talk about your website and products is your resource box–that is the author bio box that sits below your article.

In order to give your article the greatest chance of being attractive to most publishers, you need to remove any impression that your article is written for the purpose of making a sale or drawing readers to your website (remember–save that type of info for your resource box).

Here are 5 things that make an article look promotional (self-serving):

1. The article has a sales slant to it.
2. The article is about a product that you’re selling on your website.
3. The article uses hyped up language, like what you would see in an advertisement.
4. The article tries to get readers to go to your website. (The resource box is the right place to try to get folks to visit your website.)
5. The article is about you and how wonderful you are. (Remember, save that type of info for the resource box.)

If you are having trouble getting out of the “promotional article” mindset, try thinking of yourself as a teacher rather than a sales person.

A teacher provides information that educates and informs.

A sales person presents information with the intention of getting a person to buy a product.

Even if your website sells products, you still need to approach your articles from the perspective of a teacher.

This isn’t to say that your articles shouldn’t be on the topic of your website–your articles should always be on the same topic as your website, but they should not be about specific products that you’re selling on your site.

For example, if your business is Lizzie’s Gourmet Chocolates, an appropriate article topic would be anything having to do with gourmet chocolate or chocolate in general, but it’s best not to write articles about your specific brand of chocolate.

So, that would be NO to an article called “Why Lizzie’s Gourmet Chocolates Taste Best”, and YES to an article called “10 Ways To Tell If Your Chocolate Is High Quality”.

As long as you’re writing articles, why not craft them in a way that maximizes the number of publishers who will accept your article?

The more publishers who reprint your article, the more backlinks you’ll receive. The more backlinks you receive, the bigger impact on your search engine rankings. A higher ranking in Google is what you’re after–that is what will bring the increase in traffic (and sales!) that you’re looking for.

Search engine optimization also known by the acronym SEO is comprised of multiple facets. SEO is not a linear process, but rather a holistic evolution involving intricate layers, steps and cumulative stages which are equally as delicate as they are demanding to perfect.
However, there are fundamental SEO guidelines one can use to incorporate granular changes to improve coherence, functionality and visibility of a website by working in tandem with the metrics that search engines deem worthy and therefore reward with a higher relevance / optimization score.

On the contrary, if you deliberately or inadvertently neglect any one of the necessary characteristics of fine-tuning, then your pages could fall short of their goal which is to find the most suitable audience by way of reaching the most coveted top 10 spots for the contents primary keywords.

Rather than butchering coherence after the fact in an attempt to make a square peg fit in a round hole by editing content, links or the architecture of your website. It is better to start with the SEO goal in mind and building the platform to support it vs. just altering aspects of each after the fact.

With initiating any SEO campaign, you should give credence to:

Understanding your competition - There is a reason why the top 10 spots are occupied, take a look for consistencies so you can emulate certain characteristics if your website lacks them.

Determining the Gap - Determining the gap implies removing the obstacles between you and your objective. Time is the obvious ranking factor; hence, someone online for 5 years in a niche who has achieved keyword saturation and authority has an easier time maintaining visibility compared to a new website (who has not achieved a suitable reputation through peer review).

Before you just build links, your traffic and engagement for the site must be commensurate in order to get past algorithmic filters which can determine things like (1) link clusters from building links in automation (2) the ratio of inbound links to outbound links (3) engagement time / bounce rate factor (which are a metric of satisfaction and relevance) and (4) if there are other supporting topical areas within the site that concentrate internal links, subjects or landing pages to support a more competitive rankings.

Building Internal Authority - Authority is the objective; rankings are merely a side-effect (not the goal). With this in mind, it is more about acquiring a stake in market share that unmistakably positions your website in front of any search which corresponds to any of the terms, keywords or topics covered in your title, content or tags. The more authority a website has, the easier it is to rank for more keywords with less effort.

Gaining Validation from Citation and Peer Review - You can have the greatest website online, but without co-occurrence and other websites referencing your pages, it is merely conjecture. Granted, your website can eventually acquire authority in and of itself, but links from other related sites or websites already ranking for the keywords you are targeting are the fastest way to expedite the process of creating a site that is less dependent on external sources for validation and rankings.

Managing User Expectations - Since no two people think or search alike, you will need an array of landing pages to help direct them to the ultimate conversion objective. The wild card in this equation is the mood of the surfer. Landing pages are all about getting the right person in the right mindset to read the right message. If you can accomplish that with your SEO, there is virtually no limit to increasing user engagement (which is getting them to take the desired action).

Landing Pages are your websites means to an end, they are what keep you in business. With a landing page tailored to a specific array of keywords, the more relevance you can create between what a searcher expects and what a searcher discovers, the higher conversion rate your site will experience.

Landing Page Conversion - The first step in creating a successful online presence is having a page worthy of conversion. Conversion implying that it performs a specific function (sign up for a free download, sign up for a newsletter, subscribe to an RSS feed, purchase a produce, inquire about a service, etc.).

Instead of hemorrhaging user intent or overwhelming users with too many choices, the more refined and focused your value proposition is, the more likely it is that users will engage it. The key behind landing pages are (1) make it clear to the visitor what the VALUE IS TO THEM for engaging the offer, not just to your business and (2) if you have to go back and read anything twice or if a 4th grader cannot understand the offer, then it’s probably too complex.

SEO delivers traffic, but the strength of your offer is what determines if people shop at your website and proceed to checkout or if they move on and use your site like a doormat for the next search result, which is more honed to their mental map of what they consider a superb offer.

The tasks and responsibilities of an SEO company is simple (1) fill the gap with relevant content (2) salvage the existing elements that are conducive to optimization (3) build off page reputation from link building and promotion and most of all (4) fine tune the on page elements that aid conversion until a suitable conversion rate exists.

For those offering SEO services that offer anything less is just theory. The bottom line is, SEO is about results, not just temporal rankings. So, as long as you stick to fundamental guidelines that are not dependent on fickle appearances or tricks but rather real content and real substance, changes in algorithms are the least of your concern, it’s only a matter of producing enough content, links or popularity to cross the tipping point.

I love blogging, but if you’re anything like me, then you find it hard to really grow your blog quickly. One of the main challenges is to be able to add new content to your blog on a consistent basis.

Lately, however, I found a very efficient technique that can be used for this purpose.
Basically it takes one piece of content and turns it into three. You distribute it through the three major avenues of content consumption; textual, audio, and video.
How It Works

Step 1: Twenty Minute Live Ustream Show
I’ve found that my readers love jumping on a live video with me over at Ustream. It’s so much more interactive and for me it’s great because it’s easier then writing. I just come up with a topic related to what I blog about and then talk about it for twenty minutes.

Then during the show they can ask whatever questions they want in the chat box. Which I make sure to answer as I’m going about talking about our topic. The whole time though I’ve got my other computer (or a handheld, a digital recorder) recording my audio during the live stream.

Step 2: Turn Your Audio Into A Podcast
Once you’ve captured that audio from your live stream it’s pretty easy to submit it to any or all of the podcast directories. Then once you have an RSS stream for your audio you can submit to iTunes.

Now if you keep this system consistent people will start to follow along. For example I make sure to do my live stream every Tuesday. Once people know they can count on you to be there they’ll start taking the time out of their day to schedule in your shows.

At this point you’ve now got a weekly live stream and a weekly podcast. Now you just get that audio transcribed and you’ve got an extra blog post.

Step 3: Transcribe Audio Into Article
I have full time writers on staff, but before that I used to use Scriptlance.com or CastingWords.com to get my audio transcribed. It doesn’t cost much if the audio isn’t too long, and there are lots of ways to use that article once you have it in print.

You can turn those transcribed articles into articles that you submit to article directories, blog posts on your blog, Squidoo lenses, or an email newsletter.

Now you’ve got three content streams out there for people to start picking you up. You’ve really not done much more work either but now you can take advantage of multiple content distribution platforms. Not only do you increase your exposure but now your brand is getting bigger too.

When you brand gets bigger more people tend to start subscribing to hear what you have to say, because branding is credibility.

I don’t have enough time to get into everything you can do with all this new content, but if you get creative there is much more. For example downloading your Ustream videos and then uploading them to video sharing sites. Or now that you have multiple streams of content you can pull in more advertisers for each new content stream… And everyone lies “mo money!”

Article marketing has beginner, intermediate and advanced stages to it, so no matter what skill level you’re at, you can still submit articles to drive traffic to your website.

You may have started out simply writing articles on the topic of your website–that is a great start, and you can see excellent results by consistently writing and submitting on-topic articles.

But after you get used to the basics of submitting articles, you may want to challenge yourself and see if you can improve your results. One of the ways you can advance to the next level is to integrate keywords into your article submission campaign.

Google and other search engines look for words of special importance on a web page to help them determine what a website is about.

These words are called “keywords” or “keyword phrases”, and if a website owner knows the types of words/phrases that their target customers are typing into search boxes, then he can be sure to use those keywords in his articles to capitalize on the demand for those search terms in Google.

How do you use keywords in your article submissions?

Great question–it’s actually not that complicated.

1) First, figure out the keywords for your website.

Use a keyword suggestion tool such as WordTracker to create a detailed list of keywords and long-tailed keyword phrases.

A long-tailed keyword phrase is a phrase that is anywhere from 3-5 words long that a search engine customer would use to reach a site such as yours. Usually a basic keyword term for your website is more general and is 2 words long, but there is also merit to targeting longer phrases that potential customers do searches for.

For example, your main keyword phrase may be “chocolate recipe”.

Your long tail phrase may be “chocolate birthday cake recipe”.

When you’re doing your keyword research you’ll make a list of the general 2 word phrases as well as several of the more specific 3-5 word phrases.

2) Write an article around each keyword term.

Now, each keyword term has many possibilities for articles–there isn’t just one article that could be generated off of your keyword term. Try taking each keyword term and writing several articles addressing different aspects of that keyword.

If you have a long list of keyword and long-tailed keywords, that list could keep you busy for a while!

Just go through the list, writing a different article around the keyword phrase. Pretty soon you will have a library of articles that are covering virtually every topic related to your niche all pointing readers back to your website.

All of this instruction about keywords comes with a word of caution–there is a good way and a bad way to use keywords in article marketing.

The good way would be to use the keyword phrase to guide your article topic, and use the phrase or variations of the phrase naturally in your article so that the article makes sense to your readers.

The bad way would be to haphazardly spray your article with your keyword term without thinking about how the article will sound to readers or if the article makes sense.

You may have seen articles that were obviously written with the intention of using a particular keyword where you felt like the author was writing for search engines rather than for human readers–that is not way things should be!

You can write articles that please human readers and search engines–what these two groups are looking for is not at odds with each other.

Google wants to provide the search customers with an accurate list of results that is ranked in order with the results most likely to answer the searchers question at the top. Google cares about whether an article is reader friendly–it is not just looking for random words on a page.

When you write your articles, you can use your keywords to determine your specific topic and also use the keywords themselves where they sound natural. For best results keep your keyword density to around 2%.

Staying within these guidelines will give your article submissions the best chance of being recognized for that keyword term by search engines, and it will also produce an article that brings value to your reader.

I was talking to a friend this past weekend, and in my discussion with him about his efforts to market his website, I realized that he had a completely upside down idea of exactly what he was supposed to be going for when trying to drive traffic to his website.

He had thought that the idea was to make results turn up in Google when someone did a search for his name.

This is actually not the case, although a side effect of having a well marketed site can be that your name has search results that are actually about you. But that is not the main goal when you’re marketing your site.

Think about it this way–who would be typing your name into Google?

Someone who already knows who you are. Maybe they met you at a party or a networking event. If a person already knows your name and has your business card, they very likely know what your website address is and can find your site.You don’t really need to work very hard to lead someone to your site if they already know who you are.

It’s nice when someone types your name into Google if information about you pops up, but you will not see a huge increase in traffic from accomplishing that goal. The number of people who know your name and know that your business is something that they’d be interested in is a very small number compared to your entire target market.

So, what should you be going for when trying to rank higher in Google?

Your goal is to attract your target market to your website.

The main way your target market will find you is through search engine searches (Google, Yahoo, etc).

When a person from your target market is doing a search in Google, what will they type into the search box?

They don’t know your name, and they don’t even know about you or your business, but they do know what their needs are. They will type search terms into Google that will help them find someone who can satisfy their needs.

If they are in need of a graphic designer, they will likely type in the search term ‘graphic designer’ or ‘graphic designer Seattle’ if they need a graphic designer in a specific location.

This is why it’s important to do keyword research.

As we’ve discussed before, from Google’s perspective, keywords are words of special significance associated with your website. Google looks at your website and also at the incoming links to your site, and tries to figure out what the gist of your site is.

The reason why Google wants to evaluate the content of your site is so that it can give helpful search results to their customers. When a search customer types search terms into Google, Google would like to give them a list of the web pages that are most likely to satisfy the searcher’s question, and they want those web pages to be ranked in order with the sites that will be the most helpful at the top and the ones that are least likely to be helpful at the end.

Google’s goal is to give the most helpful results possible to their customers.

As a website owner, you want to know what words your target market is typing into Google in order to reach sites like yours.

I have some resources on how to do keyword research, which I’ll share with you at the end of this post, but let’s assume that you’ve already done the research and you’ve chosen 3 or so keywords to target in your article marketing campaign.

1) First off, type each keyword or keyword phrase into Google and see where your site comes up.

You may be at #9, #19, #99 or not ranked at all. In a speadsheet or in a notebook, right down today’s date and also where you ranked in Google. If you’re interested in getting a better ranking in Yahoo for your keyword terms, then do this same search in Yahoo.

If you are not ranked at all for any of your keywords, that’s alright. You’re about to do something about that!

Actually I think it’s kind of exciting to be embarking on a new keyword frontier–there is nowhere to go but up!

In order to get a good idea of how you’re progressing and keep your motivation up for the continuous work involved in having a highly ranked site, it’s a great idea to track your progress.

2) These keywords are associated with your website–they are on the same topic as your website. When you do article marketing, you will write articles on the topic of your website, and you will ideally use your keywords in your article body, your title, and your resource box as appropriate.

Of course you need to keep everything in balance and not go overboard with the keywords–your keywords should always be used in a natural sounding way and make perfect sense in the context of your article.

For best results, you should not exceed 3% keyword density for your article. Content that has over 3% keyword density tends to appear spammy and overstuffed with keywords and that can turn off publishers and search engines. (If you are a member of SubmitYOURArticle.com, we have a keyword density tool that will alert you when you’ve exceeded 3%.)

3) The key to marketing your site so that it ranks highly for your keyword terms is submitting articles on the topic of your website consistently. This is not a do it once and forget it type of thing–in order to have a higher search engine ranking and drive traffic to your site over the long term, you need to consistently work at marketing your site for the lifetime of your site.

It’s very much like working out and getting into shape.

If you work out for a few days or weeks and then stop, you will likely not see that much of a change, and you will very quickly go back to the physical state you were in before you started working out.

If you work out for several months and then stop, you will have improved your fitness level, but in stopping your workouts you will eventually revert back to what you were like before.

So, how do you achieve a physically fit body for a lifetime?

You need to get into the habit of working out consistently for the rest of your life. You come up with a workout plan that is doable and that also yields the results that you want to see in your body. You get into a groove, and pretty soon working out is just a part of your regular life–you know that if you stop taking care of your health that no matter how fit you are, your muscles will deteriorate and what was once lean and mean will be replaced with jiggly stuff.

We all know how this works with our own bodies, but a similar principal is at work in SEO and marketing your website.

If you will write articles consistently on the topic of your website and target your keywords in your title, article body and resource box (in a natural sounding way of course) then you will see results over time and you will jump up the search engine rankings for your keyword terms.

I was showing you the other day how with article marketing I was able to jump from a ranking of 87 in Yahoo up to #1 in a year’s time–That’s what I’m talking about when I mention consistency.

The effort I expended over the past year was not overwhelming and the work was entirely doable. I wasn’t submitting hundreds of articles or anything–I was just submitting a few a month, each and every month. Some months I submitted only 2, and other months I submitted 7 or 8.

Why did it work?

Because I knew what my keywords were, I wrote articles on the topic of my website, and I submitted articles consistently each month.

As you start submitting articles, this is what you’re going for–getting a higher ranking in search engines for your keywords.

And here’s something a little different and an extra bonus perk of doing article submissions–yes, you can establish yourself as an expert in your niche so that when someone does a search for your name, they are greeted with a listing of your articles.

If your name is associated with your website, then your website will also show up in the listings when someone does a search for your name. You will accomplish this as a by-product of your article submission campaign. You should include your name in your resource box, and then your articles will start to show up in the search results when someone searches for your name.

Websites and PPC Campaigns need effective keywords in order to be successful. How do you find the right keywords for your site or campaign?

1. Step 1

   We often hear about keyword research, used for articles, websites, or even PPC campaigns. How to find the right ones and how to do a basic search sometimes can be mind boggling. I know when I first started out, someone suggested I gather keywords for my niche market.
   It became a difficult task. I had no idea where to start. Well start here.
   First, you need have an idea of what your site or article is about. Let's use "mattress". I wrote an ebook about how to purchase a luxury mattress for less than retail. My first attempt was to use the word mattress in my site and my pay-per-click campaign. Using a free keyword tool is ideal for finding how many people search for this term and what to do with it once you have it.
   Try http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
   or try http://www.google.com/adwords/
   Type in your initial topic word.
   I used "mattress".

2. Step 2

   This will yield over 100 of the top keywords with the term "mattress" in it. These words were searched over the last month. At the time of writing, its been searched over 10,000 times. Pretty good.
   Once you have a list of 100 top keywords, you can start to build your list. By expanding your list, you can see how many others you can come up with. Google now recommends PPC campaigns through Adwords have a keyword list of 20 for best results. I like to start a little higher and optimize my campaign.
   This also goes for my keyword research for articles. I can modify my article several different ways with a set of 4-5 keywords.
   Now what do you do with the 100 top keywords. That's easy.
   Go to http://www.google.com and by typing in your first 10 keywords you can see exactly who is searching for your words.
   At this time, "mattress" had over 19,900,000 website associated with it. This is a huge number to work with, ie. SEO. If you want Google or any of the other search engines to find you, keep moving down your keyword list. For article writing, I like to use the top keywords, "mattress", "mattresses", or "mattress discounters". If you're using it for PPC, picking less searched items may help you be more successful. I moved down the list, coming across "how to purchase a mattress" yielded 3,190,000 websites. Keep going down your list, once you find a manageable number of websites. "Best Mattress" only yielded 774,000 websites and the number one search was only a PR of 4.

3. Step 3

   This is an easy way to use your keywords in your articles. Keeping your articles between 500-1500 words you can easily write a few sentences about your selected keywords. The idea in article writing is not to overload your keywords. For instance, if I say we are talking about mattresses and I use the word mattress 50 times in an article with only 500 words, that's an average of one keyword every 10 words. Your article will be boring and your readers will want to run from you.
   
   Also, don't forget you can write several articles using different keywords that interchange. Writing five articles using mattress, bed, futon, etc. can increase your article visibility and promote your site in general.
   
   Using keywords for PPC campaigns is a bit tricky for some. By choosing twenty to sixty long tail keywords you can easily optimize your campaign and eliminating the keywords not offering the ads to consumers. For PPC campaigns, the longer more specific the keywords, the better and more specific your ads will be served. If you don't know how to run an effective PPC campaign, you can enroll in a course or even hire a PPC manager.
   
   The best list of keywords are the ones that draw the largest viewers. Don't focus on over using them. Try to cut the keywords which don't suit your product or website.
   
   Using your keywords in the Title of your website, in the main headline and sprinkling them through out your page will help your SEO, but don't think your page rank will soar from onpage SEO. Focusing on off-page SEO is the key to higher page ranks.
   
   The next step to creating your keyword list is using a spreadsheet program to collect them. This will allow you to rotate keywords in your site pages and in your PPC campaign. If one keyword is eliminated, you can easily add a new one in its place.
   
   In finding niches, a keyword research tool can be very effective as well. Knowing what people are searching for could help you create a traffic drawing article or even a sell able ebook. Try using the keyword tool by searching for "how to", "learn to" or "learn". These searches will yield a list of what is being searched for in the way of learning materials. I have used this several times. Writing articles about "how to know your mattress needs to be replaced" or "how to buy a mattress". By getting creative with these free tools, you can determine where to spend time researching your new material.

If you are already in the blogging world or are thinking about jumping in, then read these tips so you can become better at doing it.

In this article I give some tips that have helped me and others who also blog so I know they work. I can't guarantee they will make your blog as popular as Perez Hilton's but they will definitely make a huge impact through improving your blogging skills

Experience
A blog can be a place of opinion or one where you share your expertise, either way you need to write from an area of experience. In other words when people read your blog are they going to take you seriously? They will if you can relate from real world experiences whatever it is you are blogging about. For example if you have a weight loss blog then write about your own experience, what worked and what didn't. Give people a reason to trust what you write.

Daily
I find it better if you write something everyday. It doesn't have to be pages worth of information every single day, it could be just a blurb. Sticking with our weight loss blog example, today you can write a healthy recipe that you liked and then tomorrow write something more in depth. By writing something everyday, regardless of how small or even trivial it might seem, it carries a lot of weight with blog readers because your blog is current.

Proof Read
One of the worse things you can do as a blogger is post a blog then has not been proof read. When this happens you run the chance of grammatical and spelling errors and that makes your blog look very amateurish. You do not need to write as well as a Pulitzer Prize winner but it should at least if nothing else be legible.

Visual Appearance
Your blog should have a nice streamlined look to it. Even the free blogging sites like Blogger and Wordpress give you the ability to customize your design. Your design should match your content and whereas it is ok to put up some Google ads (or other ad networks) to generate some revenue, you should limit just how many. Too many and they will make your blog look terrible.

Marketing
Without some type of marketing no one will ever see your blog. There are a variety of methods you can use. For instance, the first step you should use is to tell all of your friends and relatives. You know they will at least check it out. Second, take advantage of the social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and of course Twitter. Third, visit like kind blogs (blogs that are about a similar topic to your own) and post comments on there with a link back to your blog. Fourth, add blogs you like to your blog roll and ask other bloggers to do the same for you. Fifth, take part in online discussion on message boards that are related to your blog. Just make sure you put a link to your blog in your signature line. Combine all of these methods and you will increase visitors to your blog in no time.

Blogging can be fun and at the same tedious but you have to stick with it. Blogging popularity won't happen overnight but it will happen if you implement the strategies posted above and remain consistent in your approach.

“See I believe in money, power, and respect. First you get the money. Then you get the power. After you get the power, people will respect you.” (Little Kim - Money, Power and Respect)

I think this is true in gangster films and some aspects of real life but if you relate this to the world of social media, I think it works in reverse. First you get the respect, then you get the power and once you have the power then you will get the money.

Respect

Content is king. In order to have a successful blog you need to make sure your content is exceptional and that people are interested in your work. The key to any blog site is return visits. If people are returning frequently it means they have some level of respect for your work. The more frequently they return, a higher level of respect will be gained and they may even start evangelising your work for you. Gary Vay-ner-chuk is well respected in the social media world, just like Talib Kweli is respected in the hip-hop world. Both have core fans who value what they are doing in their field. Having respect is very important and is needed if you want to have influence. When you become influential you have the potential to become very powerful.

Power

If you have power and influence on the net then the world can be your oyster. You have the ability to do good (and bad), and in turn make an impact in whatever you want to do. The power has shifted from companies to individuals, like the famous philosopher Peter Parker said:

‘With great power comes great responsibility.’

There are a lot of people who have a lot of respect in their field and have used that to become very powerful and influential. Lily Allen holds a lot of power in numerous fields, whether it’s getting media coverage to selling albums. Arguably the world’s most famous blogger Perez Hilton is somebody else who has a lot of power. He has the power to start trends, break news, post gossip and has generated interaction from hundreds of people around the world. The important thing to remember here is that they gained respect first. So first you get the respect, then you get the power and once you have the power, the money will come in.

Money

Once you have the following and have become very influential in your field, as long as you play right on the money will come in. It will come in many different ways, shapes and forms and you will have the potential to make a good living out of this. In the world of blogging, Darren Rowse has managed to do this and in music there are countless musicians who have as well.

Keywords are ground zero. They are essential to your online success. You must get your keywords right or it’s game over before you even get started. Mainly because keywords are the most important element of your online marketing.

It can’t be emphasized enough, especially to beginning online webmasters or marketers, choosing the right profitable keywords will largely determine whether or not you succeed with your online endeavors. You simply must get this element right or your marketing will be in big trouble.

What Are Keywords?

Lets start at the very beginning, keywords are the exact words someone types into a search engine to find what they’re looking for on the web. Some keywords are valuable/profitable, while others are virtually worthless.

Profitable keywords are the ones that convert into a sale, a lead or potential client/customer for your company or product. These are the words someone is searching in order to buy a product or hire a service. Someone searching for “honeymoon vacation packages” is probably in the market to book a honeymoon vacation and could turn out to be very profitable for the right website or business.

Profitable keywords are the ones where the searcher is in the right “mind-set” or frame of mind to buy what they’re searching for on the web. Tailor your online marketing to target these profitable keywords and it can spell success.

So what’s the whole process for finding or choosing profitable keywords to use in your marketing? Lets look at some ways to proceed…

Number of Keyword Searches Made?

You need to find out how many searches are made for your chosen keywords each month. Simply use WordTracker or a site like SEOBook. These will give you a preliminary number of searches made each month for your keyword. Highly popular, well-searched keywords with hundreds of thousands of searches each month will be extremely hard to rank for because you will have stiff competition from major companies with limitless resources.

I like to pick less popular keywords that get only a couple of hundred of searches each day because my chances of getting on the first page greatly increases. But don’t get fixated on the number of searches, some keyword phrases that only get four or five searches daily, can still be very profitable.

For serious keyword research in a particular niche market I like to use Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite which is professionally designed software that makes all your keyword research so much easier. But there are plenty of free keyword tools you can use. One handy keyword tool is Google Adwords external suggestion tool which will help you find valuable keywords.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Commercial Intent of Keywords?

But how do you know if a keyword is profitable? Well, one convenient tool is from MSN which helps you with “Detecting Online Commercial Intention” of keywords. Just type in a keyword and it will give you a percentage or probability your keyword query has commercial benefit or intent.

http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx

Conversion Rate of Keywords?

Once you have your chosen keywords in place, next you want to have a landing page that converts those keywords or traffic from those keywords into buyers or leads for your online business. This is another crucial element of your online marketing - you must have a landing page or content/site that converts into a sale or you obviously won’t make any revenue.

Keep in mind, if you’re into affiliate marketing, you main goal is not to sell but to “pre-sell” your products or services. One effective way I have found to do this is to give potential customers/clients valuable information they can use in making their final purchasing choice. Comparison sites do well, as do review sites, top ten sites… potential customers use the Internet and keywords to not only find products but more so, to find information on those products. Your goal should be to provide this valuable information to make their task a little bit easier for them and they will reward you with a sale.

What are Long-Tail Keywords?

Long-Tail keywords are simply that: long three or four word phrases that searchers use to find what they’re looking for on the web. Because they are highly specific, long-tail keywords have proven to have better conversion rates than general keywords. This is also just common sense, someone searching for a “2005 ford mustang convertible” may just be in the right mind-set to buy such a vehicle; as compared to someone searching for a more general keyword phrase such as “sports cars.”

Study your website traffic logs religiously to find long-tail keywords that turn into a sale. Target these long-tail keywords in your marketing. Even buy PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising in the three major search engines - Google Adwords, Yahoo! Marketing and MicroSoft AdCenter - for these valuable/profitable keywords.

And build higher rankings in organic search for these long-tail keyword phrases. It’s really not that difficult for long phrases, especially if they’re related to your site; many times you can reach the top spot in a matter of days, especially in Google.

How To Rank High For Your Chosen Profitable Keywords?

Of course, the million dollar question is: HOW do you rank in the top spot for your chosen keywords? I believe the key to ranking high in the search engines (especially Google) is to be persistent in building your rankings for your keywords. Take a long-term view or approach, sometimes it may take months, even years, to rank in the top Five for your highly competitive keywords.

The best strategy is to “stick to it” and keep building relevant links to your keyword landing page. Create related blogs with valuable content linking back to your keywords. Write keyword related articles and distribute them all over the web. Create Google Alerts for your keywords and them place comments/links in the newly formed pages on the web that Google is indexing.

Be pro-active, download the SEOQuake toolbar and find your main keyword competitors. Check out their links and then go out and get the same links. Write better higher quality content than your main competitors because Google always rewards great content. Plus, use the free http://www.Addthis.com button and let your visitors bookmark your great content in all the social bookmark sites and build your keyword links for you.

Do keyworded Press Releases with your embedded links and spread them all over the web. Get these Press Releases into Google news and other important places on the web. http://www.PRWeb.com is really a great place for your press releases since you can embed your keywords in your links.

If you can try to get your most important keywords in your domain name. Many SEO experts argue the merits of this but from my own experience and marketing - it is much easier to rank high for your keywords if you have them in the domain name. Again, it is just common sense, if you have your main keyword in the domain, this keyword is obviously telling the search engines this is what your site is all about. I have even bought domains and created sites specifically around certain keywords just to rank high.

Always remember, you have to be persistent, I have been fighting some keyword battles for over four or five years! For really profitable keywords, it can be a constant struggle to remain on the first page, but the trick is not to give up, just keep fighting away at your competitors. Persistence usually pays off in the end and those profitable keywords will have your links in the top spot. Make ranking high for those profitable keywords your number one marketing strategy. Concentrate all your marketing efforts towards getting plenty of quality traffic for those keywords and you will succeed online.

If you’re obsessive about SEO you likely already have a domain name that contains one relevant keyword, an entire keyword phrase or even a targeted search term. This is a great practice if you have a website that is highly targeted to one topic or set of keywords, but there is a lot more you can do that will help to boost your search engine ranking position (SERP) and possibly outrank the sites that DO have your keyword in their domain name.

The keyword appearing in the URL is important, but more important than that is the keyword appearing in the title tag. Somewhere in between or just underneath is something called the H1 (which is not surprisingly followed in importance by H2). Naturally your keywords should also appear in the content here and there (not everywhere). If you write about your keywords on a daily basis you are probably already on top of your SEO situation, but if your blog is more relaxed topically and you like to drift and touch on anything you like, then you may benefit from doing a few SEO best practices for Wordpress.

1) Title Tags

The title tags are the most important thing. It may not be most important to the Search Engines, but it certainly is to the reader. Even if something is the #1 result in Google, a reader wont likely click on a title that has nothing to do with what they are searching for. That is why it is good to serve your post headline in the title tag instead of just the blog name.

You can do this by editing your header.php to include the appropriate Wordpress template tags within the HTML Title tag. This may also mean using an IF statement to determine what type of page is displaying and what tags to use.

2) The H1 Tag

There is a high degree of confusion circulating the web on the proper use of h1 tags with Wordpress. The basic purpose of h1 is to let the search engine know what a page is about. The last thing you want is more than one h1 on a page. This confuses the heck out of search bots and, as a result, drops your SEO score.

The typical belief is that serving your blog title in the H1 tag is proper. This makes sense because you have your keywords in your blog title, but what about the individual posts? Aren’t the post titles more relevant than the name of your blog?

If you have a post on your blog about “99 Ways to skin a cat” isn’t that particular page about skinning cats rather than your blog’s title, which may be “catskinners.org”? The solution here is that you want to have your post titles on the single post page inside the H1 tags. Since there shouldn’t be more than one H1 per page, this means you need your title or logo inside a div.

If you have more than one post on your homepage (which most people do) then you should place your post titles’ inside of H2 tags and your logo in an H1. This tells the SE’s that your homepage is about whatever your title is, and the post headlines are the next most important thing. Once a user clicks through to a single post the most important thing becomes the title of that post.

3)Inbound/Outbound links

A huge part of blogging is sharing the link love and creating conversations between one blog to the next. It is typical in the blogosphere to see someone quote a post from another blog, add their own 2 cents and then link the blog where the topic started. This is a fine thing to do and it will even help you gain a few links yourself as your own sharing attitude encourages others to share. You just have to be careful not to have too many links out and balance it with your links from your blog pointing to your own blog.

People often forget that a link to your blog from your blog still counts as a link to your blog (how was THAT for a sentence?). Since one of the best things you can have linking to your blog is some good relevant anchor text that contains your keywords, why not go ahead and link any of those words within your posts back to your homepage?

Here are some more things you can do to make the best use of your internal links:

• Linking from your posts to older posts (when relevant)
• Linking from your posts to your homepage (whenever possible)
• Keep your navigation consistent across the whole site
• Link every page to your homepage at least once (more is ok too)
• Use a sitemap template that includes all your single posts and pages as well as the date and category archives

4) Anchor Text and Keywords

You probably already know at this point that one of your main goals in offsite SEO is to get links with your keywords in the anchor text (the text that makes up the active link). This is one of the single most important factors to both your SE for your determined keywords and your PR. The more links you have, the better your PR. The more links you have containing your keywords, the better your SERPs for those keywords are. It is healthy to mix them up and use different combinations of your keywords to help monopolize your grip on a given topic.

We’re almost finished. There is one more important spot we need to place our keywords. If I were a keyword where would I be? In this blog post! You can have all the SEO you want on your Wordpress template but it isn’t going to matter much if you don’t talk about your keywords in your blog posts. You obviously don’t want to come off as a spammer so be wary not to simply randomly throw in long and short-tail keywords in every single sentence. However, there is nothing wrong with using your full keyword search term whenever the opportunity arises. For instance, if you have the option to use a pronoun or the actual keywords you should choose the keyword.

You can optimize your Wordpress for search engine rankings quite simply by sticking to some of the concepts we’ve covered here. It can be done over time or all in one shot. However, it would be handy to come back to this little guide each time you are setting up a new installation of Wordpress. Remember that not all Wordpress themes are search engine optimized so you may have to get your hands dirty and shine up the code of each template you use on your blog. A good start is making sure the markup is semantic and Google recommended.

I never believe in buying traffic. How do you think visitors come to know me? Did they pay to know me? Most probably they subscribed because of a free download in the first place. You may not remember how but YOU are the traffic. You are targeted because I hit your hot button correctly.

There are enough free resources out there on the Net to keep one busy with getting traffic, but here are the only 7 most effective methods: search engine optimization (SEO), link exchange, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, article submissions, blogging, viral marketing and massive giveaway events.

Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing your pages for the search engines so that your pages are optimized for the search engines to be searched with the most optimized keywords. You get the idea? SEO English is a bit like tongue twister. If you know the exact keywords your business or industry is famous for, you increase the density of those keywords in your page.

Actually, I don’t understand why some folks make SEO sound so complicated. On the other hand, other folks say SE spiders are so smart at discerning quality of content such that SEO is really much ado about nothing. Moreover, SEO English is just so unnatural sometimes and abuse may constitute as keyword spamming, unless you know the secret to writing it ‘fluently’. SEO is absolutely crucial in niche markets where competition in SE listings is not hot.

Exchanging links with like-minded webmasters create a network for increased traffic distribution. Interested visitors are free to visit your site when they see your link on other people’s sites. SEO targeted towards Google is only half the battle. Its PageRank tool measures your page’s link popularity and ranks it higher according to scale. The more links pointing into your site as opposed to pointing out, the merrier.

* PageRank looks at pages, not sites.

Pay-per-click advertising is all about how much you are willing to pay the PPC program for a high listing so that visitors take notice of your link and visit it. You incur the bid price you set for yourself for every visit (click). Considering ROI, this is particularly useful when you are selling a product. Security features are in place so there’s no point being trigger-happy if you don’t like some sites.

Article submissions can give you an amazing amount of traffic, but only if you use the method right. You should make sure the content you’re submitting is easily understandable, and only covers one or two points, leading the people back to your site with your resource box. Most importantly, you need to make sure that your article is interesting, compelling, and of course, informative. Once you’ve submitted these articles to several article directories, you’ll probably see a marked rise in link backs, traffic and more.

Blogging is a free way to make sure that you’re reaching traffic in all regions of your niche. It has come up in stature from its days of being simply a place to ’share’ with your friends and is now a valid, and often well used promotional structure for a site-or even a basis for the site itself. Using WordPress especially can mean that you’ve got an easy-to-promote, amazingly simple to update site structure that allows you to build and maintain effortlessly. As a traffic generation tool, it is also a good way to create, maintain and direct traffic to your site. The more you blog using popular search terms related to your niche, the more intensive you’re practicing SEO as the archiving system of the WordPress blog script is absolutely well suited for Google indexing. Try to post on alternate days if not everyday.

Viral Marketing is everything and anything to do with propagating your name and URL through giving away free e-books, reports, article and e-zine submission, classified ads etc. But this is only by technological means. With people, we are talking about word-of-mouth.

Massive giveaway events come once in a while but they are really the biggest source of opt-in subscribers for anyone who participate in them. The organizer announces a proposal to carry out such an event, inviting contributors to submit a product of their own or one with resell rights to be given away for free. When the event begins, anyone and everyone can download all these exclusive products as long as they opt in. It’s very easy to get 1,000 subscribers in a week.

Of course, the organizer gets the most numbers, but he also puts in the most work to make sure the web server doesn’t collapse due to traffic overload, the gifts don’t go missing and the event proceeds on schedule.

Awareness and application of the 7 above traffic generation methods slowly but surely builds a good list of followers who are willing to patronize us.

While many of you will be surprised after reading this, but there are many people who are making money by blog commenting. If you want to learn how to make money by blog commenting, then please read forward. Well the basic logic behind it is: Webmasters and Bloggers pay people for commenting on blogs to get them traffic and/or backlinks. You must be knowing about the dofollow commenting craze. Well getting a few of those dofollow comments to people would actually pay you off.

A better way of making money by blog commenting would be to break it up into smaller tasks and doing the work systematically. Basically we need to do three things:
1) Make up a big list of dofollow blogs (at least 100)
2) Find your market
3) Create smooth functionality and Make Money

Make up a big list of dofollow blogs

First of all you need to gather as many dofollow blogs as possible. You can check the list of dofollow blogs and get almost all of the dofollow blogs out there. To avoid problems in the future you can check out the blogs to see if there are any blogs which are not supporting do-follow anymore so that you don't waste time at a later time and modify it the way you want. Now save them and make sure they are accessible to you whenever you want.

Find you Market

I will usually recommend Digitalpoint or Sitepoint for this purpose, although any webmaster forum would work well. It is advisable to keep your eyes open for customers on at least 10-15 forums because diversifying will increase your target customers. Next, you can also send general emails to webmasters whom you think might be interested in your service, this will usually get you some positive replies for people interested in your services.

Create smooth functionality and Make Money

One thing that will be quite clear is that you will not make a lot of money with individual comments and hence you'll need to make your work very smooth in order to make some real money by commenting. That is, you'll sell comments in multiples of 5 and 10 like 10, 15, 20. You might fix your rates on something like this:

-$6 per 5 dofollow comments.
-Get 5 free do-follow comments if order is more than 50 comments.
-Get 15 free comment if order is more than 100 comments.

That deal is fair enough and you can easily attract quite a lot of webmasters. Usually one comment should not take longer than 3 minutes to write, so let's have a break-down of potential earnings considering we get an order of about 50 comments a day:

-Money earned -> $6x10 = $60.
-Time taken -> 3x50 = 2 hours 30 minutes.
-Pay rate -> $24 per hour.

Not bad eh? Also note that comments can be written in less than 2 minutes and your orders will only increase with time hence making you even more money. The potential is in front of you, and it can be adapted to make some easy money which does not involve too much time. But, you will never make any money is your primary commenting service contains even a small part of spam, be human and your service will become more commendable and you will get more orders! More articles on this topic will be posted in the future, so stick around.

Question and answer sites are quite popular among people who are searching for specific information or have some knowledge to share. In these websites, users post their questions on any topic anyone could possibly think of and other users can post their answers. All questions and answers are then stored within the site. This way, those who do not wish to participate can still use the site by searching for topics that are of interest to them and viewing answers to other users' questions.

Today, the most popularly used question and answer site is Yahoo Answers. Among the most appealing features of the site is how users can select the best answer to any question. What's considered as the best answer then appears more prominently in the question's web page allowing other users to quickly view the most relevant information.

These question and answer sites can be very useful for people engaged in affiliate marketing. In sites like Yahoo Answers, affiliate marketers can simply search for questions that are related to their niche. This can be done either through the site's search function or going through the available categories. Whenever they find relevant questions, affiliate marketers can use their expertise on their niche to provide answers. Within the answers, affiliate marketing links should be included so users who are interested in reading more information will be directed to the affiliate marketer's site.

If you want this to work for making money online with affiliate marketing, try your best to provide detailed answers to questions that are related to what you have to offer. Never spam the question and answer site with your affiliate marketing information because that could be grounds for getting banned. For this reason, you should always provide useful information when answering questions. Be sure that you are subtle when including your affiliate marketing links and never allow yourself to sound like you're giving a sales pitch.

Question and answer sites are among the most useful free platforms marketers can use to increase their affiliate marketing commissions. By spending just a little time each day to provide informative answers to questions, affiliate marketers may have much to gain.

Google is the gold standard of search engines and as such you need to position yourself so that your website appears as close to the top as possible. Here are some ideas you can implement today that will help.

Most people think they have to spend more money on hosting when all they need is some tuning.