Guide to make money online!

One of the most often asked questions I get concerns whether an author should write articles for search engines or for actual human readers.

I recently received this question from a reader:

“What I really want to figure out is what type of content will bring the readers to my website and then convert them into buyers and also, do I really need to keep using different variations of saying the same thing over and over to please the search engine spiders?”

Good question–The answer is that ideally you would write content that is helpful to your target market, but that is also optimized to catch the attention of search engines.

Easier said than done, eh?

It can seem like a perpetual tightrope to walk–what do the search engines want to see -vs- what will appeal to my target market–, but I encourage you to relax and not over think things.

Article marketing is a work in progress, something we do continually over the lifetime of our websites and, as with any skill, we can improve our writing and naturally increase in our skill without the pressure to be the absolute best writer/article marketer on Day 1.

This is a process, and instead of getting bogged down in trying to do things perfectly (not really sure if there is a “perfect” way to do things anyway :-)), it’s helpful to focus on starting where you are and then improving over time.

I’d like to go over a few approaches you can take when you’re trying to meld the needs of your human readers with the desire to appeal to search engines.

Write an attention grabbing title.

Now, what is attention grabbing for a reader is not necessarily the most attention grabbing for a search engine, right?

Readers respond to imagery and emotion, and a search engine is looking for semantically related words to indicate what a particular webpage (or article) is about.

There are a few approaches you can take when trying to craft a great title:

*Be certain that your title reflects specifically what your article is about.

This means that you won’t just make your title be your keywords, but you’ll make your title be more engaging and more specific.

For example, if I were submitting an article, I would not simply make my title be “Article Marketing”. That may tell a search engine what my article is about (in a very general sense), but it isn’t very helpful or captivating for human readers.

Also, if your keywords include a geographic location, such as “New Jersey Personal Trainer”, you wouldn’t include anything about New Jersey in your title unless your article was specifically about personal trainers in New Jersey.

Does that make sense? Your article title must reflect what your article is about, and any promise you make in your title must be delivered upon in your article body.

A compromise…

Option #1:

Now, this won’t work for everyone, but depending on what your keywords are, you may have the option of having the best of both worlds by including your keywords in your article title and also having wording that appeals to people.

Let’s say my keywords are Article Marketing and my specific article is about how to write your first article–I can simply make a title like this:

Article Marketing: 7 Fast and Easy Steps to Writing Your First Article…Even If You’re Not A Writer!

You’ll notice that I included my keywords at the front of the title, and then used a colon (:) to lead into a more exciting headline.

Option #2:

Like I said–the above technique won’t work for everyone, as sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to include your keywords at the start of your article title. So, here’s another approach:

Write your article on the topic of your website (as usual).

Then try to create an article title (if and where possible) to match what people are searching for, using the Wordtracker tool to help.

For example, I might write an article about how using an outline can help you write an article faster.

Use long tail key phrases as article topics.

Long tail key phrases are the longer search terms that a search would type into Google to find information on a topic in your niche. Your main keyword phrases will usually be between 1-3 words long, but your long tail key phrases can be 4, 5, or 6 words long. Your main keywords target general topics, while the long tail keywords are very specific. Because the topic is so specific, it is easy to write an article about a long tail key phrase. Since the topic is so specific, it’s also easier to rank highly for that search term.

Manage your HTML resource box carefully.

With an HTML resource box, you are using a keyword or keyword phrase as anchor text for a link–this means that the keyword is hyperlinked and when a reader clicks the words that are linked, then they are taken to your site. Google and other search engines regard hyperlinked text as being more important, so using your keyword as the anchor text for a hyperlink is little SEO thing that you can do with your keywords to help Google associate those words with your article/website.

An important note–if you’re using keyword linking from the HTML resource box, do not focus on the same keyword phrase each time, but vary them a lot within your niche.

Why?

If you use one keyword over and over again in your HTML resource box, it can appear as if you’re trying to manipulate Google’s evaluations and Google doesn’t like that. By varying the keywords you use when you’re employing an HTML resource box, you can help Google get a good idea what your site is about by linking in semantically related key phrases in a non-manipulative way.

What does semantically related mean?

If your keyword phrase is ’sail boats’, semantically related phrases would be: ’sailing boats’, ‘how to sail a boat’, ’sail boat gear’, ‘learn about sail boats’–you get the idea.

This means writing naturally, and first and foremost keeping your human readers in mind. Your article should sound natural and not contrived (not say the same thing over and over), and

You can write for humans and search engines, but I think people run into trouble when they try to write only for search engines and forget about their human audience.

Remember, your articles are pieces of communication between you and your target readers–your goal is to create an article that effectively conveys useful information. If you follow the tips in this post, search engines will also pick up on the topic of your articles and they will be able to appropriately classify your article in their results listings.

If this sounds too overwhelming, start by focusing on your readers. Write for them and forget about Google for a bit. When you get more used to writing article, it will be easier for you to integrate some of these techniques.

After a while, building links on an ongoing basis is very tedious work and some times the feeling of incentive is lost when working on your own websites. My main purpose for writing this article is to show options that are available for improving your websites authority while obtaining high quality links that really make a positive impact for your website. Website marketing needs to be fun, and you need to think of new ideas to lower the amount of time spent to earn a dollar. Working smarter than harder should be on everyones mind.

First off, I recommend that people consider becoming an author for About.com. Did you guys know that many authors on About can make anywhere from $650 per month and up in to the thousands, simply by being an expert in your industry and providing valuable information that increases About’s website traffic and page views?

The big benefit to working on About’s website as an author is that you are also building up your main websites authority, because they are more than happy to link to your website from pages that you create. About is one of the leading web power houses when it comes to information pertaining to thousands of topics. About is more of a basic version of Wikipedia that is compiled by thousands of authors. Ultimately, to become an authority on their website you need to have some industry recognition and great writing abilities, but if you need an extra few links to monopolize your niche online - this would be a great place to start!

Next, we need to talk about Squidoo. Squidoo is a beautiful place to really make some money, and it can be relatively easy if you are a talented writer that creates compelling information about your specialty online. The biggest part to succeeding on Squidoo is creating compelling information, interacting in the community with other Squi Doers and more. You can promote your product within Squidoo, you can make money from Adsense and Amazon as well as a few other affiliates and best of all; Build your authority!

Another great option is to create a compelling Ebook to offer from your website, and if it is extremely high in quality and well researched - you will be able to make some money from selling your Ebook and also generate some link bait because of the valuable information that others will likely link to. In order to increase link bait or authority, consider giving away the Ebook for 2-3 months for free, and tell people to act fast since the price will increase soon. Many websites such as John Chow have really seen link building success with giving away free Ebooks, that is something to think about.

Fourth, why not create external blogs and link to them from your main website so that they gain some trust from the search engines. Then constantly create posts that offer value to website users, and then either promote your product or implement affiliates like Commission Junction, Adsense or pull from one of the many advertisement firms that will allow you to serve ads on your website for a profit.

Fifth, you can always allow guests to post on your own blog and websites that are high in authority to improve your website traffic. As long as the article provided by guest posts is unique in nature and high in quality, you will drum up extra traffic for your website and encourage inbound links to the new content on your website. Some people get very conservative when it comes to allowing others to utilize their own website because people often times don’t want to help others, but if you open up this opportunity you will succeed. How do you think that WebProNews succeeded? They allowed quality publishers to really provide value on their own website.

When building links to your website, don’t always think about this moment. Think about opportunities to create a website that invites inbound links easily, because that is where the true search engine optimization experts succeed in the long term. The sites that perform the best in the search engines are often times not the ones that actively link build, they are the ones that add value to their website visitors and create an environment that obtains a plethora of inbound links.

I am sure there are a lot of additional ways to monetize while building up your websites popularity, and these are just a few. I am excited to hear from others about more ideas to build up website popularity while making a little “ching ching” at the same time.

The single biggest, non-renewable asset you have is your time. There are only three things you can do with it: waste it, sell it, or invest it. As an entrepreneur or a service professional, what you do with your time acutely impacts how much money you can make.

If this year you want to make clients come to you, earn a six-figure or beyond income, become the expert in your chosen field, positively impact lives of many people, gain fame and earn respect of your peers — you have to invest your time into creating marketing assets!

Just like the wealthy invest in assets that continuously appreciate and generate more money — like real estate, the savvy entrepreneurs invest in creating marketing assets that grow your business with no additional expense. What are those assets? Here is just a short list:

• Content
• Info products
• Referral partners
• Ezine subscribers list
• Customers list
• Incoming links to your website
• Testimonials
• Education

So if you want to become the ‘top dog’ in your industry, you’ve got to start doing what the ‘big dogs’ do.

To begin investing your time into creating high leverage marketing assets, use this short checklist:

DON’T design expensive logos. While establishing your uniqueness is important, people will not do business with you because you spent money on a cute graphic!

DO survey your ideal clients. Learning and understanding their needs allow you to offer them solutions they want — and that makes you incredibly attractive to them.

DON’T place ads that feature little more but your logo, phone number and address. Stop kidding yourself thinking you are the next IBM or Coca-Cola and that merely mentioning your name will get people pounding on your door!

DO create content that addresses the most pressing needs your prospects and clients are desperately trying to solve! Write articles, create special reports, publish an e-zine or e-book (or regular book), and record audio/video products. If you advertise — advertise those products not your services.

DO take time to learn and leverage free publicity. Research media contacts, take time to understand what type of information appeals to them, and become good at presenting your information in the format they like best.

DON’T attend every networking meeting you can find. Your time is much too valuable to try to attract business in one-on-one fashion. Contrary to the popular belief — networking isn’t cheap!

If you sum up the cost of your time, the price you pay to eat all that rubber chicken, and the energy to follow-up with people who will likely never do business with you — it’s a very expensive (and ineffective) way to find only a handful of qualified prospects!

DO develop informative presentations. Find large gatherings of your ideal prospects and become good at getting yourself invited as a speaker.

DON’T fiddle around adjusting the shades of colors on your website!

DO look for online communities that already attract your ideal clients and find a way to make them link to you. Ask them to post your articles. Make your site content rich so they will want to list it as a resource. Or sell an info product and invite them to become an affiliate.

DON’T beg for referrals!

DO create ways your current clients can easily ‘give you away’ (like an article or an audio CD)

DO build relationships with referral partners. Create ways in which they can introduce you to hundreds or even thousands of prospects at once!

DON’T try to figure everything out on your own — that’s a very expensive way to learn marketing and build your business.

DO invest in knowledge products and access to experts. An hour or two with a knowledgeable advisor can save you thousands of dollars in time and money wasted on wrong strategies and improperly implemented tactics.

Providing people with easily accessible information about solutions will position you as a valuable resource and an expert. These tools will not only attract all the new business you want, but they will allow you to charge the money you deserve and create the lifestyle you desire.

So stop wasting time eating all that rubber chicken and chasing people who will likely never do business with you nor refer a single client. Instead, start creating high-leverage marketing tools that over time will generate an avalanche of new business!

Many times website owners who are new to link building simply don’t know what to expect when it comes to the timeframe for registering backlinks.

Here’s a common question I get:

“I’ve just started marketing my brand new website, and I know I have backlinks coming into my site, yet when I do a check for incoming links, nothing shows up. Am I doing something wrong?”

Probably not–A backlink check will tell you how many incoming links are registered with a particular search engine, but it will not tell you how many backlinks you actually have.

Why is that? Well, it usually takes search engines months to re-evaluate incoming links, so if you do a backlink check today, there are likely links that are going into your site that haven’t yet been calculated in.

It would be nice if we could build links and then immediately have them show up in a backlink check, but that’s just not the way the internet works.

As you’re building links to your site, here are some ways to keep track of your progress and build links effectively over time:

How To Do A Backlink Check

It’s incredibly easy to do a backlink check for your site. In Google, just type this into the search box (replacing the ‘yourwebsite.com’ part with your URL):

• link:http://www.yourwebsite.com/

The results of that search will bring up a list of sites that are linking to your website address. In the upper right hand corner of Google you’ll be able to see a total count of your registered backlinks.

An even better tool is Yahoo Site Explorer https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com which provides a list of your registered backlinks and much more detailed information. Both of these backlink checking tools are free, so you can try each one out (or do both).

Why Are Backlinks Not Showing Up For My Site?

Let’s suppose you know that you’ve build links to your site, but nothing is showing up when you do a backlink check (frustrating, I know!).

There are some logical reasons why backlinks may not be showing up:

1) Perhaps your website is brand new and has not yet been indexed by Google.

When you launch a new site it does not automatically appear in Google–it usually takes several months for Google to realize that the site is there and to index and categorize it.

Until your site is indexed, it will not show up in any search engine searches and no backlinks will be registered. You can even do a search for your exact site name or URL and nothing will show up–that is how you know that your site has not been indexed yet.

If this is your situation, don’t fret! This waiting period is something that all website owners go through, and Google (and the other search engines) will eventually index your site.

It can take anywhere from 3-5 months for a new website to be indexed.

I remember the last time I was launching a new site it took about 5 months for the site to be indexed in Google. On that 5th month, all of the backlinks that I had been building over the preceding months finally showed up–whew!

2) Not enough time has elapsed since building the links.

Even if your site is already indexed, it usually takes search engines several months (3-4) to recalculate the backlinks. So, if you have been doing article submissions for the past 2 months and you know for a fact that you have quite a few incoming links, those links will not show up in a backlink check for another month or two.

This doesn’t mean the links aren’t there–they are! The search engine just hasn’t registered them yet.

As you can see, one necessary component of any link building campaign is PATIENCE. There will be a time delay from when you build the link to when you see the fruit of your labor in Google.

Keep in mind, this time delay does not impact your marketing campaign–whether the links have started to show up or not, you should continue to market your website and submit articles. Immediate results are not the goal–you should be going for a long lasting impact on your search engine ranking for your keywords, rather than a brief shot of traffic that fades away after a day or so.

When you’re link building, you need to market your site consistently–develop an article submission schedule for yourself and stick to it, submitting articles each and every month.

You will be rewarded in the long run with an increased search engine ranking for your major keywords, which can of course build traffic dramatically for the long-term.

Buying text links for your website is a highly controversial subject online. Like it or not, approve of the practice or disapprove, it does exist and there are many website owners who are doing it. I’m not going to debate the issue one way or the other; just shed some light on what some consider a “gray subject.”

So why would you want or need to buy a text link on another website? It all goes back to “link popularity.” Search engines look at how many other sites are linking to yours when deciding on your ranking. Granted, this is just one criterion, but nevertheless an important one to pay attention to.

If you don’t know how many other sites are linking to yours, go to any search engine and type this in: link:http://www.yourdomain.com … you should get a pretty good idea of your “popularity.” Keep in mind that Google never shows all sites linking to yours, so what you see in the results will not be an accurate presentation of those linking to you. Why they do this is not clear (it’s one of those “Google Secrets”), but a possible explanation is that it’s one of the methods they use to keep their ranking algorithms private.

When considering a link purchase, only buy from sites that are related to your theme and use the Google Toolbar to check their page rank. You can download it here:
http://toolbar.google.com/

A page rank of 4 or above is pretty good but a 7 or 8 is excellent. Never buy a link based on page rank alone. If the site doesn’t relate to your site’s content, don’t do it.

Here are some things to keep in mind before making any purchases:

There are two types of links: one-way and reciprocal. A reciprocal link is when two sites agree to link to each other, a one-way link is just one site linking to another without linking back. Purchasing a text link is an example of a one-way link. One-way links are counted higher by most search engines and therefore are more valuable then reciprocal.

When supplying your text link to other sites, make sure to include your keywords in your anchor text. The anchor text is the part of the link that is clickable. Use a variety of key phrases so as not to raise any red flags with the search engines.

You also want to be consistent with your url. Use the “www.” part in all incoming links, as links to “yourdomain.com” and “www.yourdomain.com” could be treated as two different websites by the search engines.

Another tip when buying links is to do it slowly. Don’t buy too many at one time. You want it to look natural to the search engines. Hundreds of sites deciding to link to yours in a week is not “natural” and may catch unwanted attention from the powers that be.

Stay away from link farms when choosing link partners. Just associating with “bad sites” can be enough to get you banned by the search engines. You’ll also want to make sure you’re getting links from different IP addresses. Search engines will give the links more weight if they don’t all come from the same IP.

So now that you have the basics, where do you buy the text links? I thought you’d never ask.

1) LinkHaul: http://www.LinkHaul.com

Purchase static links to PR 4, 5,6, 7 or 8 websites. Pricing starts at 3.00 per month.

2) Text Link Brokers: http://TextLinkBrokers.com

Offering a variety of link building programs to increase your link popularity.

3) LinkAdage: http://www.LinkAdage.com

Buy or sell text links within an auction format or buy direct thru a broker.

4) Text-Link-Ads: http://www.Text-Link-Ads.com

Offering $100.00 in free text link ads when you spend $125.00. So you only have to spend an initial investment of $25.00

5) BackLinks: http://www.BackLinks.com

A service that allows webmasters to trade, sell or buy text links.

When you buy a link, it’s usually billed on a monthly basis and you’ll always pay more for a site with a higher page rank, and also for having them put your link on their main page compared to a page deeper down within the site. Once you purchase a link let it run for a few months at a time, search engines will need it in order to find and spider them.

Right or wrong, purchasing links is one way to improve your link popularity quickly and move your site up the ranks in the search engines. Remember, there are many ways to increase your website traffic, and buying text links is just another means to an end.

If you want to sell “info products” online and make a significant income, you need to give away free information. Don’t misunderstand “give away”. All human interactions are built on exchanges. “To give away information” means to exchange it for something other than money. You exchange the information for a relationship that allows you to keep in touch with your prospects and customers. It’s a common relationship marketing strategy.

The way it works is this: a large income comes from repeat sales. Repeat sales come from relationships. On the web, relationships come from email lists and positive interactions with the people on the lists. Email lists and positive interactions come from giving away information.

You need to have a relationship to somebody to sell to him or her. You have to establish a relationship of trust. Once you have enticed somebody to your web site, you can establish at least a brief relationship on your “pitch page” by telling your story, being honest about some shortcomings of your product, and including many endorsements from satisfied customers.

But consider: you gone through all the trouble to entice people to your page, and you gone through a lot of effort to make them feel confident in you. Suppose they don’t buy the product immediately, which is typically the case. You have expended all that effort for nothing. Remember, you need half a dozen or a dozen interactions with most people before they are willing to buy. And even suppose they buy your product. If they just go away, you have lost all the good work you put into establishing a relationship in the first place. You don’t have a chance to interest them in related products.

It’s always easiest to sell to people you’ve sold to before and who liked what they bought from you. It’s easy to sell to people who know you and are comfortable with you, even if they haven’t purchased anything yet.

Although you can make some money from selling single items to people, it is clearly advantageous to build relationships so people will keep coming back to buy more.

Since you must be in touch with your customers and prospective customers repeatedly, you need an email list.

You want to get prospective customers’ email addresses, but what possible reason do they have for giving them to you? To get prospective customers on your email list, you have to give them something that they want. You can entice them to your squeeze page — the page on which you ask for their email — by offering them information that would help them solve a problem or fulfill a desire. They give you their first name and email, and you email them the information that you promised.

You must keep emailing them to maintain the relationship, but you can’t email them hard core sales pitches. A sales pitch is not a relationship. Indeed, spam emails are sales pitches outside of relationships.

So if you must contact them repeatedly, what do you send them? The only way you’re going to sell any products is if those products solve problems or fulfill desires. The only reason they got on your mailing list in the first place is that you offered them something to help them with the problem or desire. That’s the only thing you know that they’re interested in. So obviously you should send them more suggestions on how to solve the problems and fulfill their desires. To be a commercial success, you must balance giving them useful information against not giving them all the benefits that they will gain from your products.

So both to get an email list and to maintain positive interactions with the people on the list, you must give away information. Giving away information leads to relationships, relationships lead to repeat sales, and repeat sales lead to significant income online.

When it comes to starting any endeavor, whether it be learning a new hobby or starting an online business, we all have to start at ground zero. We all have to start at the very beginning from the very same place. Granted, we each bring different skills and backgrounds into the mix, but for the most part we are all on equal footing at the starting line.

If this is the case, then we really have to ponder why is it only a choice few go on to succeed, while most people don’t. Just what are the reasons why most online marketers fail? This is the core question that has to be answered if you want to fully understand Internet marketing and how it works.

What are these basic reasons?

What are the causes or stumbling blocks that hold many marketers and webmasters from reaching their full online potential? If we know these factors, we can learn how to avoid them and even overcome them in our own online marketing. These reasons can be a solid reference point or even a source of inspiration for any online marketer just starting out.

Speaking from the viewpoint of someone who has started from the very beginning with little to no knowledge of computers or even marketing for that matter, I can honestly relate to the beginning marketer. I even had to learn HTML from scratch in order to construct my own webpages. Probably my only advantage, I did have a background in art but designing webpages was completely different from anything I had done previously to starting in online marketing.

But from my own experiences I have drawn some general conclusions about Internet marketing and why some people succeed while most people fail. So here in my honest opinion, are some of the main reasons why many online marketers fail:

1. Overwhelmed With Information

Perhaps, one of the biggest obstacles I faced when I first started my website - I was bombarded with so much information on how to proceed I didn’t have a clue which direction to take or who to believe. Thousands of different info products telling you to do this, not to do that… so much marketing information to absorb that you end up scratching your head and looking like someone auditioning for a zombie movie.

Completely overwhelmed with so much information, many marketers or webmasters enter a state of paralysis where nothing gets done. You go from one course to another or from one method to another, without any real understanding of how to proceed or how to get a detailed blueprint to follow.

Information overflow can effectively crush all that novice enthusiasm and literally kill even the most eager of entrepreneurs. Anyone starting out must be aware of this obvious but insidious pitfall you have to avoid at all costs. One of the best remedies, simply try concentrating on just one or two marketing plans/marketers for all your information. Try to eliminate the clutter by just working on one marketing system. Just have a few key marketing resources you go to for information, not a hundred! And do your homework, only pick marketers who can back up their claims with observable results on the web. One obvious checkmark - just see if those marketers have top rankings for their sites for popular profitable keywords associated with their sites or products.

2. Lack Of Key Marketing Basics

There are some key marketing basics or fundamentals you must learn about marketing online. Internet marketing has some key elements you must get right or you will have a difficult task in succeeding on the web. Just simple factors you must get right or it’s game over before you even get started.

Most marketers fail to realize the web is “information driven” and you must supply quality information or content in order to truly succeed. You must provide a valuable service or function to your visitors. You must help solve their problem. You must give them a solid reason to use your site or product. Quality content is and always will be King on the web.

You must also understand much of the web is “keyword driven” and you must construct your webpages to take full advantage of these keywords. You must have at least a rudimentary understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how you can use it to get top rankings for your keyword phrases.

3. Lack Of Time And Resources

Another major reason why many marketers fail is because they simply can’t afford the time to learn and build their online business. Most people just can’t stop everything and work full time online because they have bills to pay and families to support. It may take months, probably years, before you can build up a successful online business that gives you a comfortable living. The average person just doesn’t have the time or the resources to spend months learning how all this works.

Keep in mind, getting a business or website going is probably the most inexpensive way to start your own business. Domains are cheap. Web hosting is cheap. Web design is cheap if you can do it yourself… compared to starting a business in the “real” world, creating an online business will only cost a faction of the normal expenses connected with starting a business. But the main problem is having the resources to pay your living expenses until your online business is profitable. Many beginning online marketers don’t have these resources and the main complaint from these marketers: “I Simply can’t afford the time to work at this online stuff.”

One solution is to work at your online marketing in your spare time and gradually build up your business until you can afford to do it full time. It will obviously take longer but you can still get to the same end goal.

4. Lack Of Necessary Skills

Actually, you don’t need many skills to succeed online. However, one of the major skills you must have or you must learn is communication. You must learn how to communicate. The web is all about communicating your points to your visitors or viewers so you must acquire good communication skills.

It really helps your marketing if you are a good writer because you can easily get your points across with written text or copy on your site. Writing skills can be learned but many beginning marketers don’t fully understand how important their writing skills will be to their success. You must be able to communicate on your site, in your newsletters, with your customers… might sound a bit obvious but you would be surprised at how many marketers lack this simple, yet necessary skill.

But don’t fret, because once upon a time, the written word was king online - but not any more. Videos are rapidly taking the place of the printed word so anyone with a camera can now be a success online. Of course, you still need good communication skills even using videos, but many marketers have found this is a much easier way to communicate information about their site or product.

5. Lack Of Persistence

For me, one the most significant reasons most online marketers/webmasters fail, is because of a lack of persistence. They simply give up too soon. They try something for a few weeks, even for a few months and then they conclude this is not working and they give up.

Building a solid online business or viable website takes time, a lot of time. Just because your business is online, doesn’t mean everything will fall into place overnight, it takes time to establish a customer base. It takes time to build your business relationships with others in your field.

Sometimes, it may take years before you see some solid returns. It was three years before I saw any significant revenue coming from my online ventures, and another year before I could summon enough courage to do this online marketing full time. If I had given up and not persisted at this web stuff, I would not be writing this article right now.

Building top rankings for your keywords in the search engines (especially Google) can take months, even years before you see any results. The real key is to be persistent and keep at it, day after day, until you get those top rankings. You simply must be persistent or you will fail.

In conclusion, having said all that, you must also realize there are plenty of exceptions to all of the above. There have been countless success stories on the web where someone has come up with a novel idea or product and become successful overnight. The web can offer immediate success for some but for most of us, it will take some time and hard effort on our part to build a successful online business. Just try to avoid many of the pitfalls or reasons listed above and you will have a better chance of placing yourself in the success column.

Experience really counts! I’ve been blogging for a while on many different blogs. Before turning into a partial-pro blogger, I did some research on ways to get traffic my blog, and I would like to share my points of view with you. What is the good, what is the bad and what is the ugly way of generating traffic.

Natural Backlinks
Every blogger dreams about this. As the number of natural backlinks increase, your authority will also increase. But the point here is, are those natural backlinks really worth it? The answer is yes. It is a kind of virtuous circle. The higher the number of backlinks you have, the higher your authority, and the higher your authority, the more natural backlinks you will get.

In my blogging career, I’ve learned only two ways to get good backlinks: hard work and patience. By hard work I mean the content you write. Blogs like SixRevisions and Hongkiat are among the most popular design blogs. If you visit them, you will realize the reason: the publish a lot of high quality content on a very frequent basis.

Comments
I think I don’t need to tell you why you should be commenting on other blogs. For instance, I still remember the articles TechCrunch articles where I managed to leave the first comment. At that time, my blog used to get around 40 visitors a day. On that particular day (when I left the comment) my visitor count increased to around 110 visitors.

Some tips while commenting on other blogs:

1. Try to be the first one to leave a comment. Definitely it requires you to be pro active or to have some luck.

2. Try to ask a question on your comment. This is a 100% proven way of getting traffic. But of course I am not telling you to ask “How you doing buddy?” but something which will make readers think and incite them to visit your blog.

3. Try to keep it simple. Never write lengthy comments. Nobody has time to read a comment by someone they don’t even know.

Forums
Forums are always a good way of bringing in traffic to your blog. You can either ask your blog related question there, or you can put your signature as your link there.

Things to remember:

1. Never ask useless questions just for the sake of getting some extra traffic. There are always smart people who can ban you from the forum forever.

2. When you put your blog link as your signature, try to use some eye catching anchor text. For example, “How I earn few extra bucks working part time” sounds way better than “Click here to earn money”.

3. To take maximum advantage of forums, be regular. Devote 5 minutes every day to post there or start a new thread. This means 5*30 =150 minutes a month. It can get you at least 300 visitors a month and is very good in the long run.

Twitter
Twitter has always been a very good friend of mine for getting Traffic. Mostly the traffic depends on the kind of content you write. Twitter traffic is crazy about social media. If you are writing something like “10 tips that can make you Twitter rich” then I am sure your followers would love to retweet it for you.

One thing I really like about Twitter is that your articles which never get attention on social bookmarking sites can also drive you a lot of traffic.

TIP: Twitter will only pay you off if you are regular. Try starting from 10 minutes a day and keep ReTweeting stuff. Most of your followers will reciprocate you and will RT your links too.

Search Engines
This requires no clarification. But before starting your blog, you have to decide whether you really want organic traffic or not. If you do, you will inevitably need to play around with SEO. It is also worth remembering that some blogs will naturally perform better than others as far as organic traffic is concerned. This is usually the case with tech related blogs, for instance.

Buying links
If you are really passionate about blogging and following “natural standards” without any black hat tricks, then buying links is BAD. Period!

Social Bookmarking
There are multiple ways of looking at things. Some think it is good and some think it is bad. Let us know the reason why is it so.

Why social bookmarking traffic is bad for my blog?
Social bookmarking traffic is very smart. If you are trying to make money with contextual ads like Adsense, for example, you will notice that such traffic will covert very poorly, if at all..

And why is social bookmarking traffic is good for my blog?
This is no brainer. More traffic means people like your content. Just imagine even if 1% of those visitors link to your article from their blog. Also imagine if 1% of of those people visiting your blog for the first time become your subscribers.

TIP: If you want to have success with social bookmarking sites, work on the quality of your titles. They can literally make or break your social media success.

Family and Friends
If you are deliberately asking your mom to visit your blog and check out some geeky stuff over there, then I think you need to go back to Blogging School and try harder.

On the other hand, it also depends on your niche. If you are writing about cats and dogs and your content is making your family and friends at least grin, then you’ve done a very good job.

If you are looking to make money online to either supplement your current income or as a full time income, learning how to sell on eBay UK is by far the best place to start. This way, one of the hardest parts of running a successful online business has already been done for you. This is marketing. Driving potential customers to your products and making sales. Once you list your products ready to sell on eBay, you have the potential to attract millions of buyers from all over the world, not just from the UK. Worldwide, people spend more time on eBay than any other website!

Where else can you start an online business in just a few hours that allows you to attract immediate traffic to your products? Learn how to sell on eBay and you will find that this is a fantastic opportunity to make as much or as little money as you want. Whoever you are, you can learn how to sell on eBay and make money.

Here are 7 ‘How To Sell On eBay’ tips to help you:

How To Sell On eBay 1:

Your eBay listings must have a relevant title. This is extremely important when learning how to sell on eBay because if your title is not relevant and does not contain the right keywords relating to your product, then eBay buyers searching will not be able to find it. Include all the related keywords you can think of and don’t use up your limited title space with words that are not required.

How To Sell On eBay 2:

Write a detailed description. Make sure that your eBay listing includes all the important details about your product. This might include the size, colour, brand, model number, whether new or used, any special features etc. Highlight the good things about the product but don’t forget to mention if there are any flaws or faults with the item too, but make these less obvious. Learning how to sell on eBay includes being honest in your eBay listing description.

How To Sell On eBay 3:

Spell-check your listing. eBay buyers are put off by listings littered with spelling errors and it looks very unprofessional. When you are learning how to sell on eBay, thoroughly check before you submit your eBay listing and make sure that important points are bold.

How To Sell On eBay 4:

Use good quality photographs. People like to see before they buy. Use a good digital camera and take 2 or 3 photographs from different angles to use as your gallery picture and within your eBay listing. This will attract more bidders and buyers and will help you get more experience as you learn how to sell on eBay.

How To Sell On eBay 5:

Always answer questions from potential bidders. You will receive questions and queries from potential buyers. And you must remember that this is exactly what they are - POTENTIAL BUYERS. Always try and answer any questions that come through eBay messages, within 24 hours, sooner if you can, even if you feel that it’s a silly question. If you frequently receive the same question then post it to your eBay listing so that everyone can see it.

How To Sell On eBay 6:

Be polite and friendly. eBay buyers like friendliness and professionalism from eBay sellers. So, it’s best to be polite and enthusiastic when corresponding, but not too casual. Don’t use ‘text speak’ in your emails as this is very unprofessional, but show a good sense of humour, honesty and politeness.

How To Sell On eBay 7:

Dispatch goods promptly. eBay buyers do not like to be kept waiting! So, make it your business to dispatch all orders promptly, preferably within a couple of days maximum. This is good service and will ensure that you get positive feedback whilst you are still learning how to sell on eBay!

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the thought of getting an article written, it helps to pull back and get some perspective on the reason why you’re spending time writing and submitting articles.

Here’s the reason why you started article marketing:

You wanted to drive traffic to your website. You wanted to advance your business.

You wanted to become a player in this online arena using a marketing and search engine optimizing tool that you actually understand.

You can write articles, and even if you don’t think you’re that great at it you know that you can definitely get better.

You are working as a solopreneur or in a small business, and you need to capitalize on the online tools available to you to increase your reach and extend your company’s exposure on a budget.

Think about it–

Every time you submit an article, it’s like you’re sending a sales agent out into the community.

After you hit the “Submit” button, your articles go out into the world and go to work for you.

For example, an article I distributed about a month ago has so far had around 100 views on our own article directory. Not bad, some achieve more, some achieve less. But that’s the whole point of having a consistent article marketing campaign, where you distribute a few each and every month.

Multiply that by 12, allowing for the fact that the view rate will be higher when the article is first distributed, and over the course of a year, I’d expect this to be at around 1000 views on just the one article directory.

Multiply that by say just 10 other popular article directories, and that’s 10,000 views in a year - just for a single article.That’s 10,000 times this one “sales agent” (your article) has made contact with a targeted audience.

Now, if you multiply that by 8 articles a month - or even 2, 3 or 4 - over the course of the year, and the numbers get silly! Let me take a shot at this:

If you submit 8 articles a month that would total 96 articles a year. If each article gets about 10,000 views (on just 10 sites), then that comes to 960,000 views for your articles in a year.

I ask you–How could your business benefit if you had a team of sales agents making 960,000 contacts with members of your target market in a year?

The sky’s the limit, right?

This is where the click-throughs and traffic growth to your site come from, when you implement a consistent article marketing campaign.

This also illustrates why those who submit just one or two articles, and then give up and hold their hands up to complain article marketing ‘doesn’t work’ - usually because they “haven’t seen any traffic growth” - are not only in no position to make such a judgement, but I would also suspect they would go on to achieve very little until they place at least some value in consistency, persistence, and faith in tried and tested online marketing techniques.

As you’re implementing your article marketing campaign, I encourage you to keep this big picture in mind.

Yes, we have to write one article at a time, but article marketing is not about one article. The marketing picture may be more expansive than you ever dreamed.

Here are your instructions:

Take one step at a time (can we do anything but that?).

Write one article at a time, but keep ‘em coming.

Don’t write a few articles and then get sidetracked–get some momentum going. Think in terms of a year’s worth of articles (960,000 article views!) and keep working toward that goal.

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.