A Viable Pay Per Click Alternative, A Real Traffic Exchange. Get FREE Unlimited Traffic

A Viable Pay Per Click Alternative
Have you looked at the Pay-Per-Click prices these days? Ouch! To get a top position in AdWords for most keywords related to internet marketing will cost you anywhere from $3 to $23 PER CLICK. Don't even get us started on keywords in the health industry, real estate, etc. The prices are ridiculous!

So we web site owners and marketers who could never make our money back with those kinds of prices look for cheaper alternatives. If you use AdWords, perhaps you disable search and enable the content network. That will save you some money, but have you seen some of the sites in the content network? Pure made for AdSense TRASH.

What if I told you that I've found an alternative, for sites in 17 categories, and that it's proving to be VERY effective? What if I told you that this alternative is FREE, and will help you drive a lot more traffic to your web sites?

Free Targeted Ad Exchange Alternative
Well this IS that alternative! It's called RealTrafficExchange, and it's a traffic exchange network. Now, before you run and hide at the thought of ugly, untargeted banners being swapped between trashy home-made sites -- think again!

This is a high quality network that works much like AdWords and AdSense (only it's a lot easier).


Here's how it works:

1. You sign up for a free account.
2. You add sites into the network, which are reviewed for quality and content.
3. You drop some javascript onto those sites, and when your visitors click on the targeted, AdSense-like ads shown on your pages, you earn credits.
4. You spend those credits by creating your own ads which get shown on targeted pages relating to your ads.

The ads that appear on your pages are targeted to your page content. If no ads are found matching your page content, then ads from the same category are displayed. In like manner, your ads are displayed on pages matching the content and/or category of your ad.

If it sounds easy, it is! In just a few minutes you can be ready to roll.

You Earn When Others Sign Up
If anyone clicks the "RealTrafficExchange" link below the ads and signs up, you'll earn 10% of the credits generated by every site that you refer! So if you refer 100 sites, and each site earns 1,000 credits, you earn 10% of that 100,000 credits. That's 10,000 free visitors to your sites!

You can customize the look and feel any way you want, too!

What Categories Are The Sites In?
They currently have 17 categories. Remember, though, that ads are targeted first according to page content, and only if no ads match the page content exactly are category-based ads displayed.

1. Arts
2. Business/Financial/Employment
3. Computers/Internet/Electronics
4. Health/Medicine/Beauty
5. Home/Family/Food/Garden
6. Recreation/Sports
7. Kids/Games
8. Shopping
9. Travel/Real Estate
10. Marketing/Online Business
11. Portals/Articles/Miscellaneous
12. Automotive
13. Animals/Pets
14. Society
15. Self Help/Inspirational
16. Music/Dance
17. Education/Language

What Kind of Sites Do They Accept?
To ensure a quality network, they don't accept every kind of site into the network. Our guidelines are simple:

1. Sites must be professional in quality and appearance.
2. Only family-friendly sites are accepted (no adult, gambling, warez, hate, etc.)
3. No 'under construction' sites -- they must be ready-to-go when submitted.

What Are You Waiting For?

Sign Up NOW For Your Free Account!

How to get free traffic to your blog? Another Effective Tool

Today I want to tell you about little under the radar website, withover 37,000 registered bloggers and over 7,400,000 boxviews last month

Join Now: Links2Blogs

I am using it myself on my blog for quite some time and it isconstantly bringing me traffic of real people reading my blog.

I suggest make account and try it. It's free.

You earn traffic credits from box displayed on your blog and onyour referral blogs. Referrals work 5 levels deep so make sure toinvite every blogger you know (do not spam or account will bedeleted)

If you do not have friends with blogs you still earn referralcredits.

Referral is automatic if somebody open account after click on boxlink so you build referral all the time by just displaying box andhaving people opening accounts.

Since this site grows organic way most of people came from thatreferral link in the box.

Check it out now:
Join Now: Links2Blogs

A piece of advice, Link2blogs.com denies all links to regularwebsites so make sure to post link to blog and add box code on theblog after you get it.

P.S. It takes a few hours before you will see box after you addcode due to verification process so be patient :).

P.P.S. If you already have similar kind of blog traffic exchangebox from other service double your traffic by adding box from Link2blogs too.

Join Now: Links2Blogs

P.P.P.S. You can check how this box looks like on my blog. It is on the first right had sidebar.

Get Your Blog Google-Ranked in 30 Days or Less - Part 2‏

If you haven't read Get Your Blog Google-Ranked in 30 Days Or Less, Part 1, you aren't going to want to miss it. But, here are even more useful suggestions to put your blog on steroids without any blog-roid rage. Please read on.

25. Focus on ranking for three key words or phrases to start. The keywords you select should appear in your HTML title tags and within the site's content when appropriate. However, watch keyword density levels. Anything above 5% starts to sound like gibberish. 2% to 3% keyword density provides more creative latitude for the content developer, and still lets bots know what the site is about.

24. Only purchase ad links on relevant niche sites. This, by default, limits competitive links and delivers more qualified (knowledgeable and ready-to-purchase) visitors to your site.

23. Participate in your link community. Forum and blog links are ephemeral, lasting a day or two as web fodder, so there's always the need for more green. Interact by posting to not only drive traffic with the link, but to also pick up another link from a credible site. All good.

22. Publish new content on weekdays. Even search engines need a break. Actually, more people are online Monday through Friday so your latest blog post is still the latest when posted on Monday rather than Sunday. A little thing, for sure, but little things mean a lot online.

21. Write content for various experience levels. For many spaces DIYs are the largest sector. Some readers are just starting out. Others have been at it for years and probably know more than you do, so post blogs to appeal to a broad range of skill sets – from green rookie to wizened old vet.

20. Cite the sources of your content. This adds credibility to your posts. It also provides a trail for a reader interested in learning more about the topic at hand.

19. Focus on contextual relevancy before quantity of links. Connectivity within a market or topic segment has more value than SEO anchor text, at least in the short term.

18. Poll your readers. Everybody's got an opinion. Provide a platform to let posters and readers vote on a topic related to your site. It doesn't do any good if you run a retail outlet and poll visitors on who they'd like to see in the White House. Stay on topic.

17. Create surveys. Surveys are more in depth than a poll. One survey you might want to try is one in which buyers rate the services and products you sell. Great marketing information. Consider placing a satisfaction survey somewhere on your site.

16. Write about popular brands or celebrities where possible. It doesn't matter if you're blogging short sales in the market or clothing for the over-sized human, celebrity and name brands get picked up by spiders.

15. Find free stuff to give away. Free still works on the web. There's lots of open source software (OSS), mortgäge calculators, real-time stock feeds and other digital goodies that visitors can download free. Free is nice.

14. Answer questions on Google groups and Yahoo Answers. People write in with all sorts of questions, some sure to fall within your area of expertise. By signing on as an authority in a field (your arena) you build credibility. Plus, it's fun helping others from the comfort of your own work station.

13. Add imagery and video content to your posts. A picture is worth a thousand web words. Charts and graphs simplify complex information and don't take up a lot of room. If you aren't an artist, create a relationship with a freelancer. Don't use clip art.

12. Use QA sessions in your blog. You're the expert. Also, invite guest bloggers to handle questions beyond your skill set. Helpful, simple advice keeps visitors coming back and makes you a guru.

11. Syndicate content outside of your blog. Every site owner needs content. Fortunately, there's plenty of it free for the taking. Sites like http://www.helium.com/, http://www.ezine.com/ and http://www.goarticles.com/ are content supermarkets. Post your piece and pick up non-reciprocal, in-bound links for your effort. Content syndication increases link popularity.

10. Direct (future) page rank efforts to well-optimized content on your home site. Don't direct visitors and bots to the garbage bin of out-dated content stored in the site's archives. Point them to the new news.

9. Update or create a Wikipedia page and link to your site. Another means of establishing yourself as an authority. Just make sure the Wiki piece is accurate, well written and typo-free.

8. Submit industry or topical news to general news sites. Not just industry related sites. If a small oil and gas company brings in a gusher, it's of broader interest than to just industry insiders. Also adds credibility and another link.

7. Deep links or links to sub-pages are vital. There's a tendency to link from a remote site to your home page. Not necessarily the best strategy. Consider linking to pages deeper in the site – pages related directly to your blog post. This way, visitors are in your site and less likely to bounce.

6. Respond to comments in your blog. This accomplishes three important objectives: (1) it shows that there's a human behind the blog; (2) it gives you a chance to show your expertise; and (3) you can lead the thread in a new direction or keep the discussion going. Oh, it's also the polite thing to do, as well.

5. Cross link your posts. Link amongst your related blog posts using the keywords you're optimizing your blog for as the anchor text.

4. Get linked alongside related blogs on other sites. You can contact the blog administrator to swap links, you can become a regular guest blogger if your writing is good enough or your knowledge extensive. Niche sites are great for building blog links networks.

3. Bait your blog. Post unconventional and controversial articles to create lengthy threads that, in turn, create site stickiness.

2. Be consistent into month two. Keep the tone, style and topicality of your blog consistent for the first two months until spiders get it. Then, you can branch out to peripheral topics to expand reader interest.

1. Network offline. Helpful networking tools include http://www.linkedin.com/, http://www.meetup.com/ and http://www.mybloglog.com/. These sites provide real world contacts to simplify and streamline the process of networking. They're also useful in building beneficial online relationships - not to be overlooked. Also reach out using conferences that are available in your area and abroad.

The keys to building a successful, well-tended blog run the gamut from good content to good contacts, and from credibility to controversy. There are lots of ways to expand your blog community and develop quality rankings at the same time.

Once you've got all of this down your next steps are to begin monetizing your site.

So, blog.

About The Author: Frederick Townes in the owner of W3 EDGE Web Design. W3 EDGE is a Boston web design company that specializes in search engine friendly design, Internet marketing and conversion optimization. Contact them today for a free quotatíon and more information on how to make the most of your online presence.

Snagging Inbound Links - By Andy MacDonald (c) 2008

Inbound links are now so important in the constant battle to achieve top search engine rankings, that tons of people are using every tactic under the sun to gain that one additional link. You must be careful when it comes to linking though. You could jeopardize your whole linking plan by getting links in a shady manner which could have an adverse affect on your search rankings. These inbound links are seen by search engines as votes for your site within a particular community of sites.

Anytime you're being voted for, you want to have as many votes as possible. However you want to be using tactics which are going to pay dividends in your linking strategy, not do more harm then good. Below I líst some of the best and safest methods around for generating inbound links for your website. Some can be more effective than others:

• Requesting Links: The oldest method of gaining inbound links is to request them. This requires that you study your market to find out who the players involved in the market are. Then, you contact each one of the sites and ask them to link to your site. In most cases, the person you contact receives your request, but providing links to other sites is the least of their worries, so you may never hear from them. If you do, it can sometimes be months later. So, you put a lot of time into requesting links from other sites for a relatively small return on your efforts. For more on requesting links, I recommend you checkout The Do's & Dont's of Requesting Links.

• Writing Articles: One of the most effective methods of gaining inbound links is to provide an article for other companies to use as long as they include a paragraph at the bottom that includes credits for you as well as a link back to your site. This method of gaining inbound links works well, because web sites are always looking for good content to include on their pages. The catch here is that the article you write should be well written, accurate, and useful to other sites in your industry. Once you've produced an article that meets these requirements, you can begin to let others know you have content available for them to use for free; you can do this by having a 'free articles' page on your site or submit the content to article directories. For more on article marketing, view Bill Platt's in-depth article, Article Marketing for Links .

• Blogs: Another way to get links back to your site is from bloggers. What started as a strange phenomenon that was mostly personal has now become a powerful business tool; many businesses rely on links back to their sites from the various industry bloggers out there. In most cases, though, bloggers aren't just going to stumble onto your web site. It's far better for you to contact the blogger with information about your organization, some product that you provide, or with news that would interest them. This information then gives the blogger something to use in his or her regular posts. Keep in mind, however, that you can't control what a blogger might say, so it's possible that the review you get won't be favorable. Its possible to get reviews from small to mid-sized blogs without too much of a problem, but when it comes to getting reviews from the most popular blogger in your niche, it may cost you a few hundred $$$. For example, John Chow charges a whopping $500 for a review, which he doesn't even write himself.

• Press Releases: Press releases are one of the mainstays of any marketing program. It can be so effective that many organizations hire companies to do nothing but distribute their press releases. What's so powerful about a press release? It's just the facts, including benefits, sent out to publications and organizations that might publish all or part of the press release. Use press release marketing to send out new items of all types, and send them as widely as you can. New organizations, publications, newsletters, even some forums will post press releases. When you write it, make sure a link back to your site is included.

• Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs are a type of paid advertising. You provide a link to people who want to link back to your web site. They place the link on their site and when someone clicks through that link and makes a purchase (or converts any other goal you have arranged), the affiliate - the person who placed your link on their site - gets paid a small percentage. Usually the payment for affiliate programs is very low ($.01 to $.05 per click or a small percentage of the sale). But some people make a good living being affiliates, and many organizations receive additional traffic because of their affiliate programs. The trick with affiliate programs is to not allow them to be your sole source of incoming links.

• PPC and Paid Links: Pay-per-click advertisements are an acceptable business practice. There is no problem with using PPC advertisements to achieve inbound links to your site. Remember that, like affiliate links, PPC links are not direct links to your site. Paid links, on the other hand, are different from affiliate links - you pay to have a direct, or flat link, placed on a page. Some search engines frown on the practice of using these types of links. Using paid links (especially those that land on link farms) is a practice that carries some business risk.

• Link to Yourself: Linking to yourself is a technique that sits right on the line between ethical and unethical. Linking to yourself from other sites that you might own is an acceptable practice. But if you set up other sites simply to be able to link back to your own site and create the illusion of popularity, you're going to do more damage than it's probably worth to you. If you are linking to yourself and you suspect that you might be doing something that would adversely affect your search engine ranking, then you shouldn't do it. There are plenty of links to be had without linking back to your web sites; you just have to work a little harder for the higher quality links.

Inbound links are such an important part of any marketing online strategies that some organizations find themselves caught up in the process of learning who is linking back to them. It's not a bad thing to want to know where your links are coming from. And one of the places you can gather that information is from your web-analytics application. A great and free analytics program available is Google Analytics. Check it out.

So there are my top link snagging tips which I actively employ for most of my online businesses. Which tactics do you use for your website, and have I missed out any good link-snagging techniques? Have your say by leaving me a comment.

About The Author: Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, & SEO, checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS .

How to turn your Blog into a Blog Strategy

What differentiates a tactic from a strategy?

A strategy is the plan for achieving a defined goal. A tactic is the “doing” part of the strategy. Tactics can be put together in a plan to form a strategy.

Time line is also an important differentiator between a tactic and a strategy. A blog can be up and running in a very short time frame (hours or days). A Strategy usually takes much longer to achieve (months or years depending on how lofty your goals are).

This is the second in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to look at how to develop a Blog Strategy for your Client. What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just building your client a Blog?

Starting a new Blog is a tactical move. You select the platform, customize a template, add a few plug ins and you’re done. Maybe it will be a success, maybe it won’t.

What transforms a Blog from a tactical move to a Strategy are:

1. Setting Goals and Objective(s)
2. Developing an outlined plan of all the steps necessary to get there from here
3. Having some idea of how you will know whether you’ve achieved your goals (metrics).

These principles apply to any Strategy, in this post I am going to take the above steps and apply it to a Blog.

1. Goals and Objectives
There are many good reasons for starting a Blog.
Having a good understanding of what you want to achieve will assist in setting the tone for your writing; determining what topics you’re going to write about; and making decisions about how often to Blog and whether you wish to have multiple authors.
It will also influence social networking decisions such as if you’re going to show and allow comments, if you’re going to employ social media tactics.

2. Outlined Plan
Getting the right level of detail in a plan is very important. I’m a visual person, so I like to start planning with a diagram
Here is where I currently am -> -> -> -> and this is where I want to get to.
Then I break this plan down into the high level steps that must happen to get me from A to B. Personally, I like to plan three levels deep. Steps A, B, C, then A1, A2, A3. then A1i, A1ii, etc.
By planning three levels deep, you can take big steps and break them down into bite sized, doable pieces. Unless you’re working on a 18 month IT project with 60 project members, I don’t recommend planning in much more detail than this.
Although detail is awesome, sometimes you can get caught spending too much time planning and not enough time doing (also known as Paralysis by Analysis).

3. Metrics
It’s important to make sure that your metrics are tied to your objectives. If your goal is to increase traffic then one of your metrics should be to measure increase in traffic.
Make sure that you set an actual number. Setting SMART objectives is very important. Jeff defined these principles really well in his post about setting goals for social media Profile Development.
It could be a percentage increase in overall site traffic or could be a 12 month goal. If you blow away your 12 month target by month 3, you can always adjust this goal later.
—————————————————————————————

Here is a Blog Strategy for a Typical Client which employs all of the above:

Objective
Client Objective: My ultimate goal is to increase sales and I’d like to attract new customers to my website.
Agency Objective: We can use your blog to help bring new visitors to your website. If the ultimate goal is sales, then we will go after targeted traffic. Quality first, quantity if possible. (this is different than if your client is on a CPM model who strictly is going after eyeballs).

Outlined Plan (3 levels deep)
In this case I would optimize the site to help rank for many more broader keyword phrases than we’ve targeted in the past. Further social strategies will encourage referral traffic from like minded sites. Finally, niche tier II social media will expose your site to potential customers.
Here is the plan one level deep:
SEO –> Content –> Social Strategies –> Blog Promotion using niche social media
Taking it two more level deep it might look something like this:

1) SEO
Select an SEO friendly blog platform (like wordpress) and customize it so that it has the look and feel of the clients site. Add plug ins that will make it easier to do your job.

2) Content - Develop editorial schedule for next 3 months.

• This will involve coming up with at least 15 to 60 Blog Post ideas that will appeal to your clients target market. I’ll be discussing how to come up with post ideas for Challenging Industries in Part III of this series, next week.
• Decide who is going to be responsible for the writing. I really like it when the client does the writing. Not only does this keep the budget down but it starts the conversation between your client and their clients. Plus, they are the expert in their field. They know what matters to their clients.
• Ideally you will be able to assign topics to various experts on the client side. Not only does this split up the work effort but it gives your client’s blog more variation in voices and content.
• If the client is going to be doing the writing then some Blog Writing coaching is probably required. Writing a blog post is different than writing an article which is different than writing a business email.

3) Determine what Social Strategies you are going to employ.

• The most common Social Strategy is to allow commenting on your site. I personally really like comments because take a one sided conversation and turn it into a dialog. Plus it can give your blog more of a community feel.
• RSS Feeds are another social strategy. Your client’s readers may not be very technically savvy so it’s very important to make it easy to subscribe and to give the reader the choice of subscribing by email.
• Linking out to other bloggers through your blog roll and in individual blog posts is also a good social strategy. When you link to another blogger you will get their attention. Chances are they will check out who is linking to them and if they like your blog they may subscribe to it. Or even link back to you in the future.
• Further, by linking to authoritative bloggers in your industry, your readers will perceive you to be at their level, defined by the company we keep. It’s very important that these links make sense and that they add something to your ideas. Name dropping industry experts into your posts does not add to the quality of your post and will probably take away from your readers experience.

4) Promote the Blog using Niche Social Media

• Research your clients industry to find social media sites that their potential clients may use. I.e. if your client’s product is helpful to the environment then environmentally conscious posts may appeal to the HUGG crowd.
• Decide which posts would appeal to which social media. There is no point in spamming social media with every blog post your client writes. Only the really good posts that are on topic for that social property should be submitted. If your post is interesting to the social media’s target market then social media can drive quality traffic to your client’s site.

Make sure all the steps i the plan are mapped out into a process and that the process is communicated to everyone involved.

Metrics
Forget about what all the experts say. Just ask your client “what would make you consider this a success?” You may have to coach your client to keep it reasonable but this is going to open up a very important dialog.
i.e. You want get more traffic to your site and you want some of it to convert. So we have two objectives here.

• Quantity of traffic (this is going to build over time so I would set goals for this for 3months, 6 months, 12 months).
• Quality traffic. Some of my favorite quality indicators include bounce rate, time spent on site, and number of pages visited.
• Down the line you will want to start looking at how social measures like the comments your posts are generating and the number of RSS subscribers.

I’ll discuss what realistic measures are for your Clients Blog, in part four of this series.

A Blog without Objectives and a Plan is just a Tactic.
By breaking out the steps and assigning accountabilities & time lines to those steps you can take a tactic and turn it into a successful strategy for your client.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

New Effective Internet Marketing Tools & Blogging Resouces

New Internet marketing tools are coming online each and every day. Why should you care? Mainly because these new marketing tools can have a dramatic impact on your online traffic, leads and sales. So much so, your online competitiveness can greatly depend on you finding and using these new marketing tools before everyone else does.

And as Internet marketing grows more and more lucrative, it is becoming more competitive each day, so staying aware of what's happening has become vital to your online success. More importantly, if you're a full-time marketer like me, your livelihood will largely depend upon you being able to keep on top of all the new ways of marketing on the web.

With these considerations in mind, I would like to líst some new or relatively new marketing tools that have been effective for me in my online marketíng. Some of these are marketing software, others are SEO strategies, marketing tips and the like... all have helped me achieve my online goals.

Here are some new marketing tools you can try:

1. Real Link Finder

Neil Shearing's "RealLinkFinder" is a handy little link-building tool you can use to increase your link popularity and SE rankings.

It lets you find targeted blogs that don't have the "nofollow" attribute tag so your links will count in all the search engines. Great way to build targeted links related to your site's main keywords or keyword phrases. This is one "No Cöst" link-building tool you should try.

2. Peel Away Ads

Simple ads which sit at the corner of any webpage, when a cursor hovers over the pulsating image - the page peels away to reveal your ad or promotion. Might seem a bit gimmicky, but like the pop-up or fade-in, they do work. You do get more sign-ups and sales. http://www.pealawayads.com/

3. Video Marketing

Using videos as marketing tools has now become commonplace on the web. If you're not promoting with videos, you are losing a large portion of the online traffic or surfers currently on the web.

Even using videos to explain your site or product will increase your conversions and sign-ups. Viral videos embedded with your links or site url can produce results when placed on YouTube or Google Videos. If you need help, one recent commercial product has been from Simon Grabowski (GetResponse) called TalkStream, which lets you put streaming audio and video on your sites. Just google to find it.

4. Social Media Bookmarks/Tags

One of the most significant changes in recent years has been the rise in importance and use of social bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati... these sites are now commanding huge traffic numbers and should not be ignored in your online marketíng.

You must connect your content with these sites. This is very simple to do since social media sites use tags, which are more or less simple keywords that help classify content and links. If you're using the popular Wordpress blog software, each category will be considered a tag.

You can create a simple tag in technorati by using this code:

[tagname] new marketing tools

5. Social Bookmarking Buttons

One of the easiest way I found to get your blog popular on internet is by putting the social bookmarking buttons.

These buttons are easy to install and effective for blog promotion or I can say 'Necessary' for it. You can find the code to add all popular bookmarking buttons in my following post:

How To Add Popular Social Bookmarking Service's Links in Blogger - All In One Code Provided!

6. Blogs RSS Feeds

Likewise, you must have a blog and RSS Feed associated with your site or product. It is vital that you take advantage of this technology to get your content broadcasted across the web and around the world.

RSS is only simple code that syndicates your content to all interested parties; it originally stood for "Rich Site Summary" and was a way of summarizing your content and broadcasting it. Most people now refer to RSS as Really Simple Syndication. You need a "newsreader" or aggregator such as Newsgator, Google Reader, My Yahoo! or Feed Demon to access all your feeds.

One little blog traffic tool I find helpful is John Reese's BlogRush, which helps syndicate your blog posts on other blogs.

7. Expert Marketing

Another effective way to market online or off is to promote/prove yourself as an expert in your chosen field. Creating articles, ebooks, websites on a subject that interests you will make you an expert. Once you gain credibility as an expert, your marketing will become much easier.

Some obvious places to help build this credibility would be Ezinearticles, SelfGrowth, Ideamarketers... I have found these places are excellent for getting your name and your content noticed.

8. Long Tail Niche Marketing

One of the most effective ways to market online is to use long tail keywords in your niche market. This simply means instead of targeting very general and very competitive keywords, you target less competitive long tail keywords in a smaller niche market.

I have found this tactic especially good for affiliate marketing, and the trick is to find the exact long tail phrase someone is using in the search engines and then construct content/url to match it. I find Brad Callen's Keyword Elite software program extremely helpful in finding those long tail keywords.

9. Guru Fast-track

One of the fastest and quickest ways to earn large amounts online is to hook up with big marketing GURUs and use their huge contact lists. If you have a high quality info product, then JVs (joint ventures) with these savvy marketers can be a very viable option for you to try.

These marketing gurus or experts are valuable marketing tools you can use to your advantage. Granted, their aggressive marketing methods do turn many people off, but there's no denying their methods do work.

10. Micro-List Marketing

Micro-List Building is one of the most effective online marketíng tools you can use. Quite frankly, I have found building a large opt-ín líst is not the real key to online wealth but instead creating small micro lists for each of your promoted products to be much more effective. You can have hundreds, even thousands of these different micro-lists. Use an unlímited autoresponder program like Aweber to handle and manage all these lists.

Studies have shown interested customers may not buy on the first visit, that it may take up to six or seven reminders. So keeping in contact with an interested customer, one who is looking and in the right mindset to buy, will definitely increase your sales.

Here, rather then the hard-sell, the emphasis should be on collecting contacts in order to give them helpful informative content on the product they're interested in buying. Supplying quality content should be your main goal; let the selling take care of itself. If you get the first part right, the sale will come naturally.

In conclusion, you must remember when dealing with such a complex creature as Internet marketing, in most cases there's no one single marketing tool that will do the job. Instead you need a whole orchestra of tools working together in order to make your online marketíng the most effective. So why not try some of these tools in your own online marketíng and see the results for yourself. You have everything to gain.

About The AuthorThe author:
A former artist and teacher, is now a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: BizwareMagic or MarketingToolGuide2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Everything in the Digg, Reddit & Netscape Algorithms

At work today, Matt noted that he found Digg's algorithm far more interesting than Google's. I was shocked - after all, Digg isn't nearly as complex or widely used as Google, but with its rising popularity in the tech space, I could, at least, empathize with why he might feel that way. I also took it as a challenge to expose all the possible elements that might be in an algorithm at Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Shoutwire or other social-news-voting sites. Let's see how I do:

BTW - I'm going to use a lot of Digg-specific terminology, despite the fact that I'm referring to all of the sites above.

1. Number of votes over time

• Uses a floating target based on relative levels of popularity (as mentioned in timing below)


• Any number of votes in a very short period (if not manipulative) is stronger than the same number of votes over a longer period.

2. Domain of link

• Has it previously had content submitted? If so, did that content receive votes, get marked as spam/lame, make the front page, etc?


• Has the domain been manually/automatically flagged for being manipulative

3. Profile of submitter

• Have they submitted high quality stories in the past?


• Have they submitted spam/lame stories in the past?


• How many friends do they have? This could make it harder or easier to get a story Dugg (harder if they have thousands of friends, but possibly easier if they have at least a few)


• How many submissions have they made? What is their success rate?


• How long has the member been around? New registrants could be a clear sign of spam

4. Profiles of voters (as above)

5. Timing of submission

• If a low number of stories have recently made the front page in a given sector or overall, the story is more likely to get on top with fewer votes


• If a high number of recent submissions, the opposite may be true


• Time of day - if 50 people all tag a site at 3:00am, that might be a red flag

6. Similarity to other links (duplicate)

7. Source of votes

• From the same IP address or IP block


• From the same geographic region (that's not a hotspot for Digg users)


• From the same group as has voted on previous content from a domain or string of domains


• From a group of users who aren't regular participants/voters

8. Manual review as it hits the homepage

• Many Digg users may not realize it, but all stories to hit the frontpage get a manual, editorial review that may pull the story. This often happens with content the editors feel is marketing-focused, driven by marketing dollars or has a marketing agenda.


• Reddit does this, too, but it's not instantaneous


• Netscape used to do it, but some have speculated the the level of oversight fluctuates


• As a quick example, Brian Clark (of Copyblogger) had this post hit Digg's homepage last week for a scant minute or so before the editors pulled it.

9. Number of comments

• Potentially could be used to detect patterns, though I've seen a lot of Dugg stories that had very few comments, so this might not be a great signal

10. Number of views

• An abnormally high ratio of views with few Diggs could mean that people aren't fans of the content


• In my opinion, this is a low signal, and down votes or lame/spam would earn more weight in bringing down a story

11. Down votes

• Although Digg doesn't specifically have them, Reddit does and surely uses them as an influential factor


• Digg, Netscape and Shoutwire all use flag systems which could be similarly interpreted

12. Source of Votes

• I suspect that Digg would follow how users normally reach pages (through friends, via direct links, via email/type-in, etc.)
• If an abnormally high number of folks came via an uncommon method to a Digg page (for example, with no referring URL, possibly signifying a mass email or IM link), Digg might want to discount the value of those votes

In a wonderful irony, the Digg website appears to have crashed tonight (a likely cause could be the new re-design, which Neil details at SELand).

So, what do you think? Are there other elements you'd consider having in your own social media voting site? Any obvious ones I neglected to mention?

What are Entre Cards? SEO & Traffic Benefits using Entre Cards!

What Is Entre Cards ?

Entrecard is a new advertising technique that can be very profitable if used correctly. It's best perks are, it's Free, easy to use, and doesn't take alot of time. It gives you the ability to advertise on more popular sites such as the John Chow site. Now let me show exactly how to use Entre Card, Step by Step.

Get It Now!

First go to the homepage Entrecard, and sign up for an account (the signup process is very straightforward).

How To Use Entre Cards?

Then click in the top corner for Dashboard. This is the page where you can see who is advertising on your site. It will show your credits and how much it costs to put an ad on your site. The website is based off of credits. You are awarded them for various things such as people advertising on your site. An important note; save up your credits! Don't waste them on smaller sites. That was a mistake I made when I first started using Entrecard, and I learned that those sites don't get any traffic, so it's not worth the time or credits. Save up credits, and advertise on bigger and better sites, ones with lots of traffic to give.

After you have seen your dashboard, click on Campaign. There you can see all the blogs you can post on. Like I said, I wouldn't advertise on the smaller sites… anything 30 credits or under. When you first make the account you will receive a flood of ads; you must approve all of them so you can receive the credits, and this way the cost to advertise on your site will go up.

Wait until you have over 30 credits before you start looking for a site to advertise on. Just because a site costs a lot of credits doesn't mean it gets a lot of traffic, so make sure that the site is well-to-do as well. If it's a blogger, then you can click "see my complete profile" to get an estimate about how popular the site is. If it is it's own Url then check the site for any type of hint at the amount of traffic. If you can't find one don't worry, if it costs alot, generally it's a powerful site.

Make sure you look back every couple days to approve ads on your site, (this gives you credits), and to see what your balance is up to. You should receive an email every time you get an ad, so that should save time.

SEO Advantage and Traffic via Entre Cards

And there's Entre Card for you. I've stressed this already, but be patient, and advertise on a big site. Maybe this will be the traffic that pulls your blog out of the common pack, and starts generating consistent traffic and building more backlinks, helping you increase your Link Popularity in search engines.

Blogging Power Tips For Easy Traffic

Things to do before you post and advertise your blog, and what to do after it’s up and running, such as getting traffic and using Adsense.

In howbits fashion, I made this simple to understand, for maximum usability. I even added the easiest and best tricks to get great traffic. If you are here to get the traffic tips, You've come to the right place!

First Thing To Do
This is a big step - get Feedburner setup for you website, ASAP. Make your RSS buttons easy to see so people can subscribe. I have several new visitors who stop in for a few seconds, click the RSS button and leave, namely people from Digg.

Make sure to have a good list of RSS buttons available for people to choose from. The fastest and easiest way to do this is by going to http://www.toprankblog.com/tools/rss-buttons/ and making your buttons. Make sure at step 2, you set it to default and use your Feedburner URL. To get your feed address, just go to feedburner.com, log into your account. In the top left you will see something that says My Feeds, once you click on it, click on the feed you want to use. Once the page loads up, look under the feed name and click on Edit Feed Details. On this screen you will see the address for you feed. The feed address will look something like this - http://feeds.feedburner.com/your-feed-name

Article Publishing

Do not publish just one article first.
I recommend writing 2 or 3 articles, then putting them on the website. This way when you get the first surge of traffic, the people have other articles to read besides just one. Too many blogs have come and gone with only posting one article and nothing else. So as a result if you don’t have more then a couple articles your chances of people returning or subscribing are a lot less.

If you really want to start off on the right foot, I recommend finding the best one of the 3 articles and submitting it to Ezinearticles.com. Expect 3 to 5 days turn around for them to review it and put it on the website.

I lost a lot of traffic on my first great article, because it was all I had posted and people came, read the article and left and were never heard from again.

Looking back on this, I wish I had other articles I posted before hand so people had a reason to stay. My first article I posted had around 200 visitors in the first 30 minutes, the visitors read the article, then disappeared. Now when I post good articles, I get a surge of traffic, people read the article, then browse around me website and come back a few days later.

Don’t sensationalize an article, do a brief intro, then get down to business. Some people have this annoying ability to write an insane amount of paragraphs, for something that could be said in a few sentences. I noticed that my articles that are straight to the point get more readers and people stay. Something about hyping up a subject puts people off, can’t blame them, it annoys me too.

Adsense Advertising

For adsense beginners, text ads are the best ads you can use. I have been switching back and fourth between image ads and text ads. I get a lot more clicks when using text ads, I do not know why, maybe because they are less intrusive for readers. But again I do not know why it works that way, but it does.

Do not put big ads between your post, on the main page. I have been experimenting and noticed that when I put an ad just after the latest post on the front page, people have a tendency of not going past it. In most cases they just leave. Now it’s fine to put an ad just above the comment box, when people are on a single post page.

Advice For Getting Traffic

One of my readers turned me on to using Socialmarker.com for getting traffic to my website. Social Marker by itself has made brought more than 90% of my traffic, I highly recommend using it. What it does is connect all the social networking places together, in one easy interface. The website is free, and for each website you submit to, you have to have an account with that. It takes some time to get registered to all the websites, maybe 30 minutes to an hour, but once you are registered you are good to go and never have to do it again. The ranking you will get from keywords used during the submit process is insane. Within 2 to 4 hours, the article you post will be search able and will have great ranking in search engines. The bookmarking websites are awesome for this, I have several articles that come right to the top of search engines without me having to change my keywords, or the keyword Density to them there. I don’t even have to links to the page to increase the search ranking.


Words of advice, do not submit articles to websites that are not congruent with your article. Example - if you write an article about the weather where you live at, do not submit it to Slashdot or some technology based website. Nothing will get you banned faster than doing that.


Not getting Digg or Stumble votes is not the end of the world. Digg does have the highest chance of getting the largest surge of traffic to your website, if you get on the front page, your website can crash from the Digg Effect. But I find that most of my traffic comes from Reddit.com, Fark.com, Indian Pad, and various other social-networking websites. Myspace blog has been really good for my website, whenever I write a post; I just copy and paste it over there. For the extra 100 to 200 readers I get from spending an extra minute or two, is worth it. I recommend setting up a Squidoo page, even if you have no intentions of sticking with it. The reason why I recommend it is when you make a lens, and put a link on the site to your website, you get a Page Rank boost. At this present time, squidoo does not use nofollow bot code. ;-)


Comments, Feedback, & Tracking


Don’t get discouraged if you are not getting feed back, comments etc, from people. It doesn’t mean that people don’t like what you are writing about. The best way to see if people like what you are writing is by checking you traffic.


My traffic continues to grow and my returning readers are increasing. They just don’t like to leave a comment, so I’m guessing since they are returning that they must like what I have to say, but they are not much for chatting. So if you are not getting comments, just check your traffic with a service like Google analytics and Feedburner, and see what the trending is. If you are not getting returning readers then it’s safe to assume you need to modify your content.


This article is far from the end all be all for blogging. I plan to continually add new information from my experiences so help people avoid problems so that they can start off on the right foot.

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