More Google Website Traffic

Why Social Networking Equals Increased Website Traffic

Increase Web Traffic with Social Networking

In the ongoing quest to increase website traffic, many site owners and businesses are realizing the value of social networking and how popular user driven sites like Facebook, MySpace and Flickr can effectively attract new users to their websites. Each day, millions of users gravitate towards social networks because these sites allow them to connect with others, share entertaining content, and build new relationships.

Social networking can present limitless opportunities for traffic growth for people who own and operate individual or business based websites. However, before anyone takes the plunge into the evolving marketing medium that is social networking, they will want to understand why utilizing social marketing leads to more page views.

Where There Are Users, There Are Online Marketing Opportunities

Social networking is truly where the action is at, as millions of users log into these sites on a daily basis. In 2008, Silicon Alley Insider reported that MySpace averaged 17.7 million daily users, followed by Facebook, which averaged 8.6 million daily users. With incredible and consistent numbers like this, website owners simply cannot afford to not partake in the action. Remember, you need to be where the users are.

People Use Social Networking to Target Both Larger Audiences & Niches

Social networking sites instantaneously allow you to have access to a larger audience and user base. Within minutes, you can establish your online presence by creating a profile on any highly-trafficked social site and begin posting information about yourself, your website, or your business. The fun begins when you start adding friends to your profile page that share the same interests as you or who may be interested in your business. You can even go so far as zeroing in on a niche of users, which can increase targeted website traffic. In time, you will attract users to your website and gain valuable back links, both of which can lead to more page views.

Most Professionals Use Social Networking

Many online business owners have heard of social networking but are hesitant to use it as an advertising tool because they are under the impression that these networks only cater to younger individuals. They also sometimes feel that if their businesses aren’t interested in targeting a younger market, then they shouldn’t waste their time and they fail to see the value.

The truth is that this assumption is completely false as many of these sites specifically target career professionals, not teenagers. In a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, it was reported that approximately 65% of business professionals use personal and professional social networking sites. Additionally, the same online survey revealed that most professionals gravitate to social sites like LinkedIn, followed closely by MySpace and Yahoo360.

Utilizing Social Networking Tools Can Save You Money

When you have millions of users at your disposal, why would you buy web site traffic via a PPC campaign? Instead, you should add social networking strategies to your online marketing plan and save yourself some money. Numerous companies, like MasterCard, are monetizing with social networking applications, blogs and photo galleries. In fact, according to Yahoo! Senior Product Manager Laura des Dorides, many companies who purchase micro sites (sites geared toward advertising a brand) within the Yahoo! Network now demand that their sites include social marketing tools like Facebook applications and Flickr photo galleries, as they fully understand how these tools generate website traffic.

More Google Website Traffic with Google Docs

The traditional perception that Google is simply a good search engine which displays the most relevant search results has long faded away into oblivion. Owing to the unprecedented popularity Google has experienced in the past decade, most Internet users are aware of the fact that Google goes beyond the search engine call of duty and tends to deliver a dazzling array of products and services on the world wide web, most of which are still free. Google Docs happens to be one of them and is indeed the most popular Google application or Google App next to the search engine. Here is how Google describes its most popular application:

When you use Google Docs, you can upload files from your desktop or create documents, spreadsheets, forms, and presentations right in Google Docs. The result? You can open all these files anywhere and share them with anyone. You can also:

• Upload from and save to your desktop
• Edit anytime, from anywhere
• Control who can access your documents
• Share changes in real time
• Use our online file storage and access your Docs from anywhere in the world

Google Docs Past Present and Future

Google Docs has evolved over the years in a rather interesting manner partly through internal R&D and partly through corporate acquisition. Much of Google Docs was called Writely prior to its buyout by Google and was available on the web as a free online suite of tools. It was developed by a US-based Silicon Valley software company named Upstartle. It was then acquired by Google in 2006 as a part of its hyperactive expansion phase during which Google acquired dozens of smaller companies with promising applications and visionary employees.

What is Google Docs

Before we tell you how to use Google Docs to generate more website traffic on your website, we need to first tell you what precisely Google Docs is and why it is so popular in the global online space. Google Docs is, in essence, an office suite much like Microsoft Office or Open Office, the free online open source office solution. The entire application resides in the cloud which is just a fancy way of saying that the application runs on remote servers and not on your PC. Google Docs includes:

Word processing and Document Management

Create, write and collaborate with ease on Google Docs. The word processing component of Google Docs is its most popular component. If you have ever used either Microsoft Word or Open Office, and who has not, the learning curve will be minimal. You will be up and running in less than ten minutes. What is more, Google even provides you with an ever-growing template gallery so that you can further refine and customize all your Google Docs applications and not just word processing. It allows co-browsing which means that you can literally edit a document in real time with other colleagues or friends located anywhere in the world. You can control privacy settings too and exercise control on who gains access to your documents. Word processing from Google Docs is excellent for collaborative writing projects such as business plans, feasibility studies, case studies and annual reports where multiple inputs and interventions from different members of a focus group are required. You can always access your documents from anywhere using your web browser and never worry about having to back up your sales reports or business briefs repeatedly since everything your team or you compose, write and edit is stored on Google’s servers and not on your workstation.

Spread Sheets and Numerical Data Processing

The spreadsheet component of Google Docs is almost identical to Microsoft Excel in terms of functionality and ease of use. For me, setting up a spread sheet was an effortless experience and I was up and running before I knew it. Like word processing documents, you can import and export spread sheets to your PC, a mobile device or an e-mail message where it can be embedded as a link in the message body. Privacy controls can be set in advance and subsequently modified when necessary. Google Docs spread sheets are flexible enough in that you can even import them into Microsoft Excel on your desktop. The ability to number crunch remotely is indeed a blessing for those bean counters who are constantly looking out for us with a view to optimizing our resources in these Dickensian Hard Times.

Present to the Planet In Style with Google Docs Presentations

I am not much of a writer and so I rarely create documents on Google Docs. Presentations, however, are a whole different ball game and the nature of our work in the search engine optimization space requires us to make dozens of presentations to both prospects and existing clients each time when we need to either upgrade or upsell. The interface used in Google Docs to create presentations is both intuitive and dynamic. If you have used Microsoft PowerPoint in the past, there is no learning curve for you except for a minor transformation in operating platform. Use the Task Bar on the Google Docs Presentation Page to change font, highlight, bold face and apply other effects on your presentations. As is the case with the other components within Google Docs, you can set your privacy settings and control viewership.

Forms and Surveys on Google Docs

Forms and surveys are the latest addition to Google Docs and there are good reasons to believe that this component is rapidly increasing in popularity. You now have the option to create forms such as surveys, market research questionnaires and other types of forms directly from Google Docs. This function can also be integrated with Google Apps to capture the e-mail address of your respondents.

Maximize your Website Traffic with Google Docs

There are two creative ways in which you can leverage the power of Google Docs to drive traffic to your website and both of them are perfectly legitimate. In the first instance, you can set up a comprehensive overview of your online company, e-commerce portal or any other product or service you wish to market, on a neatly organized Google Doc page. Customers like me often scout the web for documents that provide a no-nonsense, in-depth explanation of their products and services in a format that is text-oriented. Provide a link to your company’s website after making sure that you have properly optimized the content on this page with relevant keywords including a handful of long tail keywords.

In the second instance, you can set up a colorful slide presentation on Google Docs showcasing your product or service as an adjunct to the information you have already provided on your website. Set both documents to “public” view in the privacy controls and you will notice that Google will indexed these documents in a matter of weeks. Whether Google will count these links to your website as legitimate back links continues to remain unclear in the light of recent algorithm shifts. The bottom line, however, is that since more visibility equals more traffic, you are sure to notice some level of positive activity on your Analytics page.

More Help on the Way to Increase Website Traffic

Visit the Google Docs Help page for useful articles, video tutorials, document samples and a rather supportive user community which interacts on the Google Docs forum. You will also find the full menu of features and attributes on this page:

Increase Website Traffic by Submitting to Google News

Introducing the Incredible News Aggregator from Google News

In April 2006, Google introduced Google News, a real time aggregator of the latest news from hundreds of legitimate news sources from all over the world. Did this increase website traffic both on Google’s news website and its home page? You bet. News happens to be among the most popular attractions on the Internet today, according to the Pointer Institute. Google News had a long beta run in that it remained in active beta status till 2006. On January 23, 2006, Google’s runner up news aggregation service successfully made it out of beta to emerge as a news entity with which to reckon. The thunderous response Google News received from the online community the world over has prompted Google to pay special attention to this free service. It is now available in more than twenty languages, serves 40 regions around the world, is updated in real time 24X7, and is constantly tweaked by Google’s research and engineering teams. Click the “News” link from Google’s home page to arrive at Google News. You can select your country or region and even customize the home page for Google News as per your personal preference. Google will store your personalization profile in a cookie on your system and will draw from over 4500 English language news websites to serve up the latest news content on your personal Google News page. You can even set up news alerts like I have to monitor news events or news stories on a specific subject of your choice.

Driving Website Traffic to your Website with Google News

If I can safely hazard a guess, you have two reasons why Google News interests you. The first reason pertains to your penchant for the latest news from a credible source which you can access not just on your work station during work but also on your mobile device such as a Blackberry or an iPhone. The second reason is a little subtle. You have heard that Google News is a potent source for driving mountains of targeted and qualified traffic to your website. We have good news for you because you have heard right. One story in Google News about your company is all you need to quadruple your traffic in a matter of days. Although Google News aggregates and indexes news stories only for the past thirty days, its news archive function goes back 200 years. In other words, you are covered every step of the way if you do things right. Here are a few tips on how you can jumpstart and subsequently maximize website traffic through the ethical use of Google News.

Launching a Niche News Website of your own

You do not have to be a Wall Street Journal or a New York Times to set up your own news website and become a Google News publisher. Conduct a few news searches on Google News and you will notice that many of the websites featured in Google’s news search results are no namer websites with excellent content. Build a news website around your niche or industry and try to remain focused at all times. Once your news content is indexed by Google News, an avalanche of website traffic will begin to arrive on your Internet property all eager to check you out and fidgeting to buy the products or services you sell. All it takes is a prominent link on your very own news site’s home page to channel more website traffic to your flagship website. Here is chapter and verse on how to accomplish this objective straight from Mr. Google himself:

This is a very valuable and hard-to-find link from Google’s vast knowledge repository so both copy and bookmark it. We have studied these technical specifications in great detail and do not find them difficult to implement. Try not to distract your online audience when they visit your newly created website with distractions such as PPC or banner advertising and use a little bit of creativity and innovation to inspire your newly discovered qualified website traffic to arrive on your website once they have read your news content to their heart’s content!. For example, you can set up more than one banner or text ads with their own landing pages which promote your products and services. These links should point to your landing pages meaningfully and meet the expectations of your prospective customer community. After all, both the covert and overt purpose of this exercise is to propel your bottom line to new heights of profitability

Generating Killer News Content for your Niche News Website

Since every news story, article, industry report or analysis on your new vertical news website needs to be 100% original and copyscape compliant, I recommend that you outsource your content development tasks as a single project to at least two reputable overseas content firms on a long-term basis. Job board websites such as Elance, Guru, ODesk and GetAFreelancer can prove to be most useful in this regard. Don’t worry if both service providers end up writing on the same subject once in a while. Google News itself often has over 300 news stories on the same topic. Your news content should be organized and structured in strict accordance with the technical specifications Google News has outlined for this purpose. It is most important that your news content be updated at least three or four times a week, daily if possible. Invite your site visitors through a “Write for Us” page to submit news and analysis content to your vertical news portal in a true spirit of Web 2.0 and social media. The more you promote your new news website through social media and search engine optimization, the more website traffic you will experience on your website. I should clarify here that this is a second tier of website traffic in addition to the traffic that is bound to arrive through Google News. In essence, you will have two and not one source of clearly defined website traffic which you can further channel to your flagship website where your products and services are sold.

Conclusion

The online marketing and Internet arena used to be competitive. Today, it is hyper competitive. There are a trillion web pages on the Internet today. Therefore, it is best to identify and implement cutting-edge solutions to increase website traffic that are self-sustaining and guarantee the highest possible return on investment.

Get Website Traffic with Online Performance Marketing

Internet marketing is replete with buzzwords, fads and trends. Many of them have been simply invented either to generate hype or to facilitate new income streams for those who invent them. Occasionally, an age-old concept from traditional offline marketing is subtly reincarnated and beaten to death only to be followed by another marketing concept designed to trigger buzz. Online performance marketing may or may not fall in this category. However, it just might be worth taking a look since it is related directly to the quality and nature of customer service that you provide your customers, prospects and site visitors—all of which are critical contributing factors to get website traffic on your site. This brief overview of online performance marketing is simply designed to acquaint you to its presence. Internet resources on online performance marketing abound if you find that we have indeed peaked your curiosity. Implementation of performance marketing metrics means more robust revenue models thus generating new streams of qualified website traffic, especially of the repeat category.

Get Website Traffic with Online Performance Marketing

The success of an online business depends entirely on effective marketing. With the keen global competition which companies have to face today, a set of effective metrics is required and certainly called for to win an edge over your competitors. Online performance marketing is a potent tool for online businesses with a vision to grow and to conquer new territories with a view to capturing not just market share, but also website traffic from sources and avenues hitherto unexplored. Broadly defined, online performance marketing is designed to increase the quantum of your Internet business by directly enhancing the operational efficiency of not just your employees but also your service providers who come directly in contact with your online customers. Here is how you can get new avenues of website traffic on your site by implementing a few basic measures that belong to the realm of online performance marketing:

Check the response rate of your online Customers

Like me, if you too can’t afford to hire a market research firm to survey the satisfaction levels of your customers, use a free survey tool such as Survey Monkey available at www.surveymonkey.com to design customer satisfaction surveys. The website offers many templates from which you can choose. Merely conducting a survey isn’t enough—you should review the survey results and implement the recommendations they will generate so that you not only receive new website traffic but also find yourself drowning in repeat business—a surely welcome scenario!

Managing Brand Equity

If your website markets products or services, you will feel the need to check to see if your brands are delivering as per the promise. Claims need to be authenticated constantly in order to reduce customer complaints and build brand loyalty.

The Three types of Metrics to Monitor to Increase Website Traffic

Executive metric
This metric analyzes the cost of various programs or projects your company’s management team decides to undertake each quarter or year. It helps your organization to determine its future course of action and formulate a viable strategic plan.

Program Metric
This metric enables your organization to experiment with various methods and compare its costs and results. This gives it a chance to adopt the most profitable and beneficial methods to achieve your goals. When implemented judiciously, website traffic goes up, revenues soar and customer satisfaction levels sky rocket.

Brand Metric
As indicated above, this metric aims at analyzing the attitude of your customers and site visitors toward the products and services you provide on your website. An excellent way to implement this metric is by implementing a live chat solution on your website. Live chat service on a website is known not only to help you get website traffic in droves through improved customer satisfaction levels, it tends to provide a paper trail through chat transcripts which you can review to locate potential pitfalls within your online performance matrices.

In a Nutshell

Performance marketing strives to take a marketing-centric approach to how you perform as an Internet company. It attempts to quantify and streamline the various measures you can adopt to generate upward spikes in your revenue streams. Improved website traffic can be viewed both as a cause as well as an outcome of this formula and strategy. Explore this further and you will notice that there is indeed substantial merit in implementing a long-term performance marketing equation.

Increase Website Traffic by Inviting a Guest Blogger

An Internet blog is more than a full-time job if you want to do it right. As a member of the global Internet blogging community, you probably feel overwhelmed once in a while because of the multiple hats you are required to wear. In addition to articulating sure shot strategies to increase website traffic on your blog through several on-page and off-page SEO strategies, you have social media, Google’s PageRank issues and equally important, your organic position in the search engine results pages of the major search engines to preoccupy you.

Top on your list of tasks each day, I am sure, is your blog content. The gurus recommend, and rightly so, that you should update your blog content at least three times a week, preferably every day like the gurus themselves. Finding it hard to keep up with the daily demands of Internet blogging and blog content? Try guest blogging!

The ABCs of Guest Blogging to Spike Website Traffic to your Blog

There are hundreds of highly qualified and professionally capable bloggers eagerly waiting to write for you on your blog. What is even more interesting, you do not even have to pay them. How does this work? Reasonably simply—You invite guest bloggers to blog on your blog website under your personal supervision. In exchange, you give them a bio and a link back to their blogs. If you feel generous, and if the guest blogger is exceptionally skilled—an authority in his or her niche—you sweeten the deal further by offering to give additional treats such as social media links, a banner and even a phone number in the guest blogger’s bio assuming they use the power of Ma Bell to drum up business which they should be doing in the first place. Here are a few suggestions on how to find such gems. But first…

Prepare your Blog to Receive Guests by Building up Trainloads of Website Traffic

If you want online stalwarts to guest blog for you, your blog should be worthy of their visit and their potential patronage in the future. It should be fully functional, well indexed in Google and Yahoo, and carry a decent ranking on Google’s PageRank equation. Now we aren’t expecting you to wait for your blog to hit PR 8. I don’t believe your blog or mine for that matter will ever reach such dizzy heights of cyber glory. Having said that, I think a PR 3 or 4 is pretty respectable with a decent Alexa rank. You should carry first-rate blog content on your blog even if you have to pay for it. The more website traffic you have on your blog, the more impressed your guest bloggers will be thus inspiring them to return to your blog over and over again. After all, even you need a vacation!

Blog Comments that Generate Quality Website Traffic

Finally, try to generate as many blog comments as you possibly can by asking your online audience to participate in the discussions you spearhead.
A soft nudge from you requesting comments directly transmitted through your double opt in list is an excellent idea and I have seen many Internet gurus doing so in their ezines and auto responder e-mail messages.

5 Tips to Find Guest Bloggers

Here are five tried and proven methods you can deploy to open the floodgates of guest bloggers. Remember, not everyone who applies is qualified to guest blog on your website. Screen these requests carefully and do not post a blog entry without having read it first. Insist on original content and copyright-free images. Here are my recommendations:

EzineArticles.com and other Article Repositories

Like me, I am sure you too have your favorite authors on EzineArticles.com and other article directories. Why not drop a line requesting a guest blog submission? Provide a brief description of your blog accompanied by a link to your blog’s home page. Clearly indicate what you will offer in return—a bio, link, banner, social media links, links to the guest blogger’s website (how many) within the content body, a picture of the guest blogger and anything else your guest may find enticing. If you are using Wordpress, and you should if you are not for a variety of reasons, use the author.php template for this purpose.

Set up a “Blog for Us” Page on your Blog Website

Set up a special Invite Page for this purpose. It is sure to maximize your website traffic at least from the blogging community. Clearly outline the specifications, terms and conditions for submissions. Indicate a time line. After all, you need to be fair and courteous to your guests!

Approach Blog and Website Owners in your Niche Directly

It is highly unlikely that you do not read other blogs in your niche or subject of interest. In addition to new ideas, trends and concepts, other bloggers in your niche can serve the important function of the type of website traffic you can expect on your website along with an audience profile to match. Introduce your blog in your e-mail solicitation and provide a link to your blog. Better still, include a short list of topics for your guest blogger to consider. The more specific you are, the better the quality of the guest post will be. When I write to a fellow blogger requesting a guest post, I even mention what I am planning to offer in return. This way, there are no hidden secrets as far as I am concerned.

Leverage your Personal and Professional Network

Do you attend conventions? Do you visit trade shows and industry exhibitions? Look through your Rolodex for contacts you have made through your professional networking endeavors. You are sure to find qualified bloggers who fit the bill. Send them a polite invite and follow it up with a phone call. It is standard practice to trade favors within a fraternity even if it involves underlying competition. We all know that there is synergy and strength in numbers!

Send out a Quick Tweet

Many bloggers have made excellent connections through Twitter in their bids to find guest bloggers for their blog websites. The possibility that one or more of your followers on Twitter would be very interested in guest blogging for you is high. Your guest blogger could be the owner of an e-commerce portal, a Google AdSense website, or simply a senior manager in a corporation looking for additional exposure in your niche through a bio and a couple of high-powered back links.

Try Guest Bloggers before you go out and Buy Website Traffic

In addition to the fact that a guest blog post or two will free you up to perform scores of pending online housekeeping tasks, guest blogging will generate free website traffic for you. Here is how. Your guest blogger is bound to announce the guest blog post on his or her blog website and provide a link to your blog—a highly favorable scenario from Google’s perspective. If your Google Analytics suddenly displays mountains of server melting website traffic you haven’t witnessed before once the guest blog post is up, you will know where it is coming from. Guest blogging—whether you invite a blogger on your website or you choose to guest blog on a fellow blogger’s website—has many rich rewards. It is both under-rated and under-utilized. However, you can become a trailblazer and watch your website traffic soar to unprecedented watermarks.

Get More Website Traffic with Web Video Marketing

Beyond the You Tube Revolution

If someone asked you to pinpoint which aspect of the spectacular Internet revolution has reached out and touched you the most, you will probably point immediately to the Internet video paradigm. Video on the Net is no longer just another way to communicate using digital multimedia, it has slowly but surely evolved as probably the most effective way to generate more website traffic on your Internet property.

The ubiquitous “Play” button has made it possible for thousands of web entrepreneurs and decision-makers like you to trigger exponential website traffic growth on their websites. If you haven’t joined the club and wish to generate more website traffic through video-based e-marketing, you are not alone. Here are a few tips on how you can effectively and effortlessly increase website traffic through a well orchestrated video deployment strategy:

The Home Page Advantage and Website Traffic

Invest if you can on a well-produced short video of approximately 3-4 minutes to be uploaded on your web hosting server through a link on your home page. The video should anticipate some of the questions site visitors may have about your product or service. It should attempt to answer these questions. Call it video FAQs if you wish. Visitors who arrive on your website are, in most cases, sure to click the “Play” button at least out of curiosity if nothing else.

If your Analytics indicates that instead of generating more website traffic, the video happens to be demonstrating alarming bounce rates, it is time to replace your existing video with new digital video content. There is absolutely no reason to feel discouraged if this scenario emerges because it can be quickly corrected with virtually no damage whatsoever to your website’s reputation.

Once you have the right video and web content mix in place, the website traffic, which arrives on your home page, will find good reasons to explore your website and find interesting possibilities all of which are designed to increase website traffic.

The Wide World of Internet Video Sharing

You Tube is only one of hundreds of video sharing websites to which you have free access today. If embedding a video on your home page simply preserves the traffic stream and leads to more sales and conversions, uploading it on video sharing websites will surely generate more website traffic for your site.

Create a well-designed and high-impact video landing page complete with title, keywords and description on every video sharing website. The more popular video sharing websites happen to be You Tube, MetaCafe, Mega Video and DailyMotion. Use Google to locate more video sharing websites by using search phrases such as “video sharing website directory” or “video sharing website list.” You can also use paid video uploading services to ensure more website traffic like Traffic Geyser or TubeMogul.

Professionally Produced Videos for your Website to Guarantee More Website Traffic

If you do not have a proven background in video production, it is best to hire a professionally qualified video production firm that specializes in online videos to produce your clip. The Web is a professional arena today with unprecedented competition levels so it is a good idea to hire the best company you can afford. They will not only test your video on multiple web browsers but will also embed links to your website within the video itself ideally suited to drive more website traffic to your site that happens to be both qualified and targeted in every manner and respect.

Get Website Traffic that Converts with Ezine Marketing

As Net savvy professionals who are connected with the online space in one way or another, we all know what an ezine is and what marketing is all about. Do we know what ezine marketing is and how we may be able to get website traffic that is laser focused and actually converts at a higher than average ratio ?

Article Syndication and Ezine Marketing for Maximum Website Traffic

A few years ago, the concept that came to me when I first heard of ezine marketing was ezine article marketing. Logic dictated that since I had been frequently posting on Ezine Articles and GoArticles, and since the sole purpose of posting on these two popular article directories was to market my SEO and SEM services, this was what ezine marketing was all about. Boy was I in for a surprise because ezine marketing has very little to do with ezine article marketing, at least directly. Here is what ezine marketing is all about and how you can leverage maximum website traffic using this formula. Has this received lots of online press from the ezine gurus? No. Will it receive lots of publicity in the future? You bet. You need to understand ezine marketing and implement it very quickly before the rest of the Internet marketing universe hears about it and the Internet gurus saturate it to a point where the search engines begin to disregard it from a search ranking perspective.

What is Ezine Marketing?

The term “ezine” is of rather recent coinage and is derived from the “e” from “electronic and the “zine” from magazine. An ezine, also known as an online newsletter or e-newsletter, is an electronic publication transmitted on the Internet and delivered to subscribers via email. The evolution and growth of the ezine phenomena is in itself a vibrant subject of discussion and debate. An Ezine called CULT OF THE DEAD COW is the first official ezine of record. It was launched in 1984 on a bulletin board network and was actively published electronically till 1994. It was followed in 1985 by another ezine called Phrack. If I were judge and jury on this subject, I would award the accolade of being the first ezine to Phrack because instead of being published as individual articles like the Cult of the Dead Cow, Phrack was published as a collection of online articles. I can go on and on about the history of ezines but then this isn’t the time or place for ezine trivia!

Locating Ezines in your Niche or Industry Vertical to Get Website Traffic that is Ultra Targeted

Since ezines tend to be highly focused online publications with near fanatic following, picking the right ezine for you in which to advertise is the million-dollar question. There is really no hard and fast rule so you will have to perform a little testing in order to determine which ezine or ezine group works best for you. You can locate several ezine lists neatly organized into groups and subject categories by search on your favorite search engine. Here are three of the most popular ones:

Ezine-dir.com
Ezinelisting.com
Ezinelocater.com

For a very current directory of the top 20 ezine directories visit:

Ezines.nettop20.com

There are more than 100,000 ezines listed on all these ezine directories combined and therefore you won’t ever run out of ezines to consider for your ezine advertising campaign! You can also search for ezines on Google or post a message on the forums you visit frequently. Ask your fellow-posters for ezine recommendations in your niche. If you indicate the purpose of your query, you just might be bombarded with advertising offers vying for your advertising budget.

Advertising in Small Medium or Large Ezines to Get Website Traffic

Who said you could have only a single million-dollar question in your report! This one is more complex, at least for me if not for you. How to decide which ezine to pick in terms of selection, content, circulation and price? There are many formulas out there but the one I have used successfully goes like this:

If you happen to be advertising in ezines for the first time, pick an ezine where the cost per thousand impressions, also known as CPM, is the most affordable. To get this magic number, divide the total circulation of the ezine with the cost of the advertising. First arrive at how much it costs to advertise to one subscriber and then multiply that by 1000. This will help you determine which ezine in your niche and target audience gives you the best bang for the buck. Ezines with a large subscription base tend to cost more per 1000 impressions but that is not always the case. So do your math judiciously.

Types of Advertising Options

Ezines generally present three types of advertising options:

• Solo ads
• Sponsorship ads
• Classified ads

Solo ads are the most expensive and involve an exclusive e-mail campaign to the ezine’s subscribers just for you. If you have a product or service that is genuinely worth its mettle, the results can be astounding. Solo ads not only increase website traffic to your website or blog, they also tend to increase your repeat visitor count assuming your website has something unique to offer and a great bargain to pitch.

Sponsorship ads are placed at the top of articles, features and reports within the ezine body and depending on whether the ezine publisher uses HTML or plain text, they can be designed to present your advertising message with considerable visual appeal. Many ezine publishers will also allow you to use your banner with a link along with your text advertisement much like Commission Junction or Click Bank ads. Speaking of CJ and Click Bank, ezine advertising can do wonders for your affiliate marketing campaigns. This is a major subject area in itself so we will surely address this in an upcoming report on More Google Traffic.

If you happen to be on a budget and still wish to increase website traffic on your Internet property, classified advertising in ezines is for you. It is certainly an excellent way to get started and if you guessed that I made my start in ezine advertising with ezine classified advertising, you are right on the mark. I used my Craig’s List and Kajiji experience to craft hard-hitting and winning classified ads and used the ezine platform to super target them. The results left nothing to be desired and the response was instantaneous.

Action Plan to Create Online Success

Before I start winding down, let me share a few more tips with you that are bound to boost your success quotient not merely in terms of web traffic but also from a bottom line perspective.

Avoid a Mismatch
Your product or service should be carefully matched to the ezine you have chosen to leverage for ezine advertising. Read the ezine carefully including a few back issues just to make 100% sure.

Frequency of Ads
Regardless of how large or small your ezine advertising budget is, you need to run your advertising more than once, preferably three times at least, in order to impact your audience and to generate a body or sample of data large enough for analysis.

Develop a Budget and a Marketing Plan
You are sure to get website traffic when you advertise in ezines. However, that is the means and not the end. The end is to monetize the effort and the investment. So set a reasonable budget, articulate a viable marketing plan, and formulate realistic expectations and milestones.

Using Ad Tracking Tools to Assess Performance
If you have been around the online block for any length of time, you have probably heard of ad tracking. In fact, ad tracking is what makes the Internet such a reliable advertising medium. There are a large number of ad tracking services and scripts from which you can choose. For instance:

AdMinder.com offers a free online course on web advertising which you should first take before you sign up for the paid ad tracking script. And then there is:

HyperTracker.com which is a paid ad tracking service that has received many favorable reviews.

Use an Auto Responder
An auto responder does much more than simply respond to an inquiry received from a sales lead. Use an e-mail address that is auto responder enabled to respond to the inquiry with your first sales message. This message should feature the same web address as your advertising copy. Examples of popular auto responder services include:

Test your Ad Copy against Spam Filters
To make sure that your advertising message doesn’t cause the ezine and you to end up in thousands of spam folders, test your ad copy thoroughly. You can use free tools such as to check your advertising copy. If you happen to hit the jackpot with your ezine marketing campaign, and we sure hope you do, graduate to a paid and superior.

Subscribe to the Ezine 
Sign up for the ezine you have chosen to carry your advertising message to make sure your message is being displayed correctly with the right links. Request a copy of the mock-up before the ezine hits subscriber inboxes. Some ezine publishers offer this service as a courtesy to advertisers to ensure that all the links and e-mail addresses are error free.

Our primer on successful ezine advertising is sure to help you get off to a good start in your endeavors to get website traffic on your Internet property. The key is to conduct research on the subject in order to narrow down the list of qualifying ezines. Track your ad’s performance and tweak the campaign when necessary. You will surely end up with a winner!

Increase Website Traffic by Becoming a Guest Blogger

In your ongoing efforts to spike website traffic to your Internet property such as a blog, an e-commerce portal or an AdSense supported site for that matter, you are constantly bombarded with snake oils and magic potions that promise truckloads of targeted traffic for a fee. Some of them may actually work to a certain degree. However, most do not. Why? Simply because there never has existed a magic wand that can spike traffic to your website. Generating focused traffic to your website requires hard work. You can either do it yourself or pay someone else to do it. There is a silver lining though and I want to share it with you because I have used it and it sure does work like a charm. Most importantly, it is free and will not cost you a dime. It is called guest blogging.

Increase Website Traffic through Guest Blogging

I do not think I have to pitch the power of a blog to you. According to research put out by Word Tracker, “blogs attract 55% more visitors and get indexed 434% more by search engines than a traditional website, giving you exposure like never before.” So there you have it directly from the keyword gurus—blogs work and work very well. Guest bloggers are Internet-savvy professionals with either a blog or a website of their own which they wish to promote online. Chances are that you are a member of this elite group. Guest blogging is therefore certainly a worthwhile avenue to consider. You become a guest blogger when you write for someone else’s blog that either shares your niche or is similar to your niche. I will tell you about the benefits of guest blogging in just a moment many of which you have perhaps already guessed. Let us first focus on how you can become a successful guest blogger.

More Website Traffic the Guest Blogging Way

As a guest blogger, you will never have to buy website traffic because financial transactions in guest blogging are rare. The blogging community is closely knit and has demonstrated high levels of camaraderie and mutual support. Favors are traded, not bought or sold. If you are a serious contender for increased website traffic on your site or blog, here is how to become a successful guest blogger:

Build up your Website Traffic

You do not have to be #1 on the Top 10 List of Blogs but the levels of website traffic on your Internet property should be respectable before you send out a guest blogging request. Why? Because the blogging community will first come to your blog or website to check you out before your request is entertained. Use tested methodologies such as press release marketing, article syndication, forum postings, organic SEO, directory submissions to high PR human edited directories, social media optimization and whatever else you can find to build up website traffic to your property. I think it is a great idea to encourage your readers to post blog comments. This happens to be quantifiable data that cannot be manipulated with ease.

Identify the Host Blog

Check out the blogosphere thoroughly within your niche or industry segment and identify at least five blogs on which you would like to guest-blog. I typically select ten blogs at a time because of my past experience in guest blogging. Pick the one you like the most for its content, website traffic and overall appeal. Do not send in a query letter like the way magazine writers do. Pick a topic that you think would interest the host blog’s audience—a topic that has not been addressed so far—research it carefully and submit a smashing blog entry with a polite cover note. Give the host blogger at least thirty days to make up his or her mind. If the host blogger does not approve your request, you have lost nothing because you can always use the blog content you have so meticulously crafted to submit to the next blog on your list. You can post the content on your own blog if the information happens to be dated. After all, it is the same niche as yours!

The Blog Invitation Page

Many bloggers openly invite and welcome guest bloggers and dedicate a special page for this purpose on their blogs. The page carries detailed specifications, terms and conditions for those who wish to submit guest blog entries. Look for these invites on Google by typing “Blog for us..” followed by the name of your niche or industry segment.

Form Style and Length
The easier you make it for the host blogger to accept your submission, the higher are the chances of your guest blog being accepted. Stay within limits in terms of the length of your guest blog. Copy-paste a few entries from the host site into MS Word and perform a word count to assess the average length of your proposed submission. If the host blog demonstrates evidence of heaps of website traffic, you need to impress a much larger audience. Your writing style should match that of the host blog and your content should be 100% error free—no spelling or grammar mistakes please. Your host blogger is not your editor.

Submit Original Blog Content only

The blog content you submit should be 100% original and should not have appeared on your website. Use Copyscape and DupeFreePro to rule out unintended similarities with other content on the Net and make the necessary tweaks prior to final submission.

Benefits of Guest Blogging

Since back links and increased website traffic are two of the obvious benefits of guest blogging, we do not have to enumerate them. You will not be compensated for your guest blog entry. However, you will certainly receive a bio, Facebook, Twitter and other social media links, and a link back to your blog or website when you guest blog. Some host bloggers will even give you a banner and allow you to put your phone number in your bio. The end result? Tons of fresh and targeted website traffic in your niche, a back link or two which Google will approve, and lots of exposure to you as an industry professional.

Quality website traffic is up for grabs in this scenario because if you can impress your newfound audience through your guest blog, they will all come to visit your blog or website a dozen at a time.

Increase Web Site Traffic with Geo Targeted Content

Are you a local business owner with a website targeting a specific city or region?  Increasing local web traffic to your site should be at the top your list of priorities.  Increased web traffic means more business for your site and ultimately more money in your pocket.  Here are a few things to remember when trying to attain more web traffic through geo targeted content.

You hear it all the time; content is king.  It seems like a simple task to put fresh content on your site but just any content won’t do.  It’s important to have keyword rich content that is engaging, interesting and purposeful.

Finding relevant keywords should be your first focus.  Research what keywords are good for your business and implement them into some good content.  Try to stay away from one word phrases as those make it more difficult for you to obtain a higher ranking.  Focus on what words you would like to be known for and elaborate on them until you find some highly searched combinations that will specifically target your business and its goals.

Once you have found some solid keywords that represent your business it’s time to put them into writing.  Creating good content is much more than slathering keywords all over the place as it seems as though this is what the search engines want but it’s actually the exact opposite.  Overstuffing articles with keywords does 2 things:

1.  Causes search engines to deem your articles as spam and hurts your ranking.
2.  Deters online users from reading because content is irrelevant and awkward.

It’s beneficial to find keyword phrases that are geographically specific.  For example, if you are a light bulb store in Los Angeles you have a much better chance of increasing web traffic and higher rankings if you use targeted keywords pertaining to your vicinity, such as these:

1.  Los Angeles light bulbs
2.  Los Angeles light bulb store

Simply using a keyword such as “light bulb store” to increase web site traffic will be incredibly competitive and much harder to achieve organic rankings and results.

When you start writing the article make sure you keep the most important information and keyword phrases at the top of the article.  Think of it as an upside down pyramid putting the appropriate information at the top and the less important content towards the bottom

The last thing to remember when writing content for your site is making sure your content is interesting, relevant and most importantly, legible.  When a local user comes to your site looking for information they generally tend to browse through content and if it does not spark any interest, the generally move on before the 3rd or 4th paragraph.  This is why it’s important to make sure you have quality content that is well researched and easy to read.

These are only a few of the tactics that will increase local web traffic to your site but it’s also very important information that will help your site gain rankings and long term credibility.  If you want a good site then keep it updated with good content that is written well and is informative to your readers.  Anything less will only cause your customers to move on and never look back.

5 Surefire Reputation Management Tips That Will Increase Website Traffic

Online business owners know first-hand that having a positive professional reputation on the internet can lead to more customers, more business and ultimately more money. Unfortunately, the opposite also holds true as businesses that incur bad online reputations will lose countless opportunities and may even lose respect from their current customers.

Businesses are at risk every time a person posts a negative comment, review or feedback about their services or products online. Keep in mind that anything that is posted on the internet is accessible through major search engines like Google and Yahoo! Just imagine a business prospect searching for your business and finding adverse remarks. What harmful consequences would your business incur? Would you lose a potential customer? Is there anything you can do about it?

The answer to the last question is “yes”. By using these 5 surefire reputation management tips, you may be able to prevent damaging online remarks from hindering the growth of your business and will also increase website traffic as users are much more likely to choose a company that is considered reputable.

1) Conduct a basic search on your business name. What listings are returned? Are the results positive or are they negative? If you have negative remarks posted about your business, take note of where these remarks are posted. In some cases, you can contact the webmaster or administrator of the websites and ask for the comments to be removed. If they will not grant your request, you may want use the services of a professional reputation management company. Most of these companies will be able to help you get poor user remarks removed from websites for a set fee. This will only help you on your mission to improve website traffic.

2) The majority of negative business reviews are posted on message boards and forums. Thankfully, businesses owners can conduct instant searches on their company names on sites like Boardreader or ForumFind. Search for your company’s name and see what is returned. If you find that users have posted discussions that may be harmful to your online reputation, report it to the administrator of the message board or forum.

3) Be pro-active by posting positive content about your business in Google before anyone has the chance to post anything negative. In an interview with Andy Beal, a much sought after speaker in the search industry and professional blogger, Dan Schawbel asked which reputation management tips work the best. One of the things Andy mentioned was that businesses will find it is, “much easier to build positive content for Google now–while you’re not under attack–than to wait until the negative results appear.”

4) Why not get targeted website traffic by building a credible online reputation first? There are countless ways in which this can be accomplished, but one of the most effective ways is to create a professional blog or publish informative articles about your industry that are geared toward your ideal customer demographic. This type of content will not only establish your professional integrity, but also give people the impression that you are a top authority in your industry. In the long run, this will also help you get more web traffic as search engine users and prospective customers will see that your business is associated with quality content.

5) Think about hiring a company that specializes in online brand and reputation management. Doing so will save you time, frustration and even money as these companies can get rid of any negative remarks in forums, message boards, blogs and consumer review sites. These companies can also promote positive web pages and media that pertain to companies by utilizing search engine optimization (SEO).

5 Easy Tips to Increase Website Traffic with Natural Link Building

If you have a website, whether it is a blog or a business based, it is crucial to your online success that you know how to increase website traffic. In your search for this knowledge, you will encounter strategies that you either buy, like a PPC campaign, or that are free.

One useful, cost-saving strategy that is common amongst most website enthusiasts is natural link building. Natural link building is an important search engine optimization (SEO) technique that works most effectively when a highly-trafficked site provides an outbound link to another website. The more quality links a website has, the better the chance it has of ranking well in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

While natural link building can be quite laborious, it is one of the absolute best ways to maximize website traffic. The key to saving time and to obtaining successful results when link building is to remember that it is the quality, not the quantity, that really counts. These 5 easy tips will help you create links that can effectively increase traffic to your website.

1) Write informative blogs or articles that demonstrate your professional expertise. If you are selling a service or product online, provide useful information in your article that your ideal users would find interesting. Once you’re finished writing, add the content to your website and then submit the URL to popular online directories. Unsure of which directories you should consider? Think about the topic of your article or blog. For example, if you wrote about puppies, you could submit your URL to The Dog Lover’s Online Directory. Conduct a search for online directories that are relevant to your topic and your website.

2) Get free links by leaving comments in professional blogs or by answering questions on major, traffic grossing sites like Yahoo! Answers or Google Groups . Every time you comment or answer a question, add your URL to your signature. When answering questions, stick to your area of expertise so both your answer and URL are applicable. When leaving blog comments, stick to blogs that are relevant to your website.

A word of caution, most blogs has a “no follow” attribute, which prevents comment spam. When “no follow” is present in a blog’s HTML, the search engines’ spiders will not count or follow user posted links when delegating page rank. Blogging platforms, likeWordPress, automatically assign the “no follow” rule. However, there are platforms where links may be accepted by trusted users of the blog, so it is important to also establish your credibility with blog owners.

3) Submit your website to relevant online directories, like Yahoo! Directory . If you are not sure which online directories are relevant to your website, Strongest Links offers a list of internet business directories. Some directories are free and others charge for inclusion, so do your research before you decide to submit your website’s URL.

4) Pay special attention to your website’s internal link structure. If you are using links within your website, make sure that all links have appropriate anchor text and avoid the words “click here”. A good rule of thumb is to link your keyword phrases to relevant pages within your site or to quality online resources. When referencing your web pages in your text, make sure that you provide an internal link.

5) Finally, as mentioned before, it is the quality of your links that matter, not the quantity. When using natural link building to increase web traffic, try to add links over time. This is especially true if you own a newer site. Adding a ton of random links to other sites may be viewed as spamming by Google and can lead to omission from the search engine.