If you have a website then you already know the importance of web traffic. Web traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It’s the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive web traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating web traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it’s going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) web traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to web traffic. They place more importance on producing a “pretty” website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted web traffic to your site…after all, isn’t that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, web traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that “this is the Internet and it’s ok” to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don’t do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as “sex”, the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn’t have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the “alt=” HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn’t hurt. Wrong…. Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site web traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net web traffic will increase.

Hans Hasselfors is a successful business entrepreneur and internet marketing consultant. Get the net working for you. Join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and make your living online. Become a member of The Business Professional network. www.internet-marketing-experts-online.com

It’s the question so many people ask: how do I bring more users to my web site? It might seem like a simple question, but it is not. Although the answer to this question seems to change on daily basis, there are a few things you can do to boost traffic to your web site.

Search Engine Placement
A big way to increase traffic is making sure you are indexed by the search engines, and then trying to increase your ranking. This is another article all together, but here are a few pointers. Make sure your site is “search engine friendly” and that the search engines can index your site. Check that your META tags are in order and correct. Put together a list of keywords that you would like to key in on and make sure those words/phrases are incorporated into your site. Also try to keep your keywords as specific as possible. It is extremely hard to rank high for broad keywords. Make sure the content you have on your site is quality content and grammatically correct. If writing content is not your strong point, hire a copywriter or web developer to help.

Web Directories
Get your site listed in as many web directories as possible. Web directories are sites that list sites by categories. Try to find some directories that specialize in your industry. For example, if your site is about real estate then try to get your site into as many real estate directories as possible. The Yahoo Directory is probably the best directory, but it’s not free. Getting into these directories can also help with search engine ranking.

Link Exchanges
When you think about it, getting traffic is a numbers game. The more exposure you get the more chances that people will come to your site. The idea behind a link exchange is you find other sites that compliment your site, and then contact the owner to see if they will put a link to your site on their site. In return, you add a link on your site to their web site. This has been an integral part of the internet for years and it is a proven way to increase traffic.

Writing Articles and Newsletters
In order to bring people back your site, you need a good hook. Providing a newsletter or articles on your site that people would be interested in reading is a good start. Once you write these articles you can post them on some article directories to get some traffic to your site. Newsletters are also good for getting residual business from your existing customers. Another good idea is to have a blog. Everyone else has one, so why not you?

Cost Per Click (CPC) Advertising
Cost Per Click advertising has been the money maker for companies like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Whenever you do a search on Google, you see that box of paid listings on the right. Companies pay for every person that clicks their ad, hence the cost per click name. The weird thing is that Google can somehow see how interested the user is in your site and then charge you more for that click. That might sound retarded, but its great when you pay less for the clicks that only visit your front page and then leave. I highly recommend Google Adwords to all of my clients as a cost effective way to get traffic to your web site.

While there are many other ways to get more traffic to your web site, this should be a good starting point. The key to getting more traffic is getting your site’s name out there. Post it everywhere you can and with every thing you do. It’s a long process, but well worth the effort.

Eric Friese is President of Tiger Web Solutions, a web design firm located in Auburn, Alabama. He can be reached through the Tiger Web Solutions web site at http://www.tigerwebsolutions.com.

24 guaranteed methods to get site traffic.

Most people start a website , hold it for 1 year and then finally close the site . Why ? The reason they give is that the site didn’t have visitors and I didn’t make profits from the site . When you ask them what they did for traffic , you hear things like article submission , link exchange etc. Those are not traffic boosters … Those are link boosters . So what brings traffic ?

I was recently asked this question by a fellow webmaster and my reply was :

1. May be google adwords .

2. May be YPN .

3. May be MSN ad center .

4 . May be targetting a nitch .

5 . May be advertising in an email list .

6 . May be their previous visitors from another site .

7 . May be banner exchange .

8 . May be POP up exchange .

9 . May be Traffic exchange programs like traffic swarm.

10 . May be ads on other sites .

11 . May be contest announcement .

12 . May be they run affiliate programs .

13 . May be they pick ranks in search because of target nitch .

14 . May be they rank for more than one term because they found variations to a high search term.

15 . May be country specific site.

16 . May be offline advertising .

17 . May be Joint ventures .

18 . May be word of mouth referals .

19 . May be mail groups like yahoo google .

20 . May be Press release .

21 . May be featured “site of the day” .

22 . May be “email this page to friend” function on website .

23 . May be free traffic from a popular site like “hotscripts.com” for a script they submitted as free .

You can also use article submission to get traffic to your site but then here are a few things you must remember .

Most sites only display your article title when a search for an article is done . The key is to make that title clickable .Example :

If your title says “How to make income” , then replace it with specific amount like:

“How I made $3000 in a month”.

Do the same for all articles you write and see your traffic counter cross limits ! Of course just articles won’t do the trick but when combined with other 23 mentioned above I won’t say it’s not possible .

You must also keep track of your traffic stats and find out which method is bringing you the most returns . Then do more of that !

I have collected articles from the last 5 years which are full of tactics from experts in their field and you can read them all for free at http://www.ad4business.com/sss/ . I bet you will find new ways of winning the internet war and won’t loose like many do … Go at http://www.ad4business.com

If you are working on a web hosting industry and are thinking about how it works, this article is for you.

Traffic virus got its name from the same virus itself that infects computers; damaging them and limits their ability to perform well on a specific task. The only difference is that, traffic virus do not infect computers like any type of the more conventional computer viruses do, in fact, they are beneficial.

The benefits of viral marketing sometimes be interpreted as something that helps online advertisers to use this type of marketing industry without them having to spend all that thousands and millions of dollars just for the information dissemination alone.

One interesting story to share would be the success of Hotmail an industry, which provides free web-based e-mail, addresses. It should be noted that hotmail did not spend a single penny for ads in promoting the use of hotmail as premiere free mail service.

Hotmail introduced the service and applied the feature within 6 months of its operation and the number of e-mail users grew to more than a hundred thousand within that same period of time.

Why is Traffic Important?

Traffic is the main core of the online advertising industry. It is about creating a huge amount of market audience who will keep you afloat on the competitive market to which you belong.

In order to survive the frequent blows and threat related to e-commerce business, there are several ways by which you can insulate yourself and maximize your earnings through the use various viral marketing techniques and strategies. Free-mail newsletters or ezines, referrals, postcard systems, software freebies, eBooks, free-web hosting and other affiliate marketing programs are just some of the most popular brand strategies in viral marketing and how you can effectively use each of them to come up with the most satisfactory and even excellent online advertising business without any fuss. v Free-mail Newsletters or Ezines (e-magazines) This works on a rather simple way. E-mail newsletters, which carries information from one site and goes to the e-mail inboxes of qualified members.

Once the e-mail recipient opens the e-mail, your link will automatically shows up on one part of the e-mail and contains a link directing you to your particular website. This is one of the most effective ways by which you can pour in clients who will become interested in your site and tell others to do so.

v Referrals Word of mouth are the best transporters of information. People who have had a pleasant business experience with you will most likely urge others on how they would benefit on the features of your current service line. This will not cost you anything but benefits you in the long run.

v Postcard Systems Post cards are also an effective ways on how you could possibly increase traffic on your site.

If some of your clients do not appreciate the informality of e-mail newsletters providing them either information on the product or listings of valuable commodities and features offered on your site, you could probably enroll them in post cards system.

It maybe a bit costly on your part but investing while doing everything that is right for your visitors, users and members alike is one important thing that deserves equal priority.

v Software Freebies Free software, such as ICQ, hotmail and yahoo IM messenger and AIM accounts and other free people connect tools such as friendster.com and multiply.com that lets people swarm together are perfect tools in the advertisement of products that would not normally require you to pay expensive fees.

v EBooks eBooks are normally sold at a very modest price ranging from $20 to $45.00 depending on the author, type of paper used and the publisher. However, your chances of increasing website traffic is decreased should you offer such books for a fee.

In some cases, shelling out some bucks for the purpose of publishing a book concerning marketing with your website posted on a cover to make it more popular will prove to be a powerful machinery in establishing contacts which will help you in transporting your site information undetectably.

v Free-web Hosting / affiliate marketing programs Multibillion search and mail giants are built upon the foundation of network marketing programs. Network marketing programs works on recruiting affiliates that will work for each other in exchange for perks or financial remuneration.

Every step down the managerial system contributes to the total output of t e team and increase your revenue by combining individual net worth sales and referrals.

In 1993, on a moon lit, warm summer night, I was surfing the Internet attempting to discover what successful sites had in common. I was really hungry to find out the secret ingredient of websites that were making it big.

You see, I was tired of traveling thousands of miles by plane and car. My mind was made up to stop living out of a suitcase. It didn’t matter that I had hit a peak in my marketing and sales career by working on projects for best-selling author- Tony Robbins. I was eager to simplify my life, settle down, and work from home.

I began my journey brimming with certainty about achieving my outcome. You see, years earlier I learned from Tony that every successful person has three characteristics. They take certain actions, in a specific order, and on a consistent basis. With that in mind, I knew that selling on the Internet would have it’s top producers -like any other field- and all I had to do is get their materials, then read, study and implement the wisdom divulged on each page and in every word.

I was elated to find out that, regardless of all the actions, the order in which the actions were taken, and the amount of consistency employed…that at the core of it all, there existed one essential skill.

Believe or not, there is one skill that virtually anyone can learn, practice, and master (after 1,000 hours) to become successful at selling on the web.

Warning! You may want to sit down before finding out the one skill that contributes the most to the success of website owners who earn boat loads of cash. Contrary to what I believed, it wasn’t search engine marketing, pay per click or reciprocal linking.

Don’t get me wrong though. Those traffic generation methods are needed. But if you drive a million unique visitors to your site per day, and none of them buy anything, or at very minimum subscribe to your newsletter so that you can follow up with an offer, you won’t be able to pay your mortgage, car note, hosting fees, etc.

So what good are your traffic generating skills? Every online company must generate traffic, aka leads/prospects. That’s what search engine ranking and other traffic generation methods are meant to do. Good news is learning the one skill all successful website owners have in common will increase your traffic too.

What is the one skill that will enable you to generate more traffic and convert more of your browsers into customers? At the end of this article you’ll find a resource box that contains a link to my website, click on that to find out. Deal?

After you’ve mastered that one skill, the next step is implementing it through multiple online and offline marketing methods. Regardless of what methods you use, I promise that the one skill will pay off big if you learn…

Copywriting. Direct response copywriting to be specific. By now you’ve heard of direct response copywriting, but have you invested time, capital, and effort in learning and implementing the skill? Chances are if you have, you are enjoying the benefits of using the skill. If you haven’t learned anything about direct response copywriting, keep reading to grab some helpful tips.

2 Simple Tips for Grabbing Your Website Visitors By The Lapel and Persuading Them to Hand Over the Moolah Tip #1. Headlines

Headlines are crucially important to the success of your website. Testing has proven that headlines can increase your sales as much as 1900%. The late, legendary copywriter John Caples revealed that fact during his phenomenally successful career. By the way, I define Mr. Caples’ success on how many sales were made as a result of his talent as a copywriter. And I can assure you that Mr. Caples’ selling success was nothing short of phenomenal. But let me get back to headlines.

According to David Ogilvy, another legendary copywriter, the headline is the most important part of an ad. On average, five times (500%) as many people will read the headline as the actual body copy. That obviously means we must spend a considerable amount of time creating headlines.

It’s customary for professional website copywriters to write as many as 100 headlines before deciding on one to use. You may think that would be a daunting task but it’s not. All you need are a few headline writing formulas. There are 11 widely used headlines. I’ll share 3 with you right now.

The “How To” headline is one the easiest to write for “do it yourself” types. “How To” headlines grab people’s attention because of the promise of learning something of value. For example, “How to Put Words Together that Make People Beg to Buy Your Product”. Get the idea?

Another headline writing formula that’s good for “do it yourself” types is the “If, Then” statement. Here’s what I mean. “If you give me one hour of your time for 12 weeks and your promise to take action on what I recommend, I guarantee your online business sales and profits will double — or you don’t pay me a dime”. How did that grab you?

The last headline formula that I recommend for “do it yourself” types is the “Specific Testimonial” headline. I don’t need to explain why your testimonials should be specific, do I? Okay, I’ll give a brief explanation. Better yet, I’ll provide you with a vague and specific testimonial headline, then you judge which one influences you the most. Deal?

Vague Testimonial: “Harry Toes is fantastic!” J.A., CA.

Specific Testimonial: “Harry Toes is brilliant… he shared one method that I invested $1,839 in that brought back $33,637 gross profit.” Jim Baldy, President, Bald Men’s Club, Gaithersburg, MD,

Tip #2 Offer

“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” - Don Vito Corleone, The Godfather. In 1972, Marlon Brando verbalized what every great marketer must master. Making irresistible offers. A powerful factor in making irresistible offers is taking risk out of the transaction for your prospective customer. Let’s face it, nobody want’s to lose money and get stuck with a bad product. Taking away that fear will boost your online sales.

Here’s an example: “For only $49 you can try out “21 Secret Traffic Conversion Methods That Rich Website Owners Revealed To Help Their Fellow Online Marketers” for up to one full year. If at anytime you’re not convinced that the secret traffic conversion methods will make your sells soar, simply return it and receive a refund of every penny you paid– no questions asked and no hard feelings. Plus, as an added bonus, you can keep the FREE bonus gift “Website Traffic Conversion Secrets Revealed” just for giving me a shot. You have nothing to lose… call now!”

Is that powerful?

Before I wrap this article up, I’ll share another example of making irresistible offers in the form of a rather famous story told to me by marketing expert Jay Abraham.

Once upon a time, a father went shopping for a pony to buy for his daughter. After looking at a few dozen ponies, this man had almost decided between two ponies. They were quite similar; in fact, the price was the same. He decided to take another look so that he could make a final decision.

The first farmer was eagerly attempting to sell his pony so he went on and on about how gentle and cute his pony was, but the father didn’t decide. The second farmer was different in his approach. He didn’t brag about the pony, he simply said…

“Sir, I’m certain you’re daughter will love this pony so here’s what I’ll do: Give me a check, and I’ll hold it for 30 days. I’ll bring you a saddle, bridle, the pony and 30 days of hay. If your daughter decides to keep the pony, let me know at the end of the 30 days, and I’ll cash the check. Otherwise, I’ll give you back your check, pick up the pony and even clean up where he’s been.”

Which farmer would you buy from?

In closing, you can convert more of your visitors into customers. It will take an investment of your capital and time, but I guarantee you the return on investment will be worthwhile. Begin writing headlines with the “How to”, “If/Then”, and “Specific Testimonial” format to grab your website visitors by the lapel and include irresistible offers to persuade them to hand over the moolah.

About The Author

Ron Hudson is an author, business growth strategist, and copywriting expert. Get a free copy of “Website Traffic Conversion Secrets Revealed!” by clicking on the website address www.bbgs.us.

Last year was the year of search engine marketing and the experts predict the saga is going to continue full swing until at least in 2010. When you set out to work on your site’s visibility, it is useful to know what the professionals that you cannot afford to outsource the whole headache to are up to and beat them at the game. Scanning SEO news, it’s pretty obvious that high search engine rankings still are the be-all-and-end-all of online marketing, but things are beginning to move on from here. The new buzzwords that stand out are accessibility and usability and renewed energy is poured in what are believed to be new opportunities in areas like local marketing. But how much bang for your buck will you get this time?

‘Accessibility!’. ‘Usability!’ Apparently that is what the professional SEO community is focusing on to get traffic numbers up for their clients. Evidence the popularity of these words themselves. A keyword tracking tool like wordtracker shows this in a matter of seconds. Over the last two months ‘accessibility’ has been scoring a count of 158 and usability more than double that number, 308. Not a lot of queries perhaps compared to a word like ’shoes’ or ‘digital cameras’ or any tangible product you might be selling, but then -luckily- there are not as many SEO businesses out there as shoe shops.

So how do accessibility and usability factor in SEO strategies? Is it again more of the same or are you missing out on vital elements if you simply improve on your existing optimising strategies? As your strategy for online marketing is on its way and you are getting the hang of having the right keywords to describe your business, it’s time to integrate everything yet again and focus on your site’s usability and accessibility.

Usability

What is meant by usability is generally how well a site can be navigated through links, graphics and text. All your optimising efforts should have one goal in mind: attracting customers. Does your site still provide valuable information to your human visitors now that the spiders and robots can read it? This is key, say the guys at doubleclick.com, who have got good insights on what’s going on in online marketing in a broad sense. “Personalization is the hot term for relevancy, with the goal being to intertwine search with a consumer’s daily activity. As clients become more sophisticated with increased demands, the marketplace will yield more efficient results. Technology will continue to be created to facilitate the massive amounts of data currently sorted by the engines”, they report. Perhaps it is totally obvious, but you would be surprised how many strategies fail simply on wording and text writing.

It’s no use optimising for search engines if the visitors to your site are not going to be impressed by what they read. Overly-complex phrasing will have to become a thing of the past and using common sense, neutral language will open up the content to a wider audience of search terms. It is best to get a copywriter to do this for you. If you are not sure whether your site needs a professional writer’s touch, there are some tools you can run over it to see if your linked terms actually make sense in the wider context. Throw your pages through this tool (free trial of seven days) and consider contacting a freelance copywriter for a quote if it appears your content is hampered; http://www.ezapplications.com/samples.htm.

There are millions of similar tools out there that can give you quite a good insight into your content. If you think your content is a mess, consider hiring a freelance copywriter to match content and keywords.

Accessibility Accessibility of sites is way more of a technological issue. You will have what is generally considered an ‘accessible’ website if it can be read by all browsers. Providing as much ‘access’ to your site/content as possible perhaps has a number of added dimensions that you are not aware of and it is good to pay notice to every aspect of the matching between your content and the search engines. The various limitations of browsers other than Internet Explorer and Netscape are quite distinct and need paying attention to during this stage of your optimisation efforts. For instance, the Lynx browser is a text-only browser with no support for tables, CSS, images, JavaScript, Flash or audio and video content. There are various tools that replace images in the form of ALT text, JavaScript through the

There are two good ways you can check how accessible your website is. Simply download the Lynx browser to see if you can successfully access all your pages and download the Opera browser and follow their instructions to enhanced accessibility. Good SEOs focus on a few standard setting organisations’ guidelines, which are complex systems of rules on unifying coding. What SEOs make sure of is that users from other languages and cultures, and users of differing age groups are not excluded from your site because of some silly technical hiccups. Where an SEO says he’s making all the difference for his clients is that he has numerous checklists to make sure your business in whatever location or segment it is, is optimised. He likely will market his services saying that he will make your site more localised than your competition.

There is a lot of scepticism on the strategies in use here and it remains to be seen whether better accessible local business site optimisation will actually translate into tangible higher Return on Investment numbers. Local search appears to be performing well for national advertisers seeking to segment markets. The local dry cleaner however doesn’t have (or probably need) a Web site so the lead is not accurately tracked, and the value remains doubtful. Don’t buy into it until you see results from comparable segments to the one you are in!

All lists SEO’s use to make sure your site is technically kosher are likely variations in one form or another of the lengthy, prioritised in-depth checkpoints published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding of the web. It can be found here: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/. It is not deemed 100% fool proof, but it’s said to be Google-proof. The checklist consists of general, common-sense priorities that designers and programmers must take heed of. The bulk of the checkpoints are likely issues you’ve comply with for years already, but it’s always good to see if there’s anything new. It could give you that edge over the competition you need!

Search engines increasingly take their lead from Google and use hyper linked text for relevancy so checking that your links make sense all the time is not a luxury but incremental for your business. Some SEOs will run software that check that if a hyperlink is removed from the text -something that easily happens in forms- and determine whether it still makes sense in the general context of your site. An SEO would replace a simple hyperlinked word like ‘more’, with a more descriptive term such as ‘more news and events’, or similar. You get the idea here.

Source code in general is also quite important. Again, w3 sets the standard and you can run your site through their validator tool (http://validator.w3.org/) to get it analysed to see if search engine spiders/robots have any problems splitting your content/page into sections before indexing it - e.g. header, metadata tags, headings, normal text, etc. If the spider has difficulty in calculating the structure of your code, some of the text could be misclassified or omitted. Find out and optimise!

The blog explosion created a great opportunity for savvy marketers–they could post their URL’s in the comments of blogs and reap the benefits of links back to their sites as the search engines crawled through.

Some undertook blog-marketing responsibly. They found blogs legitimately related to their sites and offered insightful, relevant commentary on issues. In exchange for adding to discussion, they were rewarded with a link.

Others found more nefarious ways to take advantage of the link opportunity, and “blog spam” became a concern. Comment sections of blogs were bombarded with URL’s that were not even tangentially related to their content. Incidents became increasingly common and obvious.

Google and the other major search engines determined this blog spam was undermining their efforts to create search engine rankings that accurately reflected the quality and utility of web sites.

And now, as a result, we have the “nofollow” tag. Inclusion of the tag tells search engine robots to ignore a link, rather than cataloging it. The command will automatically become a part of many blogs, as Blogger (a Google enterprise) and several other major blog hosts have announced their intention to build the feature into their offerings.

There is some question as to the efficacy of “nofollow.” Already, some bloggers who are not enamored with the concept are protesting the move and establishing “nofollow free zones.” A quick look through the forums demonstrates a desire on the part of many to discover workarounds for the tag. Some argue that implementation of the technique will not be universal, and its overall impact will not be quite as severe as some believed.

There is no question, however, that “nofollow” will reduce the effectiveness of link-building strategies utilizing blog commentary. As “nofollow” is implemented, site owners who have relied on these techniques will undoubtedly see a drop in their incoming link totals.

Recent “nofollow” events are another chapter in a growing saga regarding linking tactics and the search engines.

Link free-for-all pages were once the promoter’s way to create traffic. Now they are overlooked by the engines–if not banned outright. Partner pages and other mass link dumps have gradually declined in importance.

Link trading is dying due to its cumbersome nature and limited effectiveness. Totally organic link accumulation is slow and gets even slower as the market crowds.

Cross-linking techniques are risky and are generally only available to those who own a myriad of sites.

Where will new links be found? One option offering serious potential is actually building off-site links in the form of freely distributed content. Authoring a valuable, informative article and distributing it with a byline (resource box) containing a link back to one’s site, offers a splendid opportunity to increase links. The results are tremendous and are generally felt relatively quickly.

Though effective, article authoring and distribution is not a simple process. The supplier must have appropriate information regarding submission locations. The content must be good enough to result in acceptance at those sites. The supplier must be prepared to embark on the tedious process of submitting articles to site after site.

It does require a significant investment of time, energy and expertise and corner-cutting is not a good option. A low-quality article or an ineffective submission plan will produce no tangible result and could actually decrease a site’s credibility and marketability.

Article Staff writes custom content for the internet and the leverages that content to maximize its value through viral marketing distribution tactics. Article Staff provides content solutions of all types, including editing services.

http://www.articlestaff.netfirms.com

What runs through your mind when you hear that ezine articles will bring you masses of fr^e traffic, get you higher listings in the search engines, and raise your profile on the web?

For many people, their reaction is this: “But I’m not an expert - how can I write an article?”

Well, you don’t have to be an expert and you don’t even have to write the article - at least not much of it.

Interviewing internet experts is one of the easiest ways of coming up with new articles - all you do is ask the questions!

Here are some tips on how to interview internet experts:

1. Ask them to introduce themselves to your readers - how did they get started in eCommerce? What products or services do they market and what are their domain names?

2. What is their main promotion technique? Why does it work so well?

3. Did they have a mentor? How important was their mentor in getting where they are today?

4. What is the biggest mistake they made in their online career?

5. What projects are they working on right now?

6. What is the one program or software they couldn’t do without?

7. What single piece of advice would they give to someone starting out in online business?

Once you get their answers, you’ll immediately come up with half-a-dozen follow-on questions. Write back to them with your extra questions. You’ll quickly have more material than you can fit in your article.

To make your article flow properly, use chatty phrases like: “that’s interesting, Joe…” or “that’s a really good tip, Mary”. Give the reader the feeling that you were having a real conversation.

The amazing thing about this technique is you’ll never run out of new articles - there are enough experts on the web to keep you going for years to come.

Which is why I call this system The Perpetual Traffic Generator.

————————————————————
Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business. Click
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There’s a stiff wind blowing in a new direction on the web. And you’d benefit from taking the time to notice the direction its headed.

Website owners are clamoring for “holy grail” hyper targeted (relevant) links from sites with a lot of traffic and high pagerank. More than ever, we are all looking for fewer links to our sites, but much more powerful links.

Another trend to watch and certainly implement on your site is getting the links out of your link directory and onto the content pages of your site.

The trick here is to go through you link directory and clear it of dead wood. Certainly all links who are not reciprocating must go. Then get rid of low-traffic sites with no or very little pagerank. They are doing you no good.

Once you have whittled your directory down to a lean, mean group of links from sites that matter, contact those partners and tell them you are moving their link to a higher traffic spot on your site.

They will of course be glad to hear this. Also look out for deals you can make with each of them to do the same for your site.

“But Jack, won’t this send traffic away from my site?” With all the excitement I can muster in response to that, the #1 question I get, YES!

But it will also work for you as you seek the same kind of link from other sites. Look, you are sending people away from your site anyway. People who are just not going to take action despite your efforts at top-notch content and offers.

Why not reward your partners with traffic like that, where the person might just take action on a partner site? If you have a similar link on THEIR site, you are going to benefit from traffic in the same exact way.

It’s all about how you want people to leave your site. Most are going to do it without doing much more than sign up for your list. Good. You can get them back later. But if they are closing their browser or leaving through a link that has no benefit to you, what have you got in the end? Squat.

But when you are one of your link partners big traffic producers, they are going to be willing to put you higher and higher in their site. You have a foothold because you are a great link partner!

Let loose of your old-fashioned and outdated theories on losing traffic through links on your content pages. The system of link directories hidden in deep corners of your site where no humans ever visit is dying an ugly death.

Getting hip to the changing winds on the net will reap huge rewards for the webmaster who brings their links out from the dark corners of their site and puts them where people can use them.

Seek partners who will do the same for you, and you will actually get an increase in all that’s good: traffic, sales, customers, rankings, and profits.

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution, available at http://power-linking-profits.com See also http://webfoxmedia.com for more information.