You can find forums all over the Web with a focus on almost any niche subject you can think up. By far, the Internet Marketing, “Make Money At Home” subject is the most popular forum focus today and probably for more than several thousand tomorrows, too.

It is easy to find forums with targeted traffic for any niche that exists. Just use any search engine, enter your niche keywords, and stand back. Find one or two forums that interest you and join. Quite a few forums are free to join. Some of them on the highly popular Internet Marketing subjects are fee-based, but do not discount the free ones for your traffic-generating marketing.

In fact I’ve had better results from free forums. Members of free forums have the same questions, problems and needs that feebased forum members have. They also have credit cards and will buy products that seem useful to them or products that provide resources they need. The first task you have as a brand new forum member is to introduce yourself to the other members. Most forums have a “New Member” category that is used for introductions and soft self-promotion…who you are…where you live…what you do…or what’s your interest or experience with the niche you just joined.

Create a short, friendly bio covering the pertinent details and post it in the appropriate category on each forum you join. Create a signature (Sig) that appears at the end of every forum post you make and on any email or private message you may send. All it needs is your screen name or real name and a statement or two, with your link, that will get clicks from any interested forum member. Here are a couple of examples:

“Tom Jones
Need a song? Contact Songwriter (http://www.songs4u.com) for music written just for you!”

“Lady Bug
Got ants in your pants? Visit Garden Solutions (http://www.gardensolutions.com)

for “Going Green” solutions to a nasty garden problem.”

(The links in the two examples are not valid, but used to illustrate the point being made) Whatever you decide your niche is, add your linked signature to every single posting or email you send, even emails to your mother. A carefully constructed signature is totally viral and will zip around the Web without you having to think about it again.

The above article is an excerpt from Free Traffic For Broke Marketers

One of the most important aspects of having a successful business website is how you are generating traffic. Without traffic coming to your site it is impossible to achieve the success that you desire. Therefore, it’s important to evaluate how you are going to generate high traffic volume. If you have been involved in any type of Internet business chances are that you’re aware of how much time, money and effort that you have to devote to getting traffic to your website.

Optimizing your website means you have to transform the content of your website to a much smaller and streamlined form and lessen your bandwidth usage while maintaining the way you want your website to look. by doing this, you will definitely help save you time and money.

Optimizing your website to drive traffic can sometimes seem overwhelming, technical and complicated. But here are some tips to easily help you optimize your site.

- Know your target visitors who will search for your site online. You need to figure out what search phrases the surfers use so  they can find your site. Always decide on the keywords that you are going to use. Think of some ideas that the surfer will type about your website.

- Next thing to do is to define a particular niche. You are certainly going to cover a very broad topic. The rule of the thumb is to optimize your website with the best keyword. Your Keyword should be direct enough so the searcher will find your site right away and he will not get lost.

- As we have discussed before, pay close to your title tags. For those who don’t know, a title tag describes a particular page of  your site. They are actually HTML tags that contains text. When you use a title tag, make sure that it accurately describes the content of your page.

For instance, if the content on your page is about  how to cook spaghetti squash then the title tag should contain the words “Spaghetti Squash”.  Always place your keywords in the title tag. This way any topic related to your page will be easier to find.

The title tag is very important since search engines look for title text when they are going to the index page.

- It is very important to analyze your keywords. You can use a good keyword analyzer tool.  One of the most popular is Google’s Keyword Selection Tool. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

- Always consider your keyword density. This is one way to optimize your webpage. Keyword phrases should appear at least three to five times in the content on your page.

- Always place your keyword in your headline when you are creating the content for your site. When search engines  scan your site they rate the text in your headline. So you should place it in the page headline.

These are some very simple ways that you can optimize your website.  If you follow them then you will see your sites search engine rankings improve steadily over time.

To stop the abuse and enhance their accuracy and reputation, search engines devised an algorithm method where web crawlers not only looked at the keywords, but also at the contents that goes along with them. With this new method of indexing, webmasters and internet marketers were finally forced to perform honest work. They stopped using words like “sex, xxx” and porn” where there was none and begun writing relevant articles that give accurate descriptions of their website or products.

As a result of this, new indexing system, the industry of search engine optimization (SEO) article writing was born. SEO article writers are required to write meaningful articles that thoroughly describe the product or website. Aside from using correct and appropriate writing methods, they also have to reserve slots within the article for the seeding of keywords.

As far as search engines are concerned, they index your website by scanning the top of your website first. Be sure to have descriptive literature of about 250++ words as this is what the search engines look for. Within that 250++ word article, embed your keywords in it without breaking the smooth flow of the article. Try to avoid grammar deficiencies because of keyword seeding. Your article needs to be as correct as it can be for the search engine to understand what your website is saying and what relevance it has to a searcher’s query.

You can try the old method but you will not get as good results as you will with the honest way. Furthermore, attempting to mislead a search engine can lead to a bottom placement in search rankings. Aside from being given low priority in searches, search engines also have the option of removing your website from their index. If this unfortunate development happens to your website, you’ve already lost your business.

The internet is evolving. Just as it took centuries for the laws of the United States to reach maturity, the internet is hurrying along at light-speeds to protect everyone who decides to visit it. If you try to disrupt the flow of one of its economies, various individuals and corporations that own a stake in the internet will immediately smother you and the tools you use for disturbing a relatively peaceful environment.

As honesty seems to be the best policy for now, SEO article writing is the way to go. Do not compromise your articles for the sake of keyword density. After all, when your customers get to your website and read a poorly written article, your esteem in their eyes will immediately plummet. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they decide to transfer to another website withbetter services and a higher degree of usefulness and accuracy.

To increase website traffic, here are 6 SEO white hat guideline you should already be following to increase traffic:

1) Make sure that you site has an accurate site map, and that the map is linked to from your home page. This helps the search engine spiders navigate their way around your site easily, and that ensures that every page should get indexed. There are many sites that allow you to create good quality HTML and text site maps for free and the advantage of using them is that the HTML coding they produce is likely to be accurate and search engine friendly as well.

2) The major search engines like to see various pages clearly linked to from any sales page that is featured on your site. These would include a ‘Terms of Service’ page, an ‘Earnings Disclaimer’ and a ‘Contact’ form as well. Leaving these off your site means that your page is definitely not as search engine friendly as it should be. So if you don’t already have these pages set up, make sure you do this as soon as possible as this will help to increase website traffic.

3) Make certain that the internal linking structure of your site works properly, and that everything links to where it should go. This will again help the search engine spiders find where they are going when they visit your site, and ensures that all of the pages that you want to be found are found.

4) Sometimes, you may be using stylized pages (e.g. a self hosted Wordpress blog) for your page. If so, make sure that it does not have ‘nofollow’ tags enabled, as that would mean that the spiders did not follow any links from that page. Instead, you need the ‘dofollow’ tags to be in place, and to do this in Wordpress you can simply download and install the ‘dofollow plug-in’.

5) Each page must have an appropriate Title that contains the keyword phrase which you are targeting in the HTML (or whatever coding format you are using) of the page. In your HTML coding, there should be a meta-description, as this is the phrase that appears beneath the Title of your site in the search engine results pages. Beneath that there should be a sub-headline that adds to the description that you began ‘building’ in the headline.

6) The on-page density of your keyword phrase should be between 4-8%. Anything less than that and you are not optimizing your page for that keyword phrase, anything more than that will make the search engine spiders believe that you might be ‘keyword stuffing’ your page, which was another black hat technique that people used to use that no longer works.

As suggested earlier, all of these SEO techniques are perfectly acceptable white hat SEO tactics that any sensible web master must adopt to ensure that their web pages are found and properly indexed by the search engine spiders.

Now, we are going to move into the realms of black hat SEO, why you might want to use it and how you can go about doing so.

The above artile is an excerpt taken from Black Hat SEO.

]]> http://mywebsitetrafficschool.com/6-white-hat-seo-tactics-to-increase-your-website-traffic/2009/feed/ http://mywebsitetrafficschool.com/traffic-building-tricks-and-web-20-and-other-ways-to-get-more-website-traffic/2009/ http://mywebsitetrafficschool.com/traffic-building-tricks-and-web-20-and-other-ways-to-get-more-website-traffic/2009/#comments Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:18:22 +0000 Admin http://mywebsitetrafficschool.com/?p=94

So what’s the point of having a Web 2.0 site if you can’t  bring in more website traffic? That’s a second generation website  you got sitting in your corner of cyberspace.  If you can’t tell people about it or if you can’t get them to come, why  build it at all?  It’s like having a theme park that nobody  knows about.  Here, you’ll learn how to use traffic building techniques with Web 2.0.

Build multiple webpages.

We don’t suggest you overdo it but having more than one  webpage other than those you have in your main website will help you expand your horizon, so to speak.  You can’t just beat your drum from one location these days.  You have to  use more than one way to get people to come to your site  and to build more website traffic in the process.

Use Web 2.0-powered social bookmarking sites such as  Squidoo, Reddit, Del.icio.us and Propeller.  These are  just a few of the sites that can help give you some much-needed exposure to an audience just waiting to be discovered.  You’ll find out it all boils down to being engaged in a popularity contest but that is truly the nature of traffic building.  Web 2.0 technologies just provided you with a better and more effective means to do it.

Use videos and images.

Don’t just limit your presence to textual content.  If you have video, audio or graphic content, post them in Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube and Flickr.  You can even post  your videos on sites whose owners are willing to build  links with you.

To make this work as a traffic building technique, embed a link to your website within the video or provide a link somewhere near the file title.  If people want to see more, they’ll find their way to your site.

Link it!

There are plenty of Web 2.0 sites out there that you can  use to build more website traffic. Take your pick from  communities such as Hubpages and Squidoo.  Build some of your pages here, follow up with some well-written  articles and a crafty blog you can update on a regular basis and then link your main website to it.

People who frequent these sites will find your write-ups quite easily and if they like what they read, they can use the link you have provided and land on your site. You’ll build traffic effectively this way.

Reference yourself.

Lots of people do it and you don’t even have to use the third person just to sound convincing.  Again, use Web 2.0 communities and technologies. When you post articles or update your blog, look for ways you can  reference something that is only found in your website.

Let’s say you wrote an article about the top 10 widgets to use with blogs and posted it in a blog community. Within the article body, reference a page or write-up in your website and provide a link to it.  Anyone reading your article who is interested to learn more can click on that link and be brought to your site. You get to build traffic using Web 2.0 without being too obvious about it.

Build a powerful, appealing site. Ultimately, all of your hard work really is to build more website traffic to direct to your site using Web 2.0 technologies and services. Make sure your site is worth all the hoopla you’ve built around it.  Build a solid site that is not only visually appealing but also functional. Avoid clutter and make content useful to your visitors.  By offering them value, you encourage them to come back, promote your site and  create some good buzz for you.

Affiliate program participants rely on sales to make money with affiliate programs. The only thing is that many new participants forget that they also need to rely on website traffic.  After all, without traffic, no one will be able to see your affiliate products, let alone buy them.  That is why, if you are in an affiliate program, you need to work on increasing your traffic.  There are a number of steps that you can take to get free website traffic. Three of the most powerful steps are outlined below.

STEP # 1 – SEO

If you are an established webmaster, you likely already know what SEO is. If not, you need to familiarize yourself with it right away.  SEO, which is also known as search engine optimization, may have an important impact on the success of your website, even its failure.

The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to increase your search engine ranking and to get free website traffic.  Having a high search engine ranking increases your chances of seeing traffic from search engines. Search engine optimization encompasses a number of different methods, but one of the most important is content. You need to have content on your website; it is what search engines pickup.
You will also want to use keyword tracking tools; they enable you to determine what keyword phrases internet users are searching with.  Using those keyword phrases on your website is sure to get your free website traffic.

STEP # 2 – Article Distribution

Have you heard of article directories before?  Article directories are websites that act as hosts for collections of articles.  They often contain a large collection of articles, sometimes even millions of articles.  In exchange for providing your content free of charge, article directories will allow you to insert a link at the end of your article.  This link should direct readers to your online website, namely the page that outlines the affiliate products that you are selling. Not only will it help to get your free website traffic, but your sales may also increase.

When it comes to submitting to article directories, which is often referred to as articles distribution, you are advised to create yourself a schedule.  To effectively use article distribution, you need to submit multiple articles.  In fact, the more articles the better.  You should create a goal for yourself, like submitting at least five articles a month. It is also important that you create content that is relevant to your website.  If it is not, your readers might not click on your clink; thus defeating the purpose of submitting to article directories.

STEP #3 – Blogging

Over the past few years, the popularity of blogging has skyrocketed. In addition to personal blogs, a large number of online businesses are now relying on blogs to help increase their website traffic and you can too.  Blogs are nice because you are given choices.  You can create your own, free blog or you can pay to have your blog hosted on your own domain name.

When creating a blog, you can create your own content, which may include product reviews or recommendations. In fact, you don’t even have to write your own content.  You can use content from many free article directories; many will give you free usage rights.  Speaking of article directories, if you submitted your own articles, you can even use them for your blog.  The only thing you need to remember is to link back to your original webpage. Doing so in each blog post will help to bring free website traffic
to your business.

The above mentioned three traffic increasing steps are just a few of the many that you can take to get free website traffic. These three; however, are a  few of the easiest ways that you can do to go about increasing your website traffic.  With a small amount of effort, you can easily   see an increase in traffic, in what seems like no time at all. In fact, you will not only see an increase in traffic, but  you may also see an increase in your affiliate sales.

To get more traffic to your site, it is a good rule of thumb when you are doing your keyword research, to choose keywords that are frequently searched for and are in high demand, but not being used by too many other websites and competitors.

Keyword research can be broken down into a three step process. The first step is the discovery phase. In this step you want to focus on identifying as many keywords or phrases as possible.

Initially you need to sit down and make a list of keyword/keyword phrases that describe the topic of your website. You can do this by jotting down, descriptive words that come to mind, and by using your dictionary. At this point include every word or phrase that you can think of.

There are several keyword tools that are available to help you generate a keyword list. This makes the job much easier. Some of these tools are free, like Goodkeywords.com and the Google Adwords Tool while others like Wordtracker.com are fee based. With these tools you will be able to generate hundreds of keyword phrases quickly and easily.

I prefer the Google Keyword Tool. It generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports statistics, including search performance, seasonal trends  and the best part is it’s free. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal It has some very useful features that include:

- Sorting the results of your desired keyword search by popularity, past performance history within the AdWords system, cost, and predicted ad position.

- Easy keyword manipulation where you can select a few keywords here and there or add them all at once.

- Searches for keywords present even in any webpage URL specified by your search. It can also expand your keyword search
even further to include those pages that are linked to or from the original URL page.

- More keyword results are generated based on regularly updated usage statistics database. This helps you to get new keywords or phrases.

It also provides you with tips on how to use the tool to get the best results, so that you can easily narrow down your final selection of keyword phases which will bring more traffic to your website.

Of course there are many more options available besides the Google Keyword Tool.  Below is a quick list of some that you can try out.

Word tracker

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook

Good Keywords

http://www.Goodkeywords.com

Self SEO

http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.php

Keyword Discovery

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Global Promoter

http://www.globalpromoter.com/seo-tools/keyword-suggestion-
tool.cfm

Rapid Keyword - software with a free trial

http://www.rapidkeyword.com/

In getting more traffic to your site, you must first do your initial research.  Ultimately, which tool you decide to use for your research is completely up to you. There are many available. I recommend testing out a few before you make your final decision to find one that works best for you.

With affiliate programs, you can easily sell products without even having to have the product in your hand. As nice as it sounds, you still need to have you own website; it is a requirement for many affiliate programs. Having a website is ideal, but to really make money with affiliate programs, you need to have a website that receives a relatively high amount of traffic. If you would like to increase website traffic, you should examine newsletters. They are a great way to increase website traffic.

Before examining how newsletters can help you increase your websites traffic, it is best that you first understand newsletters. When it comes to understanding newsletters, there tends to be a little bit of confusion. Newsletters come in a number of different shapes, sizes, and styles; they are all used for different purposes. Newsletters are essentially emails that are sent to those who have requested to receive them. Some use newsletters solely to update their customers and other uses them just as means of regular communication. Despite a variation in purposes, one the most common uses of a newsletter is to increase traffic.

One of the most common questions asked, concerning email newsletters is “why?” A large number of individuals, namely affiliate program participants, wonder why they should even bother writing and then distributing a newsletter. In all honesty, there are an unlimited number of reasons why you should write and distribute newsletters to those who are interested in receiving them. The number one reason is because you can do it as little or as often as you want. Many webmasters only send out newsletters as often as their time allows them to do so. It is also important to note that your newsletter content can be whatever you want it to be. In fact, you may even want to think about tying in your affiliate program or the products that you are selling.

In conjunction with an affiliate program or an affiliate product tie in, you can not only use newsletters to increase website traffic, but also to promote your affiliate products; products that you are responsible to help sell. You can do this by writing a quick review or recommendation of the products or products that you are helping to sell. If you haven’t tried the product yourself, you may want to try and find other internet users who have. Most of the time, you will find that many internet users are more than willing to write a quick review, just for the sake of helping others.

If you are an article writer or if you enjoy writing, you may want to write your own newsletters. If you are not an article writer or if you are, but you just don’t have the time to produce you own newsletters, you don’t have to. There are a number of alternatives for you to choose from. One of the easiest alternatives is to pay a professional to write your newsletter for you.

If you are looking for a free way to make a newsletter, you are urged to examine article directories. Many article directories give out free usage rights for their articles. This means that you can easily find newsletter content, that you didn’t write, without having to spend a dime! When using article directories, it is advised that you use articles that are, in one way or another, related to your website or the affiliate products that you are helping to sell.

As you can see, there are a number of reasons why you should at least think about writing and disturbing a newsletter - the most important of which is to increase website traffic. In addition to those reasons, there are also an unlimited number of benefits to using newsletters to your advantage. Whether you make the decision to write your own newsletters, hire a professional, or use free content from article directories, you are urged to give newsletters a chance. In the end, you might be surprised just how effective they are.

It is only natural that webmasters continuously crave more website traffic via higher search engine rankings. After all, the closer your site is to the first entry in the search engine results page, the more chances you have of bringing on surfer traffic to your website.

The choice between proper website content composition and keyword saturation is a continuing dilemma that many web masters and internet marketers continue to mull over. Should the page of the site be designed specifically to enhance search engine results ratings or should the site’s pages contain proper and relevant content with regards to its existing purpose?

To be given a high search result ranking - and thus more website traffic, the website must contain relevant information or content. This means that you can’t just jumble keywords together in a haphazard manner. You need to have quality content written down to describe your website and its contents. The search engine examines your website and all that it contains. The search engine will try to figure out if the keywords contained in your web pages are relevant to the user’s search parameters. For example, a user searches for the word “bird”. The search engine finds two websites with the word bird in it. The first website adds descriptions and additional information about the word bird.

The second website has the word bird, but it also contains other words like tiger, lion, zoo, seal all jumbled together in no particular order. Armed with this information, the search engine uses algorithms to determine which of the 2 sites has more relevance to the user’s query. In this case, the first website which has a descriptive article about“birds” is prioritized by the search engine. In addition to being ranked higher by the search engine, the user is directed to the first website and finds exactly what he is looking for.

Already, you can see that there need not be a conflict between search engine optimization and keyword placement.

You need to properly define your keywords in terms of relevance. The criterion for keyword relevance is based on how you think a searcher will write down his query. If he is looking for a pair of shoes, will he use “size 9” or “black size 9” or “Nike”? The best way to figure things out is to be a customer yourself. Go to a search engine and search for a single specific topic or product by using different words. Take note of the search strings you use and how relevant they are to your target.

Say, you want to buy a CD of Eric Clapton so you are also searching for a store to buy it from. Do you type in “buy Eric Clapton” or is it “Eric Clapton CD”? As a searcher do you have a specific album in mind? Are you searching for Eric Clapton’s unplugged album? If so, how are you going to search for it? As the keywords get more specific, the more relevance it assumes. This is actually a trade-off. Keywords or phrases that are specifically relevant to the topic at hand tend to bring in the correct kind of web traffic that you are looking for.

However, because of their specificity, your website will only be used as a search result if the user’s query specifically matches your keywords.

Writing content is not as easy as jotting down a sentence or two. Think of the search engine as an artificial intelligence that needs to know everything. The more it can read, the better it can judge the relevance of your content. That being said, a lot of internet marketers write keyword, rich content articles with a minimum of 400 words per article. To put it in simpler terms, a search engine is slow to grasp the whole point.

Having good content in your website is a blessing not only for search engine optimization and for increased website traffic, but also for usefulness to the person browsing your site. If you can make your site useful to me, I will certainly return to your site to find out if I can use something else again. People love useful and convenient things; even people.

Are you looking to increase your website traffic or increase the number of sales that you make online? If so, you are urged to examine pay per click advertising. Pay per click advertising, if properly implemented, can give you exactly what you need; an increase in website traffic and an increase in sales. As it was mentioned above, for a pay per click advertising program to work to your advantage, you need to use it the proper way. Pay per click advertising may seem tricky and a little bit overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, depending on the pay per click advertising program that you choose to join, you should be given a detailed, step-by-step guide. Speaking of choosing a pay per click advertising program, the program you choose may have a huge impact on your success. Two programs that you may want to examine include Goggle Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing; both come highly rated and recommended. In fact, they are both known to produce results; positive results.

In addition to choosing a pay per click advertising program, you also need to examine your keywords. If this is your first time using a pay per click advertising program, you may be unfamiliar with keywords and their purpose. Pay per click programs use keywords to make sure that your ads appear on relevant pages. Having your ads appear on relevant, related pages is known to improve the chances of a click and later a sale. In fact, the keywords that you choose can ultimately decide whether you can successfully benefit and profit from joining a pay per click advertising program. That is why it is extremely important that you choose your keywords wisely.

Speaking of choosing your keywords carefully, you don’t just want to choose them; you also want to research them. Unfortunately, there are a many online business owners that do not realize there are tools online that can help them research and examine keywords. To be completely honest, these online business owners are often the ones who end up finding pay per click advertising programs unsuccessful, a waste of money, or a waste of their time. The reality is that pay per click advertising programs are anything but that, but you need to know how to use them and other helpful online tools. As it was mentioned above, you should research and examine keywords. You can do this research with tools that are known as keyword research tools.

Online, you can find a number of keyword research tools, which are also commonly referred to as keyword suggestion tools. These helpful resources can be found online, easily with a standard internet search. Despite the fact that there are multiple keyword research tools out there, you may want to examine the keyword suggestion tool that is hosted by Digital Point at www.digitalpoint.com/tolls/suggestion. To get started, you need to enter in a keyword or a keyword phrase. For the most results, try one word, instead of a phrase. You will then need to enter in a security verification code; this is needed to keep the service free. You will then be provided with two lists, one from Overture and one from WordTracker. These lists contain keywords or keyword phrases that internet users searched with, through search engines, and how often those searches were performed.

As you likely already knew or assumed, you will want to select keywords that are related, in one way or another, to your online business or the products that you will be selling. For instance, if you run an online store that sells bedding, you will want to use a few of these popular keywords “crib bedding,” “bedding,” “baby bedding,” and so forth. Your pay per click advertising company will use the keywords that you choose to determine where your ads should appear and on what websites.

As you can see, the keywords that you choose are extremely important, when it comes to successfully using a pay per click advertising program. Not only will the right keywords help to increase your sales, but they will also help to save you money. While you are only charged when one of your advertisements are clicked, it can get quite costly when your ads are being clicked with no purchases made. Related keywords ensure that the right market is targeted; thus increasing your sale numbers.