On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Primer
Once your small business has an established website, you’ll find that the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) will provide the bulk of your traffic – with Google probably sending you more visitors than all other sources combined. Sure, you can submit to directories and exchange links with other websites, but they will not directly provide much traffic. Now, it’s probably fair to say that you should focus almost all of your online marketing efforts to ranking well in the most popular search engines. Below, I’ll list some tips to help you do just that.
Target Specific Key Phrases
Try to think what keywords a potential customer or client is going to use to search for a business in your industry. Now, take those keywords and make them more into more specific key phrases. For example, if you are a website designer, then you would want to use a key phrase to give your term a geographical focus like: “Windsor Ontario website design”. Or, if you specialize in small business website design, use: “small business website design”. You want to stay away from keywords that are too general because they are very competitive terms. If you choose to target “website design”, you’re going to be competing against every other web designer around the world – good luck!
On-Page Optimization
Now that you have chosen just a few specific keywords, we need to include them in your website so the search engines will know that your business relates to those terms. Try to only target one or two keywords or key phrases per page. Be sure to include these keywords or phrases in you Title tag, Meta Description tag, and Meta Keywords tag. Don’t worry about the Meta Keywords tag too much – the search engines (Google Especially) give this tag little or no weight when determining search engine relevancy. Here are some more ways to include your keywords or phrases in your pages:
H1 or H2 Tags: why not include an H1 tag right at the top of the page with your key phrase. Follow that up with an H2 tag including another key phrase or word. But, make sure that you use both tags, in use them in the proper order – H2 following H1.
Body of Page: make sure you include your key phrases in the text in the body of the web page. Make sure that it sounds natural, though. Don’t include it too many times or you may be penalized for “key word stuffing”.
Bold, Italics & Underline: in the body of your web page, try to use these tags to emphasize your keywords.
Bulleted Lists: try to include your key phrases in a bulleted list. Remember, it should look natural.
Alternate Text Tags: include alternate text to describe the various images on your website. This tag allows blind Internet users to understand what images you have on your site. Search engines index this information and you can use it to your advantage by including a couple key phrases.
Include Relevant Content
Content is now king when it comes to search engine optimization today. Why should your website be important if it doesn’t include any information that could interest a visitor? Including information and articles regarding your product, services, or industry is the best way to let the search engines know that your website really matters. There are hundreds of article directories that allow you to freely use their articles on your website. All you are asked to do is provide a link to the author’s website at the end of the article. If possible, try to write a few articles yourself so you can have some original content. Google and the other search engines will know if you are using someone else’s article. There’s nothing wrong with this, although they will give you a lot more credit if the work is original. My last suggestion: update your website on a regular basis. At least every month you should be adding some new content to your website. The search engines want to give the high rankings to websites that have fresh content added on a regular basis.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization is not an exact science. Nobody really knows how the search engines determine where a site will rank in the search results. The preceding article will give you the basic knowledge to obtain a decent position. You will have to continually fine-tune your website and analyze a competitor’s website to improve your positioning. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t end there. There are a number of off-page factors that determine how well your website will rank. I will discuss these factors in a later article, but this is a good place to start for now.
Paul J Coulter
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/onpage-search-engine-optimization-seo-primer-139715.html
Low Cost Website Traffic – Top 5 Methods to Generate Free Visitors
There are many ways to generate low cost or even complete free website traffic without having to spend what you do not have or cannot afford. Many people have gone into high spending advertising, and most of them have ended up breaking the bank before seeing positive returns.
Here I will outline the Top five ways to generate low cost or completely free website traffic that could help your home business opportunity or hobby website site a a great deal. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors converting to product sales, home business opportunity signups, or subscribers your newsletter it will have cost you nothing but some time or effort on your part
Exchange Links
This is a surefire and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.
A major requirement of the main search engines in exchanging links with other sites, is having the same or similar subject matter as the site you have swapped links with. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.Therefore this will help to boost your rankings amongst the search engines and increase the natural flow of traffic (organic traffic) to your website.
This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits when viewing other people sites. You use those credits when someone views your site.
Write and Submit Articles
There are many e-zines and online encyclopedias in the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do those articles yourself.
Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.
Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.
Make a Newsletter.
This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well.
As your newsletter gets pass around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that can regularly visit your site and to which you can market your home based business or products.
Join Online Communities and Forums
This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.
Share your knowledge and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.
Paul Wheeler
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/low-cost-website-traffic-top-5-methods-to-generate-free-visitors-138650.html
How to Get Free Targeted Traffic to Your Website
Traffic is vital to the success of your internet business but you do not need to spend thousands of pounds on pay-per-click advertising, solo ezine ads or email blasts to generate it.
There are literally hundreds of ways that you generate FREE traffic to your opt-in or squeeze page. The founding principal in all of your activity is to “leave a trail”. Wherever you go, you need to be leaving the link to your site, your URL, everywhere.
A good place to begin is by placing well-written Classified Ads on sites like UsFreeads.com, Craigslist.com, Vivastreet.com, gumtree.com.
You can then start a Blog using either Wordpress.com or Blogger.com. Both are free to join, easy to set up and easy to post to. You should always put your URL at the end of your blog entries and try to post something every day. Another way to maximise Blogs is by finding other blogs in your niche and posting to these also. Again, leaving your URL at the end of each entry.
Get involved in forum marketing. Find groups in your industry sector and get involved. You can find some good ones at Warrior.com, Yahoo Groups, Homebasedbusiness.com and so on. An important point here, you need to take a few weeks to build up some trust and credibility with these forums. Make some thoughtful posts, join the community and add some value. Don’t just spam the heck out of the members with your business opportunity and URL. It will get you nowhere and hurt you in the long run. Onve the members trust you and know you, you can add thousands of subscribers to your list by posting useful information with links to your opt-in page included.
Your next tactic is Article MArketing. Boring I know but a highly efficient way of generating targeted traffic to your site. It also generates thousands of backlinks to your site. Take the time to write ten or so articles and submit them for free to different article directories. Some of the best ones are ezinearticles.com, articledashboard.com, goarticles.com, articlesbase.com and squidoo.com. These all get trawled by the internet search engines on a regular basis which can get them indexed and ranked highly. The key to article writing is consistency as over time it can have a snowball effect with traffic coming from all directions.
Social networks are another excellent way to drive traffic to your site if you join the social network groups and forums for your market. Build a profile and homepage relevant to your market and then post links there back to your opt-in page, invite people to be your friends and watch the opt-ins soar.
Press Releases are great for generating free traffic too. You can submit to directories such as 24-7Pressrelease, PRfree and otheres that you can find on google. Anytime you have something to announce, a new product or product enhancement, a new idea, whatever, submit it as a press release.
Tools like Google Analytics will analyse for you what is driving most traffic. This is important and something you need to know because you want to focus on what works best.
I personally have used all these methods and had great success. However, it takes several months of consistent, persistent application to get results. So my advice, break it down, make a plan and then work your plan! It will not be long before you see traffic coming from everywhere and your opt-ins and sales begin to soar!
Greg Turnbull
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-business-articles/how-to-get-free-targeted-traffic-to-your-website-714151.html
How Effective are Free Classified Sites
Well I guess the big question is how effective are free classifieds and do they work.
Free classifieds are indeed a good source of free advertising and should be on every advertiser list.
In fact most small businesses advertise on free classifieds because of the instant exposure it could have
It beats searching for links,writing articles which you will need to do later on down the road but
to quickly and easily expose what ever you may be selling or advertising,Classifieds are a good
starting point.
Free classifieds sites offer a wide range of things you can do such as,banner placement,link exchange,and much more
well most of them,there not just classifieds anymore most are getting bigger and better ideals to
serve there customers.Search engines crawl these sites all the time which is a big plus!
Lets look at craigs list for instances and see how far they become,there like a household name these
days and the power of that site alone could make you thousands,If you know how to use them.
But there not the only giants anymore there many others to choose to advertise with and most of them
are free and effective.So are free classifieds effective? The answer is yes! and everyone that needs
free advertising and quick Should these sites.
But, Like I said there are many good ones out there just do a good google search and do some good background checks on them such as,page rank,vistors, traffic details etc.. and start posting some are free and there are some out there that are not I recommend using the free classified ad websites because, of course who wants to pay a classified ad website when there are plenty of free ones out there.
Mr. Writer
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/how-effective-are-free-classified-sites-737690.html
Increase Web Site Traffic in 5 Easy Steps
Web site traffic is the flow of browsers and visitors that goes in and out of your website. The more you can increase web site traffic, the higher the chances you can get to make a profit out of your website. Ideally you want to find a traffic builder that gives you instant traffic with little work.
Web site traffic is important for websites to function. No particular site will exist without having web site traffic and more importantly – targeted traffic; there is no point really of having a site without anyone going in. Owners of a website are continuously running the online business because of the profit they got from the traffic. Even the most optimized site will not be successful unless you can increase web site traffic.
There so many ways to get targeted traffic to your website. Most of them do not require out right money but guarantees to give you profit in time. There are many ways to get good targeted web site traffic as well. The methods are reduced to five ways to increase web site traffic
• Forums
You can host a forum or community that talks about any subject you can visualize. Search for the forums that can be added to the topic that you wish to promote. Carefully study the entire discussed topic and relate it to the questions asked during the discussion. The discussion can also answer personal questions. Make sure that in every discussion made, you put a small resource box at the end of it to serve as a link to your particular site. You must not advertise other sites, if you advertise it you will be banned from joining the forum. It is necessary to put your bio in every end of your postings. Do not pursue with some of the forums that do not allow the posting of a resource box.
• Make your own content
You can pass an article or web content in many websites. Usually, these sites are free and if you are cash tight, you can pass your own made web contents initially. Writing your own web content can give you enough money saving. Even if there are many freelance writers that are willing to give you articles for small fractional cost, making your own article still counts. Therefore, it is wise to do your own article. The article that you will be writing must match the topic of your website. Put knowledge that you know into every writings, you can discuss tips, tricks, guidelines that you get from your own life experiences. This will encourage your visitors to frequently visit your site.
• Exchange links
This is the most effective way to increase web site traffic. This is a careful study of all the links shown on the search engines. It is important to secure the sites that are linked to you to have topics same to your website. Targeted Traffic is generated if the same subject is seen on the recommendation by the site that you share your subject with. There will be an increased chance of reaching the highest rank with the benefit of linking with other site or search engines. Both sites exchanging links will benefit from this exercise.
• Newsletter
If you have regular visitors, you must send them newsletter regularly. It is either on weekly or monthly basis. This can be a tiring effort, as you will be writing many articles, but with the freelance writers that will offer you free articles, this will never be a problem. You should only put a small resources box after every article. The small box will serve as the link to your site if viewed and clicked by a visitor. Include all your promotions and freebies to the newsletter you will be sending to your regular visitors. This will surely bring much traffic to your website. If your customers like it, they may even recommend you to their friends, relatives and colleagues.
This is another form of exchange links allowing the member to view each other’s web pages by surfing. By surfing to the web pages, you are gaining points, the more you surf the more points you receive. You are also given an option to gain credits. This will not produce much traffic but it will obtain the names for your visitors by using squeeze pages.
Any of this method will increase your web site traffic. These five ways are proven to attract traffic in your website successfully. You can count on an increased web traffic and soon enough, an increase in profits with these traffic builder techniques.
Richard Legg
http://www.articlesbase.com/sem-articles/increase-web-site-traffic-in-5-easy-steps-96295.html
SEO Tips for Beginner
Web masters begin the optimization process of the web site, much before it is being launched, to ensure that when the site is launched, it is already someplace in the search engines for the users to find it. This technique is known as the Search Engine Optimization procedure for a website. SEO is important for a web site as it provides better exposure, raised traffic and better click results too.
Search engines are one of the primary ways that Internet users find websites. That’s why a web site with strong search engine listings may find a amazing increase in traffic.
Search for anything using your favorite crawler-based search engine. Nearly instantly, the search engine will sort through the millions of pages it knows about and present you with ones that some your topic. The matches will even be ranked, so that the most relevant ones get first.
Of course, the search engines don’t constantly find it right. Non-relevant pages make it through, and sometimes it may take a little more digging to see what you are looking for. But, by and big, search engines do an amazing task.
Beginning with ‘keywords’, it is the keywords that are reliable for the rating of the web sites. The most relevant keyword that meets the requirement of the web site, is used to optimize the site in the search engine, and it is the sit too rates for the same keyword. An improper usage of keywords might lead in poor performance of the site on the search engines, which will obviously hamper the whole work process.
For optimizing your website you must do this work
1. On Page Factor
Build your web page content around specific key phrases.
Organize your website internal links
Include your key phrases at Url, Title tag, meta description and Meta Keywords, Body Text and anchor text
Add fresh content to your website regularly
2. Off-page factor
Build link to your website for this factor you can use link exchange with another site, remember to exchange your link with similar website.
Build one way link you can use website directory or article directory to build your one way link
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Try tips above and you will see your website will increase in traffic and it’s because your website rank higher in search engine.
Andri R
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/seo-tips-for-beginner-669761.html
Earn a Full Time Income With Free Traffic
Advertising costs can add up fast. If you can not find a way to control costs, you will quickly be driven out of business. While there are some very good paid, advertising options, there are also many free ones that are just as effective. When you don’t have to pay anything for advertising, all the money that you make is pure profit. Free advertising options typically require a little more grunt work but the tradeoffs are pretty obvious. If you are looking for free ways to advertise your products (affiliate products or those that you own) consider using forums, Google and Yahoo Groups, free classified web sites, social networking sites, search engine optimization, directories and press releases.
Forums: Forums are a fantastic way to advertise for free. You can get targeted traffic that is already interested in what you are trying to sale. You do not have to actively advertise, although you can. Simply create a signature link and make posts or contribute to the forum like you normally would. Every time that you make a post, people will be able to read your ad. The more good posts that you make, the better your reputation will become. After you have developed a solid reputation it will be pretty easy to make sales.
Google/Yahoo Groups: Not too many people discuss Google and Yahoo Groups as a way to advertise. This is largely because spammers have ruined many groups. Instead of joining an existing one, start your own and set up protections so that people have to get permission before they join. Yahoo Groups tend to be better protected and has less spammers then Google and so may be a better option. Once you start your own group, you can advertise to everyone that joins anytime that you want.
Free Classified Sites: Free classified websites have become very popular again. Sites such as Craigslist, Backpage and Kijiji can potentially be good free sources of traffic.
Social Networking Websites: Social networking sites have become all the rage. They allow like minded people to get together and socialize. If you can develop a level of trust amongst these people, you will be able to easily make sales.
SEO: Search engine optimization and getting high rankings for your website or blog is one of the most well known ways to get free traffic to your website. However, it is also one of the toughest.
Directories (Blog, RSS and Article): Directories are a really good place to submit your website. There are many different categories of directories including, article, blog and RSS feeds.
Press Releases: Press releases can be a very powerful way to drive traffic to your website or blog. Prweb.com is an excellent site. It is not free. However, the results are extraordinary. Make sure that you optimize it just like you would an article.
Scott Brooks
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-tips-articles/earn-a-full-time-income-with-free-traffic-737515.html
Internet Marketing Newbies are Advised to Use Affiliate Links!
Social bookmarking sites are a plenty these days. The explosion of these sites had resulted to more and more webmasters using all means possible to make their site a raging success when it comes to search engine optimization. SEO is still the primary means to get traffic and sales for any business, website, or product.
Internet marketing newbies are advised to use social bookmarking sites to further promote their affiliate links, for more detail go to: www.internet-marketing-online-goldmine.com.blog, or their personal website. These sites are very crucial in one’s performance in the search engine rankings. They offer yet another way to provide webmasters the means to distribute their links over the internet to generate the necessary traffic needed to further promote their site.
If you are an internet marketing newbie, you’ve got to adequately use social bookmarking sites. You have to specifically put the links under the posts of your blog so that your viewers would easily share their good finds with their friends, families, and colleagues. The popular social bookmarking sites today are furl, blink, and delicious.
To make use of the web 2.0 sites, all you really have to do is to sign up with them to get started. Right now, all social bookmarking sites are free to join. You don’t have to pay for anything to avail of their services. Unlike most web directories that charge a minimal fee for inclusion, these sites are simply the better alternative.
Once you have signed up with a social bookmarking site, you can immediately avail of the goodness it can provide for your site. First off, it would deliver your site better search engine ranking because the links are counted by the search engines towards your popularity. The more users tag your website, the better page rank you get.
Tagging a website means saving your URL in the user’s personal social bookmarking page. You can think of web 2.0 in the same way as social networking sites. You are also given a page of your own. For more detail go to: www.dropshipping-made-easy.com.And that page would include all the websites that you have tagged.
Social bookmarking sites work very much like active bookmarks and RSS all rolled into one. The format on your personal social bookmarks page follows the same format as an RSS reader. The only difference is that the websites you have saved are arranged according to category. And just like a reader, the links are all active and clickable for your convenience.
If you know how to bookmark a page in your browser for further use, then you should be familiar as to how these social bookmarking site works. One of its main purposes is to relieve your browser of carrying too much links that can be a little bit hard to organize after sometime. If you use social bookmarks rather than your regular browser bookmarks, then it would be easier for you to find the things you are looking for.
But more than those, social bookmarking sites makes it easier for your visitors to share what you have on your site to others. You must have encountered tell-a-friend or e-mail-a-friend links on different websites. Now, those scripts are rarely used. They are fast being replaced by social bookmark tags. This is because such bookmarks can easily be shared with others. In fact, it is very much viewable by other people. Sharing and emailing the interesting reads over the internet has never been easier.
As an internet marketer, you would benefit more from your visitors if you have the popular social bookmark tags at the foot of your post or at every page of your website. This would not only boost your website’s traffic but its ranking on the more popular search engines as well.
Sign up for an account under the commonly-used social bookmarking sites. Then get their links and put them into your site. You never knew when a new visitor would drop by and would like to be reminded of your site often. These are the visitors you need for your site because they are good prospects. You can make the most out of their visit by making sure the can come back anytime they want news about your product, service, or business.
Narinder Bisht
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/internet-marketing-newbies-are-advised-to-use-affiliate-links-741713.html
Beat Web Traffic Scammers At Their Own Game
Every web business will eventually receive the phone call. It starts by sounding like a professional call from a local business. In fact, at first, it sounds like someone wants to build a joint venture, or make a purchase. It might even sound like someone needs your help.
Once the small business owner is hooked, the tone changes slightly, the company has something to offer you, but they are not spammers. They are always a partner with someone big that you have formed an alliance with such as Google Adsense, Ebay, Prostores, Amazon.com, or maybe your web host.
Now, the bomb drops. They promise to increase your traffic and put your web site at the top of the search engines, guaranteed.
There is only one plan of action – hang up.
Avoid Web Traffic Schemes
There are a few dozen schemes out there, none of them are legit. There is no legal way to guarantee that a website will stay on the first page unless a) the keywords are obscure or have a low ROI, and b) they are selling the top spot in the PPC program.
One way to identify a scheme is by asking them to step away from their script and answer some SEO questions:
1. Does this program use a link farm?
2. Will this program involve newsletters or email campaigns?
3. Do you guarantee that the site will never be banned?
4. Is a banner exchange involved?
5. Does a PPC type of script need to be posted on the web page?
It is almost guaranteed that the conversation will end before a single question is answered.
Many of these programs use hundreds of spam MFA (Made For AdSense) sites floating around the web. In fact, one company was closed down in 2005 for using an automated software program that published 2000 new websites a day. In 2007, Google started a new program that involved banning MFA sites and cancelling the owner’s AdSense account, forever.
Unfortunately, many of the advertisers are also at risk for being banned from AdSense. Once banned, no one in your family, or yourself, may ever have an AdSense account again.
Black Hat SEO
The best way to avoid web traffic schemes is to become aware of ‘Black Hat SEO.’ These are tricks that will result in a website receiving high hits, for a few months. But, once the search engines find the ‘trick’ they ban the site forever.
There are a few dozen popular Black Hat SEO tricks: doorway pages, link farms, invisible text, mirror websites, etc..
Quality Hits
Many of these companies have software programs that not only hit a website repeatedly, but even click the PPC campaigns. This is not ‘real traffic’. People who get caught on an MFA site and ‘clicked out’ just to escape is not a good click.
A quality hit is a visitor who actually wants to buy what is on your site. Success is not about hits, but quality hits.
Make Money
The best way to beat web traffic scam artists at their own game is to understand the different types of traffic. The most important type of traffic is a person who has been surfing the web looking for something to buy – and they find your website.
One website can make $10 000 a month, with only 100 000 hits.
Another site can make $100 a month, with more than 2 million hits. Success, and the chances of making money, is all tied up in the quality of hits.
Mark Walters
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/beat-web-traffic-scammers-at-their-own-game-180956.html
The Beauty of Free Traffic
When I was getting started in the Online Business world, I had barely enough money to afford the domain name, much less paying for traffic. So, I spent quite a bit of time looking for ways to get free traffic. There are a ton of free traffic exchanges online, but some of them are as useless as a solar-powered flashlight.
What you want to be sure that you’re getting is targeted traffic. Otherwise, you just have people using up all your credits, when they’re not even remotely interested in what you have to offer.
The way most free traffic exchanges work is a 1:1 or 2:1 exchange, meaning that for every site you view, one person views your site, or for every two sites you view, one person views your site.
The good traffic exchanges will offer more than simply Surf-for-Credit. Check out the unique features of each traffic exchange you find. What makes it different? What will make it work for your site?
You can find my list of favorite free traffic generators by clicking here, or you can view the front page at Insane-Internet-Income.Com
Well, that’s all there is to it. Just remember, with most successful online businesses, what you’re looking for isn’t traffic, it’s targeted traffic.
J.r. Mathis
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/the-beauty-of-free-traffic-85190.html