Traffic Exchanges and the Internet Marketer
Internet marketers know that they are in a competetive industry and that there are many avenues of approach for them to market their products or services. Which is the best? All have their positive and negatives. But one to consider, is the user of traffic exchanges.
A traffic exchange refers to the concept of a venue (the traffic exchange) where you are exchanging your visits to other member sites, for other members to view your sites. This helps to increase traffic to your own website and bringing in more traffic. A rather simple process, but effective one, especially for the internet marketer.
There have been many traffic exchanges come and go over the past few years. The long standing ones, are generally the most effective. They will tend to have a ground membership that is active, plus newer members signing up on a continual basis. Thus, generating more exposure for you.
But what is the cost of traffic exchanges? Generally, they are free, and should be free. Members of traffic exchanges usually have to do a little “work”, i.e. surf other member’s sites. In this vein of thinking they are “earning their keep” at the traffic exchange. Although this is nice in practice, can be a little over burdening, especially if time constraints are of a concern for you. The better traffic exchanges, will offer paid services, just to ease your marketing concerns. These paid memberships can be in the form of extra credits, better surfing ratios, banner displays, even email promotion. All great advertising tactics for the savvy internet marketer.
As previously mentioned, the traffic exchanges that have been around for a while (generally more than 2 years) are the most effective for advertising. Why? Well, its simple. These exchanges tend to be more professional and cater to the needs of their membership. The “fly by night” exchanges and sometimes pop up, and then disappear only hurt the traffic exchange industry, and its members. Also, these exchanges, usually have a good core membership that are interesting in viewing new products or services, and can be new clients for your own internet endevors.
I must reiterate also, that this can be free advertising, if you want to put a little effort into it. Being a free member of a traffic exchange refers to the vast majority of any exchange. The more serious marketers will of course opt for the paid services of the exchange. But in fact, any free member can have great marketing success.
One final point to mention is that there are two main type of traffic exchange: manaul surf and autosurf. The manual surf exchanges are very much more effective in advertising and promotion, simply due to the fact that your site will be seen by other manual surfers. Autosurf exchanges have their place, but its not usually for the marketing end of this, mainly because one cannot guarantee that someone is viewing your site.
So, in general, if you are serious about internet marketing for your products and/or services … take a look at the traffic exchanges out there, and especially the manual surf exchanges. You may discover an untapping resource for your advertising needs.
Angela Abbette
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/traffic-exchanges-and-the-internet-marketer-70430.html
How to Get Top Search Engine Rankings
The methods used to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with optimizing your site. I am here to tell you – the time has come to face your website!
A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your
company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords – the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.
Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.
To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page.
If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign.
Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing.
Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.
Rick Jorgenson
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/how-to-get-top-search-engine-rankings-58970.html
Free Web Site Traffic Will not Blow your Budget
If you are looking for a way to grow your web site traffic without blowing your budget, perhaps you should look to the free traffic exchanges. Traffic exchanges are basically surfing membership opt-in sites on the web where they will display your advertisement or webpage to other members when they are surfing the site.
Traffic exchanges provide a free traffic and advertising method where a person signs up as a member and sets up a webpage URL to advertise his/her program or product. The traffic exchange will then rotate the URL webpage to its members based upon the amount of surfing you do. In general, traffic exchanges provide a ratio of 0.6:1.0 for each page surfed by a free member. This means that for every page you surf, you get 0.6 page credit for surfing. A few of them provide a 1:1 ratio for free members. Depending on the amount you surf, they may also credit you with bonus credits (i.e., 500 bonus credits for surfing “x” number of pages). Page rotations are timed and the time varies from 10 seconds to 30 seconds, depending on the traffic exchange.
Most traffic exchanges also provide a paid “upgraded membership” (a small monthly fee) which will give you a higher credit ratio and other incentives when you surf.
Ezine Article
There are two other advertising tools provided by most traffic exchanges which are beneficial to a website owner. These tools are a referral link to the traffic exchange site and a Safe List advertising option.
1. If you promote the Referral Link, and others join the Traffic Exchange through your referral link, you will receive page view credits when your referrals surf.
2. You can utilize traffic exchange Safe Lists to send your email ads to the Safe List members of that traffic exchange.
You should know that both manual and auto-surf traffic exchanges are available to work with:
Manual Traffic Exchanges — Manual traffic exchanges generally have a 15 to 30 second timer and you have to click on an icon or text area after the timer runs out to rotate to the next traffic exchange page for viewing. This is done to assure that the pages get viewed by the user. The manual traffic exchanges usually provide a better credit ratio per page than auto-surf traffic exchanges. Manual traffic exchange advertising will get a better click ratio on your ads compared to the auto-surf.
Auto-surf Traffic Exchanges — Auto-surf traffic exchanges usually have a 5 to 15 second timer and the page views rotate automatically at the end of the timer run out. The auto-surf traffic exchanges usually provide a 0.6:1 credit ratio for surfing. The advantage of the auto-surf rotation is that the user does not have to click once or twice for each page viewed and more page view credits are accumulated as the timer is shorter and allows more page views per minute.
You can cut down on your surfing time by using a free multi-tabbed browser (i.e., Mozilla, Firefox, Crazy Browser).
Traffic exchange advertising may not be considered as “targeted advertising” (i.e., email and ezine advertising or search engine clicks), but it provides free traffic which will improve your site ranking and promotes your program or product at the same time.
Advertising with traffic exchanges is really simple once you start thinking of traffic exchanges as TV ads. You only have the viewer’s attention for a few seconds, so your sales page must grab it and give them an action they can take. Some people say that traffic exchange advertising does not work, but traffic exchange advertising is only one aspect of promoting your site. A site owner should diversify site advertising into as many available avenues as possible and track the ads to see what is working best and adjust his marketing strategy accordingly.
Getting free traffic and free advertising through the traffic exchanges is certainly worth considering.
__________________
Conley Stallard
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/free-web-site-traffic-will-not-blow-your-budget-95317.html
Are Links Important For Search Engine Rankings
The amount of quality links pointing to your website determines the popularity of your websites with many of the search engines, so it is very important to obtain quality links. However, you need to know where your website stands in the search engine rankings in order to see how much work you need to do to increase and maintain that popularity rating.
Another way to build links is through free content creation or free article submissions. When creating your website you will need to fill your site with fantastic content and make updates so other sites want to link to your site. Search engines are now smart enough to know that content is related, so, links from relevant sites are more important then links from sites which are irrelevant.
The assumption still is that if a site has valuable content or services to offer that other webmasters will link to that particular site. Most importantly, work on your content for natural linking from other websites. It is hard to get one way links but if you have good content that goes far beyond other sites people will want to link to you, it is still harder to get one way links than it is to get reciprocal links.
Since page rankings is very important to the major search engines, and links influence this, it is important to create a game plan on how to build links to your site. A well laid out plan will help in establishing the overall link plan and strategy to drive traffic to your site. As time goes on your site will grow and your page rank will get better and you will have better chances securing quality links. As you website continues to grow and build in popularity you will need to quality links from other sites pointing to your site to keep your rankings. Link building never stops, if you stop link building and other sites stop linking to you, you could possibly lose your ranking on the search engines.
The amount and quality of links you need will depend on the competitiveness of the keyword phrases for which you are optimizing. If you put in the time and work on your link building efforts over time you will see results in the long run.
Article directories work with many different partners and by writing articles your articles can show up on many different sites. Your best bet in these times is to write articles and submit it to article directories. By using article submission services and directory submission services you are able to increase your ranking to your website, by submitting you are creating one way links back to your site.
Using automated tools are not link farms, the reason for this is because you decide who you want to trade links with each and every week. Continue building quality links and you will see that in time it will all pay off.
Getting the one-way link is more difficult to obtain than reciprocal links, but the pay off will come if you get solid long-term links and you will see the search engine ranking results increase.
David Fishman
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/are-links-important-for-search-engine-rankings-100850.html
Things that Do Not Work on Internet
Internet is an ever evolving medium. What worked yesterday necessarily does not work today. There are many advertising methods that are a total waste of time and money. If you do not know what some of these things are, do not worry about them. But some of the items on the list below will probably surprise you. I have tried all these and have spoken to various internet marketers for their experience. The list below gives in a nutshell the advertising that no longer works on the net so please do not waste your time effort and money in chasing a ghost that no longer exisits.
free classifieds
free for all link sites (FFAs)
viral generators
banner exchanges
link exchanges
search engine posting
multiple search engine posting
multiple search engine and FFA posting
safelist contact name blasters
literally anything with the word ‘blaster’ in it
guaranteed sign ups
paid guaranteed click thrus
practically anything you have to pay for
just about anything with the word ‘viral’ in it
purchased leads or free leads, it does not matter if they are ‘double opt-in’
auto-surf exchanges
paid surf exchanges
This is a simple word of advise from someone who has wasted a lot of time, effort and money on the net. Please do not re-invent the wheel of folly.
THINGS THAT WORK A LITTLE BIT
In the world of free advertising there are things that work a little bit. I would not say that really anything works well. The truth is that if you want to pick up about one new recruit every one to three days, that you can do it if you use the techniques I am about to show you. But it will require about two hours or more of your time on a daily basis. And you will have to be consistent to profit from it.
There are really only two methods of free online advertising that work at all – safelists and click exchanges. But having said this, you must realize that 99% of both are no good. You have to choose the right ones. Further, you have to use them the way I tell you. By themselves they will not work.
SAFELISTS
You can spend about ten minutes daily posting to safelists. You should pick up one recruit every other day if you use the top twenty list at Traffic Hoopla. And you may pick up as many as one recruit per day if you use all of the lists given at SafeList Boyz combined, although this is a nightmare to set up. I do not want to sell these to you by offering you my affiliate number for these programs. Look them up on Google. Traffic Hoopla will lead you to the most effective lists. SafeList Boyz will lead you to the most popular ones and give you an automated method for posting to about a thousand different lists every day. The response rate is much lower than with the lists on Traffic Hoopla. But you post much more quickly using the SafeList Boyz manager, which is sold through PayPal for about $5/month. Do NOT use the SafeLists listed on SafeList Boyz by themselves. Allow two to three weeks for set up.
Now all of these lists are free but offer upgrade options. If you get results will it be worth it to upgrade? That depends on how much you value recruits. In every case you are targeting recruits. You use them to find opportunity seekers. That is because opportunity seekers are the people who use these lists. Or more accurately, people with opportunities and an appreciation for MLM. Between the SafeList Boyz subscription and upgrading your membership on ten safelists or more you can easily spend $100/month. The figures I gave you in the paragraph above assume you are remaining as a free member. Suffice it to say you could multiply your results if you upgrade. To me, time is money. So if you see you are getting results, you should consider upgrades.
CLICK EXCHANGES
Traffic Hoopla rates both safelists and click exchanges. A click exchange is a network of people who agree to view each others web sites. This is arranged through a program. The program is a server you log into. To move from one members web site to another you click – hence the name click exchange. Many exchanges will cheat you so that you do a lot of clicking but you do not have other people looking at your site. Traffic Hoopla serves as a watch dog group among click exchange users by rating the reliability of the exchanges, as well as response rates.
SIMULTANEOUS USAGE
The problem with click exchanges and safelists is that everybody is interested in having their own advertisements seen. Nobody is really interested in seeing anybody elses advertisements. For one thing, there would n0t be time to do so if they tried. As a result, response rates tend to be very low. On the other hand, a good safelist or exchange will offer safeguards, to be sure people really do look. Hence the ratings. But good is still really not very good.
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS A CLICK EXCHANGE?
A click exchange, hit exchange, surf4hits program or whatever you want to name it usually has an offer that looks like this:
A) You agree to visit web sites of other members who have joined the exchange
B) You agree to look at their web sites for a specific period of time before moving on to the next member’s web site in the exchange, usually 10-30 seconds.
C) Other members of the exchange make the same agreement and agree to visit your web site in exchange for you visiting their web site.
D) Most exchanges give you a two to one offer. In other words you will get one visit to your web site for every two visits you make to web sites of other members in the exchange.
E) If you do the math you will see that this leaves them with a lot of spare visits. The administrators of the exchanges usually sell these extra visits to you and the other members. That is how they make their money.
F) Some exchanges offer credits to you if you refer other members to the exchange. Most of these will give you one visit to your web site for every ten web sites your referrals visit
G) Some exchanges offer indirect referral credits too, in a multi-level marketing fashion, except they’re not splitting up commissions among several marketers, they are splitting up visit credits among several marketers.
H) Often this is referred to as ‘viral’ marketing. But don’t let this word scare you. You will not get a disease. You are not spreading a virus. The word ‘viral’ is a description of the way your free advertising can multiply. It multiplies as fast as a virus does, from person to person.
Or, at least, that is what the administrators of these exchanges would like you to think. The reality is a little bit different. The truth is that very few people continue to use click exchanges for very long because they soon encounter some harsh realities.
1. Nobody is using just one exchange at a time staring at any screen for 10-30 seconds except for the most naive kind of person
2. Everybody is deliberately clicking past every site they see on the exchange.
3. Nobody has any money to spend. They are out there trying to earn money.
4. They have fierce competition. Their own products or services are rarely unique and compelling to this ad-weary group of non-buyers.
5. The ‘I-give-up’ factor kicks in for their downline and for them. They conclude that click exchanges don’t work.
But they are wrong. Click exchanges work quite well. The percentages may be very low but the people who are using the exchanges are the people who are actively involved in internet business. They are the right target audience. Even if you get one serious click out of 600 the effort is worth it. By multi tasking and surfing several sites simultaneously you can reduce your effort substantially.
Praveen Kumar
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/things-that-do-not-work-on-internet-70468.html
Driving Traffic to Your Site
Driving traffic to your website doesn’t mean forking out big bucks on advertising. We show you how to publicize your site without spending a dime.
The Internet. A vast electronic window of opportunity, offering you the chance to expose yourself to millions of people around the world for the cost of a modem and a giant phone bill. The trouble is there are so many sites vying for attention that most just sit quietly on servers, unloved and unnoticed. You may have the greatest site in the world but if the world doesn’t know about it, you might as well have left it on your hard drive. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to promote your site for zero outlay, from humble reciprocal links to vast organized banner schemes. Better get started then.
First Things First
Let’s assume that you’ve already submitted the details of your website to the big search engines. If you haven’t, don’t read any further until you’ve at least submitted your details to Google. It’s the single most important free thing you can do which will significantly boost your traffic – particularly if your site covers a minority interest.
Submit your site to another 10 major search engines. Do a search on Google to find out who they are. Lecture over. Time to face some unpleasant facts.
The top 10 websites receive around 90% of Internet traffic, which means the remaining billions either have to shout very loudly or get together and help each other. And in website promotion, ‘love thy neighbor’ should be your maxim.
Start by finding sites that cover a similar subject to yours and email the owner suggesting it would be mutually beneficial if you swapped links. Make it easy by including the HTML to link to your site, and point out the location of the link’s page on your site where you have already linked back to them.
A good way to keep track of how many sites have linked to you is to use Yahoo’s link search service. Type in ‘link: usacomputers.rr.nu’ for example to see how many sites are linking to usacomputers.rr.nu. An added benefit of regularly perusing other sites is that you can check out what they’re doing to promote themselves and learn from it. Chances are you’ll come across the Web ring or the banner exchange on your travels. Both are essentially an extension of humble link swapping, only on a larger and more organized scale.
Exchange and Market
Banner exchange programs involve signing up with an organization to display ad banners on your site and in return the organization places ads for your website on other member sites. Typically you will receive one advertising ‘exposure’ (or one view of your banner) for every two you display. The organization makes its money by selling the remaining 50% of ad views to paying advertisers. Most schemes provide click-through data, which tells you the number of people who clicked on your ad. Be warned, though – click- through rates are pitiful.
A good banner can expect to generate a rate of around 5%, a poor one, less than 1%. That said, if your ad is displayed enough times, joining an exchange scheme can pay dividends. There are dozens of banner swap programs.
Web Rings
Web rings work by sites covering the same subject setting up an organized online group to promote each other’s wares. Each site links to the next one, or you can jump randomly to any other member site until you finished where you started. Ring members usually display a graphic on their front page saying something like ‘Member of the Computer Hardware Web Ring’. These graphics encourage people to look at other members of the ring.
Web rings are a splendid idea. Not only are they free to join, but they are usually devoted solely to increasing awareness of sites like yours. Surfers who have stumbled across one Computer Hardware website are likely to want to look at another one, so chances are your traffic will increase more than through a banner exchange scheme, where advertising can be less specific. If a ring doesn’t exist for your subject, don’t despair. You can start your own one.
You can also join a traffic exchange. There are basically two types. Manual and Auto.
You join for free and for every site you surf you earn surfing credits. For example, if you surf 100 sites, you may earn 50 credits and your site is displayed 50 times to other members surfing in the same exchange. In a manual exchange you have to physically click a link every time the site changes, but in an auto exchange the sites are rotated automatically. The difference being that in auto exchanges fewer people actually watch their screens and in a manual exchange you are forced to pay attention to the sites.
Article Marketing
You could also resolve to writing articles based on the subject of your website and post them to various free article directories. You include a small author profile about yourself at the end of the article. People reading your articles may be curious to click on your link and visit your site. Another important aspect of writing articles is that if people decide to use your article in their newsletter, website, or elsewhere, they are required to include a link to your site. This may help you increase the number of incoming links to your site, giving you greater exposure and a better search engine ranking.
Sandra Prior
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/driving-traffic-to-your-site-501524.html
The Google Algorithm Revealed
How many years did you register your domain name for?
If it’s only one then that’s a point against you in Googles eyes.
Why?
Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain
name for one year. A domain registered for a longer period
implies that the owner is more likely to be legitimate and
serious about their web site.
This is just one of the unusual factors now considered by Google
when indexing and ranking a website. Factors you could never
even have guessed at in some cases.
How do I know this?
Google have recently filed United States Patent Application
20050071741 on March 31, 2005.
In which many of the search giants secret ranking criteria is
revealed and it makes very interesting reading. You have got to
read this if you’re serious about ranking well in Google. The
days of Spaming Google are drawing to a close. With this patent
they reveal just how hard they’re coming down on Spam sites. You
Do Not want to get caught out.
Below you will find the hard facts, I recommend you bookmark
this page now. You will need to reference it each time you
optimize a new site.
• First of all Links. It’s common knowledge that Google relies
heavily on inbound relevant links to rank a site. Now they
explain exactly how it works. 
This is a major factor so I’ll take a few paragraphs to explain
what is going on.
As well as the number, quality and anchor text factors of a
link. Google seems to also consider historical factors. Googles
’sandbox’ or aging delay begins countdown the minute links to a
new site are discovered.
Google record the discovery of a link and link changes over
time. The speed at which a site gains links and the link life
span.
With this in mind fast link acquisition may be a strong
indicator of potential search engine Spam.
Gone are the days of pages and pages full of link farms. You
must grow your links slowly to stay below the radar and be
careful who you exchange links with. That means no more buying
hundreds of links at once or other underhand tactics.
PR is now very valuable.
Your link anchor text should vary but remain consistent with
your site content. No more using your main keywords on every
link exchange you gain. That’s ‘anchor Spam’. Instead vary them
around your top five to ten keywords.
Link exchanges are still very important but you must work and
utilize them ethically. If you don’t and you get caught the
recovery from a ban can be months in coming and your host and IP
may also be recorded.
Softly softly seems to be the message. The fact is fewer but
better quality links will benefit you more anyway and likely to
be more long-term which is good to.
• Site click through rates (CTR) may now be monitored through
cache, temporary files, bookmarks and favorites. Via the Google
toolbar or desktop tools. Many have suspected for some time that
sites are reward for good CTR with a raise in ranking. Similar
to how Adwords works.
CTR is monitored to see if fresh or stale content is preferred
for a search result.
CTR is monitored for increases or decreases relating to trends
or seasons.
• Web page rankings are recorded and monitored for changes.
• The traffic to a web page is recorded and monitored over time.
• Sites can be ranked seasonally. A ski site may rank higher in
the winter than in the summer. Google can monitor and rank pages
by recording CTR changes by season.
• Bookmarks and favorites could be monitored for changes,
deletions or additions.
• User behavior in general could be monitored.
As Google is capable of tracking traffic to your site you should
closely monitor the small amount of copy returned in search
results. Ideally you want to integrate a call to action in there
to increase CTR.
Clicks away from your site back to the search results are also
monitored. Make your site as sticky as possible to keep visitors
there longer. As mentioned above it may also help if you could
get your visitors to bookmark you.
• The frequency and amount of page updates is monitored and
recorded as is the number of pages.
Mass updates of hundreds of files will see you pop up on the
radar.
On the other hand to few or to small updates to your site could
see your rankings slide. Unless your CTR is good. A stale page
that receives good traffic may hold it’s own and not require an
update. So don’t update for the sake of it.
Depending on your market fresh content may not be a requirement.
If the information your pages contain does not go out of date
then updating may not be necessary. If your market is more news
based for example then changes regularly are a must. In general
changes don’t necessarily have to mean fresh content. They could
involve simple edits to current content.
A further indicator that Google is really cracking down on Spam
is made clear in the following extract from the Patent. Mention
is made of changing the focus of multiple pages at once.
Here’s the quote – “A significant change over time in the set of
topics associated with a document may indicate that the document
has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as
score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.
Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate Spam.
For example, if a particular document is associated with a set
of one or more topics over what may be considered a ’stable’
period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs in the number of
topics associated with the document, this may be an indication
that the document has been taken over as a ‘doorway’ document.
Another indication may include the sudden disappearance of the
original topics associated with the document. If one or more of
these situations are detected, then [Google] may reduce the
relative score of such documents and/or the links, anchor text,
or other data associated the document.”
There’s still more to look out for:-
• Changes in on page keyword density is monitored and recorded
as are changes to anchor text.
• The domain name owner address is considered, most likely to
help in a local search result.
• The technical and admin contact details are checked for
consistency. These are often falsified for Spam domains.
• Your hosts IP address. If you are on a shared server it’s
possible somebody else on that server is using dirty tactics or
Spaming. If so your site will suffer since you share the same IP.
The impression I get here is that Google have learned from the
Spam attack they suffered in early 2004 and are determined to
eradicate it.
So what do you do?
There’s a lot to take onboard here and consider. But you can’t
go far wrong with your SEO if you try to grow your site as
organically as possible. If you know what you’re doing you can
take short cuts. Carry on with link exchanges but consider each
site carefully and slow down in your gathering of them. Vary
your anchor text. Add small amounts of good quality content to
your site regularly. Check your search engine listings and edit
your site to include a call to action in them if possible. Make
your site more ’sticky’ to encourage visitors to stay a while.
Encourage visitors to Bookmark your site. Oh and register new
domain names for at least two years.
Before you do anything remember to reference the above info
first. It may just save you months of misery as your site gets
banned and ‘Sand boxed’.
Overall keep it ethical and you can’t go wrong. Do not be
tempted to Spam. Stick to the guidelines above and you are much
more likely to outlast and out rank your competition
Darren Yates
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/the-google-algorithm-revealed-2393.html
Effective Use of Free Traffic Exchanges to Build Traffic to your Web Site
In the process of becoming an Internet marketer, most of us have used free traffic exchanges at one time or another. After all, they promise free website traffic, and it seems to be so easy to just sit there and click away. However, after a while, most of us realize that either we are doing something wrong or free traffic exchanges just don’t work!
Oh, they deliver free website traffic, all right, but nobody buys into our product or program. We soon figure out that the people looking at our page have seen it before, are bored by it, and are just looking at it, if they ARE looking at it at all, just to pass the time until the next click is due. Really, they are probably more interested in what is going on with their web page than spending time worrying about ours. Eventually, most people begin to feel that it seems so pointless and they drop out and go try something else.
Now, there ARE people using free traffic exchanges to generate real traffic, visits by interested people, to their website, only they have learned a few tricks to make this happen. They have learned to avoid some of the more common mistakes that most people make when using free traffic exchanges.
1. They don’t use their real page. Certainly, the occasional offer or web page is either so universal in topic or so tempting in some way or another that it does okay…at least for a while. However, think about it. After a while, you began to recognize many of the web pages you were shown…over and over. You even began to think to yourself, “There’s that one again. That’s the seventh time I’ve seen it in the last hour.” That is, you might think that if you haven’t already zoned out.
By the way, that “seventh” time may actually be a first time. You realize, of course, that perhaps you have actually been looking at seven other members of the same affiliate program who are promoting their affiliate link. Ever see “your” site roll by? Maybe it wasn’t “your” site!
Part of the game for a successful Internet marketing experience is to stand out in some way, and this is especially true at free traffic exchanges. If you want to stand out, you are going to have to offer something that catches the eye of the other surfer and encourages him or her to click over to your real site. I am not going to go into a discussion of lead capture pages and splash pages right now, but a quick search on the Internet will provide more info.
They sometimes don’t even send people to their “sales” or “pitch” page directly from the traffic exchange. After all, if you can offer someone some kind of gift just for dropping by that helps predispose them to look more favorably on other offers you present than they would if they just show up at a sales site.
2. They use the best free traffic exchanges. For a newcomer, or even for an old internet marketing pro, figuring out which traffic exchanges are the best ones to use can be a challenge. Rest assured, however, that it can be done and it is worth the effort. There are websites that do keep track of this sort of thing, and it is well worth your while to track those down and avail yourself of their knowledge. The good news is that these are generally free and provide you with additional information about free traffic exchanges as well as the opportunity and tools to help build your downline in the various traffic exchanges.
3. They build a downline. Remember the hours you sat in front of your computer clicking away only to find that you have generated just a few hits to your site? Well, to make use of the relatively untargeted visits provided by free traffic exchanges, you need to have hundreds of hits…perhaps even thousands. There is no way most people can or will sit there for the hours needed to generate web site traffic in the volume required. In fact, there are just two ways; buy it or build a downline. Having hundreds of people in your downline at any one site, maybe even thousands, can provide the hits you need for free.
By the way, this brings us back to being with the best traffic exchanges as they will usually have the biggest base of people to view your site, will be the easiest to recruit people to, and may even allow you to buy a downline, as in the case of WebbizInsider.com.
4. They pay for services. This requires a little savvy shopping around, but once the Internet marketing professional has his or her free traffic exchange system up and running, they are willing, at some exchanges at least, to pay to upgrade to a professional level. Many traffic exchanges will allow an upgraded member to collect commissions on purchases made by their downline in addition to getting credits when they surf. Plus, an upgraded membership often includes extra credits as well. With a big downline, this could be a business in itself.
5. They experiment. Maybe I should say that they test. One thing works good at one exchange but not as well as another. It may be only the background color is turning people off, or it may be the whole design of the site. Maybe the product or offer is just not catching on. One test of a product is “did I like it”, but, even so, not everyone is going to be interested in what YOU are interested in.
6. They treat their traffic exchange membership like a business. They take the stance of selling the traffic exchange they are using just as they would do marketing their main product or service. They keep records and try to track which exchanges and which pages are giving the best results.
Donovan Baldwin
Build Links And Popularize Your Site
What is Link Building?
Link-building is the process of obtaining inbound links from external websites to your own site to improve both direct referrals (people visiting your site by clicking on your links) and search engine ranking. It can be very difficult to get quality inbound links so I am listing a few proven methods that you can use to build back links that will help you boost your sites search engine rankings.
1: Article submissions
Write an article on a topic related to your site, then submit it to free article sites. Your article can then be reprinted all over the web, always with a link back to your website.
2: Press Release
Press releases can be very effective tool for alerting the media to your website and getting publicity through media coverage. You may include link to your site in the press release, there are number of press release sites for example prweb dot com
3: Free directory submissions
You can receive a free inbound link by submitting to hundreds of free directories. Just make sure you follow their submission guidelines and then be patient as it may take several months for your site to be listed.
4: Paid directory submissions
Why pay for directory listings if you can get them for free? Many webmasters choose to buy directory listings, for several reasons. First of all, your site will generally be listed much quicker (in most cases usually within 24 hours). Also, you can often get a higher quality link from a paid submission than a free submission as most of time paid directory will higher pagerank.
5: Three way link exchanges
Link exchanges are arguably not as helpful as they once were, but 3 way links are still excellent. For example you own Site A and you will provide a link Site B and Site C will provide you with a inbound link.
6: Forum posting
Join forums related to your site and become an active member of forums. Of course, you can include a link to your site in your forum signature.
7: Blog posting
Find blogs to your site and leave relevant comments on blog posting and leave a link to your site within the comment.
Alpna
http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/build-links-and-popularize-your-site-75815.html
10 Effective Ways to Increase Web Traffic
Today, there are many ways to increase web traffic to your website. Some of them bring more traffic to your site, but some don’t. Here are 10 of effective ways that can make your pages experience a traffic explosion.
1. Trading links with other web sites that related to the subject of your web site can bring you more web site traffic. Instead of trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half page ads, classified ads, etc. Moreover, a lot of banner exchanges offer free banner impressions just for signing up. Here are just a few banner exchanges website that offer free banner impressions:
http://www.purelybannerz.co.uk
http://www.linkswap.co.uk/
http://www.click4click.com/
You will find banner exchanges that offer free banner impressions more if you do a search for “banner exchange” on any search engine.
If you don’t have a banner for your web site you can create one for free at:
http://www.addesigner.com/
2. Start an e-zine for your web site. When people read each issue they’ll be reminded to revisit your web site. They’ll see your product ad more than just once which will increase your orders.
P.S If you want to start building a list but have no auto responder for capturing leads, you can get a very cheap auto responder here:
http://www.aweber.com
3. Form an online community. It could be an online message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community they will regularly return to communicate with others.
4. Write articles and submit them to e-zines, web sites and magazines that accept article submissions. Include your business information and web address at the end of the article. Here are the best places to submit your articles:
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.contentdesk.com
You can also use Article Marketer which is a paid service and I recommend using it to save you time. Just click below for more information.
http://www.articlemarketer.com
If you don’t want to write article by yourself, you could outsource article writing for around $5 per article at these sites:
http://www.rentacoder.com
http://www.elance.com
5. Give away an electronic freebie with your ad on it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away. This’ll increase your ad exposure and increase web traffic to your web site at the same time.
6. Combine your products or services into one big package deal with other businesses offerings. You could share a web site and advertise the package deal; which means double more web site traffic.
7. Submit your freebie to the online directories that list your particular item or service for free. If you’re offering a free e-zine, submit it to all the free e-zine directories on the internet.
8. Participate on message boards. Post answers to other people’s questions, ask questions and post appropriate information. Include your signature file at the end of all your postings.
9. Exchange classified or sponsor ads with other free e-zine publishers. If there is a huge subscriber difference between e-zines, one can run more ads to make up for it.
10. Post your ad on free advertising areas on the internet. You can post it on free classified ad sites, free for all links sites, newsgroups that allow ads, free yellow page directories, etc.
Nattawuth Tuntiwiwattanapun
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/10-effective-ways-to-increase-web-traffic-59830.html