How to Build Web site Traffic with Customized Content

To attract and engage qualified new visitors, says Tom Pick, a Web marketing consultant, construction firms must offer content that both helps the visitor and positions their company as the expert in that market niche.

Here are a few of Pick’s suggestions to attract visitors to your Web site with compelling content:

News feeds. No one has time to monitor all the various sources of industry intelligence. Publishing an aggregated news feed on your site lets you provide your visitors with timely industry news in one place. Services such as Moreover, NetContent, and YellowBrix offer customized news feeds based on your specifications.

White papers. Still popular with both marketers and prospects, a well-written white paper

subtly positions your company as an expert, while providing useful “how to” type information to the reader. You can write the white paper internally (if you have the right resources), hire a freelance writer, or have the paper authored on your behalf by an analyst group or recognized industry expert. This last option is the most expensive, but also has the greatest impact.

Webinars. Essentially PowerPoint presentations delivered online using an Internet conferencing service, webinars are an increasingly popular way to present educational and white-paper-like content. Upside: Webinars give your message the combined impact of audio, visuals, and interactivity. Downside: They tie your audience to their computers for 30 to 60 minutes.

Podcasts. Audio podcasts can be almost any length and used for a variety of purposes from creating an interest-generating “teaser” to an audio white paper. Once downloaded to an MP3 player, a podcast can be listened to virtually anywhere. Although you could record a podcast using various software packages or Web services, Pick recommends hiring an expert to assure that your podcast is produced and promoted effectively and professionally.

Link exchange and Yahoo pipes

Link exchange and Yahoo pipes have a very nice future of combining their power together into the new trend of finding link partners. But let me explain what is Yahoo pipes, because this was released recently and not so many people had chance to use it. According to the quote from Yahoo website pipe is 'it is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator; using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.' But behind this shy definition stands new potential. Imagine that now you can gather RSS feeds from different web sites and make then searchable under different parameters in a very simple visible form. And people can submit their own data into the search forms to get very specific answers. And you don't need to be programmer. With the help of visual constructor you can create your simple (but not primitive) search engines that is focused to the feeds that you choose. And you don't need having ANY programming talents to make it work. You save it as your own Yahoo pipe and now every visitor of this pipe can submit necessary data and get result from the feeds of this pipe.



How Can this Help Link Exchange?



Keep in your mind that Yahoo pipe is kind of search engine that searches the feeds that you need. Now this is real case example of how you can get extra boost to your link exchange directories with new Yahoo technology. Grab all RSS feeds URLs of your link exchange directories. If your directories don't have RSS feeds, than you are still in the 20th century. Today it is almost a must to have it, and there are many link exchange scripts and tools (even free link exchange scripts) that have RSS feed which is automatically updated with every new link in the directory. Now - take all these feed URLs into your Yahoo pipe. This means you created your own searchable base, base of your link exchange directories. Then, using specific Yahoo Pipes modules, create rules for searching the base. People can search title of links, or title and description, etc. That's it. You have your own Yahoo pipe. This innovation is being nicely promoted by Yahoo, so it's not your problem to attract people to Yahoo pipe. And when they are there - they will use your pipe form to find good partners. If you fit their demand, it means you got new link partners. In the next article on Thumshots.org I am going to show you how this can be possible in real action, step by step, so make sure to have your Yahoo pipe account registered by that time to follow me.

Beating the Link Building Filters

It's no secret that search engine optimization and link building are on an aggressive rise in popularity. For example, according to a recent cars.com survey, about 55% of car dealers are investing in search engine marketing to generate online sales leads. That is a big change for these types of companies from what they have come accustomed to doing over the years.



With this rise in popularity search engines like Google, who strive to be the absolute best at accurate data retrieval based on a user query, need to find new ways of identifying what belongs at the top of their engine and what is optimized (or manipulated) to be there.



To do this effectively they need to build algorithms which identify not only methods of search engine optimization, but trends that follow. One of these trends no doubly is web links, where they come from, and how they link to you. Today, links are a major tactic for search engine optimization and those working to increase their search engine rankings, thus they are also a major target for Google with their ever changing and sophisticated algorithms.



In fact, this popularity in link building has spawned and entire industry of “Link Brokers” and “Text Link Marketing” sites, services, and companies. Not pointing to anyone specific, but I’m sure if you asked any owner of one of these text brokerage companies, they would be quick to tell you that “Business has been good”.



But how long will this text marketing phase stay effective for search engine optimization? What is Google doing to stay above the industry and remain king of search? Well, it really depends on who you ask. Every optimization specialist and experienced search engine marketing professional will have a different answer trying to predict and prepare for where this market is going.



Not too long ago, Matt Cutts, a Google engineer who has become overtime somewhat of what I would consider a webmaster public relations spokesperson, revealed on his blog that: "Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or Page Rank penalized .... However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. Page Rank and anchor text)."



This is a pretty powerful statement. This tells us that not only is Google examining links, but they are also measuring up the sites where they come from. So if a site is found to be selling links, Google may zap its Page Rank assigning power and that the anchor text used in your ad won’t help you as far as ranking for those terms, a tactic that has proven extremely effective in the past.



Now for people out there paying handsomely for those PR9 and PR8 links, it might be a good time to start rethinking your strategy; it’s not all about PR.



Taking into account that Google is more than likely doing this already, we would need to try and identify the “trends” they would be looking for. One of these trends would be sites that have large numbers of unrelated outbound links, outbound links in footer areas of websites (which are generally paid advertisements or belonging to some sort of link exchange or link trade), or possibly even links in the side bar areas of websites where advertisements are likely to be. One thing is for sure, Google must find a way to accurately identify the validity of links and how to measure them. Considering the fact that Google, although amazingly intelligent, is far from human, it boils down to page characteristics. If I am reading an article, I’m most interested in the main body of the document. Whatever is on the bottom or at the sidebar may not necessarily be of value to me. In most cases it may not even be related to what I am reading. It’s an advertisement, most of the time. Thus “article marketing” is born. A simple and effective way to gain links to your site within bodies of text. Make your own judgment.



At any rate, many webmasters have gotten hit with the last few updates made by Google. Sites that have ranked highly for long periods of time are now shuffled to the bottom of the deck. A lot of sites that got hit, at least from what I have seen, are sites with very little high quality, on theme topic relevant links pointing in. Sites that were using link manipulation tactics like cooperative advertising networks and link exchange programs are on the list of unhappy webmasters. Not in ever case, but many. These are the things that Google is looking for, and they must find and identify them to keep their index clean.



So if you are building links to your web site in hopes of increasing your search engine rankings, remember one important thing: when it comes to search engines, links are like friends, it's not how many you have, but how many you can really count on. Choose them wisely.

Building a Successful Web Business Through Content

Heard that before? I know I have. The thing I never knew was how to use content to my advantage. Content is useless unless it is optimized for the search engines. It must also be optimized for your reader. You have two customers - readers and search engines. You must satisfy both with the same exact content.

 

Content is king only if you have exact and highly specific keywords placed in correct locations. Unfortunately the hard part is determining what keywords to use. A keyword can be a single word or a phrase. It is the term that web surfers use to search for information. Place yourself in their shoes and try to discover what search terms they use. You must then evaluate the search term. How many people search using that term? How many sites already deliver information on that search term? Simple demand and supply rules. The more demand with the less supply equals more profitability.

 

You have several options for determining keywords and their profit potential. Search yourself, pay a company to search for you or have your hosting company do a complete keyword search for your niche or web business topic. If your hosting company does not offer this service I recommend you switch to a plan that does. This feature alone can make or break your business' future. 

 

Without a proper keyword search and analysis you may as well forget about becoming successful with an Internet business. Investing in this one secret is literally the start of planning your website.

 

Your next action step is to plan your site layout based on the 50-175 high-demand and low-supply keywords. Your site should be structured in three tiers. Tier one is your home page. Tier two is made of all of your main topics and also constitutes your navigation bar buttons. Tier three keywords are sub-topics of tier two pages. Organize your 50-175 keywords into three tiers. Doing this makes it easier for visitors to navigate through your site and it makes it easier for search engine spiders to find all of your pages.

 

Search engine spiders do not like to fish around for all of your pages and links. This is why many sites offer a “site map”. A site map is one page that contains links to all of the content pages. This is a fine route to take; however most people agree that pages with a lot of links on it are valued less than content pages that casually link to other content pages.

 

Using three tiers allows you to go from topic to sub-topic to sub-sub-topic all by natural in-content links. For example, tier 1 is the homepage on a fitness site. Tier 2 is a page all about cardio activity and its benefits. A tier three page off of that tier 2 page is about different treadmill routines. Do you see how the site visitor would like this structure? They click on “Cardio” and are given links to more specific pages about cardio topics. Search engine spiders like the three tier structure too. It means they do not have to dig through layers and levels of useless links.

 

There is even more to content than finding profitable keywords and structuring your site into easy-to-navigate tiers. You must optimize each and every page on your website to perform well and rank high at search engines. Many people devote their working life to optimization secrets. A full length article just on optimizing is possible. Heck, a full length book is possible. My recommendation is to use a hosting company that automatically teaches you how to optimize web pages for the engines. Doing that will cause less headache and frustration and it will keep you focused on building content.

 

A quick education in optimization: place your specific keyword in the file name, title, description and keyword section of your page. Then sprinkle the keyword throughout the content. Also provide a link using your specific keyword in the link text. If all of this has you spinning your head, I recommend going the hosting company I use. They literally teach you to build a website using blocks. It’s all simple and easier than you think.

                                                                                                                

There is one last piece to content. It must effectively pre-sell your product or service and position you as the expert in your field. When your website has 50-175 optimized pages for your visitors to read through it will start to position you as the expert. Your site will become known as the place for information about (insert your niche).

 

When visitors find your site through search engines they are seeking information about a problem or question they have. If they land on your site and you try to sell them something right away one thing is sure- they click the back button and find another site that will give them information. This is why pre-selling your product or service is paramount. Give your visitors what they want. Answer their question and in the process let them know about your services and products.

 

All of the information develops rapport and trust with your site visitor. It positions you as an expert. It keeps your visitor on your site longer since they are actually reading content. Search engines notice this and rank you better. How well your site can keep visitors is known as "stickiness." Your site must attract and keep visitors for as long as possible.

 

Provide content that pre-sells your products, positions you as the expert and focuses on highly profitable keywords. You cannot go wrong with your web business if you do those things. The secret to content is to satisfy both your visitor and search engines. Lose one or both and you are doomed. As I mentioned earlier, it is best to work smarter and not harder. Having a successful web business starts with effective content.

A Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Generate Traffic and Make Money from Myspace (Part 2)

Grow Your Friend List. Your friend list is the key to succeed in Myspace marketing. You need to make as many friends as possible. You are going to look for friends that have interests in your website and blog content, or your product and services. This is the first challenge in your Myspace marketing.

Tips and Tricks for Growing Your Friend List Faster
1) Search for Myspace users in your niche and add them as your friends. There are plenty of groups created in Myspace, look for groups in the categories related to your niche , visit these groups and add them as your friends.

2) Visit other Myspace users profiles that also market the same niche as your. They should have built a friend list, add their friends as your friends too.

3) Use Myspace trains like makeatrain.com and Myspacetrains.com to grow your friend list faster. If you have never heard about Myspace trains, they are websites with a specific program code allowing people to add their profile to a chain which will be seen in all bulletin board on the different Myspace communities.

4) Whoring. What is whoring? Here's an explanation how it works:
- You partner with a Myspace marketer in your niche, request the marketer to send a bulletin message encouraging his/her friends to add you as friend.
- In exchange, you'll do the same for the Myspace marketer.

Step 3
Drive traffic to your site or blog from Myspace and make money. Once you have got a lot of friends, you can start sending your promotional message using bulletin. Your bulletin message shouldn't directly promote your site or blog as it will not work.

You can post bulletin to notify your friends when you have written a new blog post, posted an interesting news on your blog, added new helpful tips and articles on website, organized a contest and ask them to visit your site or blog to find out more about the contest and any other ideas you can think of. This ways your traffic will increase and so as your AdSense revenue.

Tips
- Make you bulletin message interesting and fun to read.
- Don't just make your bulletin message about marketing. Occationally you can send something fun such as a joke or a brain teaser.
- If you want to sell your own or affiliate products to your targeted friends, you need to figure out ways to draw your friends to your sales page using bulletin.

I will provide my IDs on request ;)

My backlink checker

Check your link popularity! For more information on what link ppopularity is, and how can you make money from it, read the link popularity FAQ and this article

Link popularity check is one of the best ways to quantifiably and independently measure your website's online awareness and overall visibility. Simply put, link popularity refers to the total number of links or "votes" that a search engine has found for your website.

Here are some ideas for useful data you can gather using the Link Popularity tool:

1. Total number of pages in each search engines index that contains a link to your site, including your own website.
2. Browse through the sites that are linking to you. This gives you a view of the volume and quality of pages linking to you. It’s another way to view the sites that may be referring traffic to you. Once you find out who is linking to you and where they are linking to, you can understand the areas of your site that are performing well. You’ll also be able to strategize ways to improve your reach and performance by knowing your audience.
3. How are your competitors performing in search engines? If they are performing well, you can look at the sites that are linking to them to understand the places you need to improve your visibility.

This tool SHOULD NOT be used to:

1. Determine the dollar ($$) value of a website domain name. This tool is simply provided as a convenience and the user should take note that not all Links are equal in the eyes of the search engines. Just because one site has more links than another does not mean that it is a better site or necessarily more popular.
2. Excessively track link popularity values. Measuring your link popularity values once per month is more than enough. Checking daily or weekly is not a good use of your time. Instead, go create some new content that your visitors would benefit from. Suspicious activity may be reported to the search engines at Marketleap’s discretion.



In the future, I will make it a button so you can place it on your site. Stay tuned :)

4 Steps to Creating A Website Specifically to Earn AdSense Revenue

Building a website to earn Google AdSense advertising revenue has become a popular way to make extra money online nowadays. It is easier to earn AdSense income versus generating sales by selling products or services online. However it does involve works, time and money before you start earning from Adsense program. Below are the steps to creating a content website for earning AdSense revenue. Step 1 Decide the content of your website. You can write a topic or subject related to your interest, hobbies or experience. You can also provide educational information and advice on your website if you are expert at something. Step 2 Use a website builder to create your website. One of the easy-to-use website builders that can help you build a website is Bluevoda website builder. Bluevoda site builder allows users to build a website without technical knowledge. You don’t need to build your site from scratch. The trick is to use a free professional template provided by the site builder and then start adding your text and links to your website. You can add some graphics and pictures to make your site look nicer. After completing your website project, your next step is register a domain name and sign up for a hosting account to publish your website on the Internet. Step 3 Join Google AdSense program. It will usually take several days for Google AdSense team to review and approve your site. If Google accepts your application. You can start learning how to generate AdSense code for inserting to your website to generate Adsense revenue. If your site rejected by Google, don’t get upset easily. Google will let you know the reasons of the rejection. You can fix the problems and reapply again. Step 4 You need to drive targeted Visitors/Traffic to your website to generate Adsense revenue. The higher your website’s traffic the greater your Adsense earning will be. Below are some of the ways that can help you drive some traffic to your website in short period of time. 1) Use Per-per-click (PPC) advertising. The two most popular PPC search engines are Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo can deliver instant traffic to your website but it is costly to advertise on Google and Yahoo. There are other alternatives like Bidvertise.com and Clicksor.com which are cheaper to advertise with. 2) Introduce your site to your family and friends. 3) Write several articles with a link to your website on the resource box and submit them to article directories. You can find a list of article directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directory'. 4) Post messages on community forums with a link to your site on the signature of each message posted.