But, unlike the other actions, these put you in control of what happens and is of real benefit to any online business, profit or non-profit.

These action links will let visitors to your Facebook pages interact with the page in any number of ways which you can define, either with built-in actions or custom actions you create and one great feature is the links will show up in Timelines, News Feeds, and Tickers.

Let’s what it means to you and how it works…

-More-

What it Means to You

The short answer is more traffic and more interactions with your page and your apps.

Let me show you an example right from Facebook.

Say you’ve story on your page about a great pizza recipe from your site. When you add an action link you might see something like this (note the “Save the Recipe” action link):

Example of a Facebook Action Link

When they click the “Save” action link you can get “so something” for example get one of your apps installed and also update the story; it might look something like this:

Example of a Facebook Action Result

Even in that simple case you benefit by getting the app installed and by getting the action result on the person’s timeline.

How It Works

Using the above example, when somebody sees the pizza recipe and clicks on the action link “Save the Recipe”, Facebook will see if they have your app installed and if not pop up that window requesting approval of your app; if it is installed then Facebook will go to the URL specified in your app dashboard.

This should do one of 2 things: (1) publish a new “it was saved” story (like in the second picture above) or (2) if you’re leaving Facebook they will pop up a box asking if that’s okay; note, if you don’t do #1, every time they go to the page they still see the action link (not the phrase letting them know they’ve already taken the action).

Here’s what the app dashboard screen to do this looks like.

Facebook App Dashboard Screen

As you can see, this isn’t something the average person can easily do like highlighting a post but it is something that you app developer can do and you can expect to start seeing it in apps and app creators very soon.

While this wasn’t a step-by-step look at how to implement Facebook action links you should now have a better understanding of what they are and how you can use them in your Facebook Apps.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Action Links: Facebook’s Best Action Yet

To give you some context Pinterest is about equal to Twitter providing 3.6% of referral traffic to all Web sites, Twitter is 3.61%.

If you aren’t familiar with Pinterest — at Pinterest.com — it’s a site where people can go and “pin” pictures and videos; you can upload pictures for people to view, Like, repin and comment on.

The Pinterest says this about what they are…

“Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.“

I’m still testing out Pinterest in some but I thought I should make sure you’d heard of it and started looking at it yourself.

Here’s what I’ve found so far and what you need to know…

The most obvious reason you would think about is how you can use Pintestest to get more targeted prospects of buyers.

After all, your ultimate goal is to put more money in your bank account.

So far it appears that Pinterest can really generate some good prospects but only if you do it correctly.

Nurse Your Pinterest Prospects

You need to approach Pinterest prospects slowly and get them to your blog or Facebook page and further bond with them before you try to take them further.

From what I can tell, Pinterest prospects aren’t in “buyer” mode or even the beginning stages of research. It seems that most of them just like your pictures enough to want to click to see more about you.

If you send them to an opt-in page, even one closely related to your picture, they are very unlikely to take any action (like subscribing to your list) but if you send them to something interesting related to your picture and connect with them you can then get them to take some action.

The conversion rate going from Pinterest to opt-in was terrible but was so much better when going to an intermediate place like a blog; in fact, the actual number of subscribers was higher even though the number of people getting to the opt-in page was a lot lower.

This, plus the fact that Pinterest doesn’t like self-promotion (at least obvious self-promotion), are strong reasons to try this technique out for yourself; always test though, I haven’t done conclusive tests and, of course, each situation is different — you might find exactly different results although I’d be surprised if you did in most situations.

It’s really not that hard, you just need to put in a link. Duh.

What I mean is that after you pin a picture you can have a short description and, in that description, you can include a link. So add a link to a page on your Web site or blog that is specifically related to what you pinned.

Also add links to your Web site in your profile.

The key thing is to pin the right things.

Of course, you shouldn’t put any ads or anything blatantly promotional but what you should pin depends upon what you’re promoting and what niche you’re in; I can guarantee you that if you pin something promotional and/or have a promotional sounding description they will remove, I’ve seen it happen a number of times (never to me though!)

If you’re in a specific niche then pin enticing and fascinating photos of things in your niche that you also have great content for along with some promotions.

If you’re promoting yourself or your company then pin pictures of your office staff, company events, logos, you speaking, or whatever. Just remember you don’t want boring pictures or people won’t see them or click through but fun, interesting, exciting ones will get clicks and get people to your Web site.

If you have or promote products/services then you could pin product/service images but it’s best to do it in an interesting way or, at best, few people will be interested and, at worst, Pinterest will take action; this does appear to work better with services so far.

Make sure the photos are of high quality, nobody is going to be impressed with the photo or with you if it’s bad looking.

Other Tips for Using Pinterest

Make it easier for people to find your pins by adding keywords to them. To do that just add some hashtags at the end of your description; that means put some #keyword at the end of your description (separate each #keyword with commas) — for example a pin about a great catch by Derek Jeter might have #baseball,#yankees,#jeter as the hashtags,

Check out what’s been pinned from your Web site by using this special Web address http://pinterest.com/source/[*Put Your Web Address Here*]/ — for example, http://pinterest.com/source/StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/

When you pin something, you are looking for 3 types of things: repins, likes, and comments. To get more comments end the description with a question.

Of course, it depends upon what the picture is when deciding on what the question is but it needs to be one that invites an easy answer.

For example, if it’s a picture of a location ask “can you guess where this was taken?” or “what do you think this of my new dress design?”

You want to get conversations going with people.

Pinterest is a marvelous site that is addicting to people and they spend a lot of time on it and, as you’ve seen, it can bring you lots of traffic; for example, according to Monetate, 5 apparel retailers had an increase of 289% from July 2011 to December 2011 attributable to Pinterest.

Don’t neglect this site even if you don’t see how you can use it.

Sure some niches are better than others but I think you’ll find, like I did, a lot of great ideas how you can use it for any niches after you start using it and looking around at what other have done.

Tell me below how you’re using Pinterest and ways you’ve gotten people from Pinterest to your Web sites or Facebook pages.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

How to Get People from Pinterest to Your Web Page

I got some e-mail thanking me for telling them what they should do but also asking me what things they shouldn’t do.

Google Statistics on Malicious and Spam Sites

So I decided to accede to their wishes and look at the top 10 “must avoid” things when it comes to search engine optimization; both on-page and off-page search engine optimization.

From “cesspool links” to “bait and switch”, some of these may be familiar to you and some may not but, in either case it’s always good to periodically remind oneself of these things.

So go though the list below and avoid them completely, unless, of course, you want to be invisible in Google

1. Using “Cesspool Links”

I call a variety of bad links “cesspool links” because if you use them then you’ll fall into the cesspool of the search engines.

Google and the other search engines have “good links” and “bad links”.

These are considered bad back links:

• Links from Web sites that have been banned by the search engines.
• Reciprocal links, particularly from Web sites that have lots of reciprocal links like directory pages at link farms.
• Links from Web sites that have virus, malware, spyware, spam or other bad things on them.
• Links from link exchanges — they aren’t 100% bad, some are and some aren’t but, in general, the links are of little or no value and not worth the danger of harming your search engine rankings.
• Links that you’ve purchased — not advertising links (that are usually nofollow links) — then Google and the other search engines will penalize you because they are considered bad links.

Don’t get any of those types of links so you won’t be penalized.

2. “Same Ol’, Same Ol’”

It’s important to use keywords for the anchor text for back links to your Web pages but if you use the same anchor text for all (or a high percentage) of the back links to the same page.

This lessens their value and means they won’t provide any help in improving your search engine ranking.

What you need to do is mix it up a bit:

1. Most links should use the keyword phrase as your anchor text, like you already do.
2. For most of the rest of the links use the keyword phrase plus some additional words; for example, if your keyword phrase is inexpensive wedding ideas then use add words like “find more inexpensive wedding ideas” or “these inexpensive wedding ideas” or “inexpensive wedding ideas for you”.
3. For a few links, use completely different words, words that are specifically about your topic; you can even use your own name.

3. The Old Bait and Switch

Don't Try to Trick Google by Page Cloaking

A practice that some people used to use, and some expert recommended, was to feed the search engine “bots” content when they came to index a Web page that was different than the actual content that people saw when they came to the page.

The thinking was that you give the search engine content they will like and that will rank you highly but give the Web site visitors content that you wanted them to see; this way the search engines were happy and you were happy (although the Web site visitors weren’t so happy).

It was always short-term thinking and the search engine companies have so many Ph.Ds that they quickly caught on and started penalizing Web sites that did it.

Not many people do it anymore but some “experts” still recommend it.

Do not do it or you will be penalized at best and possibly banned.

4. Invisible Man Text

Don't Hide Text on Your Web Pages

Another old technique that some “experts” still recommend and that you should avoid like the plague is putting invisible/hidden text on your Web pages.

How this worked was that people would out text on their Web pages that was meant specifically to get ranked highly in the search engines but that they didn’t want Web site visitors to see.

It’s a simple technique of making the color of the text you don’t want visitors to see the same color as the background.

Since the search engines didn’t see color, just read the text, this worked… for a short while.

Those same Ph.Ds quickly caught on and penalize or ban people who use invisible text.

5. Too Much of a Good Thing

Don't over Optimize Your Web Pages

I mentioned this one in a previous post but it bears repeating.

If you have too much of any of the optimization techniques this will send signals that you are trying to create content for the search engines instead of for site visitors and they will downgrade your site.

So don’t put keywords in too many headings, have too high a keyword density, have too many internal links, too many links from the same Web sites, or any of the other suggested SEO techniques.

Always remember that you need to be balanced and appear natural; the easiest way to do that is to be natural

What About Duplicate Content?

There is a lot of talk about duplicate content and the so called “duplicate content penalty”.

Google themself has said, in their Webmaster Tools area, that there is no actual penalty for duplicate content.

That they will index the page and will include it in their database BUT they won’t always show it in the search results; note the phrase “won’t always”, sometimes it will appear and sometimes not and sometimes for one keyword phrase but not another.

Google also says they like original, unique content, so what’s what?

Then there are all the news and aggregator sites which all have the same content yet show up in the search engine results.

Well, some people consider having their Web pages shown only sometimes or only for some of their keywords is a “penalty” and that’s a reasonable argument.

So that leads to some questions, things like:

• Should you worry about duplicate content?
• Can you safely use the automated content generation tools?
• Is it okay to spin content?
• Is it safe and useful to distribute to or use content from content sharing sites?

Basically, you should be creating original unique content, particularly for your main Web sites which you can supplement with some borrowed content (curated content is best).

You can distribute duplicate content but it’s best to do it after the original content on your main sites have been indexed because usually it’s the first site indexed by the search engines that gets priority.

You probably don’t need to spin the content but it depends upon how and why you are going to use it. Going into that is well beyond the scope of this blog post.

Conclusion

There are some specific things you should not do at any cost, these include:

1. Not getting back links from (or linking to) bad Web sites, including those that’ve been banned, have lots of reciprocal links (like link farms), sites with bad things on them (viruses, malware, etc.), those with lots of paid links.
2. Not using the same anchor text every time you create the same link
3. Give the search engines one Web page and the site visitors a different one
4. Hide text on your Web page
5. Overdo your on-page search engine optimization.

Oh yeah, you don’t need to worry much about duplicate content but it’s really best to provide original, unique content instead.

If you want to discover how to set up your Web pages properly check out my SEO series; On-Page SEO Part 1, On-Page SEO Part 2, and On-Page SEO Part 3.

I excerpted the cool graphics above from this infographic…

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Top 5 Things That Will Destroy Your Google Rankings

In this third part, we’ll take a quick look at most of the other important factors to improve you score.

Let me remind you that each factor adds “points” to your final SEO “score” for each keyword, and that this sum is how well you do in the eyes of the search engines when it comes to search engine rankings.

The higher you compare to every other page, the higher ranking results will be; all things are equal.

Of course, on page SEO is just one part, and not even the largest part, of what decides the final search engine rankings one of the easiest for you to control and do.

Okay, let’s look at these final on-page SEO factors.

Ads-to-Content Ratio

If the search engines find too many ads on a page compared to the amount of content then they will withhold or subtract “points”; this was one of the reasons so many marketers (particularly bad ones) were affected by the Google “Panda update”.

Unfortunately, at this time, I don’t know what a good balance is but since Google feels that having ads in places people expect content to be hurts the page, they feel this annoys people (yielding a worse experience), you should stick to common places like the sidebar or use text links in the body of your content (which has always worked well).

How Fast Your Page Loads

Google, and I expect the other search engines, is now rewarding Web pages that load faster with bonus points which help lead to higher search engine rankings.

You’d be surprised at what can impact the load time.

Obviously, big, unoptimized images slow it down but the number of requests to a single domain, invalid HTML, use of table tags, big JavaScript files, the number of Web sites on a shared server and much more.

Fortunately, most of them you have some control over so you can make improvements if you need to. A side note, WordPress sites tend to run slowly just by their very nature although there are things you can do for them.

Check the Speed of Your Page Here

High-Quality Content

The search engines love high quality content because the people who use search engines love high quality content and the search engines have gotten better and being able to tell if the content is high quality.

You need to be creating only quality content that provides good value for the keywords you’re using.

This would include longer articles (no more of the 250 word articles that gave little to no value and just tried to trick the search engines), having good information that would be of value to the reader, make it easy and pleasant to read (no more one paragraph articles), providing other, useful ways to convey the information (charts, infographics, etc.), have your style match the expectations of your audience (if they expect informality be engagingly informal, if they expect an academic treatise be formal and academic), etc.

Use Different Modalities

The search engines like to see different “human–computer interaction modalities”.

That means have target different senses in different ways by having video, audio, photographs, graphics images, etc. (some day soon we’ll probably be able to add touch and smell modalities!)

So, try to include at least some pictures and graphics in your content. Videos are also excellent to add if you can, even if it’s just a YouTube video you didn’t create that’s on the subject of your article.

Optimize Your URLs

In part 1, we saw that it is helpful to have your primary keyword in the Web address but I only talked about the domain name part of the Web address; while technically not true, you can think of it as the part of the Web address before the “dot”, like Google is the domain name of google.com or Harvard is the name in hardvard.edu or StreetGuideToWebTraffic is the name of this Web site.

However, you’ll probably not get more than one keyword in that name but every Web page won’t be for that keyword, at least directly, they are usually much more specific.

For example, this Web site’s primary keyword is “web traffic” so I have it in the name “StreetGuideToWebTraffic” but this blog post is much more specific. SEO is a subset of web traffic and on-page SEO is a subset of SEO and this page’s primary keyword is “on-page SEO” which is not in the “domain name” at all.

However, if you look at the full Web address (technically called the URL) you’ll see it’s “http://streetguidetowebtraffic.com/blog/seo/optimizing-your-on-page-seo-2″ which contains the primary focus of the site, the sub-focus of SEO and the specific focus of the page “on-page-seo”.

This is good the people, easier to understand and remember, and therefore, the search engines like it.

So make sure your pages have the primary keyword in the full Web address by naming each individual page appropriately. Don’t use generic names like page12.htm or put in numbers, random characters and the like; of course, don’t cram the Web address with keyword either — you’re probably getting it by now that being natural is the key.

One side note, always use just one form of your Web address when you make links. By that I mean, don’t use www.YourDomainName.com sometimes and YourDomainName.com other times; it just dilutes your results.

In the worst case use the rel=”canonical” attribute, here’s a video where Matt Cutts of Google talks about it if you don’t know what it is:

Have Valid HTML

As I mentioned earlier, your page will load slowly if the programming code is invalid.

At worst it won’t display right but Web browsers do their best to try to properly display invalid Web pages but it makes them work harder and slows down the page loading.

The same is true of search engines, as part of them indexing your page they try to understand the code of the page (to find images, links, text, etc. and if the code is invalid they may not be able to figure out what’s what and either bypass your page, get it wrong or penalize you.

The easiest way to check this is go to the W3C Validator page and enter the address of your Web page; not it validates a single page not an entire site. It will check your page and give you a report of the results so you know where you need to fix things.

Unfortunately, easy systems like WordPress blogs rarely validate 100% because of all the parts created by different people (like WordPress itself, plug-ins, themes, even what you type and how WordPress interprets it).

Still validation is important to do and fix what you can, they fewer errors the better.

Don’t Over Optimize

One final tip, don’t over optimize.

Now, after two very long posts on optimizing you might think this is a weird way to end but the search engines understand that Web sites are done by people and that people are perfect so if they find everything perfect they’ll think it’s done by a machine (or a computer program in this case) and question the page.

So, as I’ve said again and again, be natural and don’t worry about doing everything or doing everything just perfectly.

Conclusion

And that’s it. Whew!

If you don’t understand something about on-page SEO after this 3 part series then I don’t know what else I can do

Let me give you a quick summary of this post, you’ll find a similar summary at the end of part 1 and part 2.

Keyword Density

For best SEO optimization put your keyword phrase(s) in the content of your Web page.

Aim for a keyword density of at least 2% and no more than 5 or 6% but don’t obsess about it, make the content excellent and make sure read well and include your keywords where it makes sense; this will usually get you into that range anyway and improve your on-page SEO score.

Position of Keywords

For best SEO optimization put your keyword phrase in the first and last paragraphs of your Web page, as well scattered throughout the content; try to get the primary keyword phrase in the second and third paragraphs also.

You can do the same with any secondary keywords you have for the Web page but keep the flow of the content as readable and natural as possible, don’t force keywords into the content at the expense of quality and clarity.

Links to Trusted Sites

For best SEO optimization add a few links out to trusted authority sites in your Web page; however, don’t overdo this (2-3 in a 500-750 word article) and make sure they are not “nofollow links”.

Links to Untrusted Sites

For best SEO optimization have few or no links out to untrusted or distrusted sites in your Web page and make sure they are “nofollow links” when you do have them.

Link to Your Own Pages

For best SEO optimization add some links to other pages on your Web site but, like all the other advice, don’t overdo this; have a least one but don’t have more than 2-3 in a 500-750 word article — by the way, since you trust yourself make sure they are not “nofollow links”

Ads-to-Content Ratio

Don’t put too many ads on the page so that it overwhelms or even intrudes on the content, and try to keep the ads where people expect them like in a sidebar or footer, or use text links inside your content.

How Fast Your Page Loads

Try to get your pages to load as fast as possible, test how fast you page loads here:

High-Quality Content

You need to be creating only high quality content that provides good value for the keywords you’re using; that includes longer articles, having good information, and easy and pleasant read providing different ways to convey the information, and match the expectations of your audience.

Use Different Modalities

So try to include at least some pictures and graphics in your content. Videos are also excellent to add if you can, even if it’s just a YouTube video you didn’t create that’s on the subject of your article.

Optimize Your URLs

Make sure your pages have the primary keyword in the full Web address by naming each individual page appropriately.

Have Valid HTML

Having valid programming code on your page is important, check your own page here.

Don’t Over Optimize

Don’t do too much, be natural and don’t worry about doing everything perfectly.

Google has a Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide you can read and download; it’s always valuable to get information from an authority even if they may also have some self-interest.

I hope you take the information in this series and use the search engine optimization techniques to improve your on page SEO and your search rankings. If you have any questions, suggestions, or other comments please leave them below.
.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Optimizing Your On Page SEO, Part 3

This second part we’ll look at most of the other important factors to improve you score; remember that you can think of it as each factor adding “points” to a total score for each keyword and that the sum of those points is how well you do in the eyes of the search engines.

The better you do, the higher ranking results you’ll get if all things are equal; I add that last part because on page SEO factors are just one part of the ranking and not even the most important part but one of the easiest for you to control and do.

Most of the talk about on-page SEO is centered around keywords, and rightly so, because proper use of keywords are the largest single factor in having a good SEO score. However, other very important factors are things like the quality and value of the content and the total user experience, so don’t neglect those.

Okay, let’s get down to it and look at other on-page SEO factors.

Using Keywords in Your Content

Since the search engines read your page to try to figure out what it’s about so they know what searches should show your pages, you need to have your primary keyword phrase in your content as well as any secondary keywords you’d like the page to rank for.

And it makes sense, if your page rarely or never has the phrase in it, why would Google and the other search engines think your page is about that keyword phrase — even if you have it in the title and meta keyword tags; remember never use keywords in titles, headings, or meta tags if you don’t use them in the content and vice versa.

There is some argument over whether to create a Web page for each keyword phrase or if you can combine multiple keywords in a single page…

Based upon what I’ve seen it really comes down to two questions? If you can answer yes to both then having a page use multiple keywords is okay, of you answer no to either of them then stick with one keyword phrase; the questions are:

1. Would somebody who is looking for, and interested in, your primary keyword phrase also be interested in and looking for (at this time) the secondary keyword phrase?
2. Would it appear natural, complementary and cohesive to combine two or more keyword phrases?

Most of the time I find you can use more than one keyword phrase and get rankings for both of them from the same article. Just be sure not to use too many keywords; too many is relative, of course, and depends upon the niche, the topic, the length of the content and things like that — use your best judgment but err on the side of using too few keywords rather than too many.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is just a fancy phrase for the percentage of your content that is made up of keywords; that is, the number of times your keyword appears in the content divided by the number of words in the content.

For example, if a keyword appears 23 times in a 500-word article then take 23 and divide it by 500 which is equal to .046 or a keyword density of 4.6%; some people calculate a multi-word keyword phrase as one word and others calculate it as however many words is in the phrase (therefore, a 2-word phrase appearing 23 times would count as 46 words and the keyword density would be 9.2%).

Fortunately, this is another easy way to improve your on-page SEO score, just repeat the keyword phrase a number of times throughout your page but don’t do it too much.

Position of Keywords

Of course, you want to have your keywords scattered throughout the body of your content and fit in naturally, however, there are some places you want to make sure you have keywords.

In part 1, we talked about having keywords in the heading tags but you’ll also want to make sure your primary keyword phrase in the first paragraph and the last paragraph.

I also like to try to have the primary keyword phrase in the second and even third paragraph if it makes sense and flows well. This really solidifies in the “mind” of the search engine that the Web page is about the keyword phrase.

You can do the same with secondary keywords if you’re using them, but it’s less important.

Links in Your Content

Nowadays, search engines look for links in your Web pages and count them towards your on page SEO score, either positively or negatively.

This is true for both links to other pages in your Web site and links to other Web sites.

Links to Trusted Sites

In the past, the search engines liked to see links from sites they felt were trusted or authority sites to your Web site; Google used their PageRank as a rough guideline to decide how well they liked the site, with higher numbers being better than lower numbers.

While that’s still important the search engines have started giving “points” for links from your Web site to trusted/authority sites; these are called trusted external links.

Their thinking is that if your content links out to trusted sites then it’s more likely that the quality of your content and Web page is better.

Don’t think though that you can just add a hundred links to a Web page to authority sites and you’ll zoom to the top of the search results because that is completely wrong.

Not only are there many other factors that decide where you are ranked if you put in too many links from a Web page the search engines will look very unfavorably on the Web page and downgrade it so you’re worse off than if you had no links.

Nobody, except maybe a few people at the search engine companies, knows the perfect number but I’d recommend no more than 2 or 3 in a common 500-750 word article.

It’s good to make sure these links are not “nofollow links”; read the Wikipedia discussion on no follow links  here or the Google explanation with video here.

Also, try not to always link to the same trusted site with every link, have some variety (like above I linked to 2 different trusted sites).

Links to Untrusted Sites

The exact opposite is that you should not have many, if any, links out to untrusted sites; these are called untrusted external links.

Of course, this can be hard because maybe 0.1% of the site on the Internet are trusted (I made up that number and if anything it’s too high); actually this can’t hurt unless you have a lot of them but don’t be needlessly sending people away from your Web site.

Even worse is links out to sites that are distrusted, these will have a negative effect in your on-page SEO score and you’ll end up with a lower search engine ranking.

For all these untrusted and distrusted links you should make the links “nofollow links” to let the search engines know that you particularly don’t trust them either but they may have some value.

Link to Your Own Pages

The search engines like to see links to other pages on your Web site from a Web page; these are called internal links.

They like this inter-site linking because it helps them understand the Web pages (the assumption being that it links to something related), it helps them understand the other Web pages, and it helps them understand the overall structure of your Web site. It also helps your readers navigate which is a great benefit on its own but the search engines like it when you make a better user experience for the people they send to your site.

However, the way that your Web site links to itself is also important; search engines like text links because they are understandable to them, that is, they contain context from the words of the link, whereas a graphic that’s a link provides none of that information so they don’t add value (see the alt tag section of part 1).

Also, the best links are links within the content of your Web page rather than in the menus or side bars or footers or anywhere else.

As you may know or guessed from a couple of paragraphs ago, the words you use for the link should be keywords of the page you’re linking to; this also helps the page you’re linking to because the search engines have a better idea of what it’s about.

For example a link with the words “click here” is worse than a link with the words “read part 1 of on-page SEO”.

One more thing about the words of the links — this is commonly called the “anchor text” — is that the latest Google updates made it so you should vary the anchor text of links so that it isn’t always the primary keyword you’re focusing on.

This is true with link that are on your own Web pages as well as links elsewhere that links to your pages.

The old recommendation was to always use the same anchor text but the search engine feel it’s not natural to always use the same anchor text so mix it up a bit while still including your keywords like I did above in the “read part 1 of on-page SEO” and even once and awhile use something completely different, even that “click here” would be fine.

Conclusion

This blog post focused on keywords and links within the content of your Web page; whereas part one focused on the various tags,

Let me give you a quick summary of this post, you’ll find a similar summary at the end of part 1.

Keyword Density

For best SEO optimization put your keyword phrase(s) in the content of your Web page.

Aim for at least 2% and no more than 5 or 6% but don’t obsess about it, make the content excellent and make sure read well and include your keywords where it makes sense; this will usually get you into that range anyway and improve your on-page SEO score.

Position of Keywords

For best SEO optimization put your keyword phrase in the first and last paragraphs of your Web page, as well scattered throughout the content; try to get the primary keyword phrase in the second and third paragraphs also.

You can do the same with any secondary keywords you have for the Web page but keep the flow of the content as readable and natural as possible, don’t force keywords into the content at the expense of quality and clarity.

Links to Trusted Sites

For best SEO optimization add a few links out to trusted authority sites in your Web page; however, don’t overdo this (2-3 in a 500-750 word article) and make sure they are not “nofollow links”.

Links to Untrusted Sites

For best SEO optimization have few or no links out to untrusted or distrusted sites in your Web page and make sure they are “nofollow links” when you do have them.

Link to Your Own Pages

For best SEO optimization add some links to other pages on your Web site but, like all the other advice, don’t overdo this; have a least one but don’t have more than 2-3 in a 500-750 word article — by the way, since you trust yourself make sure they are not “nofollow links”

Now, take the information in this and in part 1 and start to improve your on page SEO and your search rankings. If you have any questions, suggestions, or other comments please leave them below.

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This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Optimizing Your On Page SEO, Part 2

In short, SEO is how you get your Web site high up in the search engine results; getting onto page one and, more importantly, the top 2-3 positions which will get you a lot more traffic.

One aspect of SEO is the actual pages of a Web site; this is called on-page SEO.

There are certainly rules that Google and the other search engines follow when they look at your pages.

Essentially they have a scoring system somewhat like the Olympic figure skating or gymnastics scoring in that they look for certain things on your pages and give you “points” for having certain things on your page and the better job you do on those things the higher your score will be.

On-page SEO is an important aspect of SEO although it isn’t the most important factor. It’s more like “style points” that will give you extra credit to put you above your competition.

It’s also the easiest part of SEO, something that is in your control and doesn’t take much time and effort.

Let’s look at the different aspects of SEO one by one and see what to do and what not to do…

As part of my business, I am in the process of building an SEO optimization WordPress plug-in for my blogs. While there are others out there I found them inflexible and incomplete so I thought I’d build my own.

To do that properly I really needed to go through my own SEO processes and make sure — through research and testing — that I verified and discovered what on-page SEO is working today; not a bad thing to do even without the need to but them in the software and something I do periodically.

Your Web Site Address

This is definitely an important part of on-page SEO, some people rank this as the most important aspect although I’m not sure I’d go that far.

What it means is making sure you use your primary keyword in your Web address, for example, if your primary keyword is “inexpensive destination wedding” then you’d want to get InexpensiveDestinationWedding.com or InexpensiveWeddingDestination.com as your Web site address.

Remember to use your primary keyword if possible, if not, then use one of your best secondary keywords. Some other alternatives are:

• Use hyphens, for example, I could use Inexpensive-Wedding-Destination.com
• Use other top level domains. Those are the letters after the period like .com or .net or .co, etc.
• Add words to your primary keyword if applicable. For example, if your primary keyword is Harley Davidson Motorcycle but you can’t use HarleyDavidsonMotorcycle.com because someone else has it then try BestHarleyDavidsonMotorcycle.com, GetHarleyDavidsonMotorcycle.com, HarleyDavidsonMotorcycleGuide.com or whatever makes sense in your situation (look at your secondary keywords or even broader keywords that are related).

One reason why the search engines like this is because a domain name is static, that is, it can’t be changed. Therefore they assume that the name is very representative of what the Web site and Web pages are about.

It will help you get rank a little faster and a little higher but it is just one of many factors; remember each thing earns “points” so you want to have as many of them as possible.

Web Page “Tags”

Tags are internal Web page programming that your Web browser — Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. — uses to display a Web page.

There are lots of different tags but only some of them are used by the search engines when calculating your on-page SEO score, let’s look at them.

Title Tag

The title tag is a special tag used to display the “name” of the page up in the Web browser’s title bar. Here’s an example of the name of a Web page that was in a title tag.

Using the title tag in on-page SEO

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<title>Marketing Graphics Monthly | Free Marketing Graphics with a Bronze Membership</title>

This is a important tag when getting traffic for two reasons: (1) because the search engines use the words in the title to help it decide what the page is about (you get points for they keywords in your title) and (2) because this is main thing people will see in the search engine results.

Based on the title tag it could be assumed, if they are doing good on-page SEO, that they are using “Marketing Graphics” or “Marketing Graphics Monthly” as a primary keyword and it looks like “Free Marketing Graphics” is a secondary keyword.

When I do a search for that I see these results:

Matching On Page SEO to Search Engine Results

You can see that the title as defined by the title tag is shown in the search results.

As an aside, since I have an involvement in the above Web site I know a bit about what’s being done and those are indeed keywords that are being targeted.

You’ll also note that multiple keyword phrases are being used that were separated by what’s called the vertical bar or pipe symbol; this is usually used to save characters and make the phrases visually separate – I’ve heard some people say that some search engines stop if you use the word “and” but I don’t know if that’s true.

Meta Tags

There are 3 primary meta tags you’ll want to use in your Web pages: the description tag, the keywords tag, and the robots tag.

The description tag is used to describe, in 2 or 3 sentences, what the page is about.

Put the keywords in the description if you can, although the search engines don’t really use the meta tag much anymore except to display in the search results underneath the title and the Web address.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<meta name=”description” content=”[*Describe your page in a couple of sentences*]”>

Usually, if you don’t enter a description, the search engine will take the first words it thinks are text on the Web page; this may or may not be right and usually isn’t as you can see from the examples above.

Keep it simple and make the meta description tag be different and specific to each Web page.

The keywords tag was originally meant to provide the search engine with keywords that describe the page but it was so abused by marketers (including but not limited to spam marketers) that the search engines generally ignore them in most cases particularly is you use a lot of keywords.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”[*Put in your list of main keywords*]”>

Use just your most important keywords (both the singular and plural) so that if they are used they will carry a lot of weight.

One caveat, if you use words that are not related to the Web page (really they should be on the Web page also) then the search engines will think you’re trying to trick them and, at best, ignore them and will certainly deduct “points” and maybe even not index your page or ban your site.

The robots tag is really a tag to tell the search engine to look at a file that is not part of the Web page and see if you want to Web page indexed or not.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<meta name=”robots” content=”[*Either the word index or noindex*]”>

Use “index” inside the content= part if want the page indexed and use “noindex” if you don’t want it indexed; the default is index so you generally don’t need to use it, just use noindex for pages you don’t want indexed.

This is good to stop the indexing of pages like maybe your disclaimers or a page where you let someone fill our a form to contact you or any other page that really doesn’t help you by being in the search engine results – hey, why compete with your own non-content pages!

Other On-Page Tags

There are other tags you should use to help your on page SEO: heading tags, alt tags, and some formatting tags.

There are actually 6 different heading tags (1 through 6) but the best ones are the first 3. They are used to be like chapter title in a book or section title in an article or other document.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<h1>Best Inexpensive Wedding Destinations on Each Continent</h1>

<h2>Best European Wedding Destination: Tallinn, Estonia</h2>

<h3>Best Wedding Hotel to Stay At: Domina Inn Ilmarine</h3>

Here’s an example of a heading 1 tag in use:

Example of Using a Heading 1 for On Page SEO

Here’s an example of a heading 2 tag in use:

Example of Using a Heading 2 for On Page SEO

Each greater number in a heading means the words are smaller, so heading 1 is bigger than heading 2 which is bigger than heading 3 and so on.

There is something called alt tags but they really aren’t tags at all, just attributes of the image tags that let a Web page show an images, pictures and graphics.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<img alt=”Get all the marketing graphics you’ll ever need” height=”250″ src=”http://marketinggraphicsmonthly.com/images/Banner-250×250.gif” title=”Be a Gold Member” width=”250″ />

That is the programming code I took from the above graphic image that says “Never Buy Graphics Again”, note the alt attribute inside the tag it says “Get all the marketing graphics you’ll ever need” and has the marketing graphics keyword in it.

Put your important keywords in the alt attribute of your images but don’t always use the same keyword and don’t use in the same way.

The above usage is a good usage because other images on the page are unlikely to say exactly “Get all the marketing graphics you’ll ever need” but the keyword is naturally placed in the sentence; that’s what you want to strive for, using your keywords in a natural way.

Formatting tags are tags specifically designed to modify the look of the text on the Web page: these are the bold or strong tags, the italics or emphasis tags, and the underline tag.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<b>This is bold text</b> — here’s an example

<strong>This is bold text also</strong> — here’s an example

<i>This text is italicized</i> — here’s an example

<em>This text is italicized also</em> — here’s an example

<u>This text is underlined</u> — here’s an example

Put your important keyword phrase inside this formatting to tell the search engines that the phrase is special or, in fact, important; the search engines will use this in their scoring.

Wait… There’s More

This is quite long already so I’ll end here and continue in part 2 but here’s a summary of doing proper on-page SEO.

Web Page Address

For best SEO optimization, put your primary keyword phrase in your Web address or at least one of your most important keyword phrases.

One tip though when you select this, be sure to check that nobody has had the domain name previous and had it blacklisted — maybe because it for spam or illegal purposes; check it out at Archive.org.

Title Tag

For best SEO optimization, you want your keywords in your title tags but stay in the 40-50 character range and anything over 60 is too much.

Description Meta Tag

For best SEO optimization, you want to write a short meaningful description for the searcher that includes your keywords but stay in the 150-200 characters range, many people recommend no more than 160 characters.

Keywords Meta Tag

For best SEO optimization, list your main keywords (make sure they are in the content as well) but you want no more than about 100 characters.

Robots Meta Tag

For best SEO optimization, use the “noindex” content value on every page that you don’t want the search engines to index.

Heading Tags

For best SEO optimization, you should have at least 2 or 3 heading tags with your keywords in the tags, also don’t just use all the same tags.

Interestingly enough, in my research and testing I found the heading 2 and 3 tags to be the best followed by the heading 1 tag

Alt Tags

For best SEO optimization, put SEO-optimized alt tags on all applicable images, that is, images that mean something to the content or like above in the ad. Don’t put them on little arrows, navigation, or other things that don’t have to do with the topic of the Web page.

Also, use different keywords (not always your primary keyword) and vary the text of the alt tags while keeping the keyword phrase the same.

Formatting Tags

For best SEO optimization, put your keyword phrases inside the formatting tags but do this sparingly. If you format every keyword not only will it look (and rather amateurish) bad to the reader but the search engines will see that and take away points.

This should help you understand how to do on-page SEO that actually helps you, don’t miss part 2 of Optimizing Your On Page SEO.

If you have thoughts, ideas and your own on-page SEO suggestions, please leave them in the comments below.

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This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Optimizing Your On Page SEO, Part 1

Get More Traffic Using Great Content

This time we’ll look at some 4 more types of content that you can quickly and easily create that are traffic magnets.

These are important tools to add to your marketing tool  box and the more and better content (and types of content) the more traffic (and back links) you will get.

Comparison Charts

One type of content that is powerful because it appears conveys lots of information quickly and is seen as trustworthy is comparison charts; which, of course, compare two or more things.

One of the best ways to do this is to compare your product to one or more competitors (direct or indirect) — make it a fair and balanced comparison though.

You can also have a comparison chart that shows the pros and cons of anything; it doesn’t have to be products, it can be things like cars or power tools or diets or just about anything.

No matter what your market niche is you should be able to find a lot of different types of things to compare. Here’s a sample I borrowed from the Internet:

Sample Comparison Chart

People love these because they convey a lot of information in an easy to understand way and you can make them fun with some marketing graphics.

The combination of information presented in an easy to consume and balanced manner has proven to be a good way to get more traffic; and you’ll find that people love to link to them.

Sample Infographic Showing the Age Breakdown of QR Code Users

Infographics

Infographics (or information graphics) are taking information or data and, instead of presenting the values or concepts as numbers or words, creating a visual representation.

They are frequently used to take complex information or data and quickly and clearly convey them; a good example of this in use is the standard subway maps used in cities around the world.

They’re also used to turn dry and boring data into something interesting and exciting; at the right, you can see an example of this that I had my graphics person create for the sales letter of one of my products.

One of the keys is to find “hot topics” in your market niche that can be presenting visually as an infographic; something that others in your niche will want to share and link to.

Infographics are great for site visitors plus they draw traffic and can build some high-quality backlinks to your Web properties.

Demonstrations

This type of content is definitely a magnet for traffic and links because of its pure value and usefulness.

This has near universal value because any product, service, methodology, etc. has problems or techniques or other needed information that could be demonstrated and explained, and you should be the person who provides those answers.

You just need to provide content in a step-by-step demonstrative manner. This can be in textual format using words although it usually works best with video.

The sheer number of demonstration videos on YouTube and the number of views they get is proof that this type of content is in high demand which translates into more traffic.

Lists

We talked about checklists previously but any list is usually very popular content.

Lists are a common feature on blogs — think about how many Top 5 or Top 10 of lists there are; there are even lists of lists Web sites!

You can make a list of just about anything no matter what your market niche. Just look at some of the lists I quickly found on the Internet:

• 7 Greatest Roman Generals
• Top 10 Overrated Filmmakers
• Top 10 Species Rediscovered This Century
• Top 10 Disadvantages to Capitalism
• Top 10 Greatest Reggae Singers
• 11 Tech and Science Breakthroughs of the 2000s
• Top 10 Best Beaches in the World
• Top 10 Best Intellivision Games
• 10 Contest Winning Architectural Designs
• 20 Natural Wonders That Didn’t Make the Cut
• Top 10 Underrated Video Games
• Top 10 Weirdest Fruit
• Top 10 Greatest Piano Performances in Rock
• Top 10 Best Wedding Locations
• Top 10 Diets
• 8 Tools a Carpenter Must Have

Another great thing about lists are they are so easy to create; you just do a list of the five or ten most popular whatever it is.

Now you want to get that list blog post rocking on steroids then turn that top 10 list into 11 blog posts (or a top 5 list blog post into 6 blog posts or whatever).

This is what you do is have one compilation post (the “top x” list post) and in each of the list items you have a link to a post that gives a more in depth look at the specific list item.

Let’s take the top 10 diets list as an example.

So your compilation post would just list each diet by name and give a few highlights and a link to read more at the more in depth post.

If you search Google and look at lists you see a lot of people doing that (although a lot of people aren’t doing that) but from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen these are always very popular content pieces and generate a lot of traffic.

And there you go, now you have multiple posts from one idea and a nice internal navigation structure both of which will help you get traffic.

Conclusion

In this series, you discovered 6 different and powerful types of content that you can create to get more traffic to your Web properties.

Remember to distribute these in lots of different places (although quality places are better than just a mass quantity of places).

When you distribute them put links to your other Web properties – to something that complements what you content is about, not to the same content in another place; don’t put all your links to the same place with the same “anchor text”, promote your other links by linking to them.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

How to Use Content to Get More Traffic, Part 3

Celebrity is a Powerful Way to Get People Coming to You

In my last blog post, “How to Use Content to Get More Traffic, Part 1”, we looked at the first way to get traffic by using content.

In this post, we’ll look at some additional ways you can use content to attract traffic to your Web properties.

You know the power of celebrity and being viewed as an expert or authority.

In fact, there is no better way to get traffic, protect yourself from Google, and make easy sales than to be viewed as an authority or celebrity.

To do that you need to be providing amazing and helpful content in a variety of places where it will get seen.

This, in turn, will build your reputation, provide you with opportunities and, most important of all, get you traffic;

The more you build your authority status the more traffic you’ll get to your site.

We can use that fact to be able to generate targeted content that will attract and get traffic; and not only will you get traffic but you’ll get higher quality traffic.

Here’s how to do that…

Give the People What They Want

Another type of content that helps you get more traffic is called by many names “Go to the Pro”, “Ask the Expert”, “The Answer Man”, and other names.

One strong advantage of this type of content is that you’re pretty much guaranteed that the content you create will be of interest because it’s your leads, prospects, and customers literally telling you what they want.

This method is simple in that you provide a method that lets people ask questions and then you answer those questions in a format and venue that is indexed by the search engines, seen by the largest number of people, and brings to you the most authority.

This needs to be a mix of your Web properties — like your blog, your newsletter and your Webinars– and other Web properties.

Places like:

• Other people’s blogs (both in the comments and as a guest blogger)
• Social media and networking sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Scribd
• Review sites like Amazon, Yelp, and others (you’d be surprised at the even greater value of this with Google+ and Google’s Search Plus Your World)
• Answer sites like Yahoo! Answers
• Forums
• Content sharing sites like Squidoo, HubPages and article directories.
• And, of course, more

How to Learn What They Want

Use the Internet to Find What People Really Want to Know

There are dozens of ways to find out what people want to know, here are some of them:

• Your customer support site (don’t forget to mine this for common questions and issues) as well as other people’s support sites (look at their knowledgebase to find out what the frequently asked questions are)
• Your own blog comments
• The FAQ section of larger competitors in your market niche
• Other blogs and forums are great places to find out what people want to know
• Start at places like Google Trends and drill down to find the discussions on the latest trends in your niche
• Social networking sites like Facebook and Tumblr (is this the next big site, I’ve heard that teenagers and early 20-somethings are leaving Facebook and moving to it!)
• Let people ask you by e-mail, make this a formal process and publicize it — this can be done via direct e-mail to a special e-mail address or have a nice form where they can enter their question.

Of course, with e-mail you don’t answer the question directly by replying to the e-mail, you use the various places above to answer and then you can reply with a link to the answer or, as I frequently do, I send it out to my subscribers so that others who might have the same question or issue benefits from it also.

In fact, sometime the question is such a good one that I might add the answer to an autoresponder series.

Oh yes, in addition to distributing the content to one of the above places, I’ll put it in an FAQ section.

Flood the Internet with Your Answers

Remember that every piece of content you create, for whatever reason, is an opportunity to get more traffic and you shouldn’t waste that opportunity; in fact, you can multiply it by distributing it in multiple ways.

For example:

1. Write a blog post
2. Take that post and make a PDF out of it then put the PDF on Scribd
3. Import the text version of the post into PowerPoint to make a presentation which you can also turn into a PDF and put on Scribd
4. Turn on your screen capture software and let PowerPoint auto play the presentation and you have a video for YouTube and other video directory/sharing sites.
5. You could also read the article aloud and add it to the video for a voice over then you can then take the audio and turn it into a podcast.
6. Etc., etc.

Let Them Ask and You Come for Their Cash

Turn Content to Traffic to Cash

As you can see, actively answering questions of your audience can be a powerful technique to get traffic.

You know it is something your audience wants to know about, since they’ve asked, and providing quality and helpful answers starts branding you as an expert.

Of course, most people don’t become instant experts so don’t expect instant results but it’s a tremendous long term strategy.

I’ll end with a personal story on how I’ve used this technique in the past.

Some years ago, in a previous “life” I started answering questions in the main forums in my industry.

I spent a lot of time answering those questions, finding or creating solutions, contributing to the communities, and just generally being helpful and building my street cred.

To keep the story short, ultimately I was writing monthly columns in some of the top niche magazines, I was asked to speak at conferences (both in the U.S. and Europe), I was asked to author or co-author 3 books, I received the primary acknowledgement in a well-selling book in the niche, I was part of the external advisory committee for one of the largest companies in the industry (a multi-billion dollar company) and I was even asked to represent them on an ANSI standards committee.

Of course, I had people coming to me and almost begging for me to help them for big bucks.

And what are those things if they aren’t getting traffic — the magazines came to me, the major book companies came to me, the multi-billion dollar company came to me… and it is so easy to close the sale because they came to you and would do whatever it took to get you to help them.

All that from just the humble start of answering questions and being helpful.

Of course, I wouldn’t have all achieved that quasi-celebrity status without actually being an expert in that market niche but anyone can achieve part of that type of thing by acting the expert even while you are becoming the expert.

Using content in this way can be immensely powerful so bring you hoards of traffic that are already partially sold so definitely add this to your arsenal.

View “How to Use Content to Get More Traffic, Part 3″

Let me know what you think, your great ideas or any questions about using content to get more traffic in the comments below.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

How to Use Content to Get More Traffic, Part 2

Using Content to Get More Traffic

Everyone has heard that “content is king” and that’s very true.

It’s what attracts site visitors, it’s what attracts search engines, it’s what attracts advertisers, and it’s what attracts potential partners.

And, it drives traffic in an amazing number of ways.

When you think of creating content to get more traffic you need to think past your blog, for example:

• How about being a guest blogger on someone else’s blog
• How about creating resell rights or giveaway digital books
• How about creating reprintable articles (for directories at eZineArticles and content sharing sites like Squidoo and HubPages)
• How about creating Kindle books
• How about creating PDF files and presentations for places like Scribd
• How about writing articles for other people’s newsletters
• I’ll let you keep going with the list

And the truth is…

There’s no way around the fact that you must create content and there are 3 (very obvious) ways to do that: (1) create the content yourself; (2) get someone else to create it; and (3) borrow the content.

And, don’t think your situation is different, content is necessary no matter what you’re selling, no matter what your market niche is.

I won’t get into the creation of content here as it’s a huge topic in itself and will just focus on how the content can get you traffic.

And the content has to be good and provide value, it can’t be just spending 5-10 minutes with Google and Notepad or an article writing tool and create a 250-350 (essentially worthless) piece of content.

It may provide you with some small benefit, if you’re lucky, but your time is better spent taking that 20-30 minutes and creating a good 500-750 word article.

In today’s online world, one of these quality articles is worth 10 or 20 or even 100 times more than one of the small, junk articles.

So you could spend 100 or 1,000 minutes creating a bunch of junk content that won’t help much and certainly will turn off anyone who actually reads it…

Or, you could spend 30 minutes and get something you can be proud of and will actually provide you with real lasting value.

There are a lot of ways to use content to get more traffic to your Web site so this will be the first in a series.

Let’s get started and look at the first idea for creating “link bait” content.

Provide Checklists

Use Checklist To Get Web Traffic

You might be thinking “checklists, how is that valuable content?” but if you are then you’re thinking wrongly.

I mean, think about it, one of David Letterman’s most popular features is his top 10 list, it’s not really a checklist but many of the reasons it works are the same reasons it works for checklists.

And, guess what,  it’s easy to make list because they can be anything that you can put in list form:

• A list of things you need to know
• A sequence of steps
• A list of tasks to complete
• A list of items to remember
• A list of instructions
• Etc.

Shoot, the above is a list, although it just a small bulleted point list

Examples

Let me give you some examples of how I’ve and others have used checklists.

I’ve been in the Home and Garden niche for some years now and I have a digital product that is a step-by-step guide of how to do something.

It’s broken up into chapters, one for each part of the task and, at the end of every chapter, is a printable list that the people can use to shop for materials and it has a short form of all the steps necessary to complete the chapter’s tasks.

Not only is it the most popular part of the product, and not only does it have my marketing message and Web site printed on every page so when they give it to friends their friends and family they see it, but I’ve been able to take those checklists and use them as Web content that drives traffic to the site and I’ve been able to use them as a free gift to get opt-ins for my list.

I’ve also in the Relationships niche and today I’m finishing up a product to use as a free gift to get opt-ins.

The product is just a 20 page checklist with my marketing message included and I let people give it to any of their friends.

It will also become content for articles and blog posts.

A few years ago, Aurelius Tjin created a PLR product in the Internet Marketing niche that was basically a checklist although he didn’t market as that, he marketed as “tactics” — smart marketing there.

It was called 350 Social Media Tactics and I don’t know how many $27 copies he sold — I do know he sold at least one — but I still see it being sold and given away now and then; you probably have a copy of it because at one time everyone and their mother was selling it or giving it away (including myself, let me know below if you want a copy!)

Checklists, as checklists or as tips or tactics or whatever, are great content that people love and are very easy to create; by the way, don’t forget to include affiliate links where applicable.

I bet you can think of a number of them but here are some ideas to get you started:

• A list of items to take with you when going on a week long hiking trip (having done those I can tell you first hand it would be very handy!)
• A list of things (documents, etc.) you need to gather and bring with you to a house closing (having done that I can also tell you that would be handy!)
• A list of tasks to complete the day of an event you are putting on (again, having done that I can tell you it’s invaluable)
• A list of steps to set up a niche blog business (yes, again…
• A list of things to check after your outsourcer delivers your new membership site
• A list of steps your virtual assistant should follow to build traffic.
• A list of steps to create a Camtasis video.
• Etc.

As I said, I’ve done every one of those things and having list is critical to getting things done without a hitch.

In fact, it is the best and easiest way to make checklist content; base it on your own personal experiences because when you’ve gone through it yourself you are in an ideal position to know what you needed and what you forgot and you can put them all in the checklist

In the next post we’ll look at another content idea for you to use to get more traffic to you Web properties; you can view part 2 here.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

How to Use Content to Get More Traffic, Part 1

Congratulations, you’re WAY ahead of the game because the vast majority of people don’t do video at all.

It’s “scary” and there is time and expense involved.

Anyway, your video is a probably a great video that will certainly catch the attention of lots of people to checkout your product.

Obviously, though, the video can only do this if those people actually get to view your video.

How do you do that? Well, there are many ways but here is one of the best and most important ones.

Search Engine Optimization

First of all, the video should be thoroughly optimized for the search engines in the same way any Web site would be optimized.

This way, you will capitalize on the potential for getting the good search engine results that the video is supposed to produce.

Here are some very helpful strategies to help you do that.

It really is best to upload all your videos to the various platforms that are very effective for getting traffic from video.

Social networking websites and video sharing internet sites are ideal for this.

You’re probably saying, “duh, what could be a more suitable venue for videos than Internet sites like MySpace and YouTube?”

Than again, there isn’t anything wrong with putting a video on your own Web site or your blog; go right ahead and do that.

However, you will definitively want to reach your audience easily, and to do that, it is better to use world-class Web sites.

When you do distribute your videos to these Web sites, it’s always fundamental to prepare a good, solid text description to accompany the videos.

Bear in mind, the Web page which hosts the video will always be found by the search engine bots but if your written description is short, it will not be very helpful when it comes to its ability to attract lots of targeted traffic.

However, if the video includes a compelling, written description that’s optimized with the correct keyword phrases, it is going to unquestionably attract the interest of customers because its position within the search engines is going to be improved.

Also be sure to put the Web address of your squeeze page, sales page, blog or other Web property as the “author”, don’t put you own name. Hey, every link helps!

If you host your video on your own Web site or blog, be sure that your Web site and blog are properly optimized for the search engines in all ways.

This will mean that you’ll have to do link building, keyword and key phrase optimization, Web site index optimization, etc.

Don’t forget, when the video is put on a Web page which is not effectively optimized for the search engines, then the video won’t be seen by very many.

That will mean it will not yield the large number of visitors you’d hoped for and that is the principal reason of the video in the first place.

Additionally, it is quite important to use a decent RSS feed, actually, you can submit the URL where the video is hosted to a variety of RSS feeds.

These feeds can normally reach the eyes of an astonishing number of customers and prospects, and, naturally, when these people see a something of interest in your RSS feed description they are going to follow it to the host location for the video.

This, consequently, increases the potential of the video to offer the expected (and hoped for) gains.

Submit the Web address (URL) of where the video is located to as many feeds and directories as feasible.

Without a doubt, the really key ones are the most essential, but those other “smaller” ones can be a good supply of site visitors as well.

Frequently, there are free services which will submit your Web address to hundreds of directories for free, although, in my opinion, the absolute best place to submit to is Traffic Geyser, it will take care of all the submission for you.

Conclusion

Using video is a proven technique to driving lots of free traffic but you need to make sure your videos are properly optimized and submitted to various directories, etc.

Of course, putting your videos on your own Web properties is good too but do not miss the fantastic opportunity that the video and content sharing sites give you.

So, why don’t you benefit from them given that they will get you lots of traffic over time?

Before I finish I want to let you know that if you don’t know how to, can’t or don’t hae the time to create your own videos a good friend of mine Jason Anderson has a service that will make them for you.

He used to charge $400 for those videos but he expanded his studio and videographer/video editor capacity and now can do them for about 88% off that price. Don’t know how he does it but I use him and you should too!

Check it out now!

How do you use video?

Why don’t you use video if you don’t?

Leave me a comment and let me know.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian

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This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Getting a Grip on Video Search Engines