This time we’re going to expand on that and look at how to take it to the next level and see how to use powerful content sharing sites to build the main structure of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

The number of very high quality back links and how quickly you can improve your search engine results positioning is amazing and this is the real secret to the strength of the traffic network.

There are a large number of content sharing sites, including the article directories we looked at last time, but there are some that are head and shoulders above the others, ones that you must include in your Free Traffic Network.

There is only one place to start is when adding your first content sharing site after you’ve established your article marketing process.

Squidoo

While Squidoo is one of the many innovative Web 2.0 sites you can use to get some extra traffic to your Web properties, it stands above most others by its quality and by the authority that the search engines give it.

If you don’t know what Squidoo is, it’s a site that lets you easily create special Web pages called a lens; while similar to blogs, usually these focus on a specific subject, and a great thing is you don’t need any expertise to create a “lens” on Squidoo.

As a content-sharing site Squidoo was created as a way for people to share their knowledge, opinions and expertise.

The key is understanding how creating Squidoo lenses can help you.

Benefits to Creating Squidoo Lenses

Creating lenses has a number of benefits particularly in regards to building traffic.

1. Market to Niche Audiences

A primary benefit of creating Squidoo lenses is it is a great way to promote yourself and your products and services to your niche marketplace.

This generates traffic directly to your lenses and indirectly to your other Web properties.

2. Focusing on Your Niche

Creating a proper marketing Squidoo lens really forces you narrow down your focus when creating content.

A common problem people have is that they try to be broad in their writing or they have keywords but don’t focus the article on them.

The entire process of creating a lens can help organize your thoughts and keep you focused on the single topic being written about.

This focus improves your traffic results for your niche and keywords.

3. Get Google’s Love

Squidoo has “juice”, that is, their pages will rank high more easily than pages on regular sites; of course, that is only true if you have words on your lens.

When you do searches you’ll see that Squidoo lenses usually appear ahead of other social bookmarking and content sharing sites.

So , when creating a lens you would target specific keywords that are related to your niches and products. When you make your lenses you add your keywords (tags) throughout to help the search engines and to bring in more traffic.

4. Testing Keywords

By choosing and putting keywords into your Squidoo lenses you can actually test your keyword phrases to see how popular they are and how music web traffic you can get.

Just create your lenses and then look at your statistics to see how it does.

With Squidoo you can see which of your lenses is the most popular. This can be eye-opening when it comes to discovering searchable and popular topics.

Analyzing your results and making modifications as necessary will show you which keywords the ones that are bringing you the most traffic.

5. Ideas for More Lenses

The sheer process of creating a Squidoo lens will cause you to come up with new ideas for additional lenses; I usually get at least one new idea and frequently several.

Of course, those additional lenses bring more traffic and bring more ideas!

6. Creating Quality Back Links

Because of the keyword focus on specific topics and the authority of Squidoo when you link your lenses to your other Web properties they get very high quality back links which gives them more power and more traffic.

As a nice side benefit , Squidoo gives you greater exposure and helps establish you as an expert.

How to Create Squidoo Lenses

To create a new lens you log into your account and click the link to make a new lens.

Then, to make the lens, you put together the various Squidoo modules onto one complete whole.

Each section of your article is put in a text module, with an appropriate heading, then add any other modules, that are appropriate, to your lens and publish it.

There a number of module types you can use, some you particularly want to consider are:

• Amazon: allows adding related Amazon products
• Del.icio.us: this module will automatically display your Delicious’ed links on your lens.
• eBay: this lists your auctions based on your tags or list specific eBay items you want to show on your lens.
• Featured Lenses: this module allows you to display the introduction modules of up to five lenses per module, creating a sort of a “lensography” of your (or other) lenses.
• Introduction: this is where you introduce your article/lens (required)
• Link Lists: this allows you to easily add lists of links
• YouTube: this allows you to add related YouTube videos to your lenses
• Poll: this allows you to add a poll to your lens
• RSS: this allows you to add your RSS feeds to your lenses (highly recommended)
• Text: this is where you place the text of your article (required)
• Text List: this lets you easily add lists to your lenses
• Plexos: this is available for various other modules like a Amazon, Flickr, text links and YouTube and  allows your readers to vote on your which items in the module they like best

Squidoo Terminilogy

Squidoo has some of its own language and terms you should know:

• Dashboard: this is the place where you can adjust your settings and check your statistics
• Lens: a Web page created on Squidoo (by a Lensmaster)
• Lensmaster: a person who creates lenses is a lensmaster.
• Lensrank: the numerical position your lens has when compared to all other published lenses.  Similar to a popularity rating, your Lensrank can change on a daily basis and it based on a wide variety of factors.
• Module: components that you can add to your lenses to give them unique features and content.
• Publish: when you’ve finished a lens you need to publish it so Squidoo will index it and make it available on the Internet
• Squid: a member of Squidoo
• Squidcast: a message that you can be send to your fans
• WiP: stands for Work in Progress, and means a lens that is still being worked on but has not been published or indexed by Squidoo.

Google’s “Squidoo Slap

There has been some concern about the importance of Squidoo because of the “Squidoo Slap” Google did to Squidoo Lenses.

Basically Google sent a message to Squidoo by “punishing” them and their lenses with bad (or no) rankings, even for many lenses that had high ones.

Like all “slaps” this was Google’s way of saying “we want good and relevant content and since some of your lenses are spam and porn and just sales pitches we’re penalizing you until you clean your act up.”

Seth Godin, the creator of Squidoo, is one of the world’s best marketers and Squidoo quickly and effectively made some rule changes that are very positive changes for themselves and for you as a marketer; and it made Google happy.

These changes benefit you because now you aren’t competing with the more unethical or unsavory people and your lenses will get the power of Squidoo while those people don’t get that advantage.

Also, Google may give even more power to this new and improved Squidoo giving you even better rankings for your lenses.

You can find out more about the changes, like the limited to the number of links and topics that you can’t create lenses about, by reading the messages on Squidoo or doing a Google search.

Conclusion

If you’re an Internet Marketer or have an online business and you aren’t using Squidoo, you need to start because you don’t realize what you’re traffic missing out on.

Squidoo is the number one Web 2.0 content sharing site in many ways including number one in driving traffic to your Web properties.

There are lots of benefits to creating Squidoo lenses to drive traffic, they include:

• Market to Niche Audiences
• Focusing on Your Niche
• Get Google’s Love
• Testing Keywords
• Ideas for More Lenses
• Creating Quality Back Links

Next time we’ll look at other content sharing sites and how to use them properly.

How has your ultimate traffic network coming?

Just remember, it’s all in the doing!

Please leave me a comment about what you’ve been doing or what you think about this series.

Talk soon,

David

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. Don’t forget to retweet this! Use the button on the page or just Tweet this:
Content Sharing Sites, Squidoo: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 8 at http://dahsu.com/6qeO8Pd (via @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

Content Sharing Sites, Squidoo: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 8

Sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Squidoo and many other social networking sites are great for helping get traffic either directly and also, more importantly, from Google.

But fewer people talk about the importance of social bookmarking sites to get traffic and they can be just as good as social networking sites when done properly.

Social bookmarking should be one of your main strategies for maximizing your exposure, ranking higher in the search engines and making more money online.

And don’t just go with one or two sites like Delicious or Digg go for a good number of sites, at least 20-25, and that is for each account you setup. You can and should have multiple accounts but that is a topic for another day.

So here is what you need to do to get more traffic…

Traffic Strategy

First, come up with a general traffic strategy that lets you quickly get Google’s attention.

As I have talked about before, you should be using content and links in Web 2.0 properties, particularly authority sites, to let Google know and remember you exist.

Then consistently post content to those Web 2.0 sites which will create one way back links to your Web properties (like your blog and Web site).

The key word there is “consistently” because you need to continuously be creating content and creating back links, without that consistency you’ll just be continuously defeating yourself. Sort of like people who go on fad diets, lose some weight, gain it back and have to start again.

Make a publishing calendar, that’s what I do and it really helps be consistent and continuous.

Also part of your strategy is making proper use of “anchor text”, account user names and your titles, all of which should include your keywords.

When do you stop?

Only when you don’t want to make any more money with the Web site. Otherwise you keep doing it. Nobody ever said it would be easy to make money on the Internet but following the 3 Pillars anybody can but it takes work; fortunately, virtually all of it can be outsourced so you don’t have to do that work.

Dominating with Social Bookmarking

It’s all well and good to create Hub Pages, Squidoo Lens, Facebook Pages and all of that to get some good content and back links but that isn’t the only thing you need to do because just making them doesn’t mean Google will rank you on page one.

This is where social bookmarking comes into play.

You need to be promoting those social networking sites by bookmarking them. That will then get you valuable back links to your social networking pages.

Because you can bookmark any Web page be it a Squidoo Lens or a blog post it should be one of the core strategies for you traffic generation.

What to Do

First thing to do is find every important page you have, whether it is a blog post, a Squidoo Lens, a YouTube video or even a product sales page; note I said EVERY important page because Google ranks pages not Web sites so you need to find the important pages you want Google to rank.

Then create accounts on the social bookmarking sites.

Then you need to create a bookmarking schedule and bookmark those pages. You don’t want to do it once and you don’t want to do it all at once so you need a schedule, just like, and coordinated with, your publishing schedule.

This way Google will see a nice “natural” progression of bookmarking and give you that Google Love you want so much.

Then, every time you add a new page or post or sales page you add it to the bookmarking schedule so it gets it share of your bookmarks.

One thing to do though is that you don’t just want to be bookmarking your own sites. You need to be bookmarking other sites also otherwise it will just look like you are trying to scam the system.

A good percentage of bookmarks should be other people’s Lenses and blog posts and such. In fact, “traffic guru” John Reese recommends that 80% of you bookmarking should be other people’s sites, that’s how important he things it is.

What are Some Bookmarking Sites

Here are some of the sites I use to bookmark:

1. 1-webmarks.com
2. bookmarktracker.com
3. clipclip.org
4. clipmarks.com
5. del.icio.us
6. digg.com
7. diigo.com
8. esnips.com
9. fa.vorites.com
10. faves.com
11. jumptags.com
12. leenks.com
13. linkagogo.com
14. mylinkvault.com
15. mystuff.ask.com
16. myvmarks.com
17. propeller.com
18. spurl.net
19. tedigo.net
20. trailfire.com
21. wink.com
22. yattle.com

Go there and sign up and put those sites in your bookmarking schedule

Isn’t It a Lot of Work?

Yes, it can be quite a lot of work, particularly at the beginning, but again it is an important part of running an online business.

Fortunately, you can outsource it or use some tools to make it much easier. Here is a list of tools I us, they will help you automate bookmarking of the best bookmarking sites:

1. Howie Schwartz’s Bookmark Generation
2. Ross Goldberg’s Internet Marketing Revolution
3. SENuke

They each have their strengths and weaknesses so try one or all; they all have a 100% money back guarantees or free trials.

Conclusion

Social bookmarking should be a core strategy in your traffic generation plans. Google will show you more love as will your bank account!

Just sign up for accounts, find all your important Web pages and start bookmarking; don’t forget though to bookmark a lot of other sites also. Just remember to use a continuous and consistent approach.

You can use some tools or outsource the job so you aren’t taking the time away from more important things; hmm, I should have said “you SHOULD use some tools…” instead of “you CAN use some tools…”

Are you doing bookmarking? Leave a comment and let me know what you’re doing and how it has helped you.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

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

Why You Must Do Social Bookmarking

Are there other ways, sure. And you should use them but ultimately you need to play Google’s game.

How do you play?

While not earth shattering, there is still one thing that Google prizes highly, being GREAT for its customers; that is, they strongly believe if they are exceeding their customers expectations then their customers will continue to come back and they will continue to get more.

Standard business practice really but they embrace it with a vengeance and it obviously is working.

Now the question becomes, what does Google, and the other search engines but particularly Google, think help them exceed those expectation.

That, too, is one primary thing; make sure that when someone is searching they are finding what they want; that is, give the customers what they are asking for

Again, a simple strategy and one that all business should follow (if they want to be successful at least

That brings up another question: how does Google decide if something – your Web site, sales page, blog, etc. – is something they want to promote to their customers.

Promote you say?

Well, think about it, isn’t that what the search engine results are, Google “promoting” various Web sites; the higher you are in the results the more they are promoting.

And isn’t that why you want to be high in the results because you want Google to be promoting you more than your competitors.

There are 2 proven things that Google has shown and continues to show that they value highly:

Content, or rather great content, and incoming links from “valuable” Web sites. Valuable meaning ones that Google believes provides great content, particularly “authority sites”.

Again, not revolutionary information.

This is what Google has wanted for years and looks to be what they will want for years to come. Their definitions of great content and valuable incoming links may alter but the principles remain.

Great Content

What makes great content would be a complete blog post or three in itself and so I won’t focus on that here but here is a good general guideline…

Google defines great content as content that provides good value to their customers, it must be very informational – remember Google wants to make sure they are giving their customer what they want or more than what they want so the better the information the better Google likes it and the better Google likes the person who provided the content – that’s you!

Incoming Links

What Google wants for links now isn’t what they wanted in the past. For the last couple of years they have been putting a lot more weight on social media networking and content sharing sites.

These are sites like Facebook, YouTube and Squidoo.

They have dedicated computers that constantly, 24/7, index those sites for new content.

The content sharing sites Google likes are exactly what you need to help you because they let you provide both things that Google loves, great content and valuable links.

Since you can publish content on these sites and their links are so valuable this provides you with more “Google Love”

Ultimately there are 2 primary ways you can get targeted traffic from these sites:

1. The most obvious way is you’ll get better position in Google’s search results
2. Your great content will entice a certain percentage of people to click on links you have put in your content to your Web sites.

Powerhouse Sites – Use These!

Out of all the possible content sharing sites I have 3 absolute favorite sites that like to use: Squidoo, Hub Pages and EzineArticles.

Sure I use some of the other ones sometimes but I’ve found those 3 to be so much better in getting the results I want that 90-95% of my great content goes to those sites.

Yet again, this isn’t an “amazing secret” being released, as lots of people like and use those sites, hopefully you already do, but it is worth emphasizing them and making sure you are using them to get the best impact on your business.

Squidoo

Squidoo was created by famous marketing genius Seth Godin – read some of his books if you haven’t – and to publish content on Squidoo you create a Lens.

While Squidoo has other tools and even a revenue sharing plan, we’re interested in the content creation here.

With Squidoo it seems like the longer the Lens the better, that is, the more content in each Lens the better Google likes it. I try to have at least 750 words for each Lens but most are much longer.

Take a twofold strategy when creating Lenses.

First, create lots of Lens over time, one a day is my goal.

Second, periodically update previous Lens’ so that they have “fresh content”, this keeps those Lens important in the eyes of Google.

Don’t put too many other modules (like eBay, Amazon, etc.) into your Lens. It distracts from your content and do you really want people to go away from your Lens to somewhere else for a few cents, unless it is your Web site.

I’ve also recently found that having graphic images on a Lens is helpful, so try to include them whenever possible; even just a simple chart or picture helps.

One thing though that isn’t a question though is the importance of tagging your Lenses with good keywords.

Make sure you tag each of your Lenses with relevant and good keywords (use the keyword research you did before writing to guide you here).

The final, and most important, thing to remember to do though is to make sure the Lens has great, informative content and it is all on the same topic. Don’t talk about your primary topic and then throw in one or two other unrelated topics; create new Lens if those other topics are so good.

Finally, (didn’t I say the last one was the final thing) make sure you have links for your Web site and a way that they can contact.

For those who want a quick introduction to creating a Lens, I found this YouTube video:

Hub Pages

Hub Pages is another content sharing site that Google loves and it has some great tools to help you create great content.

I’ve found that, like Squidoo, the more content on a Hub the better and I go for at least 1,500 words for my Hub Pages.

There also looks to be a “reward” for having graphics and video on your Hubs so be sure to include them.

Good Hub Pages are built similarly to good Squidoo Lens but Hub Pages are much stricter in what you can and cannot do so it may take you a while to resolve a flagged Hub.

Remember to create new Hub Pages and modify existing ones to help keep them fresh.

Basically, don’t do these things and you shouldn’t have many problems:

1. Have great informational content, this isn’t MySpace where you put lots of personal stuff. Have personality, but don’t create a Hub for just your personal likes and dislikes, for example
2. Do NOT have a lot of links, particularly promotional links and links to the same sites. More than 2 links to the same domain will get you immediately flagged
3. Have good tags, not only does this help you but you won’t get flagged
4. Don’t plagiarize or have duplicate content on your Hub. This will get you flagged and certainly lower your HubScore
5. Having a commercial Hub without setting your ad level to High

Follow those rules and you’ll have few problems with creating Hub Pages; I recommend doing one per day.

Ezine Articles

EzineArticles started as an article directory and, of course, it still is.

Today though, Google has bestowed upon I such authority that it has become a powerful content sharing site although it still looks and acts like an article directory.

This is where the real value to you is.

Creating an article is easy but you need to follow certain rules to make sure your article gets published:

1. It must be original content, they’ve very specific (picky!) about only having one copy of an article on their site so if you have PLR articles you’ll need to rewrite them (always a good thing anyway)
2. Like Hub Pages, they must provide good information not just be promotional
3. They must use good English, both spelling and grammar. They aren’t as strict as your old English teacher but they want it to be well written; after all, it does reflect upon them and the quality of their articles is why Google likes them so much
4. Don’t put too many links in, particularly links to your Web sites

Things you should do are:

1. Have a keyword rich title (you should do that for Squidoo and Hub Pages also)
2. Make your article about 500 words. Unlike Squidoo and Hub Pages don’t make them too long; no more than 750 or 1,000 words
3. a great resource box where you have links to your applicable Web site
4. Like all online marketing content, it should have lots of related keyword to maximize your search engine results. Of course, don’t put to many
5. Tag the article with your keywords

Create at least one per day and submit it to Ezine articles.

Conclusion

Use the 2 ways, great content and valuable back links, to achieve a higher search engine results position.

The best ways I’ve found have been to use Squidoo, Hub Pages and EzineArticles and try to create new content on each of them every day.

You should begin a consistent and systematic approach to creating great content to submitted to the content sharing sites.

As part of that content be sure and include graphics and video.

If you do that you’ll find that your SERP improves from all the incoming links to your Web properties and the great content you’ve created.

The more you do this, the faster your rankings will improve and the more targeted traffic you’ll get.

Leave a comment and tell me what you think and I’d love to hear how you are using social media to improve your rankings.

Talk soon,

David
The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. If you want a good tool to help you with your SEO, I use SEO Elite and if you need to have some high quality content written for you, I use Need An Article and ArticleZ; they do a good job although they aren’t as swift as I would like – you know, I want great articles written instantly

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

2 Proven Ways to SERP Victory