As a quick refresher we looked at: your post titles; what to cover in your blog posts; how to create and present your blog posts; how to properly use links; what “voice” you should use; and a whole lot more.

Now you know what to do to your blogs to optimize them for your Ultimate Free Traffic Network we’re going to look at some of the final “secret” details you need to do to buff up that blog so you attract and keep readers.

You may think you don’t need these but small details are usually what separates the failures or even the fairly successful from the wildly successful.

So, to be truly exceptional, you need to go that extra step (or ten!) and do those things that others don’t.

Fine Details on Optimizing Your Blogs

Setting up and using blogs in the right way gives a remarkably strong foundation for your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

There are a few additional things you need to make sure you do, or at least think about, to have your blogs be as exceptional as they can be.

Have Personality

As a mentioned above you need to have your own “voice” and if that voice has a interesting, likeable personality it will engage your readers and have them help them build some emotional bonds with you.

This isn’t always easy for everyone, some of us aren’t as witty, personable and interesting as others; I understand as I fall into that category.

But, you need to find something inside that is part of you and that can be attractive to your readers or, at least, to a large enough group who are interested in your topic that they will continue to read what you say.

Proper Use of Advertising

I mentioned this above also but it is so attractive to so many people that I need to say it again.

Blog advertising has becoming big business nowadays and will likely grow over the new few years.

There are many forms of advertising: affiliate marketing, banner ads, ads for your own products, AdSense, etc.

For you traffic network you need to start with no ads to build up traffic and build your relationships.

After you’ve done that then start putting up related ads for your own or affiliate products and sell the space to people that will be of interest and actually help some segment of your audience.

AdSense isn’t the best way to go because, for most ads, you earn so little per click and you may get a mix of ads that aren’t always appropriate to the specifics of your audience, meaning more work for you to fine tune AdSense.

Remember you are building a traffic network, you are building a few blogs to make money with.

Don’t Give Up

People are frequently ready to quit because:

• Something “bad” happens. It will happen so just deal, learn and progress.
• They don’t know how to do something. Nobody knows everything, learn how or find someone who does. Most of it isn’t hard to learn or expensive to get done for you.
• It takes too long. If you think building a traffic network will be fast you need to think again. If you want to spend lots of money you can speed up the process but expect it to talk some months to be showing results and years to be something great. Once it gets rolling though it is like the snowball rolling downhill, it happens faster and picks up more traffic.
• It is too much work. There is work, yes. It has to be done but you can automate and outsource all of it.  Look at those ways before you give up.

404 Error Pages

When a Web server can’t find a page that someone wants it returns a “404” missing page error.

When it happens, you can control what the person sees and use it to the advantage of your traffic network.

You can become increasingly sophisticated but, minimally redirect to the home page of your blog.

You can also:

1. Put  permanent redirect for that page so the search engines will know where to look
2. Give a introduction to you and your blog
3. Show links to popular posts on the blog
4. Dynamically, when they try to go to the missing page, figure out what they are looking for and either go there or put some suggested links to places that would be of interest; this could be based upon the URL and keywords/tags.
5. Put a squeeze page to capture their e-mail address so that you can remind them ofter about your blog.
6. Some people like ads but they aren’t optimal for a traffic network, particularly as they usually take traffic away from the blog not deeper into it. It’s best not to do this until you are very well established; do it for your Web sites or non-traffic network blogs but not for blogs in your traffic network.

Tell-a-Friend

You’re building a free traffic network and need as many things to help you as possible.

A Tell-a-Friend plug-in, like the one found at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tell-a-friend/, can help you generate traffic because when a person really likes a blog post they can immediate let their friends know.

This is the type of subtle thing that makes the different between an “okay” blog network and and an outstanding one.

Blog Directories

A blog directory is simply a specific type of Web directory that focuses on listing blogs instead of Web sites.

Since there are vast numbers of blogs on the Internet, blog directories help people find the types of blog they are looking for.

Some blog directories even include reviews and human-created descriptions to further help people find what they’re looking for.

Unlike a blog search engine, many blog directories are not based on keyword searches; they let you browse and search on multiple category levels. Most do include a search engine, but for some it isn’t the primary method.

Most blog directories, whether free or paid, have categories for a wide variety of different blogs; technically there is no limit.

How to Use Blog Directories

There are several ways you can benefit from blog directories but the primary way is that you can get a lot of back links; and some of the directory are high value sites so the links are more powerful than just regular links.

Most of the time your won’t get a lot of direct traffic from blog directories but the back links will provide you with indirect traffic through the search engines and it is a simple and easy way to give another little boost to your free traffic network.

Pinging Blogs

Pinging blogs is a method where blogs tells Web sites (called ping servers) that changes have been made to the blog.

That server adds the change to their list and other Web sites that have told the ping server Web site that they want to be notified of specific changes (thay are said to have “subscribed”) also get notified.

What this means is that seconds after you’ve posted an update to your blog all the lists in the ping servers you are “pinging” are automatically updated and everyone in the world who has subscribed is also automatically notified and have your update on their Web sites and blogs.

This also helps you with the search engines because those search engines can be notified automatically of blog updates and then know what they need index.

Here are a list of the ping servers I use, just add them to your WordPress writing settings:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2/

Use Technorati

Technorati is a search engine for blogs, actually, it is THE search engine for blogs.

To get Technorati to know about your blog you need to “claim” your blog at Technorati.

For building traffic to your blog, Technorati is astonishingly powerful; the percentage of traffic to my blogs that come from Technorati is high compared to other traffic sources.

In addition, Technorati is considered an authority site by the search engines so blogs that have been claimed, that all it takes, get a search engine results boost.

Obviously, for a free traffic network the power of Technorati explodes exponentially.

Conclusion

That’s it you’ve got your blog optimized for your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Like all the rest of the optimization techniques these are also good to do even if you aren’t creating a free traffic network.

This time we looked 8 more ways to make you blogs be traffic magnets:

1. Have Personality
2. Proper Use of Advertising
3. Don’t Give Up
4. 404 Error Pages
5. Tell-a-Friend
6. How to Use Blog Directories
7. Pinging Blogs
8. Use Technorati

We now have a very strong foundation to build our free traffic network on.

Next time we’ll look at the first ring or layer around your blogs, these will feed gobs of traffic to your blogs and are the key roadways in your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

What these are you doing that you’ve found really helped your blogs?

Was there anything I suggested that you think will be helpful or that won’t help you at all?

Please leave me a comment and let me know or with any questions you might have.

Talk soon,

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

.

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

Make Your Blogs Exceptional: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 5

This time we’ll continue looking at what you need to do to make sure your blogs are optimized to get the greatest benefit and the most traffic.

I’ve identified 15 things to do that will make an incredible difference in your traffic network.

Each is a valuable technique but combined they really help each other.

1. Title Your Post for Both Your Readers and the Search Engines

First, and foremost, write your title for your readers, including those who have subscribed to your RSS feed.

Make them snappy, on-topic and catchy.

However, you also want to think about the search engines when you create your titles, since they are a primary traffic driver.

What I do, and I find it works great, is to write the title then run a search at Google’s Keyword tool and WordTracker to see if there is a better phrasing or word ordering that I can use that better matches target search terms.

2. Cover Topics that Need to Be Covered

There are always certain topics and questions in every niche that constantly come up but don’t have good answers.

Those are always good to talk about and to provide definitive answers to.

I get a lot of topics for my posts from e-mail questions and blog comments. When you have people asking you questions then these can make great blog posts.

Spend time and effort researching hot topics that will be of interest and great value to your readers and to search engines. Then write posts about them giving your readers information, ideas, techniques, etc. that will keep them on the forefront of their niche and put them ahead of their competition.

3. Don’t Just Have Text in Your Posts

Break up your blog posts and keep them interesting by including images, video, audio, polls, charts, graphs and other non-text content.

You can even just use formatting like headings, whitespace, indentation, bullet points, call out boxes, etc. to create more visually appealing and readable blog posts.

4. Link Smartly and Judiciously

Some people think you shouldn’t have link from your site that aren’t links to your own Web properties.

While I don’t agree with that, when you include external links in your blog posts be aware of how those links are part of your content.

Of course, not every post needs links to other sites and there should be a good reason for everyone your have.

Add links only when it will provide additional information of great value to your reader. For example, if you are talking about using a tool that isn’t commonly known or that requires searching around to find then include a link to it.

Also, if you quoting or discuss the ideas of other bloggers or online sources then you should link to them; not to do that is bad etiquette and could cost you nice back links from them in the future.

5. Create and Use Meaningful Permalinks

Creating permanent link that are useful is, in my opinion, the best way to go.

It should readable to a person and include keywords for the post; this helps the reader and the search engines.

They should be as short as possible but clarity should trump brevity because it isn’t likely that people will try to remember the URL link.

6. Be Sure to Bookmark Your Posts

Technorati is the first, and still THE, place that you should be bookmarking your posts and make it easy for others to do so.

Be sure to properly tag your blog posts and to use Digg, del.icio.us, Propeller and StumbleUpon.

There are many other places and you can automate much of this if you build a Social Media Domination Machine (http://streetguidetowebtraffic.com/blog/social-networking/social-media-domination-machine),

7. Archive Effectively

The best archives are the ones that make it easy for people to find what they want and for search engines to understand.

Carefully organize your blog posts into categories and date ranges.

For search traffic having the entire text on the archive pages but for readers having a short introduction and then a link to the full blog post is easier.

You need to try to balance these two conflicting needs and make your decision based on personal your goals for the blog.

8. Track Your Pages and Visitors

Use tracking software, like Google Analytics, to see which of your posts and more popular and also where you visitors are coming from. Also, track any sign up and comments links or buttons so you can what percentage of people use them and where they are coming from.

Use this information to improve your pages and your strategies.

9. Create Your Blog Without Comments and Add Them Later

A blog post with no comments feels sort of dead.

One solution is to disable comments and then when you have about 100 RSS subscribers or 7-800 unique visitors per day, then enable comments and you should start seeing some comment activity.

10. Use a Human Voice

The success of a blog is tied to the “voice” you present to your readers.

For direct response marketers, like most Internet Marketers, people in most niches like an informal voice that has empathy, authority, humility and honesty; so write from that place and you’ll be more likely to succeed.

If you see people start to leaving and your traffic dropping it’s time to do something and one of those things is to relook at your writing style and the “voice” of your posts.

11. Create a Personal Style and Be Consistent

When writing, create a personal style in tone, content focus, when you post and what your post look like.

If you vary widely from that it will be harder to get a group of people who like your style; makes sense since you don’t really have one.

Part of why people will read what you say again and again is that they like both the information you provide and the way you provide it.

Whatever style you decide you will attract people, although certain styles work better in certain niches, but you need to be consistent in that style both in content and “voice”.

This applies somewhat to post frequency so try to be consistent in how many and when you make your posts.

12. Don’t Be Secretive or Stingy with Information

The more open and giving you are with the information on your blog posts the more likely they will be read and the more you will be trusted.

The Internet itself has become a vast library of information much of it previously considered, or believed to be, private.

If you aren’t pushing to the limit of what you can rightfully publish you’ll be defeating yourself but if you do “go all the way” then you’ll be rewards with more visitiors, links and traffic.

13. Build a Brand

Most direct marketers are successful because they build a brand – not do brand marketing but build a brand.

That brand may be a personal brand where they brand themselves or it may be a corporate brand where they brand a company.

When you brand you need to create a brand that people want to be associated with that people feel they are better off by “patronize” that brand.

As with your style, be consistent with your brand.

14. Don’t Advertise (at Least for Awhile)

Some people love putting up blogs with lots of ads including AdSense.

This isn’t a good thing no matter whether the ads are AdSense, banners, contextual or any other type it has a negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, bookmark or evn add to their favorites.

That is something you don’t want particularly while you’re still trying to get established.

It also gives people a lot of places to go to that are your sites.

So, even though you might pick up a little money, until you are popular, don’t put an advertisements on you pages except maybe to your own Web properties; ultimately you’ll earn much more than you’re going to lose.

15. Have Guest Bloggers

Having a well known person in your niche to write a short post on their subject of expertise is a great way to give great value to your readers and attract new ones; particularly because you’ll probably get a link (or at least be associated with the person).

Be sure that you getting a quality post from the person and not just a sales piece and that the person is well know and thought of highly in your niche.

Also make sure they agree to have let you edit their post before it’s posted to avoid any later unpleasantness.

Conclusion

Now you know what to do to your blogs to optimize them for your Ultimate Free Traffic Network to turn them into traffic magnets. In fact, they’re good to do even if you aren’t creating a traffic network.

We looked 15 ways to do this optimization:

1. Title Your Post for Both Your Readers and the Search Engines
2. Cover Topics that Need to Be Covered
3. Don’t Just Have Text in Your Posts
4. Link Smartly and Judiciously
5. Create and Use Meaningful Permalinks
6. Be Sure to Bookmark Your Posts
7. Archive Effectively
8. Track Your Pages and Visitors
9. Create Your Blog Without Comments and Add Them Later
10. Use a Human Voice
11. Create a Personal Style and Be Consistent
12. Don’t Be Secretive or Stingy with Information
13. Build a Brand
14. Don’t Advertise (at Least for Awhile)
15. Have Guest Bloggers

Remember that your blogs are the true center of your traffic network and they need to be setup as optimized and powerful as possible.

Next time we’ll look at the last things you need to be doing to with your blogs as you create your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Do you have any things you do to your blogs that has been successful?

Are you building a traffic network? I hope so, I am!

Leave me a comment and let me know.

Talk soon,

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

.

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

Make Traffic Magnets, Optimize Your Blogs: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 4

Now we are going to start looking at the individual parts to the network, the various Web properties that will make up the network; remember what it looks like…

The center of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network is to your blogs. This is where, ultimately, all your links lead; some directly and some indirectly.

There are two types of blogs: personal blogs that are hosted by the blog owner; and hosted blogs that are hosted by specific services like Blogger and WordPress.

Each has a place and importance in a traffic network and both should be used to maximize the value of network.

The purpose of all the blogs used in a traffic network is to attract visitors and help generate traffic, either for the network or to a money site.

To attract and retain visitors, the steady stream of great content posted to the blog needs to remain focused on the specific topic on the blog both because this helps attract and retain but it also improve search engine rankings and builds authority.

Now let’s start looking at specifics of what and how to use blog to build your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Hosted

Many people blogging start with hosted blogs because they are quick and easy to get going it they don’t cost anything; they are a great places to start to learn about blogging and to build the habit of blogging.

Hosted blogs are very similar to personal blogs except you have less control of the blog but you don’t have to worry about or pay for hosting and the major blog hosts are considered authority sites and add some weight to your search engine and traffic generation.

While hosted blogs should be a part of your traffic network in many ways they are dead.

Using places like WordPress.com and Blogger.com won’t make you much money and it will be harder to come by, that why you don’t see serious bloggers using it.

But they are very useful as part of a traffic network particularly because they are authority sites.

Blogger

Blogger is Google’s free tool for creating blogs. It can be found on the web at http://www.blogger.com.

There are fancier hosted blogs but the free cost and some of the additional flexibility makes Blogger attractive.

Of course, since it is owned by Google, they index it regularly and get a lot of traffic. This makes it valuable for adding to a traffic network.

You can set up a Blogger account very quickly, all you have to do is: sign up for an account, choose a name for your blog and choose a template for your blog. You can then host any number of multiple blogs under that account

Remember, the value of a Blogger blog isn’t to make money with it or even to use it as a primary blogging platform; the value is the power of it being an authority site and getting content, even just an RSS feed, on there that points to your other Web properties will help increase your traffic.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is free blog hosting from the people who created the WordPress blogging software.

The search engines value it highly and index the pages there very frequently and give it a lot of traffic. This makes it valuable for adding to a traffic network as you can get traffic to WordPress which you funnel to your other Web properties.

It is a quick and easy way to get a blog up and running; it literally only takes a few minutes. You don’t get to take advantage of all the great features of the non-hosted version but the fact that it is an authority site still means you should spend the few minutes to set one up.

Like Blogger, WordPress.com isn’t about making money directly or even about being your primary blogging platform; use it to point to your other Web properties so you get some good back links.

Personal

Personal blogs are blogs are the true core of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

They are blogs that the blog owner hosts themselves. You have to pay for space on a computer that is connected to the Internet and install the blog on that computer. It’s crucial that you actually own your blog including the domain name.

The value of a personal blog is having complete control over the blog and that you can monetize it is many more ways than a hosted blog.

It can be a direct link to your money site and, in fact, a personal blog can protect your money sites from the whims of the search engines, social networking sites and other components of your traffic network.

There are a number of ways to get traffic to blogs, Seth Godin has a list and here is my top 23 that I find work best for getting traffic and getting that traffic further in your traffic funnel:

1. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now
2. Learn enough to become the expert in your field
3. Break news
4. Be timeless… write posts that will be readable in a year
5. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic
6. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you
7. Announce news
8. Write long, definitive posts
9. Be sycophantic. Share link love and expect some back
10. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us
11. Encourage your readers to Digg (and to use furl and reddit) your posts; do it with every post
12. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS
13. Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education
14. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lenses
15. Point to useful but little-known resources
16. Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle
17. Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don’t bore your readers
18. Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger
19. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention
20. Be patient
21. Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive
22. Don’t be boring
23. Write stuff that people want to read and share

Conclusion

We’ve started looking at the center of your Ultimate Free Traffic Network, blogs.

We looked at hosted blogs and how to use them in your traffic network.

Your personal blogs are the true center of your network and we looked at the purpose of personal blogs and 23 great ways to get traffic to your blogs.

But there is more to personal blogs than that and next time we’ll look at some other things that you need to be doing to with your blogs as you create your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Leave me a comment about your thoughts.

Talk soon,

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

.

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

Blogs, the Center of the Universe: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 3

Basically, we’re going to build a system that will get website traffic from the search engines, social media sites, content sharing sites and more.

The core components of it will be providing a steady stream of great content and creating massive numbers of links from high value Web properties.

Let’s look at what we mean by that.

Core Components: Content and Links

As mentioned in the previous blog post, the Ultimate Free Traffic Network consists of providing a steady stream of great content and creating massive numbers of links from high value Web properties.

Both of these are tremendously important, critically so, to increase web traffic to you sites, particularly targeted traffic

So important that even though you think you know what they are, what to do and how to use them for free traffic, they need to be discussed in more depth.

Content

Great content is the foundation of the Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

People love it and search engines love it. Using great content will increase site traffic with the best kind: targeted web traffic.

Great content is made by providing great information in an interesting and engaging way.

It isn’t just a bunch of boring facts presented in a formal academic manner.

It is taking those facts and presenting them in a way that draws people in, makes them interested, piques their curiosity and entertains them.

Remember though, it does need to be truthful and about topics your target audience actually needs and wants to know about.

Be broad But Focused

For your topic, try to be broad but also stay focused on the topic.

For example, if your topic is tennis for women then you should get content about ways of improving a person’s game, equipment, fitness and nutrition, even news and players of the professional players but don’t throw in content about other sports or music or gardening or whatever.

Stay focused on your topic to increase web site traffic and build a strong traffic network.

It’s good to have great content but that’s only half of the content story.

You need to have a steady stream of content.

You can’t just provide some great content now and then and expect to create your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

You need to be consistent, periodic and frequent to be successful.

The minimum frequency should be once a week but the more frequent the better, ultimately you should be aiming providing content every.

One of the best ways to make sure you are consistent and frequent is to have a schedule.

Just publish on the same day or days each week to the same places and you’ll quickly get into a routine and it will become second nature to you.

Remember too that you won’t have to do much, if any, of the work to do that but that is what you should be aiming for.

Links

That content is all well and good and by itself it will generate some free web site traffic, eventually maybe get website traffic at decent levels but it isn’t enough to create your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

You need something else and that something is links, also called back links; links from other Web properties to your property are what you want.

But not just any links, you want high quality links.

High quality links are links from places that are provided lots of great content on a consistent and frequent basis.

The best sites are authority sites. These are sites that provide such a lot of great content on such a frequent basis that they are viewed by niche experts and the search engines to be experts themselves.

For example, in that tennis for women’s niche links from usta.com or tennis.com would be invaluable.

Now, it isn’t always easy to get links from those types of place, in fact, it is usually almost impossible to get them, particularly at the beginning.

Fortunately, there is a great way to get high value links very easily.

Links from social media and content sharing sites are powerful links; and can be used to get web site traffic (and it is cheap web site traffic!)

Those places generate web traffic at such a tremendous rate and have so much content (both good and bad) that is created so frequently (every second of every day) they are considered authority sites.

And anyone can get links there for absolutely no cost.

Think about it, you can get links from these powerful Web properties by just signing up for a free account and creating great content that contains links to your Web properties.

You can create as much content as you like, getting as many links as you’d like.

Free and easy; what could be better?

Conclusion

There are two core components of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network: great content and high value links.

Content needs to be very informative and focused what people are interested in; it must be presented in an engaging manner.

With links, as with so much in life, it is quality over quantity.

Get links from high value sites – authority sites – including social media and content sharing sites. Of course, huge quantities of high value links are what you want for the ultimate, Ultimate Free Traffic Network!

In the next post, we’ll look at the center of your free traffic network.

Please leave a comment and ask questions, add your thoughts or just rant

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

.

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

Great Content and Quality Links: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 2

Web traffic is so important to us Internet Marketers for our online businesses that it is one of my 3 Pillars of Guaranteed Success; without it you will fail and with the enough of the right you have a good chance of succeeding – you still need the other 2 Pillars though.

It is non-optional.

This is the first in a series of posts on what makes up, and how to build, the “ultimate” free traffic network. That is, a traffic network that will bring you maximum traffic and a strong Traffic Pillar.

Follow along and do what’s discussed and you’ll end up with a network that will bring you an astonishing amount of traffic.

There are two types of traffic, commonly called “free traffic” and “paid traffic”.

Of course, everything costs something so using the term “free traffic” isn’t really correct; just think of it as traffic that you get without a direct cash outlay but there may be indirect costs in time and money.

Paid traffic costs you directly and the most common forms of paid traffic are:

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC), like Google AdWords and AdSense, where you have advertisement and every time someone clicks on the ad to go to your site you pay a fee
• Cost-Per-Action (CPA) is where you have advertisements and you pay for each specified action; an action can be purchase, a new subscriber to your list, etc.
• Cost-Per-View (CPV) is where you have advertisements and you pay each time someone views your ad, whether they click or take any action at all.
• Cost-Per-Mille (CPM) is where you have advertisements and you pay a set amount for every thousand views of your ad; it is a subset of CPV.
• Advertisements are text and graphic ads with links to your Web properties, like banner ads, etc., and you pay to have to the ad shown for a specific period of time.

Free traffic doesn’t have direct costs and the most common forms of free traffic are:

• Traffic from search engines, frequently called organic traffic
• Traffic from the Web 2.0/social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Technorati and Digg
• Traffic from content sharing sites like article directories, Squidoo and Hub Pages
• Traffic from your affiliates and even traffic that comes from e-mail sent to your lists

We’re going to look in depth at all the aspects of how to build a traffic network that floods you with targeted traffic.

The core pieces of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network are:

• Content: Providing a steady stream lots of great content to a wide variety of Web properties
• Links: Creating massive numbers of links from high value Web properties

Sounds like a lot of stuff to do and a lot work

Don’t worry, an ultimate network minimizes the amount of work you have to do to get a tsunami of traffic; it will all be explained.

Your free traffic network will be made up of 2 types of traffic:

1. Direct Traffic: this is traffic that comes directly from a link you created; usually this on one of your Web properties but it could be on a syndicated article or in an RSS feed someone is received on their Web properties
2. Indirect Traffic: this is traffic that doesn’t come directly from a link you created; using this is traffic from a search engine

A huge variety of Web properties will be used, including:

• Blogs: you will create multiple blogs that will be active, that is, it will provide new content at least once a week; the more frequent the better.
• Content Sharing Sites: you will create many articles for posting on content sharing sites like article directories (Ezine Articles, etc.), Squidoo, Hub Pages, etc.
• Social Networking Sites: you will create content for posting on social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
• Social Bookmarking Sites: you will utilize social bookmarking sites to provide links to all of the content your create and post; these are sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Propellet.
• Micro-blogging Sites: you will make sure that links to the content you create is distributed on micro-blogging sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Plurk, Jaiku and identi.ca.
• Other Sites: Many other sites will be used in your traffic network including blog directories, video sharing sites, aggregators and more

These will all be linked in a defined matrix; look at the figure for a simplistic view of what the network will look like. It is simplistic because many of the sites and connections/links are missing but was purposely kept that way for clarity.

As you can see, using a lot of different Web properties provides an amazing number of links and you see how much of this can be automated and all of it can be outsourced.

Conclusion

Everyone likes free things and free traffic is great to get.

Building an Ultimate Free Traffic Network will provide an incredible amount of targeted buyers to your sites and make a huge different in the success of your online businesses.

Using social media site, content sharing sites and other means you’ll be able to build a powerful tool to explode your business.

Surprisingly, much of it can be automated and all of it can be outsourced so that you can get these benefits on autopilot.

In the next post we’ll start digging deeper into the actual parts of the network.

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think or ask any questions you might have.

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

.

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

Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 1

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

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

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

Protected: Traffic Tactics: Lesson 1 – The Basics

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

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

Protected: Traffic Tactics: Lesson 2 – Free Social Traffic at Your Finger Tips

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

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

Protected: Traffic Tactics: Lesson 3 – Up Close and Personal With Blogs