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

David Husnian — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:44:59 +0000

In the last post in this series we looked at the one thing you need to get an insane amount of traffic.

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
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O.Y. Don’t forget to retweet this! Use the button on the page or just Tweet this:
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Content Sharing Sites, Squidoo: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 8

The One Thing You Need to Get an Insane Amount of Traffic: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 7

David Husnian — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:41:14 +0000

Last time we started looking at the foundation of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network; this is what will generate the majority of your free traffic.

We saw the main reasons why we want to use content sharing sites.

Things like getting a huge number of quality back links; note the emphasis here is on quality back links (we’re not going to be trying to get lots of worthless back links, that’s just wasted time and money).

And getting higher search engine results positioning — who doesn’t want to rank high in Google, and improved conversion rates; we also looked at how to use the content sharing sites to maximize benefits.

This time we’re going to go more deeply into the various content sharing sites and how to use them properly to produce an astonishingly large amount of traffic.

So what do you think the first thing you need to do to get that traffic is?

Get Content

Well, first you need content; yeah, I know, even I’m rolling my eyes and saying duh

But, this stops so many people. For whatever reason most people freeze up when they think they have to write something.

Don’t do that.

First, most people can write well enough to create the small articles for the traffic network.

You don’t need to write a thesis or a paper like you did in school. You just need to write less than one page on a topic you probably know and like but even if you can’t do that, with the Internet and search engines as research tools you can knock out an article in 10 minutes.

Just decide who your target audience is and find one or two great keywords that audience searches for and then that should help you decide what to write about.

Then sit down and write. Again, is doesn’t have to be a long, just write it.

Here are some resources I use to help me write articles:

Also, Melissa Ingold, someone I’ve worked with on several projects and someone who provides monthly content for some big name Internet Marketers, has a book on how to write articles for profit that you may find useful.

You can also look at my How to Create Absolutely Amazing Articles for some help.

Second, even if you think you can’t do that, or more importantly, you think you shouldn’t be using your precious time to write articles (which I agree with) there are 2 things you can do.

1. Buy prewritten articles that come with rights that let you use them for this purpose, that is, to use as content; Private Label Rights articles are best for this.

There are lots of great resources for PLR articles, here are some that I’ve used or created:

You can also take many PLR report and books and split them up into articles, here are some that I’ve used and created:

One thing, I would suggest you change your PLR articles to make them more unique, they’ll have more impact on your results. I aim for at least 40% different although some people say 30% is sufficient.

2. Hire someone to create articles for you; this could be an individual, a company who acts as a broker for writers or a service.

Here are 2 services I use:

Hiring a good writer can be the best way to go but it is more expensive. For example, last week, I commissioned for 400 articles from my top writer and it’s going to cost me several thousand dollars. You can buy a lot of PLR articles for that kind of money!

The advantage is I can get exactly the article I want and they are unique to me. The disadvantage is obviously that it costs more money and it takes a lot more time.

Either way you choose (actually I hire writers and use PLR) you need content that you can distribute throughout your Ultimate Free Traffic Network. It is the key to blowing off the ceiling that’s been holding you from getting more traffic than you can handle.

Article Marketing

Article marketing, yep, good old fashioned article marketing is still a wonderful way to get you direct and indirect links and, in combination with some of the newer content sharing and social media sites, it is better than ever.

Taking your articles and posting them to article directories, with the proper resource box of course, is a quick and easy way to start getting links and traffic.

If you don’t know much about it, look below for a free gift that will help you start using and profiting from articles.

Now some people say you should take your articles and blast them to hundreds of article directories.

I say don’t.

We’re looking for quality links and there, at most, 10-20 article directories that are of real value. Places like:

Ezine Articles
Article Dashboard
ArticlesBase
Buzzle
Article Alley
Go Articles

These are ones that will make a real difference in your traffic network.

All the article directories are just content sharing sites and the search engines loves content, particularly fresh, quality content.

Article Marketing is a really fantastic method to give the fresh, quality content which pleases the search engines and attract prospects to your Web properties.

One of the best things about an Ultimate Free Traffic Network is that it doesn’t matter what you are selling or if they are your product or something else and using article marketing is a key component.

I’m not going into much about article marketing here you can see Fast and Easy Article Marketing for that; as well as the free gift I mentioned above.

Just get the content and post some of it to article directories. For you Ultimate Free Traffic Network, try to get one article out every day but you can do at least 2 or 3 every week to start.

Be sure to create a good resource box (see Step 7 in How to Create Absolutely Amazing Articles).

Conclusion

As I said last time, publishing content at content sharing sites is the first and best thing you can do to build your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

To so that the first thing you need (well, after your goals and campaigns as decided) is content. It sounds obvious sure but without content you won’t create any real free traffic network let alone an ultimate one.

You can get that content by either (1) writing it or (2) buying it.

Here are some resources to help you if you write it yourself:

To buy it you can either (1) hire a writer or (2) buy articles (PLR is best).

Here are some resources to help you if you if you are buying content:

After you have your content, one of the major uses for it is to submit it to the article directories. You don’t need to submit it to hundreds but you should submit them to the top 10 or 20 article directories, places like:

Ezine Articles
Article Dashboard
ArticlesBase
Buzzle
Article Alley
Go Articles

Anything more than that won’t help much, if at all. Some people think it can actually hurt you but I haven’t tested it.

Just be sure to create a killer resource box (see Step 7 in How to Create Absolutely Amazing Articles).

If you need to know more about article marketing read my blog post Fast and Easy Article Marketing and download your free gift.

Next time we’ll look at other content sharing sites and how to use them properly. This is all doable and within your grasp, you just need to take action and do it.

So, have you been building your Ultimate Free Traffic Network? Tell me what you’ve done.

Is there anything you don’t understand?

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.

Before I finish I better give you that gift I was promising you. I have a video course on article marketing that was pulled from the new training site I’ll be launching soon.

It seemed appropriate for people who need to learn more about article marketing so I’m giving you an advanced look.

If you want to learn more about how to do article marketing then go to

http://GetYourBonusesNow.com/bonuses/ArticleMarketingCrashCourse; please note, this is meant for beginner level marketers who don’t know much about article marketing.

Talk soon,

O.Y. Don’t forget to retweet this! Use the button on the page or just Tweet this:
The One Thing You Need to Get an Insane Amount of Traffic: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 7 at http://bit.ly/8xkqp (via @DavidHusnian)

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

The One Thing You Need to Get an Insane Amount of Traffic: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 7

The Foundation of a Traffic Tidal Wave: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 6

David Husnian — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:43:44 +0000

Last time we finished up our look at blogs as the center of your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

We’re now going to start talking about the first “ring” around your blogs.

Let’s give a quick look at what the free traffic network looks like.

You’ll notice that around the blog there is a ring of yellow items (they’re not exactly oval but sort of); they have words like Squidoo, Facebook and Twitter in them.

These are all Web properties that will point to your blog; they are called a back links.

This is hugely important to the Ultimate Free Traffic Network and is the foundation of where all the free traffic comes from; it generates, directly or indirectly the majority of the free traffic the network gets.

To start, we’re going to look at the primary way to begin and maintain the flood of traffic you’ll receive in your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Yep, the best way, the thing you need to do, if you do nothing else is to use…

Content Sharing Sites

Content sharing sites are where people can post content and have it appear on the Internet, without having a website …

There are some very popular content sharing sites, some of which we’ll go over in depth later. They include:

Squidoo: Squidoo provides a free place, called Squidoo Lenses, where people can share all kinds of information and even earn a little money. You just copy and paste your article into a Lens, do a bit of tweaking and formatting and publish it for all the world to see.
Hub Pages: Hub Pages is another very popular free content sharing site and place for online publishing. You can write on just about any topic, add photos and videos and a lot more; it is strict though about promotion and marketing so you have to do things right.
Ezine Articles: Ezine Articles is a free article directory. That is, it allows people to publish articles for other people to read and use/republish. Re-publishers do have to follow the guidelines of Ezine Articles and the conditions the author adds; these can include that the authors name and contact/Web site details remain with the article.
YouTube: You’ve probably heard of YouTube but if you haven’t it is a site where people who have a video (on almost any subject) can upload it to the Internet.
Scribd: Scribd is a document and file sharing site that also provides syndication. It has the potential to drive serious targeted traffic to you site as well and improve your search engine rankings.

Reasons to Use Content Sharing Sites

When building an Ultimate Free Traffic Network, content sharing sites are critical for 3 reasons:

Because they are well liked by the search engines (many of which are considered authority sites). This all adds up to any content that is published to a major content sharing site will be quickly indexed by the search engines and you’ll achieve a higher search engine result.
They are visited by millions of people so many more people have a chance to see your content and click the links to your Web properties.
Many of the content sharing sites let people republish the content on their own Web sites meaning more links for you and more potential people to click on your links.

This will ultimately lead to more traffic.

Here’s why…

Back Links

A back links, particularly one-way back links, is considered by Google and other search engines to be a “vote” for your page by the Web site that has the link; sort of a “hey, this is a good page to read.”

These “votes” to help determine how good the search engines consider your page is and how high the will show your page in their search results.

You might think that the more votes the better and, in some ways, that is true but some Web sites “votes” are considered more important than other Web sites. These authority sites carry more weight so that a “vote” by them is like a hundred or even a thousands “votes” by regular Web sites.

This is why the content sharing sites (and social media sites to be discussed later) are so important to creating your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Search Engine Results Position (SERP)

Search engine results position (SERP) is where your Web properties appear in the search engine results for specific keywords.

So, if one of your keyword phrases is “all inclusive romantic honeymoons”. Your SERP for that keyword is what page and what position on the page your Web properties show up when someone searches for that term.

Of course, the best page is the first page and the best positions are the top few positions of that page and, according to some of the traffic gurus the bottom couple of positions are the second best position.

The better yours SERP the more traffic you’ll get.

All the back links you create on the content sharing sites help push your SERP higher.

Direct Links

Putting all those links on content sharing sites, particularly ones that allow re-publishing, mean you’re going to get additional traffic from people who read your content, either on the site or on the re-publisher’s site.

Improved Conversion Rates

This isn’t really traffic oriented but using content sharing sites bring more targeted traffic and you’ll convert better on your landing pages.

How to Use Content Sharing Sites

To use the content sharing sites you need to have content to share, obvious I know.

You should take your marketing campaigns and goals and find the keywords that best support those goals.

Then create/get content that uses those keywords.

Add your resource box (which contains links to your Web properties), or whatever is applicable, and publish them on the various content sharing sites.

Conclusion

Publishing content at content sharing sites is the first and best thing you can do to build your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

In this overview, we took a glimpse at some content sharing sites: Squidoo; Hub Pages; Ezine Articles; YouTube; and Scribd.

We saw the main reasons why we want to use content sharing sites:

Get lots of back links
Get higher Search Engine Results Positioning
Get lots of direct links
Improve conversion rates

And we briefly looked at how to use the sites to maximize benefits.

We’ve started to get the basis for an Ultimate Free Traffic Network, so let’s recap where we are so far.

Put your blog as the center of the network and use the content sharing sites as the main superhighways.

Next time we’ll look more deeply into the various content sharing sites and how to use them properly to produce an astonishingly large amount of traffic.

Have you been building your Ultimate Free Traffic Network? I have!

Is there anything you don’t understand?

Do you think I’m crazy or stupid for sharing this (or for attempting it

Please leave me a comment and let me know.

Talk soon,

O.Y. Don’t forget to retweet this! Use the button on the page or Tweet this:
Learn about the Foundation of a Traffic Tidal Wave at http://bit.ly/1lZtUD (via @DavidHusnian)

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

The Foundation of a Traffic Tidal Wave: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 6

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

David Husnian — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:06:15 +0000

Last time we looked how to optimize your blogs in your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

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:

Put permanent redirect for that page so the search engines will know where to look
Give a introduction to you and your blog
Show links to popular posts on the blog
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.
Put a squeeze page to capture their e-mail address so that you can remind them ofter about your blog.
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:

Have Personality
Proper Use of Advertising
Don’t Give Up
404 Error Pages
Tell-a-Friend
How to Use Blog Directories
Pinging Blogs
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,

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

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

David Husnian — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:35:32 +0000

Last time we started looking at the center of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network, blogs.

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:

Title Your Post for Both Your Readers and the Search Engines
Cover Topics that Need to Be Covered
Don’t Just Have Text in Your Posts
Link Smartly and Judiciously
Create and Use Meaningful Permalinks
Be Sure to Bookmark Your Posts
Archive Effectively
Track Your Pages and Visitors
Create Your Blog Without Comments and Add Them Later
Use a Human Voice
Create a Personal Style and Be Consistent
Don’t Be Secretive or Stingy with Information
Build a Brand
Don’t Advertise (at Least for Awhile)
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,

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

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

David Husnian — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:03:14 +0000

Last time we looked at the core components of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network, content and links.

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:

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

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

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

David Husnian — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:01:27 +0000

Last time we looked at an overview of what an Ultimate Free Traffic Network would consist of.

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

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

Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 1

David Husnian — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:51:31 +0000

Ah, Traffic. You hate it in your car but love it on the Web.

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:

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
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

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