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

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

The Pinterest says this about what they are…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nurse Your Pinterest Prospects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also add links to your Web site in your profile.

The key thing is to pin the right things.

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

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

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

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

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

Other Tips for Using Pinterest

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

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

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

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

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

You want to get conversations going with people.

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

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

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

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

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

How to Get People from Pinterest to Your Web Page

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

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

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

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

Squidoo

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

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

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

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

Benefits to Creating Squidoo Lenses

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

1. Market to Niche Audiences

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

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

2. Focusing on Your Niche

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

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

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

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

3. Get Google’s Love

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

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

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

4. Testing Keywords

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

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

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

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

5. Ideas for More Lenses

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

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

6. Creating Quality Back Links

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

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

How to Create Squidoo Lenses

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

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

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

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

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

Squidoo Terminilogy

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

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

Google’s “Squidoo Slap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

How has your ultimate traffic network coming?

Just remember, it’s all in the doing!

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

Talk soon,

David

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

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

.

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

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

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

Last time we talked about pay-per-click advertising and how quick and effective it can be when done properly.

But… that doesn’t mean you should stop there, not by a long shot. There is still money to be made using other tools in your traffic tool box.

One of those tools is search engine optimization, or SEO.

If there is an online marketing topic that causes more fights and arguments from people swearing by completely opposite methods and techniques I don’t know it is.

There are many aspects of SEO but one of the, if not the, most important ones is…
…the content of your site. It is a fact that having good quality content that is added frequently is a great way to appear higher in the search engine results.

Keyword Density

One thing that people tend to think of when talking about SEO is keywords and keyword density.

What keywords are is the specific words or phrases that you are targeting with an article, blog post or other text content.

You do this because when the search engine they create an index of your Web page or blog (like the index in the back of a book). Then when people search for a word or phrase they return those pages that have those words and phrases in their index for the page.

The simple definition of keyword density is the percentage of keywords in the entire page. That is, they divide the number of keywords found by the total number of words found and the answer, as a percentage, is the keyword density.

For example, in the last paragraph these are some keyword densities:

1. The word “keyword” or derivatives like “keywords” has a density of 10.26% (it appears 4 times out of a total of 39 words)
2. The word “density” has a keyword density of 5.13% (it appears 2 times out of a total of 39 words)

A more complex definition includes title, keywords, alt text, description, and comments.

There is some controversy over the proper percentage or even if keyword density is important anymore but, in general, I see people quoting in the 1.5-8% range.

The rationale behind it is that it helps the search engines understand the page and if the keyword density is too low they don’t understand it as well and, therefore, don’t rank the site as highly for that and related terms.

In truth, nobody really knows and you have a lot of people taking all the different sides because some been successful not using keyword density and others have been successful with double digit density.

To me, this just means that there are lots of other things being considered and it depends upon the combination and interaction of all those different things.

I figure, it can’t hurt to have some keyword density 2-5% but you should test to see if more or less works best in your situation.

Bottom line, there is no absolute best density to strive for and I believe there are a lot of factors so each case is different.

Links

Links are another major factor in having good SEO. In fact, they are probably the most important factor because getting some high quality links may be all you need to rank highly.

When I talk about links I mean other Web sites and blogs linking TO your site (inbound or back links) NOT linking from your site somewhere else (outbound links). A third type of link are links that are internal links, those that link from various pages of your Web site or blog to other pages of the same Web site or blog; these can have value also if you don’t just go wild – as is true will all links, have them be natural and make sense.

Google, in particular, uses inbound links as an important indicator to how good your site is. Originally, they were all about the quantity of links but then they changed and the quality of links is a more important factor.

Some good links from “authority sites” places like YouTube, Squidoo, and .edu sites ares worth far more than hundreds of links from the personal home pages of your family and friends.

If you look at the traffic plan I show in the previous post, The Traffic Pillar: 1 of the 3 Cornerstones of Guaranteed Success, you’ll see the network of links and the hierarchy being used.

It shows getting links from a variety of places, particularly a number of high quality sites.

The advantage of this is the search engines see a lot of links from those high quality sites and this helps raise the search engine results position (SERP) of your sites and blogs. You also get an addition advantage of those direct links from those high quality sites.

One note, lots of links from “link farms” and places with the same IP address range are generally considered to be bad and hurt your search rankings. Also, two way links where you link to a Web site and they directly link back to you doesn’t work well any more and can be damaging if over used.

So, don’t get one or two hosting accounts, put lots of domains on them and links them all together.

What Else Is There to SEO?

There are literally hundreds of different things different people do and insist are important. Go to a bookstore or look online and you will, similarly, find hundreds of books on the topic.

Instead of adding another voice to the confusion I want to just list many of the common factors I’ve heard.

I don’t necessarily endorse any of them and some of them I don’t even believe in but, like keyword density, I believe that successful SEO is a combination of numerous factors and you can make up for a lack of one thing but doing other things.

How else do you explain people having success with such a wide variety of different things some of which actually conflict with each other?

Okay, now to the list…

Content Related

1. Have lots of new, unique and valuable content
2. Keep the content focused on one topic
3. Don’t have a lot of duplicate content
4. Create a sitemap to help the search engines find all your important pages; create a Google XML sitemap also.
5. Start as early as possible, older sites and content are valuable

Keyword Related

1. Focus each Web page or blog post on one specific topic and keyword phrase.
2. Optimize for a primary keyword phrases but you can also optimize for one or two secondary, but related, phrases
3. Use the keyword tools (see my pay-per-click blog post http://streetguidetowebtraffic.com/blog/ppc/get-tons-of-traffic-with-ppc) to find popular keyword phrases; if you are selling something then make sure it is buyers that are doing those searches.
4. Use plurals, various verb forms, various spellings, synonyms
5. Keep related keywords together
6. Use keywords and keywords phrases in:
   • your title tag
   • your domain name
   • your page name or other parts of your Web address (use hyphens between words)
   • in your headlines
   • the keyword and description meta tags
   • the “alt” attribute of images on your site
   • the text of your internal and external links
   • the first paragraph and the top of your pages
7. Format your keywords to standout with font size and emphasis.
8. Don’t hide keywords by making them invisible
9. Keep keyword density within acceptable ranges, don’t “spam” the keyword phrases on your page (don’t create pages that are mostly links)

Link Related

1. Get links from authority sites and other high value sites
2. Get links from .edu sites as well as .gov sites (Google loves them)
3. Get linked in content specific directories like DMOZ and Yahoo!
4. Get links from other Web sites (just ask them!)
5. Get links from sites that focus on the same topic
6. Link naturally between pages in your site; don’t just link every page to every other page, have a natural flow.
7. Don’t use invisible links

Design Related

1. Try to use strictly HTML with little use of frames, Flash and content created with JavaScript
2. Have a broad, not deep link structure
3. Don’t have incorrect/bad HTML on your pages

There you have a good list of most of the important things to do or don’t do to achieve success in your SEO efforts.

As I said, nobody knows exactly how the search engines rank Web pages and I believe it is a combination

Always Test!

Think of all the different SEO things you can do as weights on a scale. You want the scale to be perfectly balanced so if you add to one place then you need to remove something else to keep the balance.

How do you find that out?

Test.

Add content, see what it does.

Add links, see what they do. Add different types of links, see what they do.

Play will all the factors and find which ones are optimal for your Web page or blog.

Always try find out why Google and the other search engines aren’t linking to you or ranking you highly, then fix it.

Conclusion

Search engine optimization can be a complex, ever-changing and frustrating task but if you have lots of good, fresh content and links from high quality sites then you are well on your way to being ranked on the first page.

Try out some of the many other factors and see how they impact your ranking and test and refine until you’ve got it perfect. Just remember that the rules change frequently so you’ll need to stay on top of it.

Just remember that this is area of online marketing that has lots of disagreements into what is the best way so keep skeptical of any claims but also open-minded enough to consider different ways.

What are your favorite SEO tips and tricks? Post them in a comment! Thanks.

Talk soon,

The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer

http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com

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

How to Profit from SEO

The fastest and easiest way for most people to get targeted traffic to their sites is the use of pay-per-click advertising.

Pay-per-click (PPC), sometimes called cost-per-click and pay for performance, has been around since the mid-to-late 1990s and has been the way thousands of businesses have been successful.

The basis of PPC is that you have ads places on various Web sites and, if someone likes your ad and clicks on the link to go to your Web site, you pay a pre-defined amount of money. That is, you pay that amount for each time someone clicks, hence pay-per-click.

That is unlike many common forms of advertising when you pay just to have your advertising made available for viewing; traditional advertising in magazines, television, radio, newspaper, etc. used this “pay to show” type of advertising.

When it comes to PPC advertising there is one extremely important thing you must never forget to do. You must be sure to do…
… your keyword research. If you don’t then you are just throwing time and money away.

What is Keyword Research?

If you’re new to getting Web traffic then you might not know what keywords are. They are words and short phases that are highly relevant to your topic or niche or blog or… whatever.

The reason this is important is that the major PPC companies like Google (with their AdWords program) use keywords to decide when and where to display your ad.

Therefore, it is important that you find keywords that are popular, that is, people are doing lots of searches for them. In addition, if you are selling something you want to make sure the keywords are ones that buyers are using.

Of course, the reason you want to do this is that people who are searching for specific things are more likely to be interested in buying something on that topic.

The entire subject is worthy a book so I can’t go into it now but there are some good tools to help you do your keyword research:

• Google: Keyword Tool – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and Trends http://www.google.com/trends
• WordTracker: http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/WordTracker
• Keyword Elite: http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/KeywordElite

Google AdWords

The most popular and successful PPC program is Google’s Adwords program.

Google provides numerous online tools to help you, including ones that track how many people have clicked on your ad. This is important so you can track how much your advertising is costing you and compare it to how much you are earning.

Then you can decide whether the ad campaign is working and whether you need to ramp it up, change it or drop it altogether.

This is huge topic and here are some good resources available if you want to learn, in depth, how to really profit from AdWords

• My Secrets of Google AdWords book at http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
• Simon Leung helped set up the AdWords program and his Adwords List Building course is full of great insider information of how to use AdWords within Goggle’s guidelines yet still maximize your profits, get it at http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/AdwordsListBuilding
• Greg Cesar is a very successful AdWords expert and highly in demand at conferences, his Adwords Profit System goes into all the tricks and techniques he uses, get it at http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/AdwordsProfitSystem

Yahoo! has a similar service named Yahoo! Sponsored Search, go to http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/ to learn more.

Online Comparison Shopping Engines

Another place you can promote your PPC ad campaign is the various online comparison shopping engines. The concept is the same as with AdWords and the techniques as the same as well.

Here are some of the major comparison shopping engines.

DealTime (http://www.dealtime.com): DealTime is one of the major comparison shopping search engines on the web and it integrates product reviews from Epinions. It goes beyond product search to offer helpful information that helps people decide what to buy and where to buy it.

Kelkoo (http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/): Kelkoo, was founded in 2000, is Europe’s largest e-commerce website after Amazon and Ebay and the largest e-commerce advertising platform both in the UK and Europe. Kelkoo now operates in 10 European countries and Kelkoo is a one-stop shopping service, which helps shoppers to find, research and buy products online with confidence using their tools that compare prices and product features in seconds.

NexTag (http://www.nextag.com/): NexTag is the leading comparison shopping site and it enables shoppers to quickly compare prices and find the best deals on millions of products and services; they get more than 17 million people per month.

PriceGrabber (http://www.pricegrabber.com/): PriceGrabber attracts over 26 million unique visitors each month, and provides a comprehensive environment for them to find and select the right products and shop.

Yahoo! Shopping (http://shopping.yahoo.com/): Yahoo! Shopping it Yahoo!’s shopping site and they have a program similar to Google.

Since there is nothing in the rules and regulations that bind you to an exclusive agreement you can certainly sign up for all their programs. The only cost is the time for research, placing the ads and tracking.

You may, in fact, do well using several different sites so see which ones are best for your products.

Conclusion

PPC is often an affordable and quick way to launch an ad campaign. The cost per click is often low so it won’t be too costly, unless you happen to lots of visitors clicking through, but if your Conversions Pillar is strong then you’ll reap the benefits and more than be able to afford the cost.

Do, however, disregard all the stories of overnight success and people making tens of thousands of dollars overnight.

Those are either false or they are from very established marketers who are experts in PPC.

Plan to start getting traffic soon and, if you did your keyword research well and you are targeting your (well written) ad to the right audience you can expect to start seeing sales but it will take some time before you see really significant traffic and sales.

Please add any comments, questions, feedback, disagreements and anything else below.

Talk soon,

The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com

O.Y. I’ve got another free resell rights product for you. It is an audio interview with Albert Hallado and Beau Penaranda talking about traffic, including Google Adwords, Article Marketing, Craigslist Advertising and more. Get it at http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/FreeStuff/WebTrafficInterview-MRR.zip

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

Get Tons of Traffic with Pay-Per-Click

The Traffic Pillar is one of the 3 Pillars of Success and, to me, this is simply getting targeted prospects to a place where you turn them into customers.

Simplistically, this Pillar is about getting people “into the door” of your online business.

There are many ways to get these people to you and we’ll look at many of those ways over the coming months but basically the important thing about traffic is that…
…without it you have no business; you are just a lonely “shopkeeper”, sort of like that Maytag repairmen guy in the old commercials.

Stated simply:

A strong Traffic Pillar requires you to have enough of the right people coming to your online properties, on a consistent basis, that you are able to build relationships and have the opportunity to convert them into customers.

The key points are:

• Enough People: what enough is depends upon your conversions and the average value of each customer
• The Right People: what right means is people interested in what you have and are willing and able to spend money to get it
• Consistently: what consistently means is frequently enough to achieve your goals, whether that is weekly, daily, or every second
• Building Relationships: the pre-cursor to conversions and the thing that is both satisfying and makes converting easier
• Opportunity to Convert: notice I don’t say convert, that is the Conversion Pillar’s job, but it is the job of the Traffic Pillar to get people there and to have built the relationships so that the Conversion Pillar can properly, well, convert.

Traffic Sources

As I said, you can get traffic from many different places, some examples are:

• Affiliates
• Article directories
• Blogs
• Forums
• Organic search results
• Pay-Per-Click and other paid advertising
• Social bookmarking sites
• Social networking sites
• And more

Each of them work well on their own and the combination of many (or all) of them will make a truly strong Traffic Pillar.

As an example, here is a simple but very effective flow of traffic combining :

Briefly, use the social networking sites (Squidoo, Hub Pages, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.), the social bookmarking sites (Digg, Propeller, Technorati, Yahoo! Buzz, etc.), article directories (eZine Articles, etc.) and various forums to push traffic to your blogs.

The search engines will also pick these up in their organic search results and drive traffic to your blogs also.

Your blogs then go to your money sites, that is, to you sales and squeeze pages.

Build up to doing that on a consistent basis and you’ll be getting a good amount of traffic everyday and it is basically free traffic – it will cost time and maybe some money for the content.

There are lots of ways to get much more traffic and we’ll be looking at them and I certainly want you input in what is working for you.

The 3 Criteria of a Strong Traffic Pillar

There are 3 success criteria to keep in mind though if you expect to get a strong Product Pillar, your Products must:

1. Give Good, no GREAT, Content

First, and most importantly, you MUST be giving people things that will be useful to them so they want to know more about you and what you do and know.

Do not just sell and sell, remember nobody likes to be sold to.

Provide interesting information and commentary. Provide stuff people can actually use to improve themselves and their lives.

2. Use the World, No Man is an Island

Don’t try to do everything yourself.

Use the social sites.

Use affiliates.

Use paid traffic.

It is virtually impossible nowadays to get traffic and certainly enough traffic to have a truly successful online business doing it all by yourself.

Just doing “traditional” SEO on your Web site, blog and other pages is so hard and changes so frequently that you can assume you will fail.

Take advantage of all the available options, there have never been more, and you will give yourself a good chance to really thrive online.

3. Be Consistent

Don’t just do things now and then.

Post new content on a regular basis, every day would be the best, but be consistent even if it is just two or three times a week.

Without that consistency you will not be building the relationships with your prospects that you need to and your will be losing traffic unnecessarily.

The relationships are important because people are more likely to buy from people they know and like.

Think about it, if one of your friends sold electronics wouldn’t you be more likely to buy from them than just go to some anonymous person.

Consistency helps build relationships so be consistent.

What About List Building?

You’ll notice I don’t mention list building in the Traffic Pillar nor is it one of the 3 Pillars of Success.

You may wonder about this and you may doubt everything I am saying because, after all, so many people so “the money is in the list.”

Well, I agree and disagree.

Building a list is NOT a requirement of success.

You can build a successful business without having any list and many people have built 6-figure businesses just using affiliate marketing where they send prospects directly to the sales pages of the product owners, by the way, you should tap into that for getting you traffic.

Building a list will make it MUCH EASIER to be a success and it will give you another means of getting traffic and I STRONGLY urge you to start list building immediately if you aren’t already doing it.

But, the only 3 things that you must have for a long-tem successful business is strong traffic, good conversions and good products; the 3 Pillars.

Everything else is “the icing on the cake.”

Conclusion

To sum up, success in the Traffic Pillar requires a never ending stream of targeted prospects coming to your Web properties on a consistent basis.

To have a strong Traffic Pillar you must do ALL of these 3 things: provide GREAT content, use everyone and everything to send you traffic, and you must be consistent in your efforts.

Do those and you should build your self a very strong Traffic Pillar and be 1/3 of the way to your dreams.

Add any comments, questions, feedback, disagreements and anything else below.

Talk soon,

The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com

O.Y. To help you strengthen your Traffic Pillar, download your free PLR product on some ways to get free and lost cost traffic from here:
http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/FreeStuff/Free-LowCostWaysToWebTraffic-UPLR.zip

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

The Traffic Pillar: 1 of the 3 Cornerstones of Guaranteed Success