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10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:57:00 +0000

Here I'm going to describe how to get laser targeted traffic in just a few simple steps.

1. Article Marketing - One of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website is through the use of article marketing. This is one of the oldest techniques for generating traffic, but it's still one of the best. Once you have written your article, you can then submit it to some of the top article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, Buzzle, the American Chronicle, ArticlesBase, and SearchWarp. For a listing of the top article directories online, go to...
MasonWorld.com

You can also publish your website to Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, HubPages, Zimbio, and Gather.com.

For a complete listing of Web 2.0 sites, go to...
Web 2.0 Directory : eConsultant

Article marketing is even more powerful when you submit exclusive articles to bloggers and owners of newsletters. This technique has sent me thousands of visitors with a single article. The key is to find the right distribution outlets.

Just imagine if you spend just one hour each day writing and distributing one article. In three months you would have 100 articles all sending you traffic on a daily basis.

So get out there and start syndicating your articles, submitting guests posts, and writing for online newsletters.

2. Viral Ebooks - Why not bundle your articles together and create a viral ebook? Giving away free ebooks is one of the best ways to generate traffic online. It's also one of the best ways to build your mailing líst.

You can submit your PDF ebooks to:

Scribd
eSnips
DocStoc
Calameo
Issuu
Yudu
FreeIQ , and
ButterflyReports

For a complete líst of ebook directories you can submit to, go to Free Ebook Directories .

Quick Tip: You can also convert your ebooks to exe files and submít them to all the different software directories online. You can convert your ebooks using a free piece of software called WebsiteZip Packer .

3. Blogging - Blogging is one of the best things you can do for your business. Blogging is a great way to get to know your readers. Plus, blogging can play a major role in getting valuable search engine traffic from Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

4. Submit your articles to Blog Carnivals. A blog carnival is a collection of blog posts on a particular subject. They are then posted together on on blog - called a host. The host (who is also a blogger), publishes the carnival on their blog, with links to each blog post that has been submitted.

This creates an excellent opportunity to get your blog posts shared on other blogs.

There are a number of benefits to participating in blog carnivals. Not only will you generate extra traffic, but it also provides you with quality backlinks and an excellent opportuníty to connect with other bloggers.

To submit your article to a blog carnival, go to Blog Carnival - Blog Communities Publishing Magazines . For extra exposure, submit to multiple blog carnivals. Just make sure they're all relevant to your topic.

This is one of the easiest ways to create one-way backlinks coming into your site, which is one of the biggest factors when it comes to ranking high in Google.

5. Submit your blog posts to social bookmarking sites.

Social Bookmarking is one of the easiest ways to get extra traffic and links coming into your blog. Social bookmarking allows Internet users to save and organize bookmarks to a public website, tag them with keywords, share them with others, and browse what others have bookmarked.

Digg, Delicious, Mixx, and Digg are just a few of the social bookmarking sites you can use to maximize your exposure.

You can do a semi-automated submission to over 50 social bookmarking sites at AutoPoster.com .

You can also encourage your blog readers to bookmark your posts as well with a Wordpress plugin called ShareThis.

6. Ustream.tv - Ustream allows you to create your very own tv station on the Web. However, it's better than TV because it's a live, interactive experience. While you're broadcasting the video, you're also getting feedback from the live chatroom.

Ustream gives your business a human face and a real personality. This is extremely valuable, because people like to buy and interact with people, not impersonal companies.

Live video allows you to reach entirely new audiences and develop a much greater level of engagement. A deeper level of engagement almost equates to a higher conversion rate when done correctly.

It's also an excellent way to get feedback from your audience.

7. Forum Marketing - Forums are another way to drive targeted visitors to your website. The key to getting quality traffic from forums is to find a forum that is highly targeted to your website, become involved in the community, and create a benefit-laden signature.

You can put a link back to your website in your signature. It's critical that you use your signature to provide something of extreme value along with a good call-to-action. Otherwise, why would anybody click?

The biggest benefit of marketing in forums is that they are centered around a very tight group of people who are all interested in the same subject. This is essentially a community of raving fans for a particular topic, making them extremely targeted prospects.

Forums are also an excellent way to connect with other bloggers, meet other marketers, and gain insights into your market.

8. Interviews are another great way to generate traffic.
When you interview a fellow blogger, they will almost always publish a link to the interview on their blog. At the same time, you are also sending traffic to their website by posting the interview on your blog.

This can be a very effective technique for generating traffic and meeting new bloggers. Unfortunately, most people are just afraid to ask.

9. Build a List - If you're not building a líst, you're missing out on a major source of ongoing traffic. Your líst is the most valuable asset in your business.

Best of all, it can be leveraged at anytime to drive a funnel of visitors to your website.

10. Video Marketing - Video sites have quickly become some of the most highly trafficked sites on the Internet, making them one of the best places to generate lots of extra traffic.

And don't worry, your video doesn't have to be a Spielberg classic. In fact, it can just be a PowerPoint presentation with audio. Even simple videos can drive thousands of visitors to your site.

Once you've created your video, you can then submit it to the top video submission sites with a tool called TubeMogul .

To find out how I get front-page rankings Grab my site http://www.seohighrank.com

3 Best Desktop Backlink Checking Tools

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:35:00 +0000

After analyzing various tool for check the Backlink these three i can say most effect able major facilities are:

* they fetch backlink anchor text;
* they check for “link type” (e.g. direct, nofollow, etc);
* they allow for powerful sorting options necessary to arrive at valuable conclusions.

1. Seobook BackLink Analyzer is a great free (Windows-only) application that has a number of useful options:

* backlinking TLD;
* backlink anchor text;
* linked page URL;
* backlinking site IP address;
* linking page outbound links;
* backlinking domain Dmoz and Yahoo directory presence;
* backlink nofollow flag.

It also has a handy export feature, and offers overall backlink summary, link summary per IP address and keyword-in-anchor-text summary. One more promising option I haven’t tested effectively include reciprocal link check.

2. SEO SpyGlass - another impressive (paid) application (available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X) that offers an exhaustive backlinking report:

* backlinking page Google PR;
* backlinking page title;
* reciprocal link presence;
* link anchor text;
* linked page URL;
* backlink page outbound and total links;
* backlink domain IP address;
* backlinking site Alexa rank;
* backlinking domain Dmoz and Yahoo directory mentions;

You can also save the project and enjoy a range of analysis options: anchor text, PageRank distribution, etc.

3. BackLinks Master (Windows-only app) looks neat but I had some problems to get it running. The good news is that it’s free and has a number of good features:

* you can view all links or links sorted by domain;
* it will also check the anchor text and link type.

Bad SEO Techniques That Will Hurt Your Google Rankings

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:25:00 +0000

As you begin to move onto more advanced SEO topics, you will undoubtedly uncover some techniques that sound like a good idea, but are really just dumb. Some of these SEO techniques should you avoid?

Hidden Text

Hidden Text is a huge no-no. You as a human might not be able to see the white text on a white background, but you can bet that the bots can and you will get penalized for it. Think about it: bots are automated and they cannot “see” a page as we humans would, therefore they are reliant upon the source code of your site. Text that is the same color as the background sets off alarm bells. It’s not a clever way to stuff your site with extra keywords. It’s also something that you really want to watch out for. A site with less than adequate security can easily be exploited and injected with tons of spammy hidden text, so it’s a good thing to regularly check your logs and source code to be on the lookout for these things. Google doesn’t care if someone else did it to you - all they know is that it’s there, it’s bad, and you will punished for your ignorance.

Buying Links

This is a hotly debated topic. Is it or is it not alright to boost your rankings by purchasing links on high authority, high traffic, and high PageRank sites? Personally I think it’s alright. Google believes otherwise, and unofficial Google spokesman Matt Cutts has made an issue of it.

Never, ever buy a ton of links with the same text, and a lot of new links at all once might also raise some flags, so try to spread your efforts out over a period of time. Be patient, be smart, and don’t be stupid.

Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of showing different content to the spiders that crawl your site than you show to your actual human users. Search engines don’t like it one bit, and no matter whether your intentions were pure or deceptive, they won’t care - you will be slapped with a penalty when they find out. You may even get banned and de-indexed, which really just defeats the purpose of doing SEO in the first place.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is another big no-no. Search engines only want to index original content, not the same thing 50 times. When duplicate content is detected, only one of them is likely to be indexed, and the others will probably end up in the dreaded supplemental index. These duplicate pages won’t rank.

On a similar note, doorway pages are also a very bad idea. These are pages designed specifically to draw search engine traffic to your site. How do you spot one? In general, if you can’t get to the page by following the site’s navigation, then it’s likely a doorway page. These pages serve no useful purpose than than attracting the attention of search engine users who will click the result, go to the site, and find that what they’re looking for is not on the page.

Link Exchanges

This was a popular technique in the early days of the web, and it’s not really effective today. The whole “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” thing doesn’t go over very well. It looks contrived, and it’s not natural. Link building should appear as natural as possible. Two-way link exchanges won’t get you banned, but it won’t help you any either. If you’re going to trade links, at least try to make sure it’s a three way thing. Never link to the same site that just linked to you. Instead, link to them from another site you own if you wish to return the favor.

Keyword Stuffing

On-page SEO is undoubtedly important, and some argue that on-page keywords have far more weight than those you stuff in your keyword meta tag. However, stuffing your site with an excessive number of keywords isn’t good, and delicate balance should be maintained. Sure, you want to rank for a specific keyword and the more times you use it on the page, the more likely you’ll rank for it. Just don’t go overboard. Try to keep your writing natural and use the keywords as you feel suitable. Using them too many times will make your site look spammy, which doesn’t sit well with either your actual human visitors or the spiders that crawl your site. It’s not likely to get you banned, but may in fact hurt your TrustRank, which is like your credibility and reputation with the automated bots.

Link Farms

Just say no to link farms. Link farms are sites whose only purpose is to artificially inflate link popularity through link exchanges. Google knows who they are, and if they’re not on their list yet, you can bet they will be soon. They’re considered “bad neighborhoods”, and will hurt your rankings. You may likely be penalized, and your site can even get banned for participating in these schemes. Avoid the problems, and don’t give into the temptation. An endorsement from a bad site is much more harmful than no endorsement at all.

The V7N SEO Blog:

These guys were recently slapped around by Google in a big way. Best known for its large webmaster forum, V7n also has a popular SEO blog which happens to have been hacked several months ago. Long after the problem was believed to have been resolved, Google banned them for some shady SEO.

Spammy text phrases were hidden all over in the V7n SEO blog, which in turn triggered Google’s spam bot detectors and got them banned from the index. This is the perfect example of how inadequate security on your site can lead to exploitation by a third-party, and consequently get you kicked out of Google. V7N admins claim that they were contacted by Google who said they would be temporarily removed from the index, not banned, but I’m going to go ahead and call bullshit on this one. Whatever the truth is, if V7N fixes the issues, begs for mercy, and files a reinclusion request, Google will likely let them back in. How long that will take though remains to be seen.

Google, Yahoo & Microsoft : SEO Influence of Keywords in Domain Names

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:51:00 +0000

SEO Question : Are keywords in URL and domain name important? And how does it differ across various search engines?

For years, this question has also been frequently asked in many forums and blogs; whether keywords in URL and domain names are important and how each search engine treats such domain names.

The importance of keywords in the URL and URL structure is fairly important, and here is the level of importance for the top 3 search engines:

Microsoft Search
Yahoo Search
Google

From Google’s perspective, keyword in domains plays a very small role in determining the rank of a website. Google is more focused on the quality of links pointing to a website and the content of that site, not whether the website has its primary keyword in its domain name or not. [Not to say it’s not important, it’s just not as important.]

Advantages of Keywords in URL Structure

One advantage of having the primary keyword in a website’s domain name is that even if some other sites link to the website using just its URL, the website still gets the benefit of the keyword as its anchor text.

Having keywords in the domain name helps to improve CTR (click thru rate) since the URL with the keyword gets bolded in the search results which grabs more attention of the searchers.

When this question was asked in the WebProWorld forums, a member said:

“Domain names are for people. There are plenty of sites at the top of the SERPs for their chosen keyword(s) that don’t have them in their domain name. Make the name easy to remember and spell because it’s for people.”

Quite true! If you make a search in Google for Computers, you will find that the sites placed at the top are leading computer brands that do not have the word “Computers” in their domain names.

If you are targeting a long keyword phrase such as “Refurbished Toyota Corolla for Sale” then trying to include this keyword in your domain name won’t be a good idea at all, at least from the users’ perspective.

However, there were views against this thought as well, another member of the WebProWorld forums said:

“We’ve seen good results with keywords in the URL, if no reason other than to entice searchers to click your search listing. Human visitors are becoming better at ignoring spam in search engine results, and are looking to important clues in your listing. Keywords in meta descriptions, titles and URLs get clicks.”

He has a point as well, with more and more spam sneaking into the search results, users now look for vital clues in the search engine listings to determine which link they should be clicking.

Also another member of the forums said:

“URLs are not so important for Google but do play a more important role with Yahoo. However, in more competitive categories so many other things come into play - branding particularly - that I wouldn’t be driven by the tld.”

Microsoft, Yahoo and Keyword Friendly Domains

So if you are targeting Microsoft and Yahoo in your search marketing campaigns, then you should probably have a domain name that has your targeted keyword in it, especially in Microsoft Live Search.

If you are targeting a moderate to highly competitive industry, then other vital things such as links and branding will easily outweigh the advantage that one gets from having keyword in the domain name, but the keyword in the domain or URL structure is highly beneficial in these search engines.

I also ran across this post in the Contractor Web Development community which nicely explains how each search engine treat domain name keywords

“Google, while highlighting keywords in the domain name, does not give preference to them, as that would be unfairly shifting favour to an aspect of a site that can easily be manipulated and does not necessarily determine content or its quality.

Yahoo has been reported to take into account domain name keywords in the past, but recent search results suggest that less emphasis is placed on domain name keywords, which has helped filter out keyword-stuffed and spam-riden sites with low quality content.

MSN Search apparently does take into account domain name keywords. As an example, compare the results of “cheap travel” on MSN Search and Google. You will notice that the MSN results are dominated by keyword domains containing the keywords cheap and travel, while Google results are not.”

So to boil it down, keyword in domain names are not important for Google, moderately important for Yahoo and it is somewhat a major ranking factor when it comes to MSN / Live Search.

So You can share your thoughts on this issue.

Google Opens Site Creation Tool to Everyone

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:29:00 +0000

Remember JotSpot which was recently launched as part of Google Apps for businesses, schools and organizations? Google just opened it up to everyone. No domain required. Group sites will be hosted as a subdomain on Google Site’s domain.

Nothing biggie here really. It’s just your old circa 1990’s site creation tool. Think of Geocities resurrected for the social web. That’s basically what Google Sites is.

It doesn’t require too much technical skills to build your own site either. The site creation tool comes with pre-loaded with several themes which you can use for your group sites.

On the positive note, this could be useful for those still using Google Groups. You can easily create a site for your Groups where your members can share stuff, collaborate on certain issues and pretty much some other things that you normally do together in a social networking site.

Russia’s Top Search Engine Yandex Raising Funds via IPO !!

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:20:00 +0000

Russia’s no.1 search engine and the country’s biggest internet firm Yandex, is now raising funds via a New York-IPO scheduled later this year. Yandex is hoping to raise around $1.5-$2.0 billion funds which is based on a preliminary valuation of Yandex at $5 billion.

Yandex had already mandated Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Renaissance Capital to organise an IPO on Nasdaq NADq.O.

Yandex has definitely come along way since we covered them in the Journal’s Spotlight of 500 Search Engines two years ago. It beats both Yahoo and Microsoft in March 2008 getting 522 million or 2.2 percent of all European searches conducted during the period, based on comScore data. It also got 47% of all searches conducted in Russia followed by Google, Rambler and Mail.ru, with a total revenue of $167 million in 2007.

No wonder, even Google’s Sergy Brin was amazed at how Yandex’s many talented people was able to make Yandex beat Google search in Russia.

A peek behind the curtain at Google

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:10:00 +0000

Udi Manber talks about search at Google in a recent post on the Google blog . If you're interested in search or search engine optimization (SEO), the post is definitely worth a read. Udi discusses items from big (Google revamped how it com.. Read Full Article Here

Image Hotlinking and SEO : Are There Any Benefits?

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:31:00 +0000

Are there any benefits of other sites hotlinking your site (is that worth as much as a regular link)?

Hotlinking refers to the process of using images of one site on the pages of another site. Hotlinking is infamous on the web due to the following reasons:

Hotlinking is treated as a way of stealing bandwidth from the host site [the site where the image is originally hosted]
Besides that hotlinking can also result in copyright infringement violations which can land you in a legal conflict with the owner of the host site.

But the main question here is, keeping all the copyright issues aside for a moment, if we look into hotlinking from an SEO perspective, are there any benefits in getting your images hotlinked by another website? Would hotlinking be worth as much as regular links?

When this question was asked in the Google Groups Webmaster Help Discussions recently, Aaron Pratt, a member of the group, responded by saying:

“anything linked to including images shows that people out there might like what you have, google then has to determine is the linking is real or make believe. :)”

However, the point to notice in the above statement is “anything linked to”, so:

If the hotlinked image has a link to your website URL, then that would be treated as a proper image link and will pass due link credits to your website.

Also if the hotlinked image is linked to the image URL itself, then that would increase the chance of your images appearing in Google Image searches.

Last year, Patrick Altoft wrote an exceptional piece and script to benefit from sites which hotlink to images, embedding an alt attribute and image title in the linking code, making this hotlinking even more powerful.

But what if the image is neither linked to your site nor to the image URL? Do you think such a hotlinking would still be beneficial to your site? What do you think?

Yahoo Search Marketing Adds Enhancements to Sponsored Search

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:19:00 +0000

Yesterday Yahoo Search Marketing made this announcement on enhancements to the system:

All names of objects (campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.) that are offline are displayed with red text for easy recognition.
The “Top Campaigns” and “Watched Campaigns” tables on the Dashboard page now include a “Status” column to help you identify if and why any campaigns are offline.
Minor updates to the “Campaigns” page have been made, including a new “Status” column, the ability to filter by “Status” when using the Advanced Search function, and replacing the “Campaign On/Off” button with individual “Pause” and “Unpause” buttons.
We made minor tweaks to the Ads table on an Ad Group page, including adding a “Status” column, and replacing the “Campaign On/Off” button with individual “Pause” and “Unpause” buttons.
New status settings have been added on the Search page, under the Campaigns tab.
The addition of the “Status” column to the Ad Group, Ad and Keyword Search screens under the Campaigns tab.
The ability to export (using the “Download” button) account information has been added to account-level Ad Group and Keyword pages, under the Campaigns tab.

Like Yahoo says, they are not the biggest ground breaking enhancements, but these still add to the usability of the system.

A Funny Reciprocal Links Image

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:30:00 +0000

I thought this was kinda funny. Someone thought that Google was taking stronger action on excessive reciprocal links. So did they ramp down their reciprocal linking? Nope. Instead, they put their offer into an image thinking that Google wouldn’t notice: Read Full Article Here

Microsoft Puts New Yahoo Deal on Table: Full Text

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:27:00 +0000

Microsoft (MSFT) released a statement on Sunday that it has made an alternative offer to Yahoo (YHOO) that wouldn't entail a full acquisition. In the unexpected move, Microsoft would be acting as something of a white knight, saving Yahoo from fighting a proxy battle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

Microsoft Corp. today issued the following statement:

“In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties.

“There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions.”

Yahoo Quick To Reply To New Microsoft Statements

noreply@blogger.com (SEOHighrank) — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:17:00 +0000

Following a Microsoft press release today - detailed in the story below - Yahoo has replied to reinforce Microsoft's confirmation of not wanting to buy "all of Yahoo" - but that it may be interested in doing something with Yahoo.

"Yahoo! Remains Open To Value Maximizing Transactions" the press release was titled. What type of transactions given Google is already supplying PPC ads and WPP just signed to distribute other media.

The most interesting part of the press release was the note about how shareholders can assign proxy votes - given the threats to the current board investors have presented.