Using Squidoo To Generate Traffic

Welcome back everyone. Today we are going to discuss Squidoo and how we can generate traffic from it. Squidoo is basically a small website for you to use that’s usually used to educate people and we are going to use it to get people to our blogs. Let’s go.

Squidoo Visitors to Your Site

So as I said before, Squidoo is basically a site that allows you to build your own one page websites one whatever topic you choose. These one page sites are targeted on one specific topic and are very easy to make. There’s a good lens that talks about all of this in a crash course on Squidoo that is very helpful for all the basics of Squidoo. 

Generating traffic from your lens to your site is actually pretty easy to do. As long as you offer quality content on your lens odds are that people will click to your site which is exactly what you want them to do. When I create a lens I want minimal distractions for my visitors. So I place just content on my lens with links back to my site. That is another thing you will gain from Squidoo, quality backlinks from a high ranking website. 

A good way to get people to your site is to offer something for free. Say a free ebook download on your topic. You offer this on your lens and place a link to the signup form on your site. They sign up, you get people on your email list, and you get traffic. It’s a win-win. 

Creating a lens is really easy so there’s really no excuse not to be leveraging this for your own site. So sign up to Squidoo, create a lens on the topic of your niche, place links back to your site, and if you have an email list to build send them to where they can sign up. Making a decent lens could take about 30 minutes or so depending on how long it takes you to write up the content for your lens. Also one last bit, I advise that you bookmark your lens in at least Digg so that your lens gets a little bit extra boost. Well, that’s it so good luck on building your lens!

Popularity: 68% [?]

Tags: promotion, squidoo

Does PR really matter?

After seeing a discussion on this topic in a forum earlier I decided to take a look at this subject and disucss it here. This is a perfect example of what I talked about before, finding topics to discuss from blogs. Let’s get started.

Does PR Matter?

Well first off PR stands for PageRank and it is a number that Google gives to websites that range from 0-10. 10 is the best and 0 is the worst, but I want to discuss if having a 0 PR site really is the worst. Many webmasters will rank their success by the PageRank of their sites. However, I think this is the wrong thing to think about because PageRank isn’t the only factor of success, and in some cases it doesn’t even affect your success. Too many people think that PageRank is the end all but in fact it really isn’t. 

I have seen in many cases that 0 PR sites can actually out rank higher PR sites in Google. It’s a fact that Google doesn’t rank sites in Google based upon their PR, just go search any term and you will see fluctuation between each site’s PR. In my experience I have had sites with 0 PR rank first for certain keywords over sites with much higher PR. In my opinion that is way better then having a good PR because if I don’t get traffic and results with a higher PR then it’s useless to me. Ranking in Google is always my number one concern and it should be yours too.

So basically when you are creating your sites you shouldn’t even worry about PageRank because it’s not worth the hassle to worry. The only time PR is worth anything is when you are selling your sites to other people, but it usually ends up that they don’t understand PR either. Just try and get into Google for your desired search terms and you will see PR follow, just keep working at it. See you later.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: pagerank

Paid Promotion Methods

Today will conclude my promotion discussion. Today is all about how and where to get paid promotion for your website. Over the past few days we have discussed other various methods to promote your website but today is all about using paid services to get traffic to your site.

Paid Promotion isn’t For Everyone

First I must say that not everyone should use these methods. They require money, and I understand that not everyone has a constant supply that they can put into a website. However, if you do have money then using the paid services can be very useful and profitable. I don’t want people blowing every last cent they have on paid promotion methods so please, if you don’t feel you have enough money then don’t do this. Stick with the free methods and you should be just fine, only difference is it will just take a little longer to see results.

The first way to use your money to get people to your site is pay per click, or PPC. This is most usally attributed to Google because they are the major search engine that does it. Whenever you do a search on Google on the right side there is a sponsored link section. This is where people like you and I pay to get our advertisments up there to ge tpeople to our site. You don’t pay per person that sees your ad but rather, per click, thus the name PPC. This method is most notably used in affiliate marketing where people get visitors to their sites and then hope to get them to buy products. However, we cna use this just to get people to our site. It’s pretty easy. AdWords is the most popular way to do this so you can sign up there, and if you signed up to HostGator then you most likely got a $100 credit to AdWords that you can use. This is useful because it allows you to test and get used to the tools before spending your own money. Now you simply make an ad, enter your payment details so that Google can be paid, and then the ad goes live. Depending on your niche you could see results quickly or it may take a while but you will see results. Also each clcik will cost different depending on your niche. Once you start getting results you need to work on your ad copy to try and get better conversions and a better quality score. 

Next is a prety simple concept. You pay someone to get your banner or link on their site. This method usually charges a per month, or per 1000 visitors, depends on where you get it and who it is. These are prety easy to find, and you can go to a site like DigitalPoint where tons of people have sites where you cna place your link. The price will vary from site to site but one thing to make sure is keep it in the same niche. Pretty easy concept. 

That’s all the methods that I would use if I was going to pay to get traffic to my site. Another method I may consider is a sponsored review but those are generally quite expensive. Hopefully after all of this promtion talk you guys have some traffic coming to your site everyday. See you guys tomorrow.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: promotion

Article Marketing, Yet Another Promotion Method

Today we are going to continue on the path of our website promotion discussion and today look at article marketing. Some call artilce marketing “bum marketing” but we won’t be using it that way. We aren’t going to be using it the way bum marketers do however, because we will use it as an additonal support to our websites. Let’ get started.

Article Marketing 101

The basics of article marketing is basically this.

1. Write articles using your keywords you are trying to target.

2. Submit your articles to the most popular article directories.

3. Receive traffic from teh resource box on your articles.

That is everything in a nutshell. Some people will actually use article marketing as their sole income source on the internet by selling affilate items or by selling their own product through the article’s resource box. We however use the resource box for traffic and backlinks. Essentially that is all we really use this for.

The first part is creting your articles. That’s pretty easy, just do what you would normally do when you write a blog post and that’s really all there is to it. The second part is submitting to article directories. The most popular by far is EzineArticles. It’s relatively easy, just sign up and submit. It won’t appear immidiately because they must approve it first but as long as you didn’t do anything against the rules it will show up in a day or two. The resource box you simply put a link back to your website with the desired keyword phrase you wish to rank for. That is it! It is really that easy.

The cons to this method of marketing is that it takes up a lot of time to write your articles. However, it is well worth it to get your articles into these directories because 1 article can send you traffic for a long time. Now imagine that you do 1 article that each brings you 25 visitors a day for a year. That’s 9125 visitors a year from just one single article! Now think of duplicating this with 10, 25, or 50 articles and the traffic you could receive is unimaginable. It does work! You just need to dedicate your time to make sure it does. If you start practicing your writing then you can get your writing time down to 15 minutes per article and just crank them out to get you a real nice set of articles that provide traffic and backlinks to your site. It is worth every second you spend on it so get started now and see the results it can bring.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: article marketing, promotion

Another Forum of Promotion

Ok, that was my poor attempt at being punny. Haha, okay that’s it. Today is all about forum promotion of your website. Despite my poor jokes today is pretty fun. It’s all about going on forums and posting as to promote your website.

Forum Posting is Useful, but Time Consuming

Well yesterday we talked about one form of promotion for your site and today we are discussing another type. Today is all about forum promotion. Everyone know’s what forums are, they are like websites where discussion between many different people takes place and it is very community oriented. Forum promotion is very similar to blog posting in that you go to another site to write small comments to get your link around. 

The process is pretty much the same as blog commenting. You search Google for something along the lines of, “your keyword forum” and find one that seems will do the trick. Again we are looking for a forum in our same niche. Then we sign up to the forum. Most forums require email verification so then we go and confirm our emails. Now most forums will require you to do a few posts before you can get an activated signature, the place where we will place our link. So first you must go around and post USEFUL and MEANINGFUL posts that add to the discussion. Then we simply go to the user control panel and insert our link so that we can get that on the forum. 

Once you get your minimum posts it’s important that you keep it up, building an authority on your topic is important. Also building a reputation on any forum takes time so don’t ruin it at first. Build it up over time so that you seem more and more reputable. If you are on a very popular website an aged and reputable account is worth a lot. The sooner you start the better.

The downside to forum marketing is the sheer fact that it does take up a lot of time. Some of this time you may want to dedicate to some other aspects of your site. That’s why I recommend only spending a little bit of time each day on this part of your promotion. For my first week on any new forum I try to get anywhere from 50 to 100 posts over the course of a week that are high quality and add to the discussion. This is critical just like it was for blog commenting because no one will respect you if you show up and start spamming links and garbage. So just take it slowly and add something worth while to it.

That’s all there is to it. It’s really simple but it does take up time. If you aren’t willing to devote the time just yet I just recommend you sign up to the forum first so that you can at least start aging your account because it will look a little better. Continue working on your blog, too, and I’ll see you guys tomorrow.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tags: backlinks, promotion

Backlinks are the key!

Welcome back guys. Today is going to be all about the importance of gaining backlinks to get your site higher in the rankings for search engines. Just a side note is that today is my birthday so I’m pretty happy. Let’s get started on today’s lesson.

You Need Backlinks to Win!

Remember way back when we were still doing research? It seems like a while ago but it wasn’t that long ago. Well part of our research was on our competition and one of hte things we looked at was backlinks. This was an important number because it was something we could look at and target for our own promotion. Now we can look back and see how many backlinks should get us near the position of Google, of course there are many other factors other hten backlinks but this is one of the most important. 

We’ve talked about getting our links in the bookmarking services that are on the internet. This is just one way to get your link out there and today I will talk about another method that is very effective. This method is called “blog commenting” and it’s really easy to do. It is exactly what you would expect. You go to other blogs and comment on them leaving your link in the comment area. However, there’s a little bit more to it then that. In order to find these blogs I usually just do a quick Google search on, “keyword blog”. This usually allows me to find at least one good blog to comment on. The first thing is that you need to make sure that you are commenting on blogs in your niche. What’s the point on commenting on a dog training blog when you run a site about working out? It wouldn’t make much sense at all. The second thing is that you comment on the higher ranked blogs because that link will be “worth” more in Google’s eyes. You could waste your time getting 100’s of low ranking backlinks but if you get just a few high quality backlinks then you will be on your way. The last thing is that you have the keywords you are trying to rank for as the backlink text. It’s called the “anchor text” and it helps to rank better for your targeted keywords. If you can do those 3 things you will be looking good.

One thing that I must stress however is that you never, and I must say it again, never, ever, spam anyone’s blog just to promote your site. When you comment make sure it’s meaningful and that it will give back to the article or add to the conversation on the article. I personally hate spam so much and once you get a site you will also understand how annoying it is also. So please, for the sake of everyone, don’t spam anyone’s blog with comments, it just isn’t cool.

Well that’s it for now, building backlinks is so important so you need to get on this now. The sooner the better. Backlinking your site is an on going process that never really ends so you need to get in the habit now so that you can continue doing it later down the road. Tomorrow we will discuss another way to get your backlinks in another popular place.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: backlink, promotion, SEO

Social Bookmarking is NOT Dead!

Yesterday we discussed how to use Digg to bookmark your posts and your blog. Today we will discuss how to use other sites like Digg to further our site promotion beyong just Digg. We are going to continue getting our sites noticed so that we can actually get some traffic to them.

Beauty of Social Bookmarking Sites

Some people may say that social bookmarking is a waste of time but I will have to disagree. Everything about social bookmarking site is perfect for any website. You get a free backlink to your site for every bookmark you put up, you get targeted visitors to your site for those that see the bookmark, and you can do it all for free! That’s pretty awesome I think. The less I have to spend to get my blog noticed the more happy I am.

The only downside is the amount of time it takes to do each bookmark. It doesn’t take much time to just do 1 post on 1 or 2 bookmarking sites but when you have 5 or so posts and you want to do them on 10 bookmarking sites it begins to take up a lot of your time. Fortunately there are some amazing tools out there online for free! One of my favorites is SocialMarker. It is really easy to use and it cuts down on your time that it takes to do these bookmarkings. The one thing that takes the longest is just signing up to the sites that allow you to bookmark your posts. SocialMarker makes it really easy though, you just enter the details for your site and then it takes you through each site to bookmark. It’s pretty much automatic with just a little bit of effort. Of course this isn’t the fastest way but it’s the best free way to do this that I have found.

However, if you have a decent amount of change hanging around you can spring for the extra spiffy automatic submitters. One that I have found works very nicely is BookmarkingDemon. It costs $147 but in the end I think it is very worth it because you will save so much time in the end. It works absolutely like you would want it to and it really does save you time and money. So if you have the money I highly recommend that you buy it.

Now you have a couple of ways to mass submit to dozens of social bookmarking sites. I know this will save you time and it will get your site out there. This is the basis of promotion and we need to get this down now so that we can move forward. You should see results from all of the work you put in so it’s not wasted effort. Go ahead and bookmark your posts. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: bookmarking, promotion, SEO

Time for some Promotion!

Well we’ve done a lot over the past two weeks or so and now it’s time to get our name out there. We’ve taken all the steps to research and write up to this point and now it’s time for promotion. We want to get our site noticed right? Yes. Let’s go.

Digg is the Key

Digg is probably the best known social bookmarking website on the web. It’s no wonder why either, it has tons of traffic and tons of new website news everyday to check out. The major benefit of social bookmarking sites is that you get a nice backlink and that the users who come to your site are usually targeted. That’s the best of both worlds. Now we just need a way to capture those people and get them to come to our site and that is where we begin.

First thng we need to do is sign up to Digg. It’s a simple registration process so just go on over and sign up. Now, if you have Sociable on your blog then you can simply Digg each individual post very easily but if you don’t there’s still a simple process. When logged into Digg click on Submit New and enter the URL of the post and click News Article. Then you type up a title and description for your submition. Then pick a topic that’s closest to your niche. Then just submit it! That was easy huh? Now if you have Sociable then the process is 1 step shorter but it is the same process.  

Now that we know how to Digg something let’s go ahead and Digg each post. After that make sure to Digg the actual URL of the site because we want the actual site to get dug too. Each of these submittions helps with our SEO also because more backlinks gives us more authority. Not only are these just backlinks but they are also a great way to get spidered really fast! Most Digg submittions, that I do allow, Google to index my site so much faster then just waiting for the natural spidering. This is always a good thing. 

Okay so now you should go and Digg probably like 5 of your posts, if you have more then you can do more but you don’t want to do too many. Then when you have finished do doing your site go to your 5 favorite websites and Digg them because then it will look more natural. It’s always a good idea to Digg other sites so everything looks natural. After that you are done for today. Maybe you should write some more content. See you tomorrow.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Tags: digg, promotion, SEO