One always wants to drive traffic to their website or blog on a daily basis. This is normally achieved by performing various SEO traffic techniques that help in driving traffic by either doing it yourself or hiring an expert. In the former case, you will end up spending too much time doing it yourself as the processes are time consuming and cumbersome while in the latter case you will save on time but end up spending a lot of money to the provider.

However, there is one technique that can achieve a lot of traffic without having to spend too much or investing a lot of time. Article Writing!

Now the next question that may come to your mind is how does Article Writing drive traffic? It’s quite simple! The Internet comprises of a lot of information and there are millions of visitors, researchers and webmasters who are looking out for content for their blogs and websites. They have a choice where they can either create their own content or search on the Internet for a good quality article which they can utilize easily and quickly. This is exactly where you come in.

This article will describe the points that you need to keep in mind while writing your article:

Choosing the Right Headline:
It is important to create a headline that is appealing. A catchy headline will attract the attention of the viewer and will appeal them to read the article.

Preferred Word Count:
A good article is one that can convey a message, strategy and tips in 500 to 750 words. Making an article too long will dilute the attention of the reader and may be considered as a drag.

Preferred Software:
The best software is Microsoft Word as it has a spell check, word count option, synonyms option, etc. If you don’t have Word, you can use Open Office Word (which is free) or you can use Notepad.

Resource Box:
This is where one hits the bulls-eye. Use this box to the maximum possible extent. Write about the author, place a link of your website, add a freebie if possible, create a call to action phrase (Download now, Submit now, Click here, Submit here, etc).

Editing the Master Piece:
Once you have written your article, don’t forget to proofread and edit it. Ensure that the article is grammatically correct and free of any spelling mistakes, etc.

Now that you are done with writing the article, the next step would be to find an online website where you can submit your article. In this way you will be able to create an online archive of all your articles. If the site has an article content management system, then it will be excellent as it automates the submission of the article to your website.

Strategies for building the traffic through the article

This involves submitting your article to the top page rank article submission directories that will publish your article on their website. Create a blog if you don’t have one and post the article there. You can register with Yahoo Groups and post your articles there as well. Create an eBook on a collection of articles that relate to a topic and give it away for free. When you give it away for free, you are actually engaging in viral marketing which brings in wide exposure. Add the article to your website and if possible do generate some extra revenue by adding Google AdSense to it. You can also create an e-course on the articles that you have written and send it out through an auto-responder. Example, Free Auto Bot. Use any social media to build awareness around your article. Submit your article to various article announcement groups. For example, Yahoo Groups. These groups give a lot of eyeballs to your article as they can be used on their own websites.

By adopting the techniques listed above, you will be able to get loads of incoming links which boosts traffic and also the performance of your website.

Professional content writing companies have well-experienced SEO writers who know well about writing SEO content. They can write all kinds of SEO content including SEO articles, SEO blogs, press releases, and web content too. All you need is to give them keywords and site name and they will provide you with well-written, keyword-rich content. Writers also know how to do keyword-research on their own so providing a keyword list is not mandatory.

SEO companies are now outsourcing content writing to India to SEO writing companies as it is cost effective. Moreover India has many people who are proficient in English and can easily write good SEO content just apt to attract more search engine rankings.

India has professionals adept in various writing techniques.  Hence, SEO content writing services are being outsourced to Indian professionals in high volumes.  This has various advantages.  SEO content writing services in India train their staff to write for their clients all over the world with varying needs. With quality content services, your website is guaranteed of getting top ranking in search engine optimization.

By outsourcing SEO content writing services, SEO companies need not worry about the quality of content or maintaining a separate a department of content writers. SEO companies can ensure that they get quality SEO content on time to help in providing high-quality SEO services to their clients.

There is a wrong notion that in-house SEO costs less as compared to Outsourcing Content writing services.  Hiring writers and reviewers prove to be quite expensive in the long run. This is why outsourcing to India is the first preference of most SEO companies. This reduces most of the content work related hassles and SEO can focus on the core SEO activities. They can handle the job professionally and apply various strategies to improve your business.

When Outsourcing SEO Content writing services you must always take quotes from 4-5 companies. You must also ask for work samples and inquire about their team strength. If you need bulk SEO content on a regular basis, you can select more than one SEO writing companies. This way you will never be short of writers or have delayed deliveries. You can also give a sample assignment to check the proficiency level of the writers. For more information on SEO content writing, please visit www.seocontentlab.com.

Instant Traffic Shortcuts works as a tutorial e-book and program published by Web entrepreneurs Richard Legg and Willie Crawford. The training system is focused on finding a great deal of visitors to your websites, that will actually hopefully grow your monetary gain. Legg and Crawford include training on a large number of tips in Instant Traffic Shortcuts, including such things as determining the right search terms for high search engine placement and getting your websites in to the search engines like google in as short a time as you can.

As I said, it’s a tutorial e-book and study course that focuses on producing a great amount of traffic to your blog with the help of Seo optimisation techniques and secrets that this successful internet marketer have been using to build people to his very own domains. Those are SEO basics that a lot of web marketers usually neglect or just don’t put a sufficient amount of emphasis on.

Included in the e-book and video, Richard Legg explain the importance regarding choosing the best domain name, along with other lost SEO secrets. In addition , they do a passable job of talking about ways to execute a certain technique in addition to detailing why, and that is often omitted of a a number of courses. Nearly all people do not take on full benefit of using market and keyword research tools correctly, and also this is well covered inside this course. Other key elements obtained in this tutorial include establishing websites that the the major search engines love, how you can analyze your competition, along with proven methods to spy on them to figure out what words they are surely using to build ranked so high inside the search listings.

In Instant Traffic Shortcuts, Richard Legg and Willie Crawford promise to stipulate in depth a variety of means of enhancing traffic to your websites. For many who are selling their personal products or services, advertising and marketing services as affiliates or wanting to put together their marketing lists on the web, getting traffic for their websites is very important and most likely one of the vital challenging tasks.

Instant Traffic Shortcuts is simply not usually simple for newbie Online marketers to learn. Some terms are widely-used and processes explained which could be difficult to grasp for first-timers. Some on-line research in a search engine online, however, can definitely eliminate the frustration, for exactly what this very easily affordable training course can offer, it might be worthwhile.

In this e-book, Legg and Crawford talk about some specific ways of increasing your site visitors that you may possibly in the early stages think are not relevant, such as choosing the ultimate website address. Fortunately, however, they explain not only the hows along with the whys. They explain the simplest way to utilise market and keyword research tools, which they claim most folks don’t use for optimum effectiveness, and ways to make a website that the google love. Instant Traffic Shortcuts helps guide you to assess your rivals at the same time ethically spy on them to see what keywords they are using for getting ranked high in google.

Instant Traffic Shortcuts happen to be favorably received by the people who have bought it. The methods presented in the training course and tutorials have proven to be sound, and many people have seen positive returns on their investments. Legg and Crawford make it clear they are not promoting any easy get rich quick products, but simply offering information that people can use to increase their profits. Many individuals totally agree that the info is vital.

Instant Traffic Shortcuts isn’t devised for the newbie in mind as a lot of the terms used in this training program are for more experienced marketers. But nevertheless, if there’s a phrase you don’t understand, just do specific searches on Google to alleviate any misunderstandings. It’s not a break the bank program, as Richard Legg  explain throughout this program. What he is delivering is good details to generate visitors to your web site. We have seen good respond from people who have purchased the product, with many saying it has multiplied their traffic and profits, and definitely worth the investment. For a price of just .97, you’ve got nothing to lose and a great deal of website visitors to gain.

Article Contents:

The purpose of a Blog

      One of the main reasons that you would want to create a blog is simply – Google loves blogs! This is because of the fresh content that continuously gets uploaded. As you may have heard many time by now, “content is king”. And what this phrase basically means is that Google love new content, they want to see websites that are continuously updating and changing their content. Other website that fall into this category are news website, review websites, forums and community sites. If you do a search’s for may different keyphrases you will find that a lot of the organic listing come from these type of websites.

      Another reason to create a blog is that they can get indexed very quickly. Long gone are the days when you had to wait for months at a time for Google to index your website. A blog has the ability to ‘ping’ you posts. What this means is that you can now let the blog aggregators and search engines know when you have updated new content. But not only that, Blogs also have there own built in RSS feed. This should not be over looked, as it plays a very big part in getting you even more free traffic. Basically, RSS feed is very similar to an email signup. Once your customers have opt-in to your RSS feed, they will be informed (in real time) of any updates that you make to your blog.

What you should be looking for:

      For best results with a blog, you should create multiple blog accounts. There are a few ways that you can go about setting up a blog, we are now going to discuss some of these, and what you should be doing.

      – Install word press on your domain: this is a great way of bringing the traffic back to your main domain. Simply install the blog onto your domain with your website. This can be a bit technical for some people, so it might not suit everyone.

      - Third party blogs: Now days there are so many third party blogs out there on the market, this basically means that you don’t need to worry about hosting the blog on your own domain. This is done for you. Some of the best blogs out there that you should go and check out are, Blogger and Typepad (paid blog). It’s normally worth your time paying a small monthly fee to create a blog, as Google and the other search engines can rate these as being more relevant and less spammy than the free blogs.

      The purpose of creating multiple blogs is that you can get your content syndicated through multiple blog hosting accounts. Now, you don’t have to use the paid for blogs, you can create 10 free blogs and still get great results.

Here are a some of the biggest FREE blogs.

- Blogger - Google

- Yahoo 360 - Yahoo

- Live spaces - MSN

Create a blog for traffic:

      Another great thing about blogs, is that you don’t need to write 500 – 700 articles for each posting. Your content should be a synopsis of what you would normally write in an article, it only really needs to be a few paragraphs long. Once you have your content, you can the simply link back to one of your websites that has your offer on it, or a sign up box to capture their name and email address. Another feature that you should be using with your blog, is uploading images to each of your postings. This can increase your conversion rates, if you can upload an image that is relevant to the benefit of your blog post.

Hope this sheds a bit of light on how to create a blog for you beginners out there. Just remember – blog once a day and always ping.

For even more info on this, please visit my website www.ebookscomputer.com.

Good Luck!

Jeff Spires

Writing a blog shouldn’t be a stressful obligation for you. If it is, you’re doing something wrong. Maybe you’re forcing yourself to write about a topic that bores you, you’re not organized, you don’t understand how to upload your blog, or you hate writing. These are all problems that can easily be solved.

First, decide what your blog problem is:

My blog topic bores me.
I’m unorganized.
I don’t understand how to upload a blog.
I hate writing.

Now, find your problem below for a remedy:

1. My blog topic bores me: The dreaded boring blog—nothing is worse. My advice to you is to be yourself and share your passions. If you’re writing a business blog that is superprofessional and stuffy, you’re going to lose your audience. Personable and passionate writing is much more enticing for both you and the reader.

2. I’m unorganized: Being rushed to search for blog topics, publish your posts, or optimize your posts can be superstressful. Eliminate this mass chaos by creating a blog editorial calendar in advance. In your calendar, breakdown each topic you want to write about on your blog over the course of the next month.

When you have a concrete schedule, sit down and write 2 – 5 posts in one sitting. Always try to incorporate several keywords and key phrases throughout your posts in a natural manner. If you read your posts aloud and they sound odd with the keywords, remove them. Keywords should flow smoothly in your posts. Batching is always a great way to hone in on your writing skills and get a few posts out of the way.

3. I don’t understand how to upload a blog: Unfortunately, the only thing you can do when you’re in this situation is either watch blog tutorials for your blog software or hire someone to upload your blog posts for you. Whichever option you choose, you’ll find that, in the long run, you’ll save time and energy, while eliminating stress.

4. I hate writing: That’s OK! Record yourself speaking about a particular topic on audio or video. If you record an audio of yourself, turn it into a podcast for iTune users to download. If you record a video of yourself offering tips and advice, upload the video to YouTube and share it with your blog readers. Another great way to eliminate the burden of having to write blog posts is using lots of photos throughout your posts. Blogs don’t have to always be web copy based, but for search engine purposes you should have some written web content that at least explains the images, audio, or video in your blog. And try to write at least one blog post a week. The other posts for the week can be more multimedia based.

Discover simple marketing strategies to attract and convert prospects. My bimonthly ezine, Sumer’s Secrets is packed with tips on how to improve your web copy, promote your website, and market your brand.  Sign up and receive a FREE report on creating web copy that will increase sales and site traffic.

Blog SEO is one of the most effective way to build automated traffic to your blog. You might have learn some basic SEO strategy, but have you heard that blog has a very different way that allows you to get your blog on the first page very quick and easy.

Most blogger will rush to build backlinks, but they will discover ranking is hard and struggling because they have forgotten to do some “On-Blog Optimization” that would help them to get to the first page few times quicker. These On-Blog Optimization are:

1. Use Domain Name That Contain Keywords

Domain name gives you a huge advantage to get to the first page on the search engines. I’ve seen websites that have only few links that rank higher than sites which have hundreds of backlinks. The difference is just these sites domain name contain their keywords. This makes the search engine thinks that the domain name is dedicated to show only contents about the keyword.

2. Does Your Blog Title Contain Keywords?

Type keywords in your blog title. When the blog title is your keywords, the h1 tag and title tag on your blog will become your keywords. Each page of your blog will link back to the main page of your blog with the keywords too. All of these gives you extra SEO benefits to your blog.

3. Does Your Tagline Contain Keywords?

Every WordPress blog’s general setting, you’ll realize something below your blog title called ‘Tagline’ or description in other blog platform. Tagline is another important location to type your keywords. Make sure get it done.

4. Do You Miss Out Ping?

Ping is a important function of each wordpress blog will have. Everytime you publish a new article, your blog will ping itself to inform few websites you’ve created new information on your blog. Ping also helps to inform search engines you updated new information on your blog. Search engines like websites and blogs that update themselves frequently because they offer their users up-to-date and quality information. Search engine will usually rank your blog high if you ping often. Remember to import more ping services in your setting.

5. Are You Using Duplicated Contents?

Beware of duplicated content on your blog. Try not to reuse your own or others’ content on your blog. Reusing same content doesn’t help in ranking because search engines don’t index many pages that contain the same content because it might annoy their users and it might be a way to avoid spammers to increase their page by duplicating same contents.

6. Applying The Technique Of Keyword Density

Do you mention your keywords in your blog? Repeat your keywords often. Try to keep your density of keywords above 2% and below 7%. It means you got to have keyword you aim for 3 to 6 times in every 100 words you wrote. The more often you use the keywords in your post, the more the search engines thinking your blog is relevant to the keywords. Many people already aware of this method, this makes some internet marketer stuff keywords in their page. Google penalize page that overuse this method. Try to keep it below 7%.

7. Relevant Keywords

Since many people discover the keyword density method, Search engines have created a different algorithm that can judge websites’ content by the amount of relevant keywords. If you are using Wordtracker or Google Keyword Tool, these tool is able to give you many other keywords that are related to the keywords you aim for. Use some of them in your articles too. For example, you’ll see “pimple” and “blackhead” as related keywords when you search for acne.

8. Speed Blogging

If you post a new articleon your blog 3 times a day on your blog or more, Google think that your blog have the latest news about a topic and always provide fresh contents. As a result, you’ll rank easier. If you have a new blog, start posting once every 3 days and increase your post to once a day after 1 month. If your blog has been there for certain period, it’s up to you.

9. Page Volume

Another tip many Black Hat SEO trick users know is increasing the vloume of webpages. However, we try to do it in a white hat approach by posting more new articles. The more pages your blog has, the more content rich and informational the search engines think your blog is. As a result, your blog will be ranked higher.

10. Is Your Page Long Enough?

Publish posts have contain more than 250 words to get your page indexed quicker and stay in Google longer. As I mentioned, there’re many spammers who use the technique of increasing blog page quantity to manipulate search results. They might simply use a few words to publish a page. Search engines have ways to calculate the words to ensure it doesn’t happen.

11. What Sites Are You Linking To?

Do you know that your blog will get lower ranking if you link to a spam site or bad site? It is the same the other way round. If you link to a high authority site, your blog will have a higher ranking too. I haven’t did any experiment to prove it yet but I am a strong believer of this concept.

12. Interlinking

Is your blog posts linking to each other? Interlinking is a tip many internet marketers apply to increase Blog SEO traffic from keywords you don’t aim for. Although backlinks from the same site is not as good as backlinks from other websites, they are useful in ranking too especially you are able to have it done automatically with blogs. Use “Similar Post” plugin and create links to your popular posts at your sidebar.

13. Change Title Tags On Each Of Your Posts

Another tip to get more search engine traffic from untargeted keywords, it’s crucial to have the title tags of each of your blog post start with the post title first. You can use a free plugin called “All In One SEO Pack Plugin” that will do this automatically.

14. Create SEO Friendly URLs

The url of each of your blog post will not contain any keywords which people would search in the search engines in it by defaul. It might be something such as http://your-blog.com/?p=123. To make each of your blog posts more seo friendly, it is important to change your blog’s url to keywords. You can go to the blog’s settings and customize the permalink into “/%category%/%postname%”. This permalink structure will turn change the url of your post into urls that have the words in your post title.

15. Does Your Blog Has A Map?

Having a sitemap on your blog will definitely help you to rank faster because robot bots from Google could only crawl certain amounts of links. If your blog has a good sitemap that allows the bots to crawl your blog easily, more pages will get indexed and continue to get a lot of traffic from the search engine. But creating your own sitemap requires

Alex Liu is a full time blogger who specialize in Blog SEO to increase blog traffic. He shares tips and strategies to get traffic to blog at his blog-http://blogtrafficgeek.com

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don’t say that because I’m the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog.  Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog.  It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn’t become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your “move”.  Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has “moved” and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to…but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche…you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily.  Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries.  Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don’t come to work for days or weeks…you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here…if you don’t update your blog for days or weeks you’ll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It’s no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the “About the Author” passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the “About the Author” passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn’t mean your blog isn’t growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what “you” have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.  Stay keyword-focused.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: “Monday Money Tip” or “Picture of the Week” which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you “will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated”.

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about “Paris Hilton Getting Married” then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You’re a Professional

You’re a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a “move” announcement. The title should be “Moved” and the blog entry should state something like “I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.yournewblogdomainname.com/“. This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.  Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying “two heads is better than one”, more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

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These techniques not only benefit the long term goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but at the same can be a good source of direct traffic. SEO is the process of getting ranked high in search engine results (SERPS) for a respective KW. To land on the first pages in search engine results is the Internet Marketer’s dream.

Google Webmaster Tools says that in order to gain SERPS you should have high quality sites linking to yours, which is termed a backlink. So, the most effective way to climb the ranks is to have the most backlinks leading to your site. And some of the backlinks discussed here are also great sources of direct traffic which can lead to sale conversions.

The two most popular types of backlinks are reciprocal and one-way. A reciprocal link is where you exchange links with another site. A one-way link is where you get a link to your site from another site without having to place a link back.

One-way links hold the most juice with search engines. But, a diverse link building campaign is best. Just get lots of different links everyday! There are several ways to build links and all of them should be utilized to optimize your sites for SEO and increasing web site traffic.

1. Relevant/Reciprocal Link Exchange – This is where you exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours. Now there are many webmasters who exchange links with whatever site comes along, but think about this. If you have a website about computers, how helpful is it for your visitors to see a link to a weight loss site? This is just common sense, think about your visitors and build links for them and not for ranks and your site will be rewarded.

Reciprocal link placement on your site can be done in several ways. There is the links/partners page, where links are placed one after the other. But, this technique is not the best option. These days search engines place less value on links pages and in reality, how good is a links page for your site and its visitors?

A better option is to place your links and get the reciprocal site to place links within the content on your site, as a hyperlink (with relevant KW) this looks far better on the site, provides a natural flow of links and gets more link juice with the all mighty Google.

Also home page links and footer links (sitewides) are better options that link pages and this is something that can entice higher page rank sites to want to trade with you when your site rank is lower than theirs. Best Strategy: The key to link building on your sites is to make the link look like a side effect and not the end goal!

2. Directory Listing Links. Another way to get backlinks is by placing a listing of your sites in Internet Directories. These links vary depending on the directory. Sometimes directories require reciprocals, and sometimes they are one-ways. Of course, you want to get the one-ways as much as possible. But overall when your site is new get links in as many good directories as you can, even if, they have a lower page rank.

Some of the more popular higher ranking directories, like Dmoz, have a long wait so it is important to submit to the less popular directories to get the links quicker. Also directory listings are in in of themselves a good source of web site traffic since many people use these directories when searching the net.

4. Links in Relevant Forums/Discussion Groups. A great way to get a backlink and also get relevant targeted traffic is joining forums that are relevant to your sites theme and those that allow a backlink in the signature.

The key to this technique is having a genuine interest and knowledge within the theme. Don’t join a forum just to get sales, with this attitude your posts will quickly translate to SPAM and you will get booted faster than you can say boo. Instead, add helpful and meaningful posts, answer other members questions in these forums, participate in a genuine manner and not only will you get a powerful backlink, it will also increase your web site traffic. Plus, highly targeted and relevant traffic that will likely convert into sales since the visitors to those forums have a deep interest in the respective theme.

5. One-way links from Comments on Blogs. A great way to get links to your sites is by leaving comments on blogs relevant to your sites theme. Some blogs use a “no-follow” command for links which is a code attribute value used to instruct some search engines that the link should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. But if you read high traffic blogs that are of interest to you this often becomes a source of traffic to your site from the other readers of those blogs.

Also there are many blogs that offer “do-follow” links, a simple search for those can definitely optimize your SEO efforts and bring an increase in web site traffic.

6. Link Bait. Another great way to build quality one way backlinks is to use a link bait on your site. This is the method of choice to get get higher page rank sites to link to lower page rank sites. Link Bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. These link baits could be, information hooks, news hooks, humor hooks, tools hooks like a widget or some helpful tool that other sites can use.

7. Write a Press Release. Make sure to educate yourself on how to write a press release, many confuse these with sales ads and that is not what they are. For a complete guide to press releases, including the how-to’s you can visit PRWeb.

8. Social/Bookmark Site Links: The social revolution is hot on the web. Social and bookmark sites are growing in huge numbers and have tons of traffic and members. Join sites, like Facebook, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Furl It, just to name a few. Also you can save tons of time with Social Marker where you can add to over 50 of these sites at once from one browser window. Submit your site content to appropriate categories and get a backlink. Plus, these sites can be a great source of direct traffic from readers interested your content.

The key to some of these sites, like Facebook, is the word “social” which means that for optimal traffic you need to participate, make friends, take interest in what others are doing, join relevant groups etc.

9. Create a Squidoo Lens. A Squidoo lens about your site is a great way to advertise your site, get a backlink and traffic. The key to Squidoo is joining lots of Squidoo groups and once again participating with other lensemasters, commenting on their lenses and link to relevant lenses by creating lensrolls and they will do the same for you, this creates lots of cross traffic.

10. Article Marketing. Last but never least, Article Marketing is the BEST way to get quality one way backlinks and at the same time get direct targeted traffic to your sites. There are many benefits to this method, including getting relevant and targeted traffic which converts well into sales if you follow the method of “relevancy” with KW anchor text techniques.

Information can be easily searched for on the web. Blogs prove to be popular sources of information. Most people will make use of search engines for their information search, and this trend will remain to be so. The blog must therefore be optimized in the eyes of search engines, if it wants to be visible to information-searching people. Blog ranking deserves serious consideration.

There are certain valuable guidelines that will help your blog to rank well:

(1) Aim for more links

More incoming links to your site will impress the spiders of the search engines. These links must be of quality and bear relevance to the content of your blog. They should preferably come from sites with higher rankings, as this will positively affect your own ranking. These links will undoubtedly drive up traffic to your site.

(2) Be the owner of your domain

It is beneficial if you can obtain the domain name for your personal name. Similarly, try to get the domain name that will match your product name or company name. This is another technique that will improve your blog ranking as far as search engine ranking algorithms are concerned.

(3) Opt for short domain names

It certainly pays to have shorter domain names, for instance www.ezinearticles.com. It is easier to remember and is easily recognizable. The domain name readily informs the reader what the site is all about.

(4) Be unique

In choosing a name for your product, aim for uniqueness. This will attraction attention from visitors. It is important to differentiate yourself, even in the choice of a name.

(5) Get the right keyword placement

The keywords must be placed high on the page where it is clearly visible to visitors. They should be the text first greeting the visitors. They should also preferably be in large and bold font, as this will capture attention.

(6) Make dedicated pages

Every product offered should have a dedicated page. Even your personal biography should similarly have one. This makes linking easier for the visitor.

(7) Insert your full name in links

When you do have “About the Author” page, remember to insert your complete name in the link to read as, for instance, “About Jeremy Long”. This shows professionalism.

(8) Show respect to names

It would be wise to use complete names throughout the length of the page or post. For example, in the bio for Alex Jones, it would be respectful to use Alex Jones instead of “Alex” or “Jones” if “he” is no longer used in the text.

(9) Linking back to your site

If you are on another site, say, MySpace, always remember to firstly link back to your own site, and secondly create a link to the title of whatever you may be promoting on your site. Readers will be redirected to your site in both situations. Traffic will gradually increase.

Good content and easy navigation within the blog are important to visitors. To increase traffic, visibility of the blog must be improved. That said, efforts must be put in to get good blog ranking.

You have a business in a mall. Customers find information about your business through coupons. Customers come to the mall and go into your business. They look around and decide if they should purchase or not.

The concept is the same with any online business.

You have a website. Visitors (traffic) find information about your website through advertisements. Visitors search on search engines, find your website and click to your website. They look around and decide if they should purchase or not.

If you compare two together:

Online Business vs. Offline Business

Traffic = Customers

Online Ads = Coupons

Search Engines = Mall

Website = Storefront

No traffic to a website is the same as no customers coming into the mall.

No traffic / No Customers = No Sales in both cases.

Blog-driven websites are becoming more and more popular. If you have a blog, pay attention to the tips below: (not in particular order)

1. Choosing the right platform, domain, and internal tagging (categories)

CMS (short for Content Management System) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fasion. A Blog is a CMS application. The right blog software can make a huge difference. If you use blogger or wordpress templates, make sure they are designed with search engine optimized in mind.

Domain should be carefully thought through before going for it. A domain is not just an URL. A domain represents your brand! It should be unique and easy for people to mention to each other. Don’t make it too hard to pronounce. Ideally a domain should have the most important keyword about your business in it, and it should be no longer than 20 characters. You should also always aim for dotcom domains first, simply because “dotcom” is more well known compared to dotnet, dotorg…etc.

Proper internal tagging is very important for both search engines and users. Internal tagging enables search engines to better crawl the various content within your website. Internal tagging also allows users to navigate your website a lot easier, as they can just choose and display certain categories of their interest.

2. Write Title Tags and Content with both Search Engine and Visitors in mind

Search Engine is all about relevancy. The more targeted keywords you have in your content the higher you will rank in search engine results for these targeted keywords. Title tags and content should have your targeted keywords in them. The more the better, but avoid spamming. This is why you should also write with visitors in mind. If you mention too much of the same words, it’s actually quite annoying. Write with honesty and provide quality content to the best of your ability.

3. Proper bolding and underlying

Your writing has to please your readers. Don’t make your font too small to read. Use proper bolding and underlying to help readers read more efficiently.

4. Use more than just Text

This is self-explanatory. You will see popular blogs or websites make good use of graphics, audios, and videos, just to remove the boredom of plain text.

5. Pay attention to your site stats and focus on topics that’s popular and needs attention

If you pay attention to the traffic logs of your site, you will be able to tell which posts and topics that your audiences like the best. If you find posts and topics that draw the most traffic, they are probably what people are looking for. If you focus on these topics you will be fulfilling people’s needs, thus, increasing your readership and building your authority in these topics. Of course if would be even better if these topics lie around your targeted keywords.

6. Invite Guest Bloggers / Posts

It’s a good practice to invite guest bloggers to post on your blogs. This will improve the variety of the content on your site. Of course, these guest posts should be relevant to your site.

7. Implement Search Feature

I can’t tell you how important the search box feature is to a website, especially for blogs with hundreds of archived posts. These archived posts may still be valuable to your visitors. By implementing a search feature on your website you are connecting related content with respect to your visitors’ demands / needs.

8. Participate in Social Media, Forums, Blogs and Article Directories

Most social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, can allow you to automatically update content to your profile with your blog’s RSS / Atom feeds. These Social Media, if used properly, can bring you tremendous amount of traffic.

Participating in forums and blogs related to your niche will help building up your authority and your voice in your niche. Not only that, you will also get backlinks to your website if you have your website URL in your signature. Also, a lot of people on these forums and blogs will click on your signature URL out of curiosity. Same effects can be achieved with submitting articles to article directories.

9. Include Keywords in your Links

A lot of people only include their direct website URLs in their links. This is a simple mistake that most people make which dramatically reduces the quality of their backlinks. As previously mentioned, search engines are all about relevancy. The quality of a backlink depends on the relevancy between the linking text of the backlink, the title and the content of the website. If your website is about travel (targeted keyword), make sure the keyword “travel” is mentioned in the linking text.

10. Building your Brand

Your brand is like the purpose of your blog. Your readers share the same purpose as you and their loyalty are built based on their level of comfort with your brand. Sticking to your brand is very important as you will be consistently building up your authority and voice within your brand, your community. Your readers follow your brand, and you want loyal, quality, and focused readers.

You can, of course, diversify your website but it takes a lot more work and dedication to build up authority in multiple areas. It also takes a lot of work from the search engine optimization point of view since the relevancy of all the content on your website dramatically changes.

If you already have a solid readers to your existing brand, introducing a completely new subject can be off putting for them.