The format for the site submission has changed in the free Yahoo web submissions http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request . At first it allowed you to submit your site to it using the free submission form. This was normally the home page, and you would hope that their spider would crawl the rest of your website from there. Some webmasters have found this inadequate and have submitted other pages that Yahoo failed to notice otherwise.

More recently Yahoo allowed you to put in a text document with a list of URL’s to simplify the submission process.

A few weeks ago I noticed that Yahoo also allows RSS feeds of your website, Atom feeds, or a text listing of urls in this submission form. What does this mean? What will Yahoo do with the links in the RSS feed?

The text list of URL’s was obviously an effort to simplify the process for Yahoo to find all the pages in a website, as their documentation describes. But the RSS? Will they just add this to their database of RSS feeds for RSS searches, or will they follow the links with their spider to evaluate all the pages listed?

I have been working with Google Sitemaps since they came out. (Google uses their XML-formatted Google Sitemaps to help discover all the pages in a website, as well as to evaluate what pages have changed recently.) I am wondering if this is Yahoo’s response to the Google Site Maps. Does anyone know?

If I was them, then I would use RSS feeds to evaluate changes in the website. This has more information than the list of URL’s, since it also has descriptions and date changed. They have all the right information. If this is the case, it would be advisable for webmasters to have a RSS feed for their whole site to submit. That way Yahoo could just check the feed and know what pages to re-crawl, or what pages have been added.

It could be just as possible that this is just a field for us to submit RSS feeds, in addition to the other pages in your website. If this is the case, then we may need to submit both the feed and the home page of the website.

For myself, unless I find out differently, I am going to submit both. I intend on having a Google Sitemap and a RSS feed on all my future websites. I think it is safest to help out the search engines in any way possible. If they want information on what files have changed, I want to be proactive in giving it to them.

In addition, for those who have the coding experties, it is advisable to automate pinging Yahoo when your RSS feed changes. This is a standard blogging technique.

If you use movable type, the following article will help you configure your Yahoo to be automatically notified of a change in your RSS feed: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001490.html . There is an alternate way, for those who dont use movable type or standard blogs. Lets say you want Yahoo to know about the RSS feed for http://www.yourwebsiteurl.com and have the RSS file, myRss.xml. You could automate (or even use a web shortcut) to make the following HTTP request: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://www.yourwebsiteurl.com/myRss.xml

For more information, see the official Yahoo documention on RSS here: http://publisher.yahoo.com/rssguide

Unfortunately, hiring an SEO expert can be quite expensive. For those who want to do it themselves, here are the steps.

Bookmark these tools! you WILL need them!

The first step in website optimization is to make sure you have well-formatted HTML. I would encourage you to use the following tool to check this: http://validator.w3.org/ Do your best to get your website as close to conformance as possible.

If you use CSS, then use a CSS validator at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-uri.html There is rarely an excuse for not having it validate here.

If you follow most of the suggestions for having valid HTML code your web pages will be more digestible for the search engines, as well as being much more cross-browser compliant. You should also do this after any significant edit of the web page – to ensure that it is still compliant.

The second step in website optimization is to work on the Meta tags and the title tag for each page in your site. These are in the header of your web page document and need to be tailored to attract users who type in one of a select group of keywords. If you need a tool to help generate these, use this meta tag generator tool here (http://www.spiderweblogic.com/HTML-Meta-Tag-Generator.aspx) that I built.

The title tag:

The title tag is, of the three, the most important for the major search engines. Don’t make this too long – normally no more than 6 words. But have your most important keywords here. Some SEO specialists advise that even the order of the text here is significant. They suggest that if you place your company name in the title, that it should be placed last so the other keywords are being considered with greater weight.

The meta-keywords tag:

This is now of lesser importance than before, due to abuse by webmasters to achieve high rankings. However, it is still important and is required by many of the smaller search engines. Make sure that you don’t repeat any keyword or keyword phrase more than three times. That would be considered Spam (bad SEO tactics) by the search engines. Remember, your visitors will see the title of the web page. Make it useful to them as well.

The meta-description tag:

This is of higher importance than the keywords tag. Several search engines use it when they show your listing. It needs to encourage your potential visitors to visit your website. Of course, having keywords in here is important. But keep the primary purpose in mind as you write it. Here too, you should make sure that you don’t repeat any keyword or keyword phrase more than three times.

Each page in your website needs its own tailored title, meta-description, and meta-keywords tag. These need to be focused on the keywords you are trying for. (These are the words or phrases you want to be found at when people are doing searches.) These shouldn’t normally be the same on every page. They should be customized to the content that is on that page. You should also keep your visitors in mind as you write them.

The third step is to work on your content – especially on your home page. Ideally you would have between 800 – 1200 words of text. It should have your most important keywords at the top, middle and the bottom of the text. If possible, use an “h1″ tag at the top for your title – and have your most important keyword imbedded in it. Also, have some of your keywords in a sentence or phrase that is bolded. Keep it natural for your visitors to read. If it doesn’t look natural, you will loose any visitors you have attracted.

The fourth step in website optimization is to edit your links and your images to make full use of the “title” and “alt” attributes.

Text links can have a “title” attribute. The content is to more fully describe your link. When you put your mouse over the link, the content of the “title” attribute is displayed. I would encourage you to tailor the description so that it contains at least one of your keywords – but keep it accurate – that it really does describe the link. It must make sense to the common user.

Images HTML tags can have an “alt” attribute. It is used to describe an image when you put a mouse over it. It is also used for different devices for seeing impaired. Also, it is used when the user decides not to show images with the web site. They will see this text instead. (It is the “Alternate Text” for the image.) Try to incorporate some keywords here too – but keep with the spirit of being the “alternate text” for the image.

If you are using tables, you may even include a table “summary” attribute. The purpose of this attribute is to assist for those with disabilities to understand the contents and structure of a table. Keep all summary comments within that purpose – and add keywords only where appropriate. Note that these summary attributes may cause your web page validator to spit up an error – but this is newer item that is encouraged.

The fifth step is to have a good menu system or a site map. Search engines follow links to find the different pages in your site. If your navigation is one of those JavaScript drop-down menus or Flash menus, the search engines may not find all of your pages unless you have an alternative non-JavaScript link path that they can follow. If you use the fancy JavaScript links, you should have a hard link to a site map on every page. The site map should have a real non-JavaScript list of links that the search engines can follow to map out your whole site. As a standard policy I tend to avoid the JavaScript links in the menus.

Optional:
If you haven’t chosen a domain name yet, you may strongly consider having your top keyword phrase in the domain name, with the words separated by dashes. This is an excellent idea, but not always feasible. Many companies already have a domain name selected, or prefer to use their company name as the domain name. This is a business decision left up to the customer.

Things not to do:
Don’t create and market mirror sites though to accomplish this trick either. Sites that are identical in content, but have a different domain name are considered SPAM (bad/taboo) by the search engines. They don’t appreciate such tricks, and the ranking of both websites will suffer for it.

Also, don’t get too crazy with stuffing keywords where they don’t belong or by repeating keywords or by having keywords in hidden layers. Search engines don’t like that and will ban your site.

SEO Software to buy:
I have used SEO Studio to do website analysis during my optimization. This has been an invaluable tool for analyzing how saturated my keywords are in a particular web page. It is reasonably priced and I have been very satisfied with the performance. It is easy to see such things as keyword density relevance for the whole web page. It also is helpful in showing where the keywords are not (and can be). Y ou will learn a lot about website optimization just by using this tool!

NOW WHAT?
After all this “Search Engine Optimization” you need to do a human review your website – is it natural/useful/helpful for the human visitor? Remember, getting website traffic is only half the game. This site needs to quickly convert them into paying customers.

Once it is “Optimized”, then you need to let the search engines know that you exist. Only after it is ready should you tell them about it. But this is a subject for another article. Do a search of different article warehouse or SEO news sources. You will find a lot of information on this.

Website optimization news sources:
Since there are new quirks in the website optimization and website promotion that come out all the time – some that apply to all search engines, and some that apply to a particular one, it is wise to keep up to date. I strongly encourage you to join a couple of relevant mailing lists!

I really like the news sources from Entireweb.com. If you submit a site through them, I would encourage you to accept their free newsletters. They have great content. http://www.entireweb.com/submit_site/

Another place to get really great articles on website optimization or promotion is http://www.SiteProNews.com They also allow you to subscribe to their articles. Do this!

If you are serious about keeping up with your website positioning, keep up with the news. You will find these resources invaluable!

Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites.
http://www.SpiderwebLogic.com | http://www.SchoolAndTeacher.com

But easy does not always mean simple.

Google makes it easy to sign up, generate an ad and put it on your site, however, it’s not always so simple designing your site for interest, finding high paying keywords and placing your ads so that they attract maximum clicks.

Here are a few surefire tips that will help draw interest to your site and your ads while helping you get the clicks that will make you money.

1. Build content rich sites

Content rich sites do several things for you. They keepviewers on your site because you are providing information of interest. It’s also important to keep the information refreshed periodically with up-to-date and current content. This is not only useful for your viewers, the search engines like it as well.

Sites containing useful content will also help establish you as an expert in your field allowing viewers to respect your opinions and suggestions. But most importantly, good content will keep your viewers coming back to your site. They will bookmark your site more often and notify their friends a lot more.

2. Research and use higher paying keywords.

Develop site pages using topics that contain high paying keywords while keeping the keywords relevant to your topic.

The Overture website has a free ‘keywords bid tool’ that is excellent for showing you what advertisers are paying for keywords.

For example, using this tool I can see that the keyword ‘pet medication’ has a maximum bid of $1.51 while the keyword ‘pet name’ has a maximum bid of $.11. If I were looking for informational pages to add to my pet site, the clear choice here would be to develop a page about pet medications and optimize that page for the keyword ‘pet medication’.

3. Place your ads in the upper left hand quarter of your website.

Studies show that people almost always scan your site from the top left working down. Placing a vertical skyscraper ad in that section can help increase your click through rate from 2% to as much as 30% or higher.

4. Don’t use horizontal banners or ads.

Google recommends that you use vertical as opposed to horizontal ads. Web surfers see lots of horizontal banners and ads and they almost instantaneously avoid them.

According to Google, wider ad formats such as the large rectangle and inline rectangle also tend to perform quite well. This is probably due to the fact that they are more reader friendly allowing you to read more text at a glance without having to skip a line and return to the left margin every few words.

My experience is that positioning these ads just before or just after your main content can increase your clickthrough rate substantially.

5. Avoid the Dead Zones

Google research has shown that there are zones within your site that won’t generate clicks. These areas are the top right of your site, the bottom right-hand corner and the very bottom. Ads in these areas are often ignored. Keep your ads to the upper left and center or just above or below your primary content.

6. Coordinate the ad colors to match your site colors.

Google adsense offers an array of colors that you can use to display your ads. Choose the two main colors of your site and use those colors for your ad. Keep the URL link of the ad in blue since this is the link color that most viewers are used to. The idea is to blend your ads with your site content so as to invite more clicks.

7. Follow the adsense program policies to the letter.

Google keeps a close eye on how their ads are displayed and they will cancel you immediately if you break the rules. Google adsense is an excellent way to bring in some extra revenue so don’t risk losing a good thing.

However, many websites are facing this problem: No visitors = No sales. And it can be a daunting task for newbie webmasters new to online marketing. In this article, I provide some internet marketing tips and solutions for webmasters new to website promotion.

There are many ways you can market your website indeed:

a) Search Engine Positioning
Some may call this search engine optimization, or “SEO” for short. It is the most effective way to market your website online. To illustrate what I mean, you may type the keywords “Singapore web design and hosting” into MSN search box, and see if you can find Singaporewebdesigner.com. [We are currently ranked top 10 for the keywords you just typed].

In fact, statistics have also shown that more than 80% of online traffic is driven by search engines. However, to squeeze your way into Google top 10 can requires a lot of time and effort. If your site is newly built and has not been indexed by Google, there is no way you can rank top 10 for popular key phrases within 1 month. You can take my word for that.

Benefits:
1. Highly targeted visitors searching for your products and services.
2. Very cost effective in the long run compared to advertising.
3. Increase your website’s online reputation.

b) Pay per click advertising
This effectively means that you advertise your site on other websites by pay per click. You will pay for every click when visitors click on your ads on other sites.

Currently, the 2 most popular pay per click advertising campaigns will be Google Adwords and Yahoo! Overture This is another very popular way to market your website online. It is not easy for new websites to climb their ways to the top of search engines ranking. Hence, this is a very popular marketing solution for new websites.

c) Article Writing
If you can write articles in good English, article writing can be one of the most economic ways to market your site. You need not write like an English professor. In fact, many internet marketing experts suggest that you write in a personalized style. Your articles need not be too long. Online visitors do not spend the whole evening trying to figure out what you want to say. Also, writing in proper paragraphs and point forms help to convey messages fast and effective.

After writing an article, remember to include a resource box.

See example below:

“Article by Byon Ong, Singapore web design, hosting and website promotion”.

You may also suggest your article to Articles Factory as a writer. If your article is interesting with useful content, many sites would want to publish your articles in their sites. By contributing useful contents for their readers, they provide valuable backlinks to your site in exchange.

Here are only basic ways to promote your websites. For more promotion tips and techniques, you may want to read Internet promotion and marketing Part 2.

E-courses are excellent sales tools and a great way to get your knowledge out there. It is very simple to create your course and either sell, or give it away as a give-before-you-get sales technique. If your course is designed to be a freebie, youll want to give a portion of good information; but dont tell them everything or they’ll have no reason to make a purchase. If you are selling your course, make sure to jam pack it with everything you know, that way your customer will feel like they are getting a lot for their money (depending on how much you really know.)

E-courses are simple to create because there is no need for fancy formatting, heading tags or conversions. E-courses are made in the same fashion as e-zines; by using plain text.

For a sample of my 7-day mini course, send an e-mail to: minicourse@aweber.com. You will receive the first portion of the course in just a few minutes, and then for the next 7 days you will get an email with a new section attached.

AOL USERS BEWARE: The only complaints I have ever received about the course not being delivered were from AOL members.

Here’s a quick check list for creating your course:

• Pick your topic of expertise.
• Divide your material into specific sections. These topics will be your lessons. I advise starting out with a day-by-day course rather than splitting your material into weeks.
• Write an introduction to the course and a list describing upcoming lessons.
• If this is a free course: make sure to weave subtle hints throughout about all of the information that they are not receiving to give them incentive to purchase something (anything!)

Once you have written your course, set up an account with a sequential auto-responder company. Every company will have different instructions for set up, but basically you will be cutting and pasting and they will deliver the e-mails/lessons at the appropriate time.

Promote and advertise your course on your website, and send out a notice to your distribution list: let people know about it any way you can.

The first part of gaining profits through website promotion is to have an excellent website design. You cannot expect to gain any profits through a website that is designed poorly or that is difficult to navigate. Make it easy for visitors to your website to find what they need and make a purchase. This will gain you fast profits.

The second thing you should do to gain profits is to use search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO has been widely used to put people’s websites at the top of a search engine’s list. It is found that most people that use a search engine only visit the website that is listed at the top of the list. This is why you need to use SEO to help with your website promotion. With the proper SEO, you can attract more visitors to your website. More visitors means more profits for you.

Next, to gain more profits you can use email marketing. Be sure that when you use email marketing to gain profits that you are not using spam. Use an opt in list instead. Have an opt in list posted on your website. An opt in list is when people request to receive email material from your website. It has been shown that opt in lists give a 40% increase in response. This means that you will again have more profits.

In order to gain profits through website promotion, you must be sure that you go after your target audience. Be sure that your website’s design attracts the type of people that would be interested in your product or service. Also, be sure that your email marketing sends out emails and ezines to people that will actually read it and have an interest in it. If you don’t, you cannot expect to gain profits.

Lastly, you can incorporate the use of affiliate programs to help with your website promotion. Have links to your affiliates on your website. Your affiliates will also do the same. With you and your affiliates working together to promote your website, you will start to see more website traffic and more profits.

Website promotion is the only sure way to gain profits for your business. Without it, you can easily find yourself in a hole that is hard to dig your way out of. Be sure to utilize all of these methods so that you can attain more profits.

edit: seems somewhat of a sales type article, but the bulletpoints on what you need to learn is good advice – SEO advice

You will miss out on a goldmine of potential buyers if you do not!

You need an all-in-one kit that:

1. Allows you to be in total control of operations
2. Countermands the ever-changing search engine vagaries
3. Outstrips all other forms of web promotion
4. Constitutes the ultimate weapon in viral marketing
5. Exerts infinite influence on article exposure
6. Produces an ever-increasing stream of links
7. Builds lists of pre-qualified prospects
8. Works for any niche opportunity
9. Taps into a goldmine of browsing buyers
10. Attracts incremental sales
11. Grows your business at zero cost
12. Has the power to make you famous online

But you need more than points 1-12…

You need to learn…

• How to research the topic before you write your article
• How to use keywords and phrases to stimulate interest
• How to use magnetic verbs to trigger impulse buying
• How to command the reader’s subconscious
• How to use subheads to catch quick readers
• How to create mental movies in the prospect’s mind
• How to educate, inform, and motivate the reader
• How to address the WIIFM questions on everyone’s lips
• How to think like the people you want to influence
• Why simple words and short sentences work best
• How to develop the power of speaking with authority
• How to avoid over-egging the clichés
• How to paint word pictures that drive visitors in hoards to your website
• How to craft articles that zing like bullets shot from a bell

But even all that isn’t enough…

You also need to learn…

• How to write editorials; not ad copy
• Why you must be totally truthful in your claims
• How to start with an eye-grabbing headline
• How to fire your biggest gun in the first sentence
• Why you must fire the next biggest in the next 2 sentences
• How to roll out the remaining text on in crisp chunky paragraphs
• How to break it up with occasional subheads
• How to keep your dialogue conversational
• Why you must restrict the word count to acceptable limits
• Why your resource box is the catalyst to successful article distribution
• How to choose your core keywords
• How to prepare the ‘description’ copy
• How to become accepted as an expert article author

And when you’ve learned all this you will discover that…

1. Articles do outstrip all other forms of web promotion
2. Articles do constitute the ultimate weapon in viral marketing
3. Articles do exercise an infinite influence in product exposure
4. Articles do create an ever-growing stream of links back to your website
5. Articles do continue to work irrespective of the search engines
6. Articles do build lists of pre-qualified prospects
7. Articles work for any niche opportunity
8. Articles do tap into a goldmine of browsing buyers
9. Articles do attract incremental sales
10. Articles do grow business at zero-cost
11. Articles do have the power to make you famous online

If you would like to learn even more about the amazing power of articles, click on the link in the resource box below.

Keyword Optimization – How To Achieve It

The most important thing you can do for your business and your website is develop relevant keywords that are not too competitive yet generate targeted traffic to your website.

It’s called keyword optimization. Why is it important?

Because Keywords and keyword phrases do a coupleof things for you:

- With the right keywords, you will attract the viewers most interested in the items or services on your site.

- You will rank higher in the search engines for your chosen keywords, saving you thousands of dollars in advertising. It all starts, however, with the best keywords that pertain to your product or services.

When selecting keywords you should select 1 perhaps 2 of the most relevant keywords for each page of yoursite. I suggest using no more than two keywords per page, preferably one.

Why?

Because search engines strive to deliver the most relevant pages for the search term entered. The more focused your page is for the search term, the more relevant the search engines will find your page. The more keywords you use, the less focused your page becomes.

How do you find keywords that your target audience will use?

- Think like your readers. Take yourself outside your site for a minute and think about how you would find the products or services you are selling.

- Use Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/Type in your most basic keyword and it will show you the variations of the search term and also the count of how many times that term was entered in the search engine.

- Think of phrases as opposed to one single word. If you sell clay pots, think of keywords such as painted clay pots, or clay flower pots, large clay pots, buy clay pots. Use descriptive words when brainstorming phrases.

- Ask your relatives, kids and friends what they would type in to find your products. You would be amazed at the great ideas that can be generated. For example, I asked a teenager once what he would type in to find shoes online and he said ‘nice kicks’. As of this writing, Overture’s keyword selector tool showed a count of 12130. Hmmm, never would have thought of it on my own.

- Use a thesaurus or Webster’s dictionary to find similar words to your chosen keywords. Consider allforms of the word. For example, for the term supply there is supply, supplies, supplier, supplying. Thinking of allforms of the word help a great deal in brainstorming keyword ideas.

- If you have a website already, place a search engine on your site. This would be a search engine that you put on your site that searches only your site such as http://www.freefind.com/ . This will help you collect data on what keywords users are using. Once you’ve collected a good list of search terms you can use this to help you determine the best keywords.

Along this same line, you can also use your website server logs to gather information on the keywords used to find yoursite. Once you’ve made a list of the best keywords and keywordphrases, you will need to determine which ones are the best.

Your challenge is to find keywords that have a high usage count but appear on the least amount of competing web pages. Wordtracker.com is an excellent tool for helping you achieve this. Wordtracker’s ‘Keyword Effectiveness Index’ (KEI) will provide you with the number of times a keyword is used along with the number of competing web pages. The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition. This means a better chance for you in getting to the top of the search engines.

Finding the best keywords and keyword phrases is an important part of your marketing mix. Find the correct keywords and build your content around them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

More and more we are starting to see a shift in consumer demand for the increasingly popular website content management system.

Most website owner’s are typical business entrepreneurs who don’t have the time to chase down their web design company for some minor updates that usually cost an arm and a leg. Updates for websites are becoming more and more necessary. It’s now a reality and a trend that in order to make something happen with your website online, you need to stay on top of things and create new content to keep visitors coming back.

As entrepreneurs, we all get new creative ideas almost every day on how to improve our products or services. Without the ability to update our own website’s, those fresh, new ideas may not become a reality for a long time.

Website Content Management Systems Are The Future:

This is somewhat of a call out to all web design companies. If you cannot offer content management to your clients, you may be left in the dust within a few years. The more affordable content management becomes, the more in demand it will be. Without giving your prospects this crucial option, you may lose a great chunk of your potential clients to the next web design company that has a fully automated system that states: “all the consumer has to do is login and get started.”

Granted, there will always be a need for web designers. That is an understatement but with the option of content management, you can also decrease the amount of work needed to put into each project and concentrate more on marketing your business and it’s services.

Content Management Gives The Consumer The Freedom They Need!

Without giving too much freedom that may make the website look bad, there is a high demand for the ability to update a website when needed, not when convenient. People like to have power over managing their own company, content management gives them the freedom they need to expand on their own terms, without extra costs.

Here Are Typical Features Of A “CMS”:

- Add/remove/edit pages.
- Update content within each page.
- Add images where needed.
- Update contact information.
- Show updated listings (i.e. Real estate listings, Mortgage rates).
- Add new tips on their industry everyday (The spawn of blogging).
+ Many extra features not listed here.

Take The Real Estate Industry For Example:

In the last 2 years, “Real Estate Content Management Systems” are popping up everywhere we look. I can recall reviewing over 50 websites that offer this style of service. And why not! Real estate agents as a whole spend a great deal of money marketing themselves. Just in the last couple of years, real estate agents have seen more value in marketing online than they have through regular print media. Many real estate agents I know would rather spend $4,000 for a website rather than spend $4,000 getting listed in the local telephone book.

In Conclusion:

If you offer web design services and have (CMS) Content Management Systems available to your visitors, this might be the time to consider this ever growing popular service for your company. You won’t regret putting in the effort of developing your own system and marketing it, there is a shifting demand for this ever-popular freedom online.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I have a quick question to ask you… “do you know How-To set up your own BLOG and RSS Feed so you Too can take advantage of all the benefits Blogs and RSS(Real Simple Syndication) have to offer you and your business?” If you answered NO, your not alone. I didn’t either at one time, but that didn’t stop me from finding out How-To on my own. So basically, what I’m trying to say is by the time you finish reading this article you’ll be a master at setting up your own Blogs and RSS Feeds in a matter of minutes by simply following my simple ‘Step-by-Step’ instructions below. With that said, Buckle Up, put your thinking cap on, grab yourself a beverage and get ready to learn… “HOW-TO Set Up Your Own BLOG and RSS Feed In Less Than 5 Minutes…” Now lets go to Step #1.

Step #1. Go set-up an account with Blogger.com. This is probably the easiest part of all, which is simply setting up an Blogger.com account at http://www.blogger.com. Go there right now. It will take you to Blogger.com’s homepage. Once there, you’ll see an orange arrow pointing to the right that says…”Create Your Blog Now” … click on it. That’s Step #1.

Step #2. Creating your account with Blogger.com. If you thought Step #1 was easy than Step #2 will be a breeze. Simply select a Username and Password that you’ll remember followed by your Email Address.(You don’t have to use your primary email address, you can use a Free web-based email account like Hotmail or Yahoo! if you like. Your choice.) Then check the box that says “I accept the Terms of Service”. Now proceed by clicking on the orange arrow that says… “Continue”. That’s Step #2.

Step #3. Naming your Blog.(Very IMPORTANT!) Now, depending on what your Blog is about your going to want to use your target ‘Keywords’ within the name of your Blog, its description and the URL. And there’s a good reason for this simply because this is what the Search Engine spiders are going to see first. They’ll first see them within your Blog name which is at the top of your Blog that your visitors see, they’ll see them within your description of your Blog and then they’ll see them within your Blog URL that you choose.

Why is this so important? By using your ‘Target Keywords’ within those areas I just outlined, thats what the SE’s will use to index your Blog under so when someone does a search for those target keywords, guess whose Blog will pop-up within the results depending on your competition? That’s right, yours! The SE’s will also use those area’s I outlined for your SE listing within there results index. Here’s an example for a quick ‘Case-Study’ for you.

This is one of my Blogs I have. Go to: http://internet-marketing-tactics.blogspot.com You’ll notice my Blog title, description and URL all have the ‘Keyword Phrase’… Internet Marketing Tactic. To take this a step further, I want you to go visit these search engines MSN, Yahoo! and AlltheWeb and type in “internet marketing tactics” within there search boxes so you can see where my Blog sits within those SE’s so you can see the importance of having your Target keywords within those area’s I mentioned earlier. MSN ,Yahoo!, AlltheWeb. In the MSN SE results my Blog is #1 for that keyword phrase, in Yahoo! I’m #11(not bad) and in AlltheWeb I’m #18. Of course these positions will very in time but just as long as you get the point of why you need to use your target keywords within those 3 areas.

Lets move on. Now, your last step for Step #3 is to simply type in the ‘Verification Code’. Once you’ve done that, click on the orange arrow below that says… “Continue”.

Step #4. Choosing your template. If everything went well in Step #3 and that Blog name you chose isn’t taken you should be looking at a bunch of Blog templates Blogger.com offers. Simply select the one you like most and then click “Continue”. CONGRATULATIONS! You just created your first Blog and completed Step #4. You should now be looking at an orange arrow that says… “Start Posting”. Click on it and it’ll take you to where you can start posting whatever it is you want. Now that you have set-up your Blog your probably wondering… “where does RSS fit into this formula?”

Step #5. Locating your RSS Feed URL. What can I say, I always leave the Best for last. Assuming your still within the Blogger.com ‘Posting’ area you’ll notice a bunch of tabs at the top labelled, Posting, Settings, Template and View Blog. Click on the ‘Settings’ tab. This will take you to a sub-menu with a bunch of other options. Out of all those options click on the one that says… “Site Feed”. And there it is. It should look something like this: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml This is the URL you’ll want to use to promote your RSS Feed with to the RSS search engines and directories so that everytime you make a post, the RSS SE’s and directories will be ‘Automatically’ notified and updated with your latest information bringing your Blog more exposure to your target audience.

Now that you are armed with this information that I just revealed to you, you should have no problem setting up and getting the MOST out of your Blogs and RSS Feeds.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I recently received a post on my Blog from a fellow that inspired me to write this article since I found the nature of the topic important to ALL who are serious about getting the most out of there RSS feed and this new technology.

I’m pretty sure you can guess what he ask from reading the headline of this article. Well… I did some research on what he had asked of me and came up with… “8 TOP Ways To Promote Your RSS/XML Feed For MAXIMUM Exposure” So, with that said, let’s dive into the first and MOST important step to Maximizing your RSS feed for the exposure it deserves.

Step #1. Build a dedicated webpage for your RSS feed. This is probably the most important part of getting the most out of your RSS feed, is by building your own dedicated webpage for your RSS feed subscription. The KEY here is to give your potential readers many options to adding Your RSS feed. The best way for me to illustrate this to you is by clicking on the link below that leads to my dedicated RSS feed subscription page so you can see first hand what you need to do to get yours started.

Click here:
http://www.internetwondersezine.com/rss_feed.html

Did you notice all the different options I give?

That’s what you need to do. Now, for those of you who aren’t so web savvy, don’t worry, I have something for you that will auto-generate a RSS feed webpage for you within minutes if you already have a Blog or RSS feed. The service I’m talking about is called FeedBurner.com — http://www.feedburner.com — and is a free service for you to sign up for. Here’s what my webpage through FeedBurner.com looks like so you’ll have an idea of what yours will look like.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheInternetWondersBlog

Do you see all the options they give your potential readers to add your RSS feed to there RSS readers?

Once you’ve accomplished one of the two options above your all set to start promoting your RSS feed for MAXIMUM exposure.

Step #2. Add links to your RSS feed webpage on your website. This is yet just another way to pull your visitors towards your RSS feed webpage by simply adding Text or Graphic links to your existing webpages. Make sure you put them in Highly visible area’s where your visitors will see your links. I would would put one at the top, middle and bottom of your website. This really depends on what kind of website you have so you’ll have to use your own dicression. Here’s what I have done on my website to give you an example.

Click here: http://www.internetwondersezine.com

Step #3. Add this HTML tag to your RSS feed webpage. Here’s something you can add to all your websites webpages that will get the attention of Search Engines spiders to come on over and check out your RSS feed further. Simple add the following HTML tag to the <head> of your document:

link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”YOUR SITE TITLE RSS Feed” xhref=”URL TO RSS FILE”/

(note: add this < in front of “link rel” and this > to the end after the forward slash /)

Step #4. Some idea’s if you have your own newsletter. If you have your own newsletter like I do, here’s a couple ways to get your visitors to visit your RSS feed webpage. Add a link on your “Thank You” page that leads to your RSS feed webpage. Whether its a Text or Graphic link. The key here is to get your RSS feed link in front of your readers as much as possible to get them to add your RSS feed to there readers. The next one is, add a link inside your “Welcome” email that’s sent out to your New newsletter subscriber after they’ve subscribed. This again, will give you another chance of getting them to add your RSS feed to there readers.

Step #5. Put together a “Signature File”. Here’s another couple great ways to get your RSS feed webpage more exposure every time you send out an email or post to any online forums is by simply putting together a “Signature File”. Now, every time you sent out an email to your list and/or business contact you can attached your “Signature File” at the end of every email you send. The same goes for online forums, every time you make a post or answer someone else’s, your “Signature File” will be automatically attached. Your “Signature File” doesn’t have to be a huge, a few enticing lines will do fine with your RSS feed URL.

Step #6. Submit your RSS feed to RSS Directories and SE’s. Another great way to give your RSS feed more exposure is by submitting it or them to RSS Directories and Search Engines. I’ve listed a few resources for you below to get you started with.

- Feed Shark
http://feedshark.brainbliss.com

- Ping-O-Matic
http://pingomatic.com

- RSS Top 55
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

Step #7. Write an article, if you write articles. This is a great way to get your RSS feed webpage in front of thousands of targeted readers absolutely FREE! Simply write an article on a HOT topic within your niche, and at the end of your article add an enticing, attention grabbing “Resource Box” that points to your RSS feed webpage URL.

Step #8. Set-Up a PPC(Pay-Per-Click) campaign. For the last step to getting your RSS feed webpage Maximum exposure is to set-up a PPC campaign. By doing this you will be able to send HIGHLY targeted traffic to your RSS feed webpage that are hungry for the information you have to offer. The only downside to doing the PPC tactic is that it will cost you. And, this tactic solely depends on whether or not you chose to set-up an RSS feed webpage of your own.

Now, I’m sure there are many others ways out there that could draw in more visitors to your RSS feed, but, these ones I just outlined in this article are the Best ones in my mind and are the ones I use.

Well, this concludes the, “8 TOP Ways To Promote Your RSS/XML Feed For MAXIMUM Exposure”, so, the only thing I have left to say to you is… Get Started!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Permission Email Marketing”, the only way to market your business via Email without getting yourself into trouble and giving you the ability to stay in touch and build a ongoing relationship with your customers and/or subscribers. The only question is… is email still a reliable vehicle to deliver your marketing messages to your potential customers and/or subscribers?

With the rising concerns of SPAM, Blacklisting, Email Filters, and CAN-SPAM laws, it’s getting Harder and Harder for legitimate “Permission Email Marketers” to reach there Target audiences with there Product or Service offers. The end result is… “Time Wasted” and “Loss of Profits”. Is your online business suffering from this? Only you can answer that.

Email used to be the MOST effective form of direct marketing online at one time before everybody started abusing it and there guidelines. Don’t get me wrong, email still is effective, the question is… how effective? The benefit to marketing with email was that you were able to get your marketing message infront of your Target audiences within a matter of minutes with a single click of your mouse, which at one time made MANY marketers “Buckets-Of-Money” literally over night.

Email WAS the answer at that time, but, what’s the solution for the future of “Permission Email Marketing”? Is there an answer to this rising problem with Email? I’ll give you three letters… RSS! Yes, there is a solution for “Permission Email Marketers” and/or for any online business owner who uses email to stay in touch with there customers and/or subscribers and that is RSS(Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication).

RSS is the NEW technology on the block(though its been around for quite some time) and is transforming the Internet and how businesses communicate with there customers and/or subscribers as we speak. The biggest benefit you’ll receive by incorporating RSS into your online business is… your customers and/or subscribers will receive 100% of your Product and/or Service offers. I’m going to say that again, “your customers and/or subscribers will receive 100% of your Product and/or Service offers”. No other online technology offers this benefit. Just imagine the increased response to your offers, which in turn will convert into more Sales and Profits for you and your online business. Rest assured, you could sleep at night knowing that your messages are reaching 100% of your Target audience without the worry of SPAM filters mistakenly marking your email as “SPAM” and that all that time you spent putting your offer together didn’t go to waste. Would you then consider RSS? I think you would. But, that is just my opinion.

There are many others benefits to using RSS which you can read about in a earlier article I wrote by clicking on this link — http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_15.html — since there are to many to list within this article. Things are changing online, so we must change with it and adapt any new technologies we can in order to get the most out of our time and online businesses. So, with that said, if your a “Permission Email Marketer” and you’re not happy with the results your currently getting from using “Email”, then you might want to consider switching to “RSS”. 100% delivery rate is unheard of with Email, but, is GUARANTEED with RSS(Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Get ranked well on the most important search engines (Google, Yahoo, Msn, Ask.com, etc.)
• Pay Per Click (PPC) programs
• Per Click (CPC) programs
• Link Exchanges
• Directory Submissions
• And more…

All of these methods are valuable for getting traffic to your website. If you are not competent enough to rank well your keywords, you can obviously hire a SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) for this work. From search engines you can get a very large portion of traffic to your website.

Today, everyone wants to know the big secret to driving traffic to their website. Every day I see an article or an ad talking about driving people to your website; driving traffic to a website has become the “holy grail” on the Internet. People are realizing that if you build it, they won’t come… unless you give them a reason. Website traffic just doesn’t happen by itself. Your website is just one of many millions on the web and people rarely just stumble upon your site by accident.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You can buy traffic from vendors that will pummel your website with hits from automated programs. This will increase your hits but will it increase your bottom line? Probably not. You can set up blogs that spider (connect to) your website increasing your traffic count. Does this drive users to your website? Only if your blog is so interesting that people are reading it. There are thousands of blogs posted on the internet and your blog is just a needle in the internet haystack.

Another trick is to create RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for your website and subscribe to other RSS feeds. This again will increase your hit count but will do very little to drive potential customers to your website unless you’re providing valuable information. Tricks will increase your hit count but do very little todrive potential customers to your website.

People often turn to traffic exchanges. Quite simply, a traffic exchange is a program where you sign up and agree to surf sites in exchange for some credits. These credits are then used when other members of the exchange surf to your site. This traffic is not highly targeted traffic. In fact, if this were your only method of advertising your website, you’d probably fail. BUT it is a great method of getting traffic to your site in addition to the other methods listed above.

So, why do people use traffic exchanges? Here are a few of the benefits:

• Increase your Alexa rating! Did you know that some search engines factor your Alexa rating into their algorithms? More traffic means higher search engine placement!
• Increase your branding awareness. Any marketing expert worth his salt will tell you that branding is extremely important to stand out amongst the billions of websites out there. More traffic equals more sales. A percentage of people surfing will be enticed by your ads and click on them to find out more information. Another source of revenue. Many traffic exchanges will actually pay you money to surf. More importantly, as you refer other people to the network, you’ll earn a percentage of the money that they earn! It may be small amounts but if you work the system it could amount to a lot of money.

Now, before you head over to Google and search for Traffic Exchange, I’d recommend knowing a few facts:

• traffic exchanges are simply out to get money from you and will refer very little traffic to you.
• traffic exchanges have poor systems in place to stop cheaters from running programs to increase their credits faster.

Finally, some traffic exchanges will allow popup, active x controls, site rotators, etc. in their network. Any of these can stop your auto surfing from working, or even worse, allow your computer to be infected with a virus.

The best part about Traffic Exchanges is that you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The worst thing that could happen to you is you get a little bit of traffic which increases your Alexa rankings and you don’t get any money.

Of course, for the system to work, you’ve got to make sure that you do some surfing yourself. The makers of the exchange programs realize this and some of them even have an auto surf feature where you get a reduced number of credits while your browser happily loads page after page every 10 seconds or so.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The idea here isn’t about getting as many business directory listings as possible. The idea we need to create is about more community within your directory.

I always like using a “saying” I learned from network marketing: “I would rather utilize 1% of a hundred people’s effort, then utilize 100% of my own to market my business.” If you keep this in mind, there is nothing you can’t be successful at.

With that in mind let me be quick to point out that, I am not talking about creating an affiliate program. Those come a dime a dozen and can be bought. What we need to do is create something larger than ourselves. I am talking about taking our directory and improving everything involving people.

GENERAL DIRECTORIES ONLINE:

For these types of directories, it gets a little harder to create a community people can relate to. This is only true simply because the more broad your audience/visitors are, the harder it is to target your resources.

Here are some ideas you can use for a general directory:

- Create a blog and use it to feature some new listings within your directory. Maybe even offer a review of some kind.

- Offer the ability to add a logo or image attached with the listing in order to personalize it more.

- Give people the ability to submit more information than most of your competing directories out there.

- Make sure to include a detailed search function.

- Create an online questionnaire on tips to improve the directory. Use these tips right away.

- Email everyone within your directory maybe once a month outlining all of the new listings posted online for that month.

- Make sure to have a “news” page so that visitors can see what’s new.

I think you get the idea now. The whole point is, there is no limit as to how you can expand “around” your directory listings in order to increase the value of your directory online. The more you give back to people, the more they might tell their friends about your directory.

TARGETED TOPIC RELATED DIRECTORIES:

Whether your directory is targeting the local business community or you are targeting the international health community, having a directory that is more content specific will make it a lot easier to create a community based website.

Here are some ways to better your targeted directory:

- Create a forum detailing all of the topics within your directory so that people can discuss issues or tips within those categories. For ex. If you own a local business directory, create a forum to allow local business owners to discuss business related issues, hot commercial real estate properties, special deals on office equipment, etc.

- Create a news section that outlines some local news & events within your community. This will especially help to bring more local visitors to your directory and expose your listings further.

- Offer weather & traffic reports within local community directories.

- Add a feature page where you actually interview one directory member (maybe once a month). This will help people to get more familiar with the members of your directory and it will also help promote your directory. People who are submitting to your directory may only submit just for the chance to get interviewed about their service/product/expertise.

- Add a blog with your experiences related to the topics of your directory. This will help in two ways:

1) People will be able to relate to you and feel more connected with you.
2) People will begin to respect what you are doing and may tell more people about your directory since they are starting to feel that your directory is more people oriented instead of just simply getting the most listings in the world.

- Add related tips to the industry. The internet is full of reprint articles for your website. I am 99.9% sure you can find articles related to your industry. Maybe start a newsletter for members of your directory and send them tips on their industry. Who doesn’t want to learn more about their industry!?

In Conclusion:

As you can see from above, by simply taking some ideas here, and implementing them within your directory, you will be well on your way towards creating a more community-based directory. This is very important these days as more and more directories like yours are popping up everywhere.

Let’s not forget about search engines. They too are increasingly rewarding communities more than they are rewarding simple directories online. The more resources and content you add around your directory listings, the more valuable they become in the end and the more traffic you will get.

The more valuable your listings are, the more visitors will be willing to come back from time to time and possibly tell their friends about it. You never know what will make it or break it but, all we can do is try our best to increase the value of our increasingly popular online community.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Search engines and web directories (such as Yahoo! and LookSmart.com) are one of the best sources of targeted web site traffic. Recent changes in the functionality and submission process of several search engines and directories are detailed below.

The biggest change in the search engine landscape has been a move towards paid submissions by several services. While some may consider it a bad thing that services that were once free now charge for submission, it’s actually an improvement in many ways. Most notably, the time it takes to get listed is usually drastically reduced with a paid service, meaning your site can start receiving traffic within days of submitting. And the potential traffic you can receive from the various search engines that use paid submissions usually far outweighs the cost. That’s more than can be said for most other marketing efforts, which carry a much higher risk.

One of the biggest recent announcements of this kind is that search provider Inktomi has recently added a paid submission. For prices starting at $20, Inktomi guarantees they’ll spider your Web site every 48 hours for a year. Inktomi search results are used by 125 partners, including HotBot, AOL, NBCi, MSN, and others.

Information on paid submissions to Inktomi is available at: http://www.positiontech.com. This service has just been released; as I find out more and test its effectiveness, I’ll mention my findings here.

Yahoo! has for quite some time featured its “Business Express” option of paid submission. LookSmart.com recently moved to accepting only paid submissions, doing away with its free submission process altogether. However, if I were going to spend only $199 to market a Web site, I would spend it on a LookSmart submission. LookSmart’s data is used by MSN, Excite, AltaVista, CNN.com, and others, and the results have been very good in my experience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it. “The Money Is In The… LIST!”

I bet you’ve heard this catch phrase once or twice while surfing around on the Internet. I know I have. But, the question that usually arises is… “How do I effectively build one that won’t cost me an arm and a leg in the process?”

Well, today’s your lucky day because I’m going to highlight 3 of the MOST powerful ways to build your targeted ‘Opt-In List’ by using the Power of ‘Viral Marketing’ as your engine. And the best part about using these 3 ‘Viral’ methods I’m about to mention are… they cost virtually Nothing to produce, are Highly targeted, give You INSTANT Credibility and are in constant demand by website owners.

So, with that said, let’s move on to what these 3 ‘Viral’ methods are and how they will benefit you and your List Building efforts.

Method #1. Writing ‘Special Reports’.

- Special Reports work great because they allow you to go into more depth about the Topic or Problem in question where you’ll then be able to lead them to how your Product or Service(or Affiliate product) can fix there current problem.
- They give you Instant Credibility, which builds trust in your customer that you are knowlegdable in your industry.

- Website owners are always looking for quality **Free Stuff** to give away or offer to there Visitors and/or Subscribers.

This is where you could CASH-IN, especially if you make your special report ‘Brandable’. This gives the website owner even MORE incentive to give your Freebie away if they can make Money in the process.

- And your Contact Information will always be inside, no matter what. Meaning, as your report is being passed around the Internet you’ll always be able to lead your potential customer back to your website where they could sign-up for your newsletter and/or read up more about your Products or Services you offer.

Method #2. Putting Together A ‘Free eBook’.

- Free eBooks work great as well and have the same benefits as I outlined through the special report.

The only difference using this approach is, you can put together a free ebook in less time then it would take to produce your special report simply because it doesn’t even have to be your own material inside, it can be someone else’s.

Just make sure you put together a free ebook with quality information inside.

- And they also allow you to target more then one Product or Service inside because free ebooks are usually a compilation of related articles targetting a particular problem leaving you room to diversify.

Method #3. Writing ‘Articles’.

- Writing Articles is probably ONE of the Best and Most Effective Ways to produce a wave of Viral traffic to your website because every website owner needs FRESH content to feed to there visitors and/or subscribers.

- They also allow you to Target your audience’s problem specifically that they’re dealing with.

- And at the end of the article you have a spot called the ‘Resource Box’ to insert your personal Bio and/or Website information.

Just imagine if your article were to be picked up by some Newsletter Editor with a large list or High Traffic website and they use it as a ‘Featured Article’ in there publication, you could see an INSTANT Surge of targeted traffic to your website overnight.

That’s where your ‘Resource Box’ comes in.(Take a look at how mine is formatted at the end of this article.)

Well, that about sums it up for the 3 MOST powerful ‘Viral Marketing’ methods being used today by most Internet marketers, and for good reason, because they work.

Now, with all that said, what do these 3 ‘Viral’ methods all have in common that’ll put your List Building efforts on ‘Auto-Pilot’?

- They’re in HIGH demand by website owners.

- They’re HIGHLY Targeted.

- They give You INSTANT Credibility in your industry.

- They have YOUR Contact Details leading to Your website.

…and Most important of all, they’re all FREE!

Just think for a minute, by using only ONE of these methods listed above, how it could put your Opt-In list building efforts on ‘Auto-Pilot’.

This article represents just a summarized version of all the different List Building techniques available online, But, in my opinion, these 3 are the most effective.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Everybody’s doing it then I can do it too. This is the mentality that many of us have when it comes to making a choice in our life. Why do we do this? We do this because we all like to make the right decision when it comes to spending or making a life long commitment. If ten other people make the decision to purchase purple kittens then you believe it is socially acceptable for you to purchase a purple kitten as well. This is social proof and it is a powerful marketing tool.

If you manage to convince a potential customer of yours that there are hundreds of people lined up to buy your product then it would be fairly easy for you to convince that potential customer to purchase your product. They believe you because they believe that many other people have either purchased your product or is about to purchase it. You just earned their trust by letting your potential customer know of what others think of your product.

Here are few ways that you can utilize this:

1. Have a traditional testimonial section for your product. In this section you may want to post few comments and feedbacks you have received for your product. This has been around for a long time but this does not really hit a home run when it comes to marketing. People are used to this so you will have to make that extra step.
2. Have some other site do a case study on your product. Give free samples to some people and have them do a case study. Take the case study and post it with your product. This tells your potential customer what experience others had with your product and what the recommend. This is good if you get a case study done by a credible source.
3. Create a sense of “hype” or “urgency” for your product before and after the launch. Limit the quantity of your product and work on influencing your audience that this product is so huge and it will be sold out within days of launch. Let them know how many people are waiting to take a peek at it and how many wants to buy it from you. This influences them to make a choice to purchase your product because everybody around them seems to like it too.

The more people you engage to believe in your particular product then more acceptable your product becomes. There are many ways in which you can utilize the power of social proof.

Have the right product and use social proof with the right motives, then this can be a powerful marketing tool for you. If you like to read further on social proof or human influences, I would recommend reading “Influence: The Psychology of Persuassion” by Robert Cialdini.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

First: You need to be sure your home page is effective at explaining what service or product you are offering. Traffic exchanges have a timer so the person viewing your site has the option to leave within a matter of seconds. So your main goal is to give them a reason to stay!!

Second: Only choose traffic exchanges that offer manual surfing. Most people do not even watch the window when an autosurf is running. If it is a manual surf exchange they have to physically watch the pages in order to go to the next site. This gives you the best opportunity for them to actually see your site and be drawn in by your content.

Third: Be prepared to work. In order to earn credits for people to view your site, you have to view other people’s sites. That is why it is called a “Traffic Exchange”. The more you view other sites, the more your site is viewed.

With these 3 steps you can use traffic exchanges as an effective advertising strategy. It takes planning and work to get results, but doesn’t every advertising plan? I urge everyone new to advertising to do alot of research to find the plan that is best for you and your business.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1. Write ArticlesWe all know that the major search engines rank websites more highly if there are a lot of links pointing back to that particular web site. The search engines assume that the more links which point to you, the more important and relevent your site is.

Getting other sites to link to you can be a major chore, and you want to avoid free for all link farms, so what to do?A lot of webmasters have begun to write articles which they allow other webmasters to freely display on their sites, so long as they provide a link back to the authors website. If you list your article in the major free content article directories, you can easily build up 500 to 5000 links back to your website. This boosts your PR rank, making you easier to find in the search engines, and you’ll also get traffic from people who read your article and click on the link.

2. Banner exchangesBanner exchanges can provide a steady stream of visitors if used correctly. Most banner exchanges work like this – you display their banners on your website, and upload a banner of your own. For every 2 times you show an exchange banner, they’ll show your banner once on another exchange member’s site. Banner exchanges have been around a long time, but they still work.

3. Traffic ExchangesUnlike banner exchanges, traffic exchanges are a fairly new idea. The basic premise is that a large group of website owners agree to visit each other’s websites. for each member site you visit, another member will visit your site.

Some exchanges, like www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?412437 will give you multiple credits for each site you visit, and credits for each person you refer. It’s possible to get thousands of new visitors each day.

Summary: There are many ways to get new traffic to your website. The three methods I outlined here are absolutely free.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

How do you think the Internet received the reputation as the “Information Super-Highway”? Because thats what its primary purpose was before they decided to commercialize it to what it is today. And… what do ‘Articles’ contain?

The answer is quite simple… “Information”. So, what does this have to do with you? Be the one who supplies it. It’s that simple. Now, for the rest of this article I’m going to give you 10 POWERFUL reasons why you should and/or need to get started using ‘Articles’ as one of your online marketing strategies so you too can reap the benefits. With that said, lets move on to reason #1.

Reason #1. Search Engines LOVE them. It’s no secret that Search Engines LOVE content, so if you supply it on a regular basis your giving them a great reason to stop on by to take a look around. Once there they’ll spider and index your website which is just what you want.

Reason #2. Website and Newsletter owners always need them. I touched base on this earlier about why web surfers come online. Website owners need fresh content to keep there visitors and/or subscribers coming back, where as newsletter publishers also need fresh content for there “email” newsletters that they publish and send to there subscriber base. Remember the two reasons I discussed earlier about WHY web surfers come online. BINGO!

Reason #3. They generate Life Long residual Traffic. Articles produce Life Long residual traffic because website owners, newsletter publishers and article directories archive them for there visitors to read and search through. And since you have a ‘Resource Box’ located at the end of every article you produce with your website info and URL you’ll receive traffic.

Reason #4. Great way to get One-Way HIGH PR links. This is probably one of the best reasons because when you offer your free information with ‘Reprint Rights’ and the website owner decides to archive your article within there article directory and their website happens to have a High PR(popularity ranking) ranking, guess what? You’ll be able to ‘Piggy Back’ off there PR giving your website a PR boost because at the end of every article you produce your able to leave your ‘Resource Box’ with all your websites info and most important of all, your URL.

Reason #5. They’re VIRAL. This is yet another great reason to start using articles as one of your online marketing strategies simple because your going to offer ‘Reprint Rights’ with all the articles you produce giving Website and Newsletter owners permission to publish them causing a VIRAL explosion and Traffic surge to your website.

Reason #6. You can syndicate them via RSS. If your up to speed on the latest marketing technology called RSS(Real Simple Syndication) and you write ‘Articles’ on a regular basis you can set-up an RSS feed that web surfers and/or website owners can ‘Opt-In’ to and syndicate your ‘Articles’ via RSS to them, plus, you can also submit your RSS feed(s) to RSS search engines and directories. Depending on how many ‘Opt-In’ this is yet another great reason to get started with ‘Articles’ and another way to generate LOTS of Free targeted traffic.

Reason #7. Bloggers with BLOGS need “Information” too. If you provide quality information related to a specific Blog that blog owner just might post your article on his/her blog for their audiences/readership to read giving you again more free exposure for your business. It gets better. Blogs also use RSS(Real Simple Syndication) to syndicate there content to various search engines, RSS search engines and directories giving you again more free exposure through their feed.

Reason #8. Info-Product developers need it too. Ever receive a free ebook of some sort in your Inbox with related articles inside it from other authors? When you offer your articles with ‘Reprint Rights’ and someone decides to include your article in there ebook for a Viral marketing campaign they’re working on, guess what? More free targeted traffic for you as that particular ebook circulates across the Internet.

Reason #9. Post them to related Forums and Newsgroups. Remember, the Internet is all about numbers and Forums and Newsgroups contain numbers to and are yet another avenue for you to gain some extra exposure for free for your online business through your articles. Just make sure you read there ‘Terms’ before you start posting because you don’t want to receive any ‘Flames’ in your Inbox.(They can be Nasty.)

Reason #10. You gain INSTANT credibility as an Expert. The best way to gain the trust of your potential customers online is to supply them with quality “Information”. By doing this your stepping up and telling them that you know what your talking about within the industry your in giving them a reason to look into what you have to offer further by following the link you provided within your ‘Resource Box’ at the end of your article.

WoW! Are those 10 POWERFUL reasons to get started with ‘Articles’ or what? You get all those benefits by just producing ONE article. The more you produce the more you’ll benefit. Do you see how powerful ‘Articles’ are now and how they can take your online business to the next level? I certainly hope so. In conclusion: “Content IS King” online and will remain King for as long as the Internet exists. It’s now up to you to step up to the plate and decide whether or not You want to tap into this ‘Proven Internet Marketing Strategy’ yourself and reap all the benefits I just finished explaining above.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR