“What Should I write about? Who would be interested in what I know?” I hear this a lot when entrepreneurs start being active on their blogs. They are all experts in their field of interest but somehow they assume everyone else is too.

What do you think? Try it out and let me know if this method works for you.

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According to Jupiter Research almost 40% of people searching the web actually purchase something. In all cases, they focus on page 1 and sometimes page 2. The percentage of info seekers decreases tremendously starting with page 3 of any search engine.

The dirty little secret you probably don’t know is that 72% of all people who search Google click on the organic search results, ignoring the paid ads section. I do. Don’t you?

Based on these findings, logic will tell you that your website/blog should be listed on the top 1-2 pages of every search engine page. To accomplish this you’ll need a solid and powerful SEO behind your site.

So does SEO matter? Heck Yes!

Here are some things you need to understand before you hire a SEO company or even contemplate on doing yourself SEO for your site:

 1. SEO is an ongoing activity and it stops when your company doesn’t need a web presence anymore.
This is not a “set it” and forget it” task. It’s a long time strategy that needs constant attention and fine tunning as you go.

2. SEO results are not immediate nor permanent.
Whoever is telling you otherwise you should seriously dispute their knwoeldge of the web.

3. If you want to do solid SEO (mainly based on fresh content), think of your site as a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Update it as much as you can and you got yourself a dynamic and fresh site every time.

4. Tag everything (images, links, video, etc.) and link to relevant sites.
Link internally between your pages and ask others to link to your site.

5. Pure SEO is not about TRAFFIC – it’s about QUALIFIED TRAFFIC.
What good does it do that your site list on position 2 on the first page for a “company that sells oranges” when you in fact are “selling space ships”?

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“Building quality content without marketing is like locking Shakespeare in a room to write for himself” – Michael Grey, SEO Expert

Content without marketing is nothing.

See the 5 Golden Rules of Blogging
You write like a pro but you’ve got no idea what you should do so people flock to your blog and read your unique pearls of wisdom. Is that you Blogger? I know that’s exactly what I was worried about for a long time. Well, I’m here to give you some shortcuts so you don’t have to go through the pain and aggravation I had to endure.

First of all remember this:

The more you try to sell your blog and convince people to follow you, the more you will encounter their resistance. People buy you first, your expertise and the experience you so eagerly display in your posts.

How do you get them to like you? Simple – give, give and when you are done give again. People love free stuff and when they see your willingness to help and provide resources others are charging for, they will not only like you, and they will follow your posts.

Great article how to establish trust online.

So, before you do any type of promotion, start thinking about the things you can offer for free; resources you know you can offer to potential visitors.

To help you out, here’s my list:

• FREE 30 minute consultation on (insert your own text here) web design, SEO services, marketing critique, etc.
• Answer and help people find solutions on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.
• Offer a free report, eBook or whatever else you have in your expert panoply.
• Organize a contest and offer a free book to the first 5 people what post significant comments on your blog for the next 30 days. Don’t forget to post the results at the end of the contest.
• Write for other blogs and give your honest opinion about the topic at hand. Just commenting “Thanks that was a great post” will not make you too visible and will not convey that expert aura you are after.

In a way, you are already promoting your blog but you are not really engaged in direct selling at this point. The more detached and nonchalant appear vis-à-vis your scope of getting more traffic to your blog, the more people will appreciate and want to come back for more.

Also, although many blogging experts advocate the “create a controversy” approach, I tend to “navigate” towards a softer approach and command attention through my willingness to extend a helping hand rather than criticize and spew controversial remarks.

Do all these things for several months and you’ll see significant improvement in your traffic numbers. Guaranteed.

Create Traffic to Your Website

How To Get Free Website Traffic

This is part 2 of the “How to Make Money Online Series“.

As I mentioned before, there are two ways to get traffic to your website:

Paid traffic (Google adwords) and free traffic. I will tell you how to get free website traffic. I understand that most people that start an online business, don’t have the budget for expensive Google ads. You need free traffic and lots of it. I will cut to the chase and tell you my top ways to get free website traffic.

Top ways to get free traffic:

1. Write Lots of Keyword Rich Articles
   You can write a bunch of articles on your niche and publish it on article directories like Ezinearticles or CopyBlogger.com. You can put links to your articles pointing to your site and this way you will get free website traffic that is targeted as well.

2. Go Viral & Submit Your Videos to All Video Sites
   You can use Camtasia (or Camstudio is free) or other video tools to make loads of videos and upload them to various video sites with one click using Tubemogul. Put a link to your site in the video’s description and see your free website traffic skyrocket!

3. Use Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.)
   Nothing is easier than to start a free profile with Facebook, Myspace, or whatever other social media you  choose. On Facebook you can start money making groups, post links on your and other people’s groups and also update your status with links to your site. This is a great way to build trust, a steady following to your sites or products and of course to get free website traffic. Same goes for LinkedIn and MySpace. be active and show your true potential.

4. Use Social-bookmarking
   Submit all your articles and web pages to the biggest social bookmarking sites like, digg, stumbleupon, propellor, reddit, delicious, buzz etc. Addthis is a very helpful tool to add to your pages, where you and other people can add the articles to all these sites with the press of one button. This works really well, in the short term and also builds up back links to your site. It’s definitely one of the best ways to get free website traffic, especially in the short term.

5. Become a Twitter Expert
   The new social media and micro-blogging site is becoming very popular and is one of the best ways to get thousands of people to see links and descriptions of your sites. You can get hundreds of free hits every day if you build a big Twitter following. To make this easier, you can use an automated way to get thousands of followers with The Twitter Online system or Twitter Traffic Machine. This way is potentially one of the easiest and best way to get free website traffic on autopilot.

6. Be Active in Forums
   Join a few popular forms in your niche and make a lot of interesting posts and comments. Make sure to have your link in your signature. This will also build some nice back links for free website traffic.

7. Email Marketing
   You should definitely get a good auto responder, like Aweber, and build yourself a list. In a matter of months you can have a huge list of potential customers that you can mail at will with your offers. This could bring you a lot of extra sales.

8. Create a Blog
   Create a blog at Blogspot or use WordPress to write about every product that you promote and comment on other blogs as well. Get free website traffic when you use all your links in these blogs. Blogs tend to rank up pretty high with Google, so it gives you good back links.

9. Use Viral Marketing
   This can really get you a lot of free traffic if you start to promote your link a bit. It’s pretty easy to do. Most sites require you to view a few sites to get started and you then promote your link. All the people that you referred, have to view your site as well and the people that they refer and so, for many levels deep. So if you refer 3 people, and they refer 3 people and so on and so on, you can actually get thousands of hits and get free website traffic easily. I can recommend Million Ez Hits, if you want to try viral traffic.

10. Traffic Exchange sites
    You can get an unlimited amount of free hits to your website with this kind of free website traffic, you are only limited by the time you put in. You have to surf different people’s sites and get credits for doing so. These credits are used to “buy” views for your website, banners or text ads. So, for instance, you view 100 sites, 100 people will view your site. It’s best to use a good splash page for this traffic to get the surfer’s attention. Sign up pages work well. The top Traffic exchanges I can recommend would be Easy Hits 4u, Traffic Splash and Traffic Taxis. Use all 3 at the same time, taking turns surfing the sites, you will build credits quickly.

There are many other ways to get free website traffic, and with experience you will find which ones work best for you. If you are considering using paid advertising, like Adwords, I recommend you get a good guide like The Commission BluePrint , to help you step by step to setup profitable campaigns and make huge commissions. If you don’t you could lose a lot of money very fast.

For other valuable insights to the Web Marketing Business see the column to the right or go back to part 1 of this series:”How to Make Money Online Series“.

Promote Yourself with Squidoo

Sure you are on Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace and Twitter but have you heard of Squidoo? Well – you should because Google loves Squidoo so you should come to love it too.

Squidoo is a very popular publishing platform and community designed for you to create text about your particular niche in the market. The text published on Squidoo are called “lenses”.

Basically, Squidoo lenses are pages that resemble more like advertising flyers which concentrate everything you know about a particular topic of interest. Squidoo snaps it all into focus – thus the name “lens”. Think of it like the “Red Bull” of the internet.

Publishing on Squidoo is very simple to do. It’s also fun but very powerful in the grand scheme of all things Google. This is a new way to share your opinions, interests, create and promote your online identity and mostly – your credibility. What’s even better about Squidoo is that it’s FREE. That’s right –you heard it – Free. You can also (and are even encouraged to) earn a royalty for charity or yourself.

So, Why Should You Build Squidoo Lenses?

A Squidoo lens is a great tool that can help you:

• Market your online business
• Brand yourself and your websites/blogs as authorities in your niche
• Build traffic to your websites, blogs, on line storefronts, and online auctions
• Build your subscriber list
• Sell more of your products
• Build lots of deep links to the inner pages or shopping pages of your websites
• Build resource pages on each topic that’s part of your main niche
• Dominate the search engine results for various keywords in your topic
• Squidoo lenses are indexed and ranked by Google very fast

The important part is to get started. You can always edit and change anything on your lens. Then, when it’s ready, publish it and show it off to your friends and colleagues.
Click to start your first lens!

Press Release - Part II

As previously related in Part I – The Power of Press Releases, this important element of your promotional campaign not only helps in driving traffic to your website but also in generating lots of back links and so it kicks your Google Page rank higher and gets you picked easily by other major search engines.

This article will go into the fine details of creating a succesful Press Release and what it means for your business as a whole.

I. Choose Topic

The main distinction between an article and a Press Release is that the Press Release announces a specific event. An article describes an opinion or simply shares information about a specific topic. For example, “Company ABC Launches a New Web Portal.” In this example, you are announcing a specific event (the launch of new web site or portal).

Understanding this difference now, will save you time and energy, as many distribution sites will not submit releases that are not formatted and written like a proper release.

Ideas for Specific Events:

• The launch of your new business
• The launch of your new website
• The launch of your new team
• The launch of your new blog

II. Choose Keywords

The focus of a Press Release should be not only to inform other people about your event but using keywords within the Press Release in order to gain high ranking positions with the search engines. In order to produce the proper
keywords follow the steps:

• Make a list of 5-10 keywords that are related to the topic you chose
• Go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com and type in your keywords, one by one.
• Choose the top three keywords that have the highest number of searches

III. Write the Press Release

This is where everything happens. Remember – the organization where you send your Press Release isn’t interested in helping you make money or driving visitors to your site. All they look for is a story – an interesting one so more readers will flock to their articles. So it’s up to you to make it interesting and make the cut.

Here are the steps to accomplish this:

Step 1 – Outline

Create an outline by answering the following 5 questions:

• What specific event am I announcing?
• When did this event happen?
• Who did this event involve?
• Why would other people be interested in reading about this event?
• Where can people find out more information?

Step 2 – Quotes

Make sure you write 2-3 personal quotes to use in your press release (as if someone was interviewing you about this event). These quotes should be what you think or feel about this event.

Step 3 – Release

Write your release Notes along these lines:

• This is where the news reporter should shine. Your press release should read like a news story, as if someone else wrote it
• Be sure your keyword is used at least 3-4 times in the body of your press release and in the title of your release, without feeling like you are stuffing or forcing them upon the reader
• Do not use one keyword more than 4 times in the body each release

Step 4 – Review

• Check your entire text for spelling, punctuation and grammar errors
• Check if your web site URL is the correct one on the bottom of your Press Release – you won’t get a second chance at this
• Double-check everything as you want the release to be as professional as possible
• Have others read it and get feedback
• Modify accordingly is the majority of your feedback points to a specific item in your Press Release

IV. Distribute the Press Release

Once your press release is finalized, distribute it to the search engines ASAP!

Here’s a resource list where you can distribute your Press Release:

• www.free-press-release.com
• www.webwire.com
• www.prweb.com
• www.24-7pressrelease.com
• www.prlog.com

Note: You will have to signup for each of the resources listed above. Once you do –do not forget to save it in your Favorites should you return back to them. Each distribution site distributes your release to many other websites.

Important Notes:

• Keep your Press Release at an effective rate of 400 words or less
• Your press release should contain your keyword 3-4 times in the body, and once in the title
• Always use your personal business name when distributing releases
• Some distribution sites will make your press release live immediately; some will require up 72 hours for approval
• The distribution site will immediately reject you if your press release sounds more like an advertisement, or a sales pitch and not a newsworthy event
• Press releases are impossible to edit after they have been distributed; make sure you are 100% sure of the content you are about to release
• Make sure you submit the same press release to a distribution site only ONCE
• You can distribute the same press release to all the different distribution sites

Even More Important Notes:

• Whenever possible, add a video into the distribution with your press release. Google loves press releases with video in them
• Some distribution sites will give you the opportunity to have your website displayed right beneath your press release. Take advantage of this option when possible. It looks very professional and adds credibility to your release
• If you follow the instructions in this article, your release will begin to appear more and more on the search engines over time

For other helpful infomation Self Promotion, please see 7 Powerful Laws of Self-Marketing

Visibility On FaceBook

That is a very large number. Are you on Facebook? How about your company? If not, you are missing a huge opportunity.

Here are 15 must do things to create front-row visibility in Facebook:

1. Create a profile (obviously) and update your status often.
2. Upload pictures & videos (try to keep it G rated) and add tags, comments and share if possible
3. Use the share button every so often
4. Write notes and or comment on your own or your friend’s Notes
5. Tag the people mentioned in those Notes
6. Comment on Notes as often as you can
7. Import your blog (if you have one) into Notes
8. Share links with posted items
9. Join Groups and Create Your Own Group
10. Upload pictures, videos and links to Groups
11. Write on “Discussion Boards” for Groups
12. Write on the Walls of Groups
13. Become fan of Facebook pages
14. Write on the wall of a Facebook fan
15. Install Facebook applications and Write Reviews about them

Great Headlines + Superb Press Release = Traffic to Your Site

Release The Power of Press – Part I

Besides establishing your website, blog and social media accounts you can also write Press Releases. They are a superb way to position yourself as a leader and add instant credibility and presence for your business.

A press release is similar to a new story, except you can submit your “news story” to many sites on the internet, through press release distribution sites.

The key to writing a press release is to search and insert specific keywords that pertain to whatever your business is selling. These keywords should be your personal name, business name, or other industry-specific keywords directly related to your business.

Your Press Release will show up every time someone goes to Google (or any other search engine) and type in the keyword. As a result, prospects will have the opportunity to read your press release, and click through to your website. And that folks, is money in the bank, because traffic means clicks to your site and clicks means people being interested in you and your business.

The main difference between a press release and an article you write for your blog, is that a press release should be geared towards announcing a specific event, such as the launch of your new business or blog, a new service or product, even a launch party. An article shares opinions or information, a Press Release lets people know about an event. Keep this in mind, as you create your Press Release.

If written professionally with lots of CTAs (Calls to Action), the Press Releases can bring very high quality web surfers to your site. Most people reading your Press Release already want a business opportunity. After all – that’s why they are reading it. Now it’s your job to lure them in and simply mystify them with your exciting and new opportunities.

Be creative, honest but most of all razzle dazzle them and soon they will become loyal customers. If you want to be more of a web 2.0 guy or gal, include a video and Google will love you for that.

Note:
Part II of this article will dissect and display the elements of a successful Press Release in detail.

Use the Title tag and get high rankings with Google

Get a Title – Would You?

Don’t underestimate the power of one of the most common elements of your website/blog – the title tag (<title>). Google puts much emphasis on this tag and you should strongly consider it next time you update or construct your site. 

You need to know the rules and how to apply them accordingly. This article will give you the edge over your competitors and rank higher in all Google searches.

In short, here are the rules:

1. Every page should have a title and each should be different
2. The tile should contain no more than 65 characters (including spaces)
3. The title should start with the name of your business
4. The title should incorporate a CTA (Call To Action), even a provocative statement (usually a verb-noun combination)
5. Each page should contain and/or reflect the same keywords used in the iys title

And there you have it. 5 easy rules you should abide by and make it easy for Google to find your site, so you can find it in Google’s first page.

Best Practices - SEO - Google Image Optimization

Find out why this is a bad idea

So you have a blog up but it doesn’t look all that snazzy. Pictures…you need some pictures. But wait – Google’s search engine doesn’t really understand pictures. Does it?

The short answer is Yes – but there is a right way and a wrong way to serve Google with pictures. Find out here how to do it (the right way) – and increase your blog exposure.

It’s called “Image Optimization” and is crucial in getting a big BANG for the…BLOG.

So, do you need some fancy coding? No – not really. You just have to keep in mind 5 elements the Google Search engine is looking for:

1. An alt attribute that describes the content of the image (don’t leave home without it!)
2. A title attribute – meaning text that will be displayed when you move the mouse over the image
3. A src attribute – indicating the location of the image
4. A width declaration – meaning the width of the image (in pixels)
5. A height declaration – meaning the height of the image (in pixels)

That’s it! If you are running a WordPress theme – even better. When adding the image to your media category in the WordPress dashboard, you can specify the following elements:,/p>

• Title
• Caption
• Description
• File URL

Do this now! You will probably have to go back to your images and start reloading them with descriptions, title, etc. Image optimization produces extremely tangible results and you will see your traffic spike almost instantly.

If you have the time and patience do it for everyone of your articles. If not, take in consideration at least the ones which best promote the theme of your blog.

Note:

Make sure the picture is describing the essence of the article itself. If they are not related, Google will probably slap your wrist for tricking it and move on without paying any attention to your article.