The Power of Web Directories

Submitting your web site to web directories is still a key strategy for search engine optimization and improving rankings. Web directories have been pervasive on the Web for a long time.

With recent reports from Google about penalizing sites for listing in paid directories, many webmasters have avoided integrating them into their seo campaigns. However, the right directories can provide benefit. There are two main types of directories found on the Internet.

1. General Directories – these directories do not feature any particular theme/market and are open to most websites for inclusion. Many will place restrictions on adult and gambling websites.

2. Vertical Directories – A vertical directory is dedicated to a theme/market, such as shopping websites, health websites etc

Why Submit to Web Directories?

Most web directories will publish your website with a direct text link and a short blurb about your site.

The advantage is that search engines can crawl the link and read the text being used to describe your website, from another source.

The key is to make sure that you use well optimized copy within this description as it can help with your natural search results – where possible include popular search terms.

Submitting your website to web directories is beneficial when aiming to increase your backward link count and helping page rank.

Being included in these directories can be as simple as making a submission via the “Suggest URL” form.

The time it takes for your website to be included in the directory will vary - some directories will list your site within a matter of hours, others, such as DMOZ can take longer. Inclusion is often dictated by how the web directory is maintained – many of these are maintained by hand, so the time for inclusion can vary (weeks, possibly months).

Note: Directory inclusion time does not directly reflect the quality of the directory i.e. DMOZ is the most popular Internet directory inclusion time can take months.

Other popular Web directories such as Yahoo! charge for inclusion. The majority of Internet directories that charge for inclusion base this on a 12 month subscription.

Tips for a Web Directory Submission Campaign

As with any other element of search engine optimization, directory submissions should be on going.

When starting out try and dedicate at least half a day a month minimum, to doing directory submission.

By putting in the time, over the space of 4 – 8 weeks you should see a noticeable improvement in the volume of back links pointing to your website.

Before rolling out your campaign it pays to do some research and preparation:

• Write at least 4 – 6 alternate descriptions of your website
• Using a spread sheet, compile a list of the directories you wish to submit to
• Prepare your keywords, description (both long and short)
• Using a version of Firefox or Internet Explorer that supports tabbed browsing can also help speed up the submission process

If possible, create a separate email account for the campaign. You will receive a high volume of emails when doing such submissions, most of these are confirmation emails however you are also opening yourself up to spam. You need to check these emails and confirm your submissions, although you don’t want this cluttering your personal inbox every day.

To speed up the process and make life easier, directory submission software is available:

Directory Submission Software
Article and Website Directory Submission Software

Finally, try to avoid doing too many directory submission all in one hit, this can raise a red flag within the search engines, resulting in possible penalizing.

What's Content Based SEO?

The concept of content based SEO adopts the principle that the content of your website is what really matters. This could be described as the "purist" view which assumes that if people develop high-quality websites, they will be rewarded with high-quality search rankings.

The theory is that good content will attract attention, inbound links and other referrals. Over time the accumulation of good press will give you many of the same benefits as other methods of SEO. In addition, this type of "natural" referral tends to be more genuine, diverse, robust and long-lasting.

This approach is better suited to websites which can provide large quantities of content, especially unique content. If, for example, your website is about the life cycle of the native New Zealand tuatara lizard, you will probably have plenty of content in a field without much competition. In this case a modest amount of content and a few links from other sites will give you a good chance of being well-placed in the SERPS.

If your website covers a more popular topic you will need to try harder. For example, MediaCollege.com provides content in the area of film and electronic media production. This is a much more competitive field, with many thousands of websites competing for the same keywords. At this level it is much harder to get good SERP placement through content alone, although it is still possible.

It gets worse for those competing for the very top keywords. If your site provides content in the area of "debt reduction" or "online gambling" you will find the competition is so fierce that content alone won't be enough.

Content-based SEO alone may or may not be enough to give you good SERP placement, but in any case it will ceratinly benefit your website to some degree.

Make the Most of Your Landing Pages

Landing pages are created to improve conversions for marketers spending on email and PPC advertising. When thinking about paid search and email, email is the cheaper route, and allows more freedom and speed in testing. Paid search is more difficult because it's not overly intrusive. As might be obvious, email puts a marketer's message directly in front of the consumer whereas search requires not only the consumer to actively seek out but to not be blind to advertisements.

As an extension to that, most effective marketers believe that landing pages should not be subtle. She prefers the "buy it now" approach, especially with smaller ticket items for sale that don't require a lot of research.

Knowing the intent of the consumer then, plays a big part in developing a landing page. Make sure the landing page matches where the consumer expects to be taken. Consumers hate to see someone come in and hit the search button immediately. That's making consumers work too hard and costing you good marketing dollars. Landing pages more closely aligned to PPC ads can also reduce click costs. Here are some other things to consider...

1. Get top-level buy-in for strategic projects; not all projects produce immediate sales, but have more strategic implications for the business.

2. Create urgency, such as a deadline to increase CTR and conversion

3. Print destination URLs on pages in your catalog

4. Sepertate CSS and data points for ease of use

5. Make sure landing pages deliver on a promise that drove the shopper to the site with consistent products, benefits, offers and branding

6. Split test different paid search landing pages

7. Split test different email landing pages. Don't throw consumers to a category page, but a specifically designed page using the email messaging, creative and extended product offering

8. Track key performance on all pages

9. With landing pages - think like a consumer

10. Test, test, test

Landing pages are a good investment, especially when they're done right. Follow these landing page guidelines and optimize your conversions.

Use Web 2.0 To Improve Search Engine Rankings

Web 2.0 is being thrown around quite a bit these days. Do you have a handle on what it is, what it means to your business, and how to prosper in the Web 2.0 world? The concept of Web 2.0 includes a wide range of areas like shared media, social networking, online collaboration and adding the user generated content back into the Web.

Primary tools of Web 2.0 include video sharing sites such as YouTube; Wiki sites like Wikipedia; blogs and various "live face" technologies. We'll cover three of the fastest and easiest ways to optimize for Web 2.0, beginning with blogs.

1.) SEO for Blogs

Optimizing a blog is one of the absolute best ways to capture Google's most coveted top spots very quickly. You can hit number 1 on Google in a matter of days. Here's how you do it...

a.) First, find a good blogging tool. There are plenty out there. I use Blogger. I originally picked it because it was so quick and easy to setup. And I soon realized the platform does 50% of SEO by its very nature. It's free and you can get thousands of themes, to fit any style you wish, also for free.

b.) Once your blog app is installed, turn on the "permalink" option from the control panel. This ensures each posting you enter will also get its own URL. And finally, start entering postings of 200 words or more, focusing on only one or two keywords per post. Try to begin each post title with the primary keyword for that topic.

2.) SEO for YouTube Videos

YouTube accounts for more than 60% of ALL online videos watched in the US. And your YouTube videos can be found in Google's search results just like any normal Web page. This means they can rank number 1 in just days, with the right SEO.

If you're looking to capitalize on SEO for Web 2.0, this is a fast and free way to do it. I won't get into how to upload the videos and optimize the frame size, etc. That said; let's assume you have signed up for your free account at YouTube.com and are ready to upload your first video using their easy to follow instructions. This is all the SEO you need to know...

a.) When forming your title, think in terms of "long tail" keywords, meaning keyword phrases of three or more words. Be sure these are in the same order people would search for them (eg/ "long tail keywords" not "keywords long tail.") Also try to anticipate what the user will type in his search. "How to" is one of the most common search phrases people use in Google and YouTube to get answers quick.

b.) Think of "tags" as keywords and enter them like you would the Meta keyword tag of a web page. Select only the most likely search terms people are using and keep the words in the order people use them. Don't just use random words separated by commas. Use full length search phrases exactly how people search for them. And don't go too crazy here. Excessive tags tend to confuse the YouTube engine. Incidentally, if you have "how to" as a tag, also add "how to" (without the space.) If "how to" returns a bunch of unrelated junk your "how to" tag can better cut to the chase in YouTube's search engine.

c.) The description is where you have the most freedom. It's best to begin the description with your main keyword (and title) as close to the beginning as possible. Something like this works well... "Learn how to..." then follow up with several sentences rich in long tail keywords (the same ones from your tags.) Grammar is not the most important thing in the world but try to make it friendly for people who might read the description before they decide to watch the video. Also remember that Google uses a natural text algorithm that can spot unnatural keyword spamming a mile away.

Real Life Example: I just saw a commercial on TV for a spy movie and someone threw a knife. I went to Google and entered "how to throw a knife" (without quotes.) The top three matches include a YouTube video and Wiki entry. Wow! Welcome to Web 2.0!

3.) SEO Using "Live Face" Technology

One of the biggest reasons for the dot com crash of '01 was that Websites became way too impersonal. One of Web 2.0's strengths is the ability to help people relate to people once again. And one of the hottest technologies leading the way is "Live Face."

Live Face allows a video spokesperson to meet, greet and inform your Web page visitors. As far as SEO benefits, any sort of video has usually involved heavy RealTime or Flash files that block search engine spiders and hurt rankings. Now however, there are services like Live Face for Web that can add full length videos to your site without it interfering with onsite SEO one bit (due to the file's location) while greatly enhancing offsite efforts such as acquiring the highest quality one way and reciprocal links.

Most sites employing this technology report conversion increases of up to 5x. This means they are converting up to five times the number of sales they did before using Live Face technology.

Real Life Example: The SEOcbt.com site mentioned earlier uses Live Face for Web and they hit number one on Google for all of their major keywords within two weeks of site launch.

About The Author
Mike Small is a ten year veteran SEO specialist with thousands of top search engine rankings to his credit. He is the author of seven SEO books and founder of http://www.SEOpartner.com.

Improving search engine rankings with Web 2.0 begins with a single step. Start today and continue to enhance your use of social networking tools.

Basic Search Engine Optimization Techniques: Improve Search Engine Rankings Today!

In today's post, we highlight some key search engine optimization techniques you'll want to us to improve search engine rankings for your website. Here's a quick rundown of things to consider...

On Page Optimization

1. Make sure the page title is descriptive - make it different with each page if you can.

2. Use the meta description tag and make it good - this is what most search engines show as the blurb about your site on the results page.

3. Make sure you use your keywords in your copy more than once. Do bold them if it works in your content.

4. If you can make it work, use an H1 or H2 tag. If you are comfortable with CSS you can make the text in them smaller (this is becoming less and less important).

5. Make sure to use alt and title tags on images. It lets the search engines know what the image is about and can cause your images to show up on the Google image search.

6. Use title tags on your links. It will help the search engines know more about the page you are linking to and improve relevancy.

Off Page Optimization

This is also called 'Off Site Optimization' which is a misnomer. Search engines care little about 'websites' and care more about 'web pages'. The reason for this is that they don't link to a site, they link to a page. So what is this mysterious type of SEO you ask?

Well, if you read the on page part above you will have learned that Google and the other search engines decided that they couldn't trust the page itself too much as too many people put fake content on a page to generate traffic. So they decided that the best way to know if a page was relevant was to let people do it for them.

How do they make this work? They simply look at who links to you and what their page is about. If your page is about sewing, and another page that Google knows people like is also about sewing and it links to you, then your page is probably not misrepresenting itself. This is the driving force behind what is called 'Page Rank'.

Page rank is essentially a calculation of the importance of the pages linking to you vs the relevancy of your content to those pages. If a page about banking links to a page about peanut butter, then chances are that the search engines won't assign any importance to that link, but links between pages of similar content have high importance.

There is also a nebulous thing that we know exists, but don't know how to quantify. It is the matter of how much a search engine trusts a site. Sites with high trust have their outbound links given more importance than sites the search engine does not trust. An easy way to determine if a site is trustworthy or not is to think about it yourself. The folks at the search engines are humans, they will trust the same sites you do and distrust the same sites you do.

Untrustworthy Sites Include:
1. Link/Banner farms - sites with nothing but links to various other sites. These used to work, but the search engines wised up and now having a link farm link to you will hurt, not help.
Sites with a lot of advertising on them - The search engines know that these sites are mostly computer generated and have no valuable content, and so don't pay any heed to what they link to.

2. Black Hat Sites - sites that use questionable SEO tactics aren't ones that you want linking to you. Google is suspicious of them, no reason to make it suspicious of you.

Trustworthy Sites Include:
1. Directories - There are two types of directories. Automatic and Human verified. Google knows which are which and if your site is listed on a human verified directory (meaning that someone looked at your site and verified that your description and content match the category you chose to have it listed in) then it knows that your content is relevant to the description you gave. Find the directories for your market (just google things like sewing boston directory or whatever your niche/market is and you'll find some to list in.

2. News Sites - Many news sites allow you to post comments on them. Don't spam, but find some relevant articles to your site and post a few comments. Its not advised that you place your link right in the article (unless you think it applies) but rather have your link in your profile.
Sites with high page rank - This is key. There is little point having sites with no page rank link to your site with no page rank. You want sites with high page rank linking to you. Install the Google toolbar and select yes when it asks if you want to view pagerank. This will let you know how other sites rank and help you determine where to try to get links.

There are a lot of other tips and helpful bits of information out there and I'll be posting a few more specialized articles about them. While there is a lot of bogus software and ebooks out there that will literally tell you no more than what you have read above, there are some that will help you carry out the suggestions above. They'll suggest directories, give you reports on how well you rank against your competitors and many other things. Most you can do on your own, but they take time. Good SEO software like SEO Elite should mainly remove the tedious, manual tasks involved in SEO and help you focus on more important things like niche research and adding actual, valuable content to your site.

About the Author
Michael Cooper is a computer/internet/technology enthusiast and has been building websites since 1996. He has been using SEO for years to help drive traffic to his and his client's sites. Visit http://seosoftware.topconsumerproductreviews.com/

How Small Businesses Can Improve Google PR

A 7/10 Google PageRank is generally reserved for major media companies, Fortune 500 companies and A-list bloggers. So how does a small company achieve a high PageRank? The answer is holistic search engine optimization.

To understand how holistic search marketing calculates, you need to understand how Google assigns a numeric weighting from zero to 10 for each Web page on the Internet. This PageRank denotes a site's importance in the eyes of Google. The scale for PageRank is logarithmic and roughly based upon quantity of inbound links, as well as the importance of the page providing the link.

First, small businesses have to be patient with their site's performance. Although your domain may have been registered for years, avoid the temptation to actively build links to the site. Instead, write articles and/or blog postings to fill the site with relevant information. Also make on-site updates like improving title tags, adding a permanent redirect and adding no-follows to the outgoing links, but nothing that needs a rocket scientist degree to understand.

Blogs and forums are good places to create back-links, which can improve your PageRank. Posting comments on a highly trafficked blog immediately creates a link back to your site. The down side is that blogs are being increasingly used for this purpose so blog administrators could treat your links like spam. So to avoid getting your links deleted, make sure to post relevant and interesting comments on these blogs.

Let's say you want to optimize for the long-tail key term “page rank success.” The first step is to create content that relates to that term. It might be something as simple as an article, blog posting, whitepaper or how-to guide. Step two is to ensure that the URL of that page reflects the term. This might look like this: yoursitename.com/page-rank-success.html. Using hyphens between each word gives you a better chance of being indexed correctly.

If you have a lot of good content on your site, you will also want to have other sites link to the terms that best represent your positioning. Make sure you are not just hyper linking your company name but the term that your customers are most likely to use when searching for you. Also consider whether your content is on a blog or a static page. This is important because the title of an article is more effective when it is published on a blog. The title should be catchy and definitely include terms you want people to associate with you when searching for your business.

Remember, if you are trying to achieve a higher PageRank for your small business, you'll need to be patient. Unfortunately, this will not happen instantly.

by Richard Banfield, CEO, Fresh Tilled Soil

Article Marketing Improves Search Engine Rankings

Radically Improve Search Engine Rankings.

Everyone knows that article marketing is an effective way to generate traffic to websites and develop good search placements.

Does Article Marketing Really Work?

Some article marketing nay sayers will admit that they have only distributed only one or two articles. Well yeah, I can see why article marketing did not work for them - because they did not work at making article marketing profitable for them.

Article marketing is like any other method of advertising. If you don't make a real investment in it, then you cannot reap great rewards from it.

The Marketing Rule

Advertising professionals speak of the ‘Marketing Rule Of Seven’ which suggests that a consumer must see your marketing message at least seven times before they start to pay attention to your message. The pros also suggest that once seven exposures have been achieved, the consumer will make a subtle, subconscious connection to the advertiser. Recognition brings rewards, in that after seven exposures to an advertisement, consumers will start to feel as if they know enough about the advertiser to trust their sales message.

If television, radio and print advertisers understand that a company's sales message must be seen or heard at least seven times, then why would you - the Internet marketer - think that you can write a single article and see the full benefit of the medium?

Successful Article Marketing Requires A Commitment

All commerce on the Internet is driven by information, such as written sales messages and information about products and services. Some websites also benefit from generic information concerning topics that their potential clients will be interested in reading. For example, if a website sells plumbing supplies, the consumer may find the availability of information about how to remove the old fittings and how to install the new plumbing equipment, as an essential element of their purchase decision.

Article marketing when used well can help a company establish itself as an expert in the field, and it can help show a reader why hiring the author's service might be better than a do-it-yourself project. As an example, with the resume advice article, once the reader sees how comprehensive your knowledge is and how detailed a resume should be, the reader may just decide that using your resume writing service will be much more productive than the do-it-yourself resume.

Your Article Marketing Strategies Influence Your Overall Success

We know that some people tell you that the only reason to write an article is to get a link back to your website. What most of these people don't tell you is that most websites that accept reprint articles do so, only after a human has reviewed or at least scanned the article.

An article that does not read well will never be published on a top-tier website. Yes, some websites may accept a poorly written article, but more sites will only accept well-written articles.

A reader who is not impressed with your article will seldom reach your resource box, so the link back in the resource box can only give value to your website from the search engines - maybe. The search engines generally only give value to articles on good websites or those placements that have lots of links pointing to the article within the website. Bad articles don't get published on good websites, and they do not attract links.

As the Marketing Rule Of Seven should indicate, multiple articles generate a long-term wave of new links and potential visitors to your website.

Consistency is also important to a successful article marketing campaign, in that releasing weekly articles will enable your readers to see your marketing message regularly.

Finally, the smart use of a variety of related keyword phrases will strengthen the ability of your article to appeal to the search engines and the people who use them.

If you can balance the needs of your article's audience against your need for search optimized content, then you can benefit handsomely from your article marketing campaigns.

Submit Your Articles to More Than 700 Directories

Google Image Search: What You Should Know

Google image search is increasing in importance on the world wide web. Curious about this functionality, I did some digging on what it takes to get your photos ranked well in this image search engine. Here are some great tips to follow:

Ranking high in Google’s image search can increase your traffic considerably. This is especially true if you can rank in the top three for search results that show images above the organic search results.

1. Make your images large - Large images tend to rank higher than smaller images. I recommend making images you want to rank high in searches at least 10,000 square pixels. An image that is larger than 333 pixels wide by 334 pixels tall would work.

I just did an image search for internet marketing and there were only two images with less than 10,000 square pixels on the first results page.

Make sure to specify the width and the height of the image in your html.

2. Put your keywords in the file name - If you want your image to rank high for the term ‘internet marketing’, name it ‘internet-marketing.jpg‘.

3. Put your keywords in the Alt tags - This is probably the most obvious thing to do. Alt tags are designed to provide alternative text when images cannot be displayed. They should describe what the image is about.

4. Put your keywords in the image title tag - Many people don’t realize that there is a title tag associated with images. The text in the title tag is shown when the user mouses over the image. Put the same text in the title tag that you put in the Alt tag.

5. Put your keywords in the text close to the image - I recommend putting descriptive text that includes your keywords below each image that you want to rank high in image searches. This is just more information for Google to use in determining what your image is about.

6. Optimize your page for the keywords - Include the keywords in the title tags, meta tags, header tags and the body copy of your page. Keyword density of the page that the image is on is very important.

7. Create an image site map - I have just started testing this out, but I have high hopes for it. Create a page with text links to all the images on your site that you want to rank high in image searches. Use the appropriate keywords for your anchor text when linking to the images.

An image site map is a great way to get links that come directly into your images and it lets the search engines know more about what the images are about.

8. Increase the authority of your web site - Images on pages with high Page Rank tend to rank higher in image searches. Build links into the page where the image is located and both your organic and image search rankings should improve.

9. Prevent the framing of your web site with javascript - You can stop Google from framing your web site by adding javascript code to your pages.

The idea here is that when somebody clicks on the image thumbnail in the search results they will go directly to the page on your site where the image is located without seeing the Google frame that has a direct link to the image. You should get more page views by using this javascript. I’m not sure if Google will penalize your site for using such code.

I would love to hear of any other techniques that you have found successful for increasing your image search results.

Affiliate marketers are always looking for that 'pot of gold' at the end of the rainbow. Sometimes they think that they just have to join and some magic formula will make them successful. But, of course, it is a bit more complicated than thatWinning at affiliate marketing is not really that difficult. It simply comes down to good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work, dedication and commitment.

If you stick to the tried-and-tested methods that have worked for many years and still continue to work well in the online affiliate marketing world of today - you will win! With the top three marketing tips given here, you will be in a very good position to increase your sales and be successful in the amazingly profitable sphere of today's affiliate marketing programs online.
So - what are these three Tips For Affiliate Marketers' Online Success?

1. Having unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. Do not just throw them all in 'en masse' to save a little money on web hosting.It is desirable to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more.

Actually, having said that, there are quite a few web hosting companies that will allow you to host Unlimited Domains on your account - so hosting charges should not be a problem if you go down that road.Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial appreciation on what the products can do for those who purchase them.

Try to include testimonials from users who have already tried the product. Be sure, however, that these customers are willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

You can also write articles displaying the uses of the product and include them on the website as additional pages. Try to make the pages attractive and compelling. Also, don't forget to include a few requests for them to act on the information.

Each headline should attract the readers and encourage them to try and discover more, possibly even to contact you. Draw attention to your product's special points. This will help your readers to learn what your page is about and will possibly make them want to find out more.

2. Offer free reports to your readers. If possible, locate them at the very top of your page so they simply cannot be missed.Try to create personal-type auto responder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal information into your sign-up box.

According to research, a sale is closed usually on the seventh contact with a prospective client.Only one of two things can possibly happen with the web page alone: a) a closed sale or b) the prospect leaving the web page never to return again.By placing useful information into their in-boxes at certain specified periods, you will later remind them of the product they were interested in and may find out that the sale is soon closed.

Do make sure that the content of your messages is directed toward specific reasons for buying the product. Never ever make it sound like a sales pitch.Focus on important points showing how your product can make life easier and more enjoyable. Include compelling subject lines in the email.

As much as possible, avoid having the word "free" in there because some of the earlier spam filters dump those kind of contents straight into the junk so no-one even gets the chance to read them beforehand.Convince those who signed up for your free reports that they will be missing out on something big if they do not take advantage of your products and services.

3. Get the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product. Just think, if the person who visited your website has no interest whatsoever in what you are promoting, they will be among those who move on and never come again.

Write articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate publications that are focusing on your target customers and what you have put up might just grab their interest. Try to write a minimum of 2 articles per week, with at least 300-600 words in length. By continuously writing and maintaining these articles you can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a day.

Always try to remember that only 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product or subscribe to your services. If you can generate as many as 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, this means that you can make 10 sales, based on the average statistics.

The methods defined above are not really difficult at all to do, if you think about it. It just involves a small amount of time and a definite plan of action on your part.Try to use these tips for several affiliate marketing programs. You can end up doing something that not every affiliate marketer can do and that is, maintaining a really good source of income and being successful in this business. Besides, when you become successful, think of those regular massive pay-checks you will be receiving !

from SiteReference Newsletter

The Power of Search Clouds and SEO

There are many ways to improve your search engine rankings. There are off page factors (basically link building), which can include techniques like article submission, blog commenting, forum posting, directory submission and more.

And there are on-page factors- like keywords, markup, etc. Both are important, and if you wish to do rank highly on the search engines you need to focus on building links, and improving on page factors. If you're looking for an extra boost, you may like to consider search clouds- An on-page factor that is often overlooked by many people.

A search cloud appears on your website (often on the side), and is a large list of words. Each word is a link, and they are all different sizes. Each word is something that someone searched for when they came to your website. If a lot of people search for a certain word, then that word will appear bigger in the cloud.

One of the best benefits of a search cloud is that it gives you more internal links to the pages that are important on your site. And it uses the "right" anchor text, because it uses the anchor text that people are already searching for. This will help with search engine rankings, because it adds more links to your pages, with the correct anchor text. These links may not be as useful as links from other domains- but they still help!

This can be shown with an example... Suppose you have a widget website, and you rank on the first page for "green widget". When people search for "green widget", and click the link to your site, the search cloud will add "green widget" to the cloud, and link to the "green widget" page on your website. You now have more links to the green widget page, which will help you to rank higher for "green widget".

That's not the only reason to have a search cloud though! Another great benefit is that they encourage people to explore your site. When people see a search cloud, they can't help but glance through the list. Because of the wide variety of search terms, it is quite likely they will find something that interests them, and click the link. This means you will have lower bounce rates, as well as higher average page views per visitor. This will correspond to more page views- which will lead to more people buying your products, or making more money from your advertising.

You can usually add a search cloud quite easily to your website. Google "Install Search Cloud" and find a corresponding listing. Many individuals have already done so and have shared their technique.

Today's Marketing Tip: Repeat Traffic

Repeat website traffic that comes at no cost has to be the second most important priority for any E-Commerce site. Number one being the initial generation of traffic. Take the time to get your site consumer friendly. Spend time visiting sites you frequent and write down all the items that attract you about that site and duplicate them. You don't have to re-invent the wheel to have a successful website.

10 Ways to Attract Free Repeat Traffic

1. Offer as much additional value on your website as possible without shooting yourself in the foot. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and ask them to reciprocate the favor. Another great way to benefit both of you is to advertise their products and ask them to do the same. This provides free traffic and advertising for both of you. Obviously you don't want to advertise any product or service that you are in competition with.

2. You can allow customers to 'opt in' and provide them with a 10% discount on their first order, and allow them to be the first to see any new promotions you are offering. This also allows you to stay in constant contact with your customers and potential customers. Coupons are another very effective way of keeping your 'opt in' list returning to your site.

3. Create a schedule to update the pages on your website on a regular basis. In time, stagnant websites are dropped by some of the search engines. I would suggest you put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated. This also tells all your visitors very quickly how attentive and diligent you are in bringing them the latest information.

4. Make it simple for a visitor to become a customer by adding a link to your primary page with a script 'Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites'. Most internet users are repeatedly referencing their favorite's folder, I know I do.

5. Like item 4, make it simple for your visitors to attract potential customers for you by adding a link 'Recommend this site to a Friend' so that the visitor can email your website link, with a pre-written title, "Thought you might be interested in this", that with the click of a button a visitor in recommending your site to.

6. Create an 'Our Policies' page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site. This is a great opportunity to reveal to your potential customers who and what your principles and morals are all about.

7. Brand your website. This will create a presence and feel for your customers and visitors that they are at your site. Use consistent colors, page design, logos and slogans on every page and always provide a 'Contact Us' link and 'Home' link on each page. Spend some time to create a "favicon" to forever identify and brand your site. I know from my own surfing experiences that there have been sites I was visiting with no way to return to their home page without clicking the back button. Very annoying. You need your sites pages to flow.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts, questions, and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. Sit down and picture yourself arriving at your site for the very first time. Get a pen and paper and write down what you would like to know as a potential purchaser from this site. This will help to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

9. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails! Also if they decide they want to 'opt out' of the mailings, always be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

10. Make sure each page on your website has the appropriate title and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the bookmark. Remember your page title appears in the web browser. Anyone like me who has multiple tabs and pages open at the same time, the title allows for a quick return.

SUMMARY

Here are 10 ways to free repeat website traffic. Copy and post this beside your computer for the next time you update your web pages. They are the basics of great websites and will certainly pave a path to free repeat website traffic.

By Mike Davey

The Power of Article Marketing: Generate Thousands of In-bound Links!

Are you trying to build inbound links to your website or running an affiliate program? Maybe your simply trying to get more traffic to your website.

Article marketing, if done correctly, can help you develop links to your website and generate a huge flow of steady traffic, generating a steady stream of qualified prospects to your site and your products.

The first step in article marketing is to develop an article that is clearly written, provides value, and builds credibility. A clearly written article ensures that readers do more than skim your article.

To keep your reader's attention, your article must provide something of value. An example might be an SEO related article that shows readers how to write an effective "Title" tag for their webpage. A valuable article would first explain the concept then follow with examples.

A result of a clearly written article that provides valuable information is that of credibility. The concept of credibility can be subtle but is very important if you wish to drive the most traffic to your affiliate product. Some suggestions for building credibility include: injecting your experience into each article, providing references to findings from recent studies, offering facts, providing quotes from industry experts, and so on.

Once you've written a compelling article, you can weave a mention of your affiliate product into the text. However, be sure to do it in modest way. Some examples are:
"I've used a number of products that weren't any good… but I did have some success with the [insert product name here]."

"I've used [product 1], [product 2], and [product 3], but found [insert product name here] to be the cheapest and the best."

"Personally I use [insert product name here], but any [product descriptor] will do."

"I'm not an expert on [product descriptor] but know that [insert product name here] is quite popular."

Too often I see individuals using article marketing with a hard sell. This doesn't work. People don't like to be told what to do, what products they must use, or rely on the opinions of those they do not trust. So your best bet is to begin with a clearly written article, provide something of value, and use your newfound credibility to generate referrals or sales.

Now that you've written your article, what are you going to do with it? There are a number of article directories on the Internet, but which ones should you choose? I personally use Article Submission Software to distribute my articles to more than 600 article site, but you can start by submitting to some of the top article directories: About.com, EzineArticles, and GoArticles.com

A number of these directories are also favored by major search engines like Yahoo! Some allow affiliate links and others do not. Be sure to read the submission policies carefully before submitting your article. For some directories, you may have to include your affiliate link in the "About the Author" section. This is okay as many article directories allow multiple links in this section.

The added benefit of inserting an affiliate link in this section is that other webmasters, who repurpose articles from article directories, will include these links – giving you the benefit of viral marketing.

Article marketing is a great way to promote your affiliate product or affiliate program. By writing an article that delivers value and offers a subtle mention of your affiliate product, you're well on your way to getting the proper exposure for your promotion. Add the on-page optimization factors we talked about, and you're sure to get noticed. Give article marketing a try and you'll be surprised by the results!

Submit Your Website To Thousands Of Article Directories Instantly!

Go Beyond SEO With Effective Email Strategies

In addition to using SEO to attract visitor and generate sales, email still works! First, the good news: permission-based e-mail is great at getting consumers to buy.

Half of US adult e-mail users surveyed in April 2008 for Merkle's "View from the Inbox" study, conducted with Harris Interactive, said they had made an online purchase in the previous year as a result of permission-based marketing.

In addition, e-mail was second only to customer reviews on Web sites for influencing online purchases, according to DoubleClick Performics' "Green Marketing Study," conducted by Opinion Research Corporation in February 2008. E-mail was roughly equal to search results in terms of influencing online purchases.

Bad news for e-mail marketers included the fact that consumers are increasingly willing to revoke permission that they have previously granted and that the bar for relevance remains high.

About one-third of respondents in the Merkle study also said they had stopped doing business with at least one company as a result of poor e-mail marketing practices.
In the same vein, more than half of US adult e-mail users told Merkle in 2007 that they were only willing to get marketing or promotional messages in status or transactional e-mails if the offers were relevant to them.

"There is a substantial gap between what marketers believe is relevant to the consumer, and what consumers rate as valuable," said Lori Connolly, director of research at Merkle.

"Traditionally, marketers believed that relevancy meant pushing content that is based on stated preferences or behavior, but companies need to update their view of what is relevant," Ms. Connolly said.

Consumer wariness is often justified. Some marketers are the victims of spammers, who ruin it for everyone, according to David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

"Consumers welcome relevant, opt-in e-mails from companies they have a relationship with," said Mr. Hallerman. "But the broad spectrum of spam—any unsolicited message—continues to degrade the e-mail environment for all parties."