How to Generate Traffic on a Shoestring Budget

If no one visits your site, it hardly stands a chance of producing an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and this results to the sites demise. In other words, it takes money to make money.

But, it does not take a lot of cash to generate website traffic to your site. Have you ever wondered how big hit sites drive traffic to their site? They all spend vast amounts of money to lure the traffic to their sites by investing in different marketing and advertising campaigns. This is completly worth it to them because they wouldnt be where they are now unless they had done so...huge earning, big hitting websites.

You don't have to do this if you don't really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you cant afford. Alot of people have tried to use expensive methods of marketing only to end up broke in the end.

Let me show you exactly how you can do this the low cost way of bringing traffic to your site. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in, compared to client ratio, it still works, especially if you get a large number of people to your site.

Exchange Links With Other Web Sites

This is a proven method. It is rare to actually find a site that doesnt in some way have another link to a different site in it. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so they can produce more public awareness about their sites. You will soon see and be aware of the sudden increase of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in trading links with other sites is that they should have the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is stability in the providing of service and information for what interests your targeted traffic.

Exchanging links will also enhance your chances of getting a high ranking with search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high, sites that have inbound and outbound same-niche links. With a good ranking in the search engines, you will produce more traffic to your site without the high costs.

Use A Traffic Exchange

This is basically like exchanging links but on a different elevated level. This may cost a little more than trading or exchanging links but could be more cost effective because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when you view others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are basically viewing of someone else`s site or page. This is done back and forth where one site can use your sites contents and you can also use their content in return.You will both benefit from each others labor to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as their own. Once again the public consciousness of your sites existence is elevated.

Write and Submit Articles

There are truly many e-zines and online encyclopedias as well as article directories on the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save money, you can do the articles yourself. [One of my favorites by the way!] There are a lot of freelance writers who are willing to write an article for you for a miniature fee, but to save costs, you would be better off writing those articles yourself.

Try to write articles that go along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can see your knowledge about the subject and will be enthusiastic to go to your site. Write articles that convey tips and procedures to the subject or niche your website has.

Don't forget to include a resource box at the bottom of your article that can link them to your website.Write a little about yourself and also your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they should go to your site for more.

Create a Newsletter

This might sound like to much work because of all the articles you may need to use to create a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not true. There are many writers and sites that will want to provide articles as long as they can get their name in your newsletter. This will also grant free advertising for them as well. As your newsletter gets passed around, you can expand your public familiarity and build an opt-in list that can frequently visit your site.

Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing more. You can impart your wisdom and know-how with many online communities as well as your own website. You can attract free advertising when you are on forums that are discussing the same subjects that is what is on your site.

Share your opinion and let them see how well-informed you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the status of your site, making it a reputable and sincere business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

This post provided by Robert Hanna. To see the most amazing short video on starting your own home business just visit http://www.massivewealthforever.com

Writing for Search Engines: Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

In order to achieve maximum search engine visibility, you need to think a bit like a search engine when writing the copy for your website. Search engines look at the HTML code that makes up your web page and attempts to parse out the textual copy on the page, eliminating the HTML markup used for layout. The textual copy goes into the search engine’s “index," which is a very large database.

When a user conducts a search on the search engine, the database is queried to identify all the pages in the index that include those words on the page and/or in the links pointing to that page. So if your page does not include the words the user was searching for, it is unlikely your page will rank well, if at all. The same holds true when none of the links to that page include the words that the user searched for in the link text (the clickable text that forms the link).

Once pages have been identified, search engines order the results according to relevance. Relevance can be determined based on dozens and dozens of criteria, such as keyword prominence (how often your keywords appear on a page, and where they appear).

Crafting Your Page

As you begin to start thinking the way a search engine does, most copywriters will realize that they are being too verbose in the first few paragraphs. It also occurs to them as they are writing that the title tag for the page they are working on doesn’t have the most important keywords listed first, but rather last. Moving the most important keywords for that page to the beginning of the title tag, as well as moving those keywords to the top of the page copy, can really help to boost your page ranking.

It is also important that you do not go overboard with what is called “keyword density.” This refers to the number of times your keywords appear on a page. Too many occurrences of your keywords and the page will trip the spam penalty algorithm, which will damage your page’s rank. Also, if you are going after a particular keyword phrase, your web page will appear more relevant if the individual words in that phrase appear together in your page copy.

In addition to placing your selected keywords at the beginning of your title tag and also in the first paragraph or two of page copy, it also helps to emphasize your keywords by enclosing them in heading tags (i.e. h1). Think through how you can best structure the information on your page so that your keywords appear inside heading tags, body copy and other tags while still writing something interesting and compelling.

Once you have thought about each of these points, it is time to start writing. Try to write at least a couple of hundred words of page copy. This is not a rule, but a good guideline to follow. When you are creating links from text, be mindful to include good keyword-rich text in your link text. Avoid using phrases such as “click here” and “more information” in your links, and instead choose words that are relevant to the page the link will go to.

Test The Waters

At this point, you presumably now have well-written, interesting and useful page copy that includes your most important targeted keywords in all the right places. However, don’t just assume that you have gotten it right, especially if you are new at this. Run your copy past a human being or two to ensure that it is interesting, engaging and communicates your message effectively. If it doesn’t, it’s time to start again and rethink your copy.

Once you have human approval, it’s time to run the draft page through a search engine spider simulator.. This tool, and others like it, will tell you how many times you used each keyword. It will parse the text just like a search engine would, and occasionally you will see that another keyword comes through more strongly than you had intended and a more important keyword is dwarfed in comparison. Don’t worry, now is the time to fix this, and with a little practice you will have a good gut feeling for what will rank well.

The final test, of course, is linking your new page to the rest of your website and seeing how it performs with the real search engines. If the results are lower than expected, you can make some adjustments by moving text around, adding and subtracting copy and so forth. Pay particular attention to your title META tag, as this is given the most importance by the search engines out of everything on your page.

Another way to help convince visitors to click through to your website is to write a descriptive summary of your page to be included in your description META tag. Make sure that your description contains the targeted keywords that you have chosen for this page, and be brief. While this does not help with your search engine ranking, having a compelling description is just good form and worth doing.

Today's Post provided by Stephan Spencer

Google Sandbox: Does It Exist?

With an article title like this, it almost seems like I am playing the fool, by telling you something doesn't exist and then telling you that I will show you how to beat that thing I said does not exist. Maybe I am the fool, or maybe, I have something valuable to share with you today. You be the judge.

I Don't Believe In The Google Sandbox, Dragons or Unicorns...

Many people believe in the existence of the Google Sandbox, and I am not one of those people. I place the "Google Sandbox" in the same category as the leprechaun... they both make a neat children's story, but I see no truth in either.

What Is Google Love?

Google love is the imaginary "feeling" that Google has for the websites in its index. The more Google loves a website, the higher that website will rank in the Google search results.

No matter how many search results Google shows for a particular search term, Google will only show a maximum of 1,000 website listing in its search engine result pages (SERPs). However, few people, except nuts like me know that as you go to each consecutive page in Google's SERPs, the actual number that Google is willing to show you gets smaller with each additional page visited.

For example, I just did a search on the keyword phrase "Google Love". My default Google settings are set to 100 results. When I first typed the search phrase, Google showed 68,300,000 results, and Google shows me that I can look at ten pages of results. But, when I get to the tenth page in Google's results, there are only three listings. Google only loves 903 web pages for the search term "Google Love".

Google has told us that they attribute value to a web page, based on the number of inbound links that page might have. Google Love primarily comes from link popularity, which is derived from inbound links.

The Suggested Lifespan Of The Google Sandbox

I see the "sandbox" as being a term that some person working in SEO derived to explain why so many of his client's new pages appeared in Google's search results for about one month, before the pages disappeared into the deep recesses of the Google index.

In absence of a better explanation, some SEO person coined the term "Google Sandbox" to explain to his or her customers why a page disappears from the Google index and stays missing for months or years.

According to those who preach the Google Sandbox theory, the lifespan of the Sandbox is six months to one year. That is a lifetime when you are running an online business.

The Life Curve Of A Web Page

Google's algorithms rely heavily on inbound links to determine the value of a web page. But a brand new web page has not had the opportunity to attract any inbound links, because after all, it is a brand new web page. So Google gives new web pages the benefit of a doubt.

News stories are a good example of web pages that may very well be important to the world-at-large, but its importance cannot be determined by the number of inbound links available to that page.

As a result, all brand new web pages on the Internet are given an intrinsic value by Google, as if the pages housed a news story. But what was important thirty days ago, will not necessarily be important today. So news stories are given early value and then their value fades with time.

Once the news cycle is completed, the web page will slide down to where it deserves to be according to the normal Google algorithms. This often means that a new web page will disappear into Google oblivion (or the theoretical Google Sandbox), if after 30 days the page has not generated any link popularity of its own.

After The News Cycle, All Normal Rules Apply

We have all heard it before. The way to get a web page to rank in Google is to build link popularity for the web page.

And how do you build link popularity for a web page? Build inbound links to that web page, of course.

Once the news cycle is done, a new web page must compete with every other web page, based on Google's normal algorithm.

What If A Page Could Develop Link Popularity In 30 Days?

What if you were able to build inbound links and therefore link popularity for a web page, before the news cycle runs out? That would be a twist, wouldn't it?

Personally, I know for a fact that if you can build link popularity on a page, within the news cycle window, that this new page will not fall into the dreaded and mythical Google Sandbox. The page will not fall into the Google Sandbox at the end of the news cycle, because the page will have already accrued some link popularity within Google's primary algorithm.

You Are The Master Of Your Own Domain

As the master of your domain, you get to choose how long a page is sandboxed. Most people don't realize they have that kind of control, but with smart link building, one can prevent a web page from entering the sandbox. Or, if the web page does slip into the sandbox, the smart online marketer can bring a web page out of the mythical sandbox in days or weeks, instead of months or years. The beauty of this truth is that you define the time line for when a web page exits the sandbox, not Google.

I Boast That I Can Prove It To You

I built a new page 16 days ago (June 10th, 2008) that is holding page one results in Google against 200,000+ websites, with my Blackhat Fish SEO Contest entry.

Now, one could argue that I am still in the news cycle for this web page, so in another two weeks, my page could disappear from the Google results. But, I have built so many inbound links to this page that I fully expect that when the news cycle is done, my page will remain outside of Google's mythical sandbox.

I Challenge You To Test My Results

Test my proof by checking back here in a couple weeks, or even in four weeks or six. If I am right, you will be able to click this link to Google's search results for the keyword phrase Blackhat Fish, and you will be able to see my page title on page one or two of Google's search results: "Whitehat vs. Blackhat: Fish For Links or Die Trying".

I say page one or page two of Google's search results, because I would be surprised if I actually won the competition. However, if I am still in the top20 results for the search key term after July 10, 2008, then I will have proved to you that anyone can beat the sandbox, if only they exercised the right strategy for escaping the sandbox ahead of the end of the news cycle.

I have actually pulled this off with three web pages in the last 60 days. The above listed example is just one of many examples I could show you as proof of concept here. But for brevity's sake, I am only including the one example here.

In Conclusion...

You can accept my analysis as sound, or you can call me the fool. It does not matter to me which you choose. If you want to believe that the Google Sandbox really exists to thwart your online business, then more power to your fears.

This post provided by Bill Platt. Bill has been providing article marketing help to his clients since 2001 at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com He offers ghost writing and article distribution services. With lots of experience writing articles that attract publishers, readers, traffic and sales to his website, Bill wrote an ebook to share the secrets of his article marketing strategies at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Grow Your Business With Free Traffic

I just read a great article about traffic generation. As you may already know, there is a significant number of sites that promise you traffic and are even willing to sell you thousands of visits. Are these sites legitimate? How do you know what type of traffic they're sending?

Enter TrafficSwarm, one of today's most popular traffic exchanges. There are others like HitGusher and TrafficG, but do not have as many participating members. After reading the article, I signed up and began surfing. The way that the traffic exchange works is simple. You decide the types of sites you're willing to surf and at the same time, place text ads linking to your site that other members surf.

Each time you visit a site within the network you earn credits. Those credits can be redeemed to have your ads appear, resulting in click throughs to your site. Yes, it truly is FREE traffic. You do have to spend some time (I'm spending about 15 - 20 minutes per day) surfing the interface, but it's ridiculously simple to do.

Give it a try and you'll be surprise by the amount of free traffic you generate!

Local Search Engine Optimization: Here's How

Roughly a year ago, local search engine optimization was all the rage - the new frontier in search engine marketing. For a while, it seemed that everyone was interested in the local search angle - even multi-national companies. However, for many companies selling products or services to the entire United States, or even globally, it seemed like a non-starter.

Companies that counted on people looking for certain products or services that did not require close proximity to the company's location were unaffected. As far as local search engine optimization goes, things have changed a bit since then - at least for some.

Some time ago, Google introduced a "geographic box" at the top of its search results. This is tied in to its mapping feature, and, when it was first introduced, the engine would display three results at the top of its search results whenever somebody entered a geographic modifier into the search box ("Atlanta widgets," for example). The Google algorithm then has the intelligence to determine whether the query calls for results that are primarily local in scope. Since that initial trial, Google has obviously found that its users appreciate the feature.

The engine now displays ten local search results at the top of the listings for certain queries, provided that they have a geographic modifier attached. For example, if you type in "Atlanta gyms" in Google, you will see ten results alongside a map that shows the location of ten gyms in Atlanta. It should be noted that you will not see local search results for all queries that contain a local modifier. In certain instances, it almost seems as if Google somehow "knows" when a geographic modifier really means that you only offer services in a particular area. Yeah, those guys are pretty good.

There are many resources on the Internet to turn to if you are looking for local search engine optimization for your regional website. However, many companies have client bases that cater primarily to a national or international field. Can they benefit from local search?

Yes, they can - in two ways (with a caveat for the first). First, many customers prefer to deal with people that are local, even if the business is national, or even global. A businessperson that is looking for, say, marketing consulting, may be inclined to work with someone with an address in close proximity found through local search. It just feels more comfortable - if something goes wrong, he or she can request a meeting, rather than calling an 800 number.

Here's the caveat - you may not want people showing up at your doorstep. Some companies invite people to show up at the headquarters and voice concerns or sing praises, but others would prefer to keep things at a distance. This is not a value judgment by any means. With many companies that deal with thousands, or even millions, of customers, it would be impossible to service every complaint with a human smile.

The second way, which seems more customer friendly (but actually isn't), applies when a large company has many locations. This doesn't mean that your company has "walk-in" locations that are open to the public. If you have locations in many cities, each serving a different function, you can still benefit from local search engine optimization. Say, for example, you are headquartered in Toledo. You have distribution centers in several cities across the United States. Each of your physical locations is eligible to show up in local search results on Google, provided that you supply the engine with the proper information.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, not all searches with regional modifiers attached will bring up regional results. But based on recent happenings, it's a good idea to make your regional presence known and consider the effects of local search engine optimization. After the years of talk about it, local search might finally turn out to be something that most companies can take advantage of.

About the Author
Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue (www.mediumblue.com), a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.