Blog Me Happy I don't want to be a newbie any longer.

As an Internet consultant, strategist and developer for over 20 years, one of the greatest concerns I hear from my small business customers is that building traffic to their Web site is too great a task, particularly as more Web sites compete for online consumers and strategies have become more and more technical over the years. 

 

If you share these same concerns, my advice to you is to start where you’re comfortable, and grow from there.There are a number of activities you can start with to increase your Web site traffic that don’t require any Internet knowledge at all.  Here are three options:

 

Word-of-Mouth.  Tell everyone you know about your Web site.Strangely, people seem to overlook this easy yet powerful resource.Perhaps they think that their Web site is too simple compared to some of the more extensive sites they have seen. Others just disregard this valuable source of information for people interested in learning about your product or service. Take pride in your Web site and tell everyone why they should go visit it.

 

T-Shirts.  Have a black t-shirt made with your Web site address displayed in yellow, gold or silver.Before discovering this strategy, I would wear a suit at any speaking engagement or seminar I would attend. Now, instead, I wear a very nice long sleeve shirt with my HereNextYear logo embroidered on the front.  Along the back collar, www.HereNextYear.com displays. Whenever I attend a workshop, I make sure to sit in the front five rows toward the center. When I do, someone always comes up to me during the break to ask me about my business.   

 

Don’t skimp on quality here.It can be some of the most powerful and direct promotion you can invest in.. Get a stylish shirt and have an embroidery store reproduce a digital copy of your logo and Web site address.  It is one of the best investments you will make to spread the word about your Web site and build traffic. 

 

Give-a-Away Premiums.Give pencils, magnets, bumper stickers or other freebie gifts to anyone you see.The goal is to give something related to your Web site.  Dentists might give away toothbrushes, and financial advisors might hand out small calculators. Remember the whole point is to provide a reminder to your prospects and customers that your business exists. So be sure to display your Web site address on all those items.

 

Business Card.  Sure, you have probably been using business cards long before your Web site existed.  But the purpose of these business cards is to do nothing else but to get your prospective customers to visit you on the Web.  Consider offering a free report with information of value to your customers when they visit your site.Promote the report and the Web site address they should visit to receive it on your business card.Then, give a card to everyone you meet and tack it up on every public bulletin board you see.

 

True, there are many options for building traffic to your Web site, and many of them require some real time and skill.But keep in mind that many of the tried and true promotional strategies that people have been using for years are equally effective to build traffic to your Web site.Personal publicity can still be one of the best ways to build traffic, and it is simple to start using this plan of action immediately. 

To find out even more Web site traffic builders that you can start using today, get your free report:  “101 Ways to Get More Web Site Traffic”. 

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Any webmaster knows that a successful website is one that brings in visitors. We’re going to focus on ‘organic traffic’ for the duration of this tutorial.

Traffic that enters your site through natural means (such as search engines) is classified as ‘organic traffic’. Without a high search engine ranking, this is not going to happen. Often, this requires at least top ten rankings, as the chances of people finding your website otherwise are not very good.

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Proper search engine optimization is a must if you want your site to have high search rankings. Optimizing your page effectively will cause it to be simpler for search engines to index your website, and index it highly. Done correctly, your site can go from virtually unknown to an ‘authority’ website in a matter of weeks. The problem now is learning how to do the SEO.

A while ago, it was possible to merely stuff your page with relevant keywords, and then rely on the search engines to list your website highly. That won’t work anymore. The ‘big three’ search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) have started to crack down on ‘keyword stuffing’, and will penalize people who still do it. So, we’re left with a dilemma here: how are we going to optimize a website with these switched algorithms?

For high search rankings, you need plenty of backlinks. This is doubly true with Google, which weighs backlinks very heavily. Backlinks are so imperative that your page will climb up in the search rankings even if it is not optimized for a specific keyword, if it has enough backlinks. However, building backlinks may turn out to be a lot more difficult than you think.

One strategy involves searching for article databases, blogs, and sites that you can submit unique articles to, hoping that they get published. This strategy goes under the name ‘article marketing’. While this is technically doable, surely no one has the time to rewrite the same article 30 times to ensure that each version is different. The time invested in doing this doesn’t justify the returns. While article marketing does work for building a few backlinks, it has just about died out.

See why article marketing as you know it is dead.

The internet evolves quickly. Depending on how you interpret this, it is a positive or negative thing. One example is the changes that search engines have made to their algorithms. This change came out of nowhere. Because of this, lots of top-ranking sites suddenly dropped out overnight. In this case, rapid change was a bad thing.

Now, let’s examine Web 2.0. This includes social networking sites that you may be familiar with, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, etc. With Web 2.0, information can be shared instantly and content can become ‘viral’ , meaning the content can quickly reach an audience of virtually all of the internet within several moments of the information being released. For affiliate marketers, this is probably one of the best things in the world to come along.

Suddenly, the entire internet becomes potential visitors to your site. Link to your website on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or any social bookmark such as Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. Each time you post your link, it counts as a backlink and a source of traffic. You can also take advantage of blogs to push your website and get backlinks/traffic. Search engines love content from Web 2.0, so you’re doing yourself another favor in the end. Excellent.

Where Web 2.0 exists, so does Article Marketing 2.0. Do you remember the ‘article marketing’ technique described earlier? What if the process of rewriting articles was handled automatically for you? Imagine posting a unique, rewritten article to over ten thousand sites, each having its own traffic? What if all you had to do was write a single article in a special ‘spinnable’ format and then have it automatically rewritten (spun) for distribution to websites?

This is what AMAutomation does. You write one article in a special format, then upload it to AMAutomation’s article database. Article Marketing Automation then takes care of the rest, building traffic and creating backlinks while you’re free to work on other things. To avoid the ‘duplicate content’ penalty, your article is rewritten every time it becomes published. Like what happens with Web 2.0, your article becomes ‘viral’. Your backlinks multiply, and traffic will come flooding in.

This is exactly what Article Marketing 2.0 is about.

Article marketing is dead. Long live Article Marketing 2.0.

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Technorati Tags: AMAutomation, article marketing 2.0, building backlinks, first page google rankings, site promotion

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Delta Squadron Bonus

Article marketing is a form of online advertising that allows businesses to advertise or market themselves by writing short article content pieces that relate to the industry they are in. Usually article marketing is used by affiliates and is not the same business as the one exposed in Delta Squadron – Later the written articles are published in the web market for the customers to easily access it. Every one of these articles contains a byline and a biography box that allows businesses to include references to their company, website or contact information. By crafting well written content and releasing it for this type of free distribution, businesses gain the potential of significantly increasing their credibility within the industry as well as reaching out to new clients in the process. Article marketing is really a great aspect of online marketing which can really help to market one’s company or website as it is really effective.

Article marketing is utilized in paper-print formats as well as online formats, especially by businesses that want to obtain free press space. You can get the name and contact information of your company on the newspaper for free by submitting quality and useful content. This can be really beneficial for all businesses as the newspapers and other form of media are with a view to present content in a cost effective way.

If an accounting firm wants to popularize their business with the help of article marketing then they can submit their articles to the news paper and other forms of media before the tax season, they should write and submit the article like ‘Best steps to avoid audit’. Not only is the accounting firm providing useful information, but they are also getting their name out there when it is most important for them to do so. In the same way a roofing company can write articles like ‘how to avoid ice damage on your rood during winter’ right before the winter season, this will allow you to publicize your business for free.  Ever since online marketing and ecommerce developed article marketing has become a very effective concept on internet for the success of the online business. Through internet article marketing, the companies and the advertisers can offer free articles to their customers.

Article directories are the place where these written articles are posted. The companies and other advertisers do not have to pay for posting their articles on article directories since they can earn money by marketing the articles on their website. On the basis of number of articles which are posted, these articles directory websites receives huge search engine recognition and by posting the articles the companies can take the benefit of this to establish their name in the market. Other than regular print marketing with articles article marketing has many other online dimensions and one of them is that it helps search engine optimization by making proper use of keywords and niches.

With the help of useful articles, the writers can spread their awareness amongst the potential customers, especially those who are pretty much interested in the concept. Article marketers who found article marketing as a very effective means to achieve desired results may have posted hundreds and thousands of articles.

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Telling a friend about a certain product you like is very much an advertisement for the product itself. The fact your enthusiasm for any brand or company has grown into a topic in a conversation between friends is enough to show the sincerity of your appreciation. In the same way, anything you talk or speak can spread amongst your family, relatives, or friends, your web site can be sent to thousands of people through an effective, well-implemented “tell a friend” feature

Most cases, a link to your “refer a friend” feature provides satisfactory results. Placing it in an area where the maximum number of web site visitors can see it will warrant the greatest results possible. Now once the link is clicked, a quick and easy to use method for e-mailing or instant messaging the visitor’s friend should be revealed. The information required to send the recommendation should be kept as simple as possible in order to ensure your visitor is not intimidated by the process.

If you possess the expertise or can invest in the necessary website design services, “AJAX” enabled features allow users to tell friends about products, services, and web sites without leaving your web site. The same to the comments areas featured on the popular video sharing site, YouTube, AJAX enabled tell-a-friend features allow the user to enter their friend’s contact information, send it, and receive a confirmation message without exiting your web site. This can vastly improve the immersive experience and brand recognition generated by your web site.

Once your tell-a-friend feature is installed you should be patient as you wait for the generation of new traffic.. Plus, always ensure your existing marketing efforts are generating enough entry traffic to cause a residual effect through your new feature. Without an existing base of web site users your tell-a-friend feature will more than likely not produce the additional traffic you seek..

As a webmaster you should know that it would be a huge thing if you could get each and every visitor to ‘tell a friend’ about your web-site. I would signify that for every ‘told friend’ you would be getting a visitor for FREE, better than that, one that had been ‘pre-sold’ because their friend had pre-sold or recommended your site.

A tell-a-friend feature is one of the most effective means for marketing your web site and generating new site traffic.. Taking advantage of every potential stream for new network traffic can result in more website exposure and more profit. So if I were you, don’t hesitate to build, institute, and take advantage of a tell a friend feature on your web site.

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