Streams of Targeted Traffic

But you can easily become a victim of your own success. When your efforts result in a steady stream of targeted traffic it’s all too easy to sit back and relax, watching that steady stream continuing to come in. That is fine, but why don’t you aim for the next level and try and find more streams of targeted traffic to add to it?

You probably already know that the more people you can get to visit your site who have an interest in what you want to sell, the more sales you will make. That much is obvious, and you’ll get a much higher conversion rate of visitors into sales than you will from a general audience, who mostly just sucks up your bandwidth each month.

Methods for Good Results

So think about what other methods you can use to find more targeted traffic. Which advertising methods can you use to get good results? Can you do things for free which don’t take much effort to get up and running? Even if you have to tweak them or do a little regular work every now and again to keep them working, it’s worth it if you get a lot of visitors in return who are genuinely interested in what you do.

However successful you are at the moment, targeted traffic can get you to the next level of online success. All you need to do is sit down and work out how you are going to get there.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is really important in any niche and doing a bit of research can help you find popular and profitable niches.  There are all kinds of tools online that are free and available for a fee that can help you learn about the popular online categories and keywords to focus on.

Google Trends

Alexa.com

WordTracker

The above links can help you learn more about what’s being searched for so you can decide where to focus your efforts.

Knowledge=Power=$

Using tools to help you discover what people are looking and what types of searches are being done for a particular category help you learn to work those keywords into your content so that you’ll get picked up by the search engines for your targeted key phrases and increase your chances of getting clicks or making sales.

What Should You Give Away?

A free report, a gadget, even something small like a gift card or a free book can help you in several ways including: increasing subscribers, generating traffic, building a mailing list and increasing your SEO.

Subscribers and SEO and Mailing Lists-Oh My!

You can do the above in several ways including asking people to write about you on their blog with a link or referring others to your site. They can also write in comments on your blog as well as do social bookmarking to tell others about your contests.You can even really utilise the contest entry by building a mailing list and starting to build an autoresponder series. Use names of contest entries to try to sell other products or services of yours (do be sure you offer an opt-out link.).

In terms of building a following and getting attention, the small investment you make in a giveaway can result in your making more money online overall.

Tips To Safeguard Your Google Adsense Account

To protect yourself and your online earnings, it’s important that you fully understand the terms of service. Do ensure you actually read the terms instead of simply scrolling and clicking to the “I agree” button. This way you’ll understand which subjects and actions are taboo.

Don’t ask for clicks. This may sound too obvious but really, even if you think you can get away with randomly asking a friend to click it will very likely catch up with you.

Don’t tell your family and friends that you are blogging for money or have a website for money because they might try to ‘help’ you. I once read on a forum that a particularly well-liked schoolteacher had told his students he was blogging and without his knowledge, the entire class tried to help him by clicking his ads. Needless to say Google saw the pattern by IP address and he lost his publisher status.  Best to keep it to yourself so that if someone does visit your site and decides to click an ad, they’re doing it out of natural curiosity.

If the unthinkable has happened and something has happened that you think will jeopardize your status, write to Google and explain. Hopefully your efforts will pay off.

Beware of Productivity Traps!

If you’re apt to go off to read a blog post or update your MySpace, Facebook or Twitter status and suddenly realise time has slipped away and you’ve been playing in cyberspace for the last hour and a half instead of working, a timer can help you. Set up a little egg timer by your computer and allocate time for tasks.  Here are a few tasks you might choose to do it for:

• Social bookmarking
• Link Building
• Bum Marketing
• Blog comments
• Social networking
• Keyword research
• Chatting

As an entrepreneur you are your own boss and as such, sometimes you need to crack a whip and make yourself get back to work! Feel free to dig through our archives here at www.seanseo.com for a few more minutes before you do so, though

The Importance of Ad Placement

Whether you have a content site or a blog, if you’re using advertising like Adsense, banners from Commission Junction or PepperJam or another affiliate program, placement is important. If you can imagine where the reader’s eyes will go when they read your article, that’s where the ads need to be.

So, if you’re writing blogs to make ad revenue, you’ll want the ads near the entry that the reader is looking at. Don’t put the ads all the way out of the way at the bottom of the page. Beside, above or directly below the text the user is reading can work the best. Blending your ads in with your website colours is also helpful because the ads look natural.

Experiment with the placement of the ads until you start to see results. It may take a few experiments to find the perfect blend and remember, the best way to get someone interested in clicking an ad is to leave enough to the imagination in your content that the user is bound to click the related ad looking for more info.

An Appropriate Domain Name

We all know that all the good ones have gone – allegedly – but it’s still important to make sure that the one you do finally decide on is easy to read, easy to understand and doesn’t need to be spelt out when you say it out loud to someone.

Here are a few good ways to see whether you have chosen the right domain name:

• Write it down – complete with the http:// bit – on a piece of paper. This sounds a bit mad but if you can see what your domain name looks like written down you’ll get an idea of whether it will work or not

• Tell a few other trusted people what domain name you are thinking of using. If you get comments like ‘Huh?’ or ‘Say that again?’ or ‘Can you spell that?’ then it might be worth having a rethink

• Try it with and without hyphens if you have more than one word in your suggested URL. Hyphens can be a pain but a longer URL can look totally confusing without them

Think About Keywords

In the end it’s just as much a matter of personal taste as it is anything else. You will have to live with your choice so make sure it’s a good one. You also need to ensure you think about keywords – don’t go for an obscure title that won’t help you in the search engines just because it sounds good. Put traffic flow first – you won’t get many visitors without it.

Ok? So go and choose a great domain name – and then grab it before someone else does.

What are Text Link Ads?

Text link ads are very much like Google Adsense in that they are contextual and look at your content to come up with relevant ads. Only, instead of being displayed in a side bar or blending in with your design in unobtrusive ad blocks, text link advertisements exist within your text.

When specific words and phrases are used in your text, the text will become a link and be underlined. As the reader hovers over that link, a pop-up window will generally come up with an ad that will take the reader away from your page.

Some people find these types of ads too cluttered and if a lot of your web page looks like links, your readers may not click any links you already intend to put in your text. The advertising can become overwhelming.

If you really want to give these links a try, there are a few things you might consider including:

Use contextual ads in archives instead of on your home page.

This way, your post of the day looks like usual and posts past a particular age can show text links and you can have the landing page of your blog that makes the first impression do something other than scream “blatant advertising”.

Using these ads but having this be your sole advertising program.

This could be a great approach. Instead of having ads and banners all over the place, one program in place could be the best approach when using text link advertising. You may decide to experiment and do trial periods with several types of ad programs or with ad placement until you find what fits your blog and helps with blog monetization.

E-mail Marketing

Marketers build e-mail lists and market selectively. Spamming would include many tactics such as anonymous email blasts, ignoring those who try to opt out or selling lists. If you want to build an e-mail list, consider giving away something for free, having a valuable newsletter or doing something else to build a list of people who are likely going to be interested in what you’re selling.

Article Marketing

Valuable articles will give the reader some information and may direct them some place they can go to in order to find out more information. They don’t generally contain affiliate links and they do provide value. If you try to spam through article marketing you probably won’t get very far because most e-zine sites have requirements and terms of service that prohibit spam.

Blogging or Splogging

While it’s perfectly fine to do advertising on your blog, you want valuable information there as well otherwise it’s considered a splog (spam blog) and you won’t have too many repeat visitors. Visitors who do arrive probably won’t buy anything or return again. Give people value and you’ll have more chances of making sales and having them do some of your marketing for you through social bookmarking.

Social Media: Don’t Be One Sided

If you’re constantly asking people on social networking tools and forums to Digg or Stumble your entry but never do it in return and never participate in discussions in a reciprocal way, eventually everyone will just ignore you. Reciprocate a little in your online marketing efforts and you’ll find a bit difference in how people receive you.

(photo credit: www.sxc.hu)

Here is some practical advice about using this service. A lot of people already know what constitutes scraping and plagiarism but for many who are new to using this service, these practical tips can be helpful.

Don’t Scrape!

The articles are free to use as long as you adhere to the terms and conditions indicated by the website. This includes leaving everything in the resource box in tact. Do make sure you are crediting the original author by linking as well otherwise it is considered site scraping and plagiarism and could cost you with your site hosting and your affiliate status with companies like Google.

Don’t Copy!

If you use an article to come up with ideas for your own content articles, be sure you’re not just rewriting a single article as this is plagiarism. Rewriting PLR articles is ok because you have bought the rights to alter that content. If you are simply taking ideas from article directories and promoting them as yours this is wrong. This doesn’t mean you can’t use the site to inspire ideas and take several articles and use them for research to come up with your own original article. Just be careful and consider using a tool like Copyscape to be sure you’re not inadvertently plagiarising.

Writing Articles of Your Own

Feel free to post your articles on this service. You can use it for your own marketing efforts and it helps build search engine rankings when you benefit from the resource box to target your desired key words and phrases.

What do widgets do?

Widgets can simply dress up your blog or they can provide function as well. They’re simple to insert and generally you can just paste the code into a text widget and place it where you like.  Many sites offer widgets for you to grab and use.  They can help you put advertising on the site as well as direct your traffic elsewhere. Here are some examples of blog widgets you might consider using:

Twitter or Plurk

These widgets can sit on your site and tell people what you’re doing. You can get the widget from your user settings and it’ll allow your website visitors to read your statuses, click to subscribe or follow your updates as well as let them see others on your friends list.

EzineArticles

Ezinearticles.com has a widget that feeds your articles to your site which can be great for your marketing efforts.

My Favourite Widgets

I’m a bit of a self-professed widget junkie.MyBlogLog has one of my favourite widgets. There are a few to choose from that look great and can show people your various blogs or your activities in social marketing so people can see the sites you Digg or Stumble as well as links for new posts in cyberspace. Wink offers my other favourite options as it also lets people check out a lot of different aspects of your online activity and is customisable so it’ll blend well into just about any template.

Social profile sites often have widgets you can use that can help you with social bookmarking and networking as well as dress your blog for success. There are also functional ones that feed internet marketing ads and other blogs for advertising and link exchanges. What widgets do you use and why?

Content is King

If you get all the search engines to index your site as number one but there’s nothing high quality when your visitors arrive, they’ll just skim your site and move on to something else without subscribing, buying or getting to the bottom of the page. Forget your keyword density and keyword proximity and your silos of researched keywords and phrases because it really doesn’t matter if you don’t have copy that will sell.

Do Success Formulas Exist?

Success and wealth will always come from quality and in internet marketing, you should also strive for quantity as well.

Here are three tips that can help you make smart search engine optimisation moves both on page and off so that your site will not only fare well in the search engines but will also convert visitors into buyers:

1) Keywords. Use logical words and phrases in your site. Use them in the titles, subheadings, toward the beginning and end of the page. Do make sure you fill in your meta descriptions as well. There are great SEO toolkits available to help you maximise SEO on your site.

2) Eye popping titles. Titles and lots of white space work best for online users. Break your text into small paragraphs instead of one long and continuous block of text. Look at the way this page that you are reading right now  is structured. You’ll see plenty of white space and headings to help your eyes quickly ascertain that there’s relevant info here. It’ll help catch eyes of visitors and help you with search engine relevancy as well.

3) Backlinks.  Get backlinks to your site. Visit blogs and forums and plug your site (without spamming of course) and do it on a regular basis so that you are continuously building relevancy on your site which can help you keep and improve your page rankings in the search engines.

In short, SEO trends can help you but while trends will come and go quality lasts forever and quality copy can convert more customers than SEO ever will.

photo credit: www.sxc.hu

You can also publish your own products on ClickBank for a fee so can do more to earn money above and beyond selling other people’s digital items. If you have an idea for an e-book or membership site, you can sell memberships through the ClickBank marketplace and make money when people buy copies of the digital product. Selling your own product on ClickBank can be great because you can have affiliates sell the product for you and increase your chances of making money.

How Does ClickBank Pay?

ClickBank pays by cheque or direct deposit and there are some requirements such as minimum order quantities and a specific mixture of credit card types that should purchase before you are cleared to receive payment. They also have policies regarding chargebacks. You’ll find a number of products to sell through ClickBank and many marketers make the lion’s share of their income through this program.

Too Many Online Communities?

That’s where you need to be wary of how many online communities you join. There is no definite number, and what one person finds to be unmanageable might be just the right amount for someone else.

The key to getting the most out of your own online communities is to find out what your happy number is. If you get to the stage where keeping up with them all is getting difficult – and your work is suffering as a result – then you know you’ve got too many.

It can also depend on how particular online communities are set up. Some are much easier to understand and use than others, and by their very nature it’s going to be the easy to use ones that will get to stay if you find you need to start paring down your efforts in this area.

Get the Best Response

But you should also consider which sites get you the best response, and funnel the largest amount of traffic over to your website. Those will ultimately be the ones that should stay, since they are bringing in the largest volume of interested people.

Social networking has great potential when it comes to locating the target audience for whatever you are selling. When the sites don’t allow you to advertise directly to other members, you can still make a name for yourself because people will start looking for you and your website.

So choose your online communities wisely. Sometimes less really can be more.

Blogs

Start a MySpace account and other free blog accounts and write regularly in those blogs to promote your self. Anchor your desired keywords to your sites and blogs in this blog. Google seems to love MySpace for indexing so creating links that point to your new website or blog from this social networking tool can be helpful. People also browse through their friends’ lists regularly so adding ‘friends’ on these sites can help you as well.

Article Directories

Submit to sites like Ezinearticles and create alternate pen names or even just resource boxes that can help you to get more links pointing to your online homes. Search engines take notice and so do people who might read your articles and visit your sites.

Online Communities

Post your site URL on forums in your auto signature and in your profiles on online sites as well such as Plurk, Twitter and others. People will visit and search engines will as well. If you post often on a community forum, every post could equate to a link to your website. Some prolific posters on high ranking online forums will even offer signature links for sale because it can equate to great SEO results.

Every Little Bit Helps!

In terms of SEO and online marketing, every little effort can help a little bit in getting you more traffic and making you more money!

Submit Your URLS to Search Engines

Here are places where you can manually submit:

http://www.google.com/addurl/

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx

Social Bookmarking

Go to sites like Digg, Stumbleupon and Del.icio.us and bookmark your site. These sites will bring traffic to your site as well. You can also get traffic and attention by trying to get noticed on places like Technorati, Twitter and Plurk. Be sure if you have other sites, you link from them to your new site thorugh blogrolls or link pages. Blog about your new site as well on your other online homes and write a few articles for article sites with links to your new site in the resource box. Spending a bit of time getting search engines to notice your website could shave days or even weeks off the process of getting organic search engine results.

Why Trade Links?

Getting links on other related blogs in cyberspace and related blog links on your blog as well can help you with your SEO and can contribute to increased page rank with search engines. The more you’re plugged into topics and linked, the the more relevant search engines will view your site as being.

Places to Find Other Bloggers in Your Niche

Blog Catalog is a great place to find bloggers in your niche. Search on a tag (category) related to your own niche and you’ll find others in that category that you can visit. You can also send private messages to others to suggest that you trade blog links with them in your blogroll.

Consider visiting forums and putting up requests for trading links as well. Webmaster forums or forums in your particular niche can be a great place to get ideas and find bloggers to do blog carnivals and niches with.

Internet marketing can be a lot like exercise. Once you’ve done the same thing for a while your routine can stop showing you results. Diversifying income and switching up your marketing tactics is important. While some things continue to work and bring you results, there comes a time when you’ll want to stretch a little so you can reach new goals. Just like exercise routines need to periodically be adjusted so do advertising methods.

Signs you may need to switch your marketing tactics:

• Slow down in traffic
• Slow down or level out of dollars earned
• Loss of search engine positioning

Things you can do to switch things up:

• Try a new article directory
• Do some social marketing with new social media tools
• Read some e-books and find out about the latest new trends, ideas and tools.

Staying up to date on the latest and greatest internet marketing news and trends can help you stay ahead of the curve so you don’t flatline in your earnings. Tested and true can work but try to stay ahead of the game by trying new techniques every few months as well.

When deciding to start your affiliate marketing career, it can be tempting to sign up for everything under the sun and go crazy.  The problem with this is that it’s the equivalent of trying to juggle with not enough hands and too many balls.  Instead, consider starting slow, perfecting your skills and then adding to the mix.

Affiliate Marketing: Fine Tune Your Skills

Concentrate your efforts on one program at a time until things are kind of on autopilot. You can always come back later and tweak or improve your efforts on a money making program but until you’re making money consistency on one program, don’t be tempted to start on something new. There are so many profitable niches and programs that it can be difficult to be patient but patience and focus will pay off.

Start off With Small Goals

If you want to sign up for five different programs, you might set small goals of trying to hit specific milestones with one program before adding another to the mix.  By learning the ropes and fine tuning your skills in one area, you can move forward confidently into a new revenue stream before long.

When are you ready to go from learning about earning for free to paying for secrets?  The answer is simple.  When you have a thirst for more and can’t find the information for free it might be time to find an internet marketing guru.  Once you’ve started earning some commissions or hit payout with Google Adsense, you might be ready to take your internet marketing career from that of a newbie to the path of becoming a guru.

Never stop reading the free stuff as you’ll find that new information and new angles continuously develop but there may come a time when you decide you’re ready to pay some money for information. Do yourself a favour and spend time researching before you take the plunge!

Reading Product Reviews

Product review sites are all over the Internet.  Some of them offer great information on what’s available. A good product review site will have purchased the products they review and offer valuable positive and negative information as well.

It’s a good guess to assume you’ll find affiliate links on these sites but that doesn’t mean the information isn’t valuable. Take time to look at a few reviews before you make your decision about buying an affiliate marketing e-book or a membership.The reviews should do more than tell you a product is great. They should provide insight about how to use it, what features and benefits it has as well as what type of results the reviewer got.

Who Is Promoting Your Site?

A lot of internet marketers do everything they can to spread the word about their website, but when it comes to promoting their blog things can go slightly awry. Some of them seem to leave the promoting to other people, hoping that every visitor who finds them will tell everyone else and send waves of traffic flowing in their direction.

Real life is not so wonderful of course. You should be promoting your blog by shouting from every rooftop you can find. If you have business cards make sure your blog URL is printed on them. If you fancy the idea of one of those neat metal strips on the outside of your car, boasting your web address and an eye catching quote from your blog, why not splash the cash and get one made up?

Blog Self Promotion - Every Little Bit Helps

Sometimes all it takes to be promoting your blog in a way that will get you noticed is to do it differently from everyone else. Try printing up some slips of paper on your computer with a cryptic message or tantalising question that leaves people wanting to know more. Add your URL and stick those bits of paper wherever you can think of that’s relevant.

If you write about internet marketing, stick a piece of paper in every internet marketing book you can find at your local library. Get creative. Be different. It’s what will get you found when you are actively promoting your blog.

Getting Approval From Google

The fastest way to get approval from Google is to show them what your plans are.  Start a blog and post regularly in it before you apply for approval. Wait a few weeks before you apply so Google can see regular posting and content on your site. If you send in an application and don’t show Google that your website is valuable, you might not get approved. They do want to maintain integrity in their program and if you look like a spammer or splogger, you won’t get very far.

How much money can you make on Google?

Google doesn’t reveal their formula for money making potential but there are website owners and bloggers  that have significant Google earnings.  Don’t put all your eggs in one basket by trying to make all your money from one online source but adding Google to your multiple streams of income is a great idea.

SEO Tips For Your Blog

On your blog you’ll want to do on-page and off-page search engine optimising. This means that on the blog you do things that make search engines want to crawl you such as having blog tags, categories, using links inside your blog to other blogs posts as well as links to outside sites through your blogroll and your blog entries.

In terms of off-page SEO, you might consider visiting other blogs in your niche and linking back to your blog through blog comments.  Also use sites to catalog your blog such as Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog which can draw visitors in from other pages. Being friendly to search engines with SEO will get you more rankings and more visitors.

Visitor Tips

Once the visitors arrive, give them a warm welcome! Talk to your visitors in a friendly tone in your posts and stop by and visit their blogs to return the favour when they’ve been kind enough to comment or to link to you on their blog.  When someone leaves a comment that asks a question or compliments your site answer them and consider leaving a comment on their site as well.

Don’t overdo it on the advertisements. You may be in the blogging business for the ad revenue but if your blog doesn’t provide any value, you won’t have many visitors and you definitely won’t get any subscribers. Carefully managing your blog to appeal to the people and the search engines will help increase your chances of online success.

Choosing Your Niche

Are you passionate about a subject? Is there something you could endlessly learn about? If so, this might be a good niche for you because the more time you spend researching, learning and developing a niche the better your chances of attaining success and fulfillment.

Look at what’s out there. There are countless lists available talking about the most profitable niches. Read up on them and drill down until you pick a favourite.

Lookat free keyword search tools and see what you find in the news, on sites like Technorati which will make the tags for the most popular comments the biggest, Google Trends and Alexa which will give you a good inclindation of what people want to know about.

After you’ve decided on a starting point, you’ll find loads of information through websites and blogs and to get information delivered right to your e-mail box, consider using a tool like Google Alerts to send you messages about new information in that niche. We’ll talk some more about Google Alerts tomorrow.

But what is an internet marketer to do?

If you are using Wordpress for your blog, consider using the Askimet plug-in.  This will catch a big portion of your spam and save you considerably on moderating time.  You can also set your your comments as moderated only which will stop the spam before it’s published. You can quickly view the comments and manually approve the ones you want to let through. You can set up some blogs so that commenters are approved automatically after they have one approved comment but be careful about this because some crafty spammers can take advantage of this loophole and post one useful comment only to come back later and try to post spam on your site. You might need to de-approve some commenters.

All in all, you want to be choosy about who is allowed to link to your site because association with certain kinds of sites can bring your own search engine ranking down. The good news is that search engines seem to be finding your site and people think it’s valuable enough to try and capitalise on your success!

(Image courtesy of sxc.hu)

Well here is a solution that can pull in some more traffic as well as giving you some time off. Why not think about inviting someone to do some guest postings for you? This is also a great solution if you’re very busy or away for a week on vacation.

Where To Find A Guest Blogger

Finding someone to do this isn’t actually as hard as you might think. The first step is to think about where you might find such a person. You will want to use someone who has already made a name for themselves in your particular niche, and maybe has done guest postings before.

Make your offer enticing by saying that you will include a permanent link back to their own site or blog in return for a couple of guest postings on yours. If you pick a niche blogging guest who has a successful and well established site already you will probably find that some of their traffic and following naturally comes over to your site to see what they’ve got to say for themselves in their guest postings.

Spice Up Your Blog

Guest postings can really spice up your blog, especially if you feel it’s gotten a bit stale. By introducing a new point of view into the mix you can make things more interesting for your existing visitors and readers, and attract new ones as well. If your blog is a good one, you can expect some of the fans of your guest blog poster will stay with you even when they return to their own site.

Always keep an eye out for people you could invite to say a few words. It could be the start of a fresh new era for your blog and their regular viewers could start subscribing to your blog as well.

The Curiosity Factor in Online Advertising

If you write a blog post about how to build a house and you tell everything to the reader, there’s no reason to click, is there?

However, if you pique the right amount of curiosity in your copy and manage to pepper in some great keywords, you should get advertisements that directly relate to your customer’s interest so that they’ll click the ads to learn more.

Providing Value Without Revealing All Your Cards

In terms of copywriting tips for Google Adsense ad revenue, you want to give enough value to your visitor that they want to read more but don’t feel cheated like you’re simply telling them nothing. It’s tricky to strike the perfect balance between value and piqued interest but getting there can result in people clicking your advertisements and helping you make payout every month with Google.

With school of thought number one, you might think it’s better to be up front about being an affiliate selling a product either by saying so or simply by presenting your link with your code in it without worrying about cloaking. On the other side, some  suggest people are more likely to buy your product if they don’t think they’re being sales pitched or sold to. For some reason, a lot of people don’t feel good about someone getting a commission off their purchase. Some will even try to avoid your affiliate link if they really want to buy it and you led them there. This is why many affiliate programs will credit you with the sale due to a ninety-day http cookie.

You might consider conducting experiments and seeing what bodes better for you. If you choose to cloak your links, there are free tools like Tinyurl.com that can take a long URL and turn it short as well as make it difficult to see where someone is about to click through to.  This type of tool can be useful for more than just affiliate marketing. It can be great in micro blogging environments like Twitter and Plurk or anywhere else that has a 140 character maximum.

Link Cloaking Tools

If you’ve decided that cloaking is something you want to do, there are link cloaking tools that are free and available for a fee. Do be careful you’re not cloaking beyond recognition or you could impact your ability to get paid through companies such as ClickBank.

Finding Blogs in Your Niche

If you want to find people to trade links with and you’re a blogger, check out other blogs in your niche. Have a look at tools such as MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog which can help you find blogs to check out. You can find plenty of blogs with similar tags and join their neighbourhood. By doing so, you’re also increasing your own profile. Comment on other blogs and link back to your own blog (without spamming, of course) and join blog neighborhoods through the Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog tools. By doing this, you’ll also get interest from other people interested in your subject matter

Link Love

If you give other some link love on your blog by posting a link to their blog, they will often return the favour. They might write a post featuring something you wrote and they might put you on their blogroll. The blogosphere is a vast place but within specific niches is actually quite a tight knit group and when people like what they see and think they’ll get something out of your blog (whether it’s link love reciprocation or valuable information) they’ll probably visit often.

Find More Subscribers

When you comment on a blog, you’ll leave a link to your own blog. People interested in what you have to say will probably come by to see what else you have to say. Write interesting and helpful comments.

SEO

Search engines like to index you when they find you in your niche so if you’re a diet blogger and want to be known that way, comment on blogs in that niche with a link back to your site and this will help your search engine rankings.

Blogroll

Many bloggers will put frequent commenters on their blogroll which can bring you plenty of visitors as well. There are some great new widgets as well in tools like Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog as well as avatar sites that let you leave your logo or face on the blog which can help bring you more exposure and entice visitors to that blog to stop by and visit you.

Reciprocating Commenters

It’s good blogging etiquette to visit blogs where people have taken the time to comment. If you do, chances are the blog owner could stop by your blog to return the favor and that can bring more activity and self-promotion to your own blog in terms of comments and links.

How Do You Write a Great Byline?

The byline should tell interested readers a bit about you and where they can find more information about you. If anchored keywords related to your niche are present, they’ll tell people about what you do and give them a place to link to in order to find out more about you. This can bring you further publicity.

Here are two examples:

Dana Prince is a writer and blogger who thrives on information about internet marketing. Read more of Dana’s blog posts at www.seanseo.com.

I tagged myself as a blogger and showed where people could read more of my blogs about internet marketing.

And:

Sean Rasmussen is an internet marketer and success communicator who has been helping people learn to be successful entrepreneurs for several years. 

I’ve linked to two places where Sean can be found that anchor words related to his topics. This can help people interested in either subject click through to learn more and helps the search engines index Sean for these targeted key phrases.

You can use the byline to generate interest, help you become perceived as a subject matter expert and get you human visitors and search engine spider visitors as well. Those spiders will help your website’s SEO significantly. Use the space at the bottom of your page on article directories and guest posts to your full advantage!

Stumble Around Cyberspace

The internet is a neverending entertainment zone. You might have several areas of interest you browse and StumbleUpon knows what you want. How? When you set up your profile, you define the types of sites you want to see. It could be blogs, food or health or internet marketing or internet tools or  photography or another area you like to see.

When you hit the Stumble button, it’ll show you sites in your category. You can vote for a thumbs up or a thumbs down and the tool decides whether you’d like to see more of those types of sites (based on the categories in the listing) or not. The more thumbs up, the more often people will be shown that page.

Bookmarking Your Own Posts

Social bookmarking is something that can definitely help you get relevant traffic and search engine positions. When you use this tool to give a thumbs up to your own site, you have a great chance of getting some traffic to your website.  By using relevant tags and categories people who want to see what you have on your site are more likely to see it. They can give it a thumbs up or down as well.

Friends on Stumbleupon

If you follow friends on this tool, you can also see what they like and browse their favourites. They can browse yours as well.  There are some great tools and options worth exploring on this social marketing tool.

In summary, this is one of my favourite tools for bookmarking for myself as well as finding interesting content. Actually, it can be downright addictive!

OnlyWire

Social bookmarking can get you more traffic. Plain and simple. Placing interesting headlines on sites that information-hungry people browse within hot categories can net you traffic, subscribers and maybe even some sales.

What is OnlyWire?

OnlyWire is a bookmarklet that contains many social bookmarking sites.  Instead of having to visit several sites every time you want to do some bookmarking, you can simply use the toolbar in your browser to bookmark them all at once.  Then, if you have a new website or new blog post you want to share with the world,  you can simply enter the details once.

Setting Up Social Bookmarking Accounts

Several of the tools in the system might be ones you already use but if not, you’ll want to visit all the sites first and create accounts.  Then you’ll need to set up the tool with your username and password for each site.  Sites covered by this bookmarklet include: del.icio.us, Furl, Wink, Blogmemes, Bluedot and others.

And long blog posts can give you another advantage as well. Let’s say you’ve written a really good article on a subject you frequently write about. You’ve sent it to a few article directories and you are pointing the resource box towards your main website.

Why not make even more out of that one article by using it as a blog post?

And better still, you could give anyone and everyone who reads it permission to put it on their website or blog. They might link to it anyway, but why not let them copy and paste it over with a backlink to your site?

Fresh Content For Other Sites

People are forever looking for fresh new content to put on their own sites, and if you actually say to someone, ‘Hey look, I’ve got a great piece here you can use wherever you like – just make sure the contact details at the bottom stay the same…’, that’s really persuasive. It’s steering them carefully towards doing exactly what you want them to – which is to stick your nice long blog post on another site somewhere to give you even more exposure.

The internet is all about sharing, but even while some people might like to read and use your content elsewhere, they won’t ever get around to asking you if they can do so. If you give them permission up front you never know where your articles could end up.

If you’re pretty new to internet marketing you’ll still be looking for ways to promote yourself and start to make a name for yourself. Giving people permission to republish your blog posts is a great way to do just that. So why not start writing, posting and offering right now?

Why Use Social Bookmarking?

Today, the web is all about Web 2.0 and the social side of the Internet and that’s one of the reasons blogs can be so effective and profitable. Not only does the way the web works with social bookmarking give you the ability to get more exposure for your blog but it helps you find more relevant websites to link to and to gain knowledge from as well. Web 2.0 tools can be integrated into your site and you can also use them yourself after you’ve created a new blog entry. Here are a few tools you can use and a few tips:

Technorati

Technorati is a blog directory. Once you list your blog, people can find you. The more popular you are, the more potential new visitors you get. Technorati is a robust tool worthy of a full post about it which we’ll explore another day but for today, let’s just say that by using technorati tags in your blog, you can increase your blog visitors based on people who want the information you’re sharing. This is also a great tool for keeping up with blogs you are interested in reading.

Blog Catalog or MyBlogLog

Joining Blog Catalog or MyBlogLog gives you access to another directory of blogs and people can find you in those directories. There are also some great widgets you can display to dress up your blog and by visiting other blogs in your niche, you can display your face on other blogs and entice new visitors.

Digg

Digg is a great tool for getting traffic to specific articles. By logging into the tool and submitting specific articles, you can bring traffic to your site. When you put a digg button on your post, you also get the bonus of letting your blog subscribers or visitors show their appreciation by giving you some social love.

There are dozens and dozens of social tools out there to help you maximize your blog and website’s potential which can help you make more money online.

How Blogging Can Help Internet Marketing Efforts

A blog, added to your website can do a lot for your search engine optimization. Not only can you continually add more information to help you get more visitors but you can also be sure that the search engine spiders will start visiting your site more often.

Every time you make a change to a web page, the spiders want to come and visit and see what’s new. The blog is a great way to get Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other search engines visit more regularly.

Visit Other Blogs in Your Niche

By writing blog posts relevant to your niche and commenting on other posts in that category, with a link back to your site, you’ll increase your search engine presence as well as get people putting you on their blogroll which can help you get more relevant visitors, too.