All of the top major search engines are currently battling for market share. As social websites become more and more popular, it is becoming less common that someone will find your site through a search engine. This is exactly why you have to branch out and ensure that your content is on far more than just your own websites.

Watch what the major search engines are adding to their sites for enhanced functionality. You could just catch the next great method of finding your customers simply by watching what Google releases next as a feature. Yahoo has some great features, too. Watch what they are doing as the competition gets more fierce.

Google Tip: When looking for who is linking to a site, Google only gives a small sample of links when using this command:

link:http://www.url.com
Instead try this:
“www.url.com”

This will give you every time that specific url is listed in their results. Yahoo’s site explorer also gives a very comprehensive listing of the links pointing to a site.

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Paying for traffic is great when you have no time or a brand new site, but wouldn’t it be nice to find your customers without paying for them? Outside of small ads on forums, I haven’t paid for any advertising in 18 months. I simply don’t need to. I have mastered the free methods so completely that I personally don’t need to pay for traffic at all.

Obviously, the free methods are the main focus in this course.

Understand that you don’t necessarily have to do all of the work with many of these methods. Outsourcing tedious work is the first step to having a serious and profitable business.

Let’s say you love to write articles, but hate to do any graphics or web work. Take a look at the communities that you’re a part of right now and find someone that likes to do those things. Trade work with them and you’ve now found someone that you can outsource the things you hate to do. You also have a new relationship that can help you expand your business even further.

Search Engine Optimization

Free rankings in search engines show a much higher likelihood of click-throughs than PPC ads. Obtaining those rankings isn’t always easy though. Search engine optimization is a changing craft at all times. What works today may not work tomorrow. This is why you should focus on ethical methods of proving to search engines that you are a site worth visiting. Trying to cheat the system will do nothing but make your job more difficult the next time the engines decide to update their systems.

Use multiple sites on different hosting plans from different companies (feel free to trade with friends) to set up a silo structure for your sites. What this does is allow you to raise your own search engine rankings by linking to your sites from each other.

By having multiple sites linking back and forth, you are funneling traffic from one of your sites to the next. Focus on using links that will make you money if they point to sites you don’t own!

On-Page SEO – html coding, Meta tags (title, keywords, description), header tags, inner-site linking structure, and site content. Formatting these tags right can make or break your rankings. The focus on onpage factors of SEO has changed due to spam and cheaters.

Use this example for your Meta Tags:

<title>Your Company Keyword 1 | Keyword Phrase 2</title> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Add 2 to 3 sentences here and be sure to use your main keywords and keyword phrases."> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Keep this keyword tag simple, only use 10 to 20 keywords and keyword phrases separated by commas">

You MUST utilize these tags: Alt tags for images using keywords, h1 to h6 (header) tags for important keywords, and tags for keywords on every page.

Add a robots.txt file even if you don’t need one, the search engines look for it.

?Add at least one content page of between 300 and 600 words based around your main keywords every week. Before you know it you’ll have a huge site with a ton of great information, which the search engines love!

Use text links at the bottom of every page and insert at least one text link inside the content of every page utilizing your targeted keywords.

?Keep your site clean and simple whenever possible. If your site is hard to navigate, you won’t get business whether you get zero traffic or thousands of visitors.

?Google has developed their methods to a point of recognizing when someone is writing for people. This is called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). What this means is that they look for related terms in your content. If you are writing about office chairs, they expect to see terms like desk, computer, and bookshelf. Simply write for people and don’t worry too much about this.

Add a sitemap and submit it to Google (sitemap.xml) and Yahoo. The big 3 search engines have agreed to use the sitemap.xml format. For more info on this go to sitemaps.org.

Off-Page SEO – This is completely link development. There are many ways of obtaining links for SEO and most of them are discussed here. Every link that points to your website is considered a vote by the engines. Does this mean you need to generate millions of inbound links? Not really. Focus on quality over quantity and your SEO picture will come together.

Search engines put a high weight on the words you use to link to your sites. This is called anchor text. Here is how a html link is formatted:

<a href="url.com">Anchor Text to be displayed</a>

You must use a multi-tiered approach in your link building. By using the methods contained here, you will have tons of links pointing to your sites in no time. Just be sure to use as many as you can.

Firefox Add-ons give you some amazing abilities when it comes to seeing what your competition is doing. This specific SEO plugin from Aaron Wall’s SEO Book site allows you to see which sites are using the “no-follow” attribute on outbound links. This allows you to save time when looking to build links to your website. You can find it here.

Universal Search

Google has made the wise decision to incorporate images, videos, news, maps, and products into their regular search results. Understand that Google can’t read images or video.

News Optimization

Getting into Google News is as simple as submitting a press release to the right press release directories. See the press release section for more information on this.

Maps Optimization

Check your address and make sure that it is listed as your business. If not, modify the address! If someone looks for your exact business name, this will normally be the first result.

Image Optimization – Images are actually searched quite a bit. Your affiliates will search for images they can use in promotions and you can definitely get visitors through image optimization.

To optimize images do these simple, but very specific things:

Name your images with your keywords

Over 83,000 results with the name “image001”. These people should be embarrassed!

Your “alt tag” should use your keywords. This tag was created for the blind so they can understand what they would be looking at if they could see. Don’t be spammy and keep it focused. Also, don’t name all of your images with the same keywords, change it up!

The words near your image should also be your main keywords. Nobody is doing proper image optimization and you can dominate the image results for nearly any keyword imaginable. Video Optimization – Videos are searched every day, all day long. Did you know that the average YouTube user spends over 43 minutes watching videos every day? Be sure to check out the video marketing section for detailed instructions on dominating video sites.

Your title should start with the term you want to rank for. Your description should include your keyword terms in different, logical, and readable sentences. Your tags need to include your keywords. Join terms with a dash if needed. Attract viewers to your video by putting it everywhere!

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Before reviewing paid methods, you must understand the different models used when paying for customers:

CPA – Cost Per Action: You pay people that drive customers to you that take a desired action. The standard model here is a purchase where you pay through an affiliate program for customers that people send you. Don’t limit this method to affiliate programs, there are many other applications. You can pay people to send you visitors that sign up for your newsletter. A typical newsletter subscriber should be worth a minimum of $1 per month. Pay out $1 and you will be earning money on that new customer by the time next month comes.

CPM – Cost Per Thousand (Impressions): This is where you pay for banner or text ad placement and no matter how many clicks you get, you pay for how many times you ad is shown. Banner advertising disappeared for awhile, but it is very much alive and well. The key with this kind of advertising is to set it up where those that view your ad or image are given a reason to click on it. Whether you offer something for free or put decent enough sales copy to entice a viewer to take the action you want them to take, you have to put in the effort to get them to do what you want.

CPC – Cost Per Click: This is the standard method of advertising through Google, Yahoo, or MSN. You pay them when one of their visitors clicks on an ad you have placed with them. See the PPC section for more details on this specific method of getting new customers.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

The concept of pay per click advertising is simple. You bid on the keywords you want to rank for and you automatically appear based on the amount of the other bids for the same keyword. It’s an easy and automatic way of generating traffic to your website immediately. The key to doing this properly is to do keyword research. You can find tons of methods of doing this, including through the pay per click search engines you choose.

My secret website for this is www.spyfu.com. It gives you:

• Average Cost Per Click
• Current Adwords Ads
• Organic Results
• Categories
• Terms Others Buy With Your Main Term
• Related Terms and Concepts

With this you get to spy on your competition and see what is working for them!

Secret website – www.crazyegg.com – Analyzes where your clicks are on any page. Tells you what links were clicked on. This gives you a clear look into what customers are doing.

Secret PPC Success Strategies

Success with PPC is guaranteed when you focus on specific elements of your ads.

Keywords: People follow a routine when looking for products:

• Search for a single keyword.
• Search for 2 words.
• Search with brand names.
• Search for long tail terms (3 to 5 words).
• Buy!

What do you think you should focus on with your pay per click strategy?

Long terms! Use longer and more focused terms. Your conversion will be much higher and you will pay less per click.

Your Ad Copy: There are two specific areas to focus on with your ad copy.

First, you must use specific ads for every term you target. Using that term in your ad will increase click through rates.

Next, The ad itself MUST be attractive to a consumer. People know where paid listings are and normally don’t even look at them. This is a simple fact based on studies of where someone looks on their computer screen while using search engines. Test your copy, if it isn’t working – change it!

The next piece is your quality score. Having the terms that you are paying for on the landing page you are sending people to will reduce your cost per click. This must be organic and look natural, once your page becomes spammy, your potential customers will lose interest in you and what you’re doing.

Secret tip – There are two specific terms that will always attract buyers: Review and Bonus. Review applies to any niche, while bonus applies mostly to internet marketing specifically.

PPC Search Engines:

• https://adwords.google.com/
• http://www.overture.com/
• http://www.espotting.com/
• http://www.findwhat.com/
• http://listings.looksmart.com/
• http://www.kanoodle.com/ Sucks – Don’t bother!

What to Watch:

• Costs – Set a budget, otherwise you’ll end up with a $400 bill in a few days and at least as angry as the image above . All pay per click programs come with a budgeting tool, where you can limit the daily expense for your program.

• Click Fraud – The engines do their best to prevent charging you for competitors clicking on your ads. Your competitors will click on your ads to eliminate your daily budget and remove your ad. Once your budget is gone, your ad is gone, too! This moves their ad up and benefits them by costing you money.
• Companies – Depending on how competitive your keywords are, you may want to think about the non-mainstream companies. Google and Yahoo are great, but Exactseek is $4 per month with no click charges! You should only use alternatives with EXTREMELY competitive terms as they get a lot less visitors than the big dogs.

Banners and Buttons

I’ve heard from numerous different marketers that someone needs to see your offer 7 times before they even consider it. Banner advertising is the perfect way to take advantage of that. You have a nice looking graphic ad created and pay to have it posted on sites that have traffic that would be interested in what you have to offer.

Your banner should be created with your customer in mind and lure them in to find out more. Curiosity will get you new visitors and customers you may not have ever found. The more they see your ad the more likely they will become curious enough to visit your site for more information.

Your banner ads should be left in place for as long as you can afford to test them. If you get zero results from a banner ad that has gotten 10,000 impressions, then it’s time to think about not paying for that anymore. A simple 100 or 1,000 impressions isn’t enough to be sure that the right people have seen your ad.

Finding places to put your banners is not hard at all. Forums are a great place to pay for this type of advertising. Blogs can work extremely well, too. With blogs, be sure that it is content heavy and not filled with promotions of other products. When searching for sites in your niche that you can dominate, look to see if they have advertising and what types they have.

Create as many different types of banners. Common sizes include:

• 88 X 31
• 468 X 60
• 120 X 60
• 125 X 125
• 250 X 250
• 600 X 160

(measured in pixels)

Blog and RSS Feed Advertising

Paying people to review you or your products on their blogs can be an extremely effective way of promoting your website. Find a blog in your niche that gets a ton of visitors and look for an icon that offers paid reviews. Be sure to choose bloggers that have a solid reputation and don’t do a lot of reviews for others. The more objective their review, the better your product looks and the more sales you will make. Check out Reviewback to do free review exchanges.

Advertising in someone else’s RSS feed can be effective with the right feed. You need to be extremely cautious with this one as it has shown in testing to be very hard to track and get pretty dismal results. When picking a feed that you want to advertise in, be sure that you can find out how many users are subscribing to that specific feed. If they don’t have numbers for you, don’t bother! Find feed advertising sources here.

Contests

Having a contest can bring you in tons of qualified visitors. The goal of your contest is to ensure that anybody that may be interested in what you’re offering sees the contest and takes part if possible. To do this, do a press release, blog about it, and submit it to these sites:

• Contest Blogger
• Blog Contest
• Site Contest
• Beat Blog Contests
• The Prize Blog
• RevieWOW
• Disregard Me
• Contest Tracker
• Enter Now!
• The Contest Winner
• My Blog Contests
• My Blog Contest
• Blog Contests
• The Link Bait
• Contest Blog
• Contester

Be sure you get the most exposure possible for your contest. You want it to pay off, right?

Where you gain your exposure is completely up to you. If you have the time to do it, comment on high traffic blogs in your niche, write articles, pay for the upgrade on PRWeb and get it in front of as many eyeballs as you can.

Web Directories

We are not talking about getting listed in directories for SEO purposes, but traffic. When analyzing directories for traffic you must:

• ?Find Niche Directories: You need to search for your main keywords and phrases on the search engines to find high traffic sites that may be willing to add your site their directory. Most of these directories will want payment to show your website. Research these sites on Alexa and Google and only pay for the ones that will be worth your money.
• The Almighty Dmoz: Dmoz is extremely important because their directory fills Google’s. The results in their index also make up the results of hundreds of other directories. The problem with Dmoz is that the editors are finicky. They do what they want, when they want. It can take anywhere from 2 months to 2 years for your sites to be accepted into their index.
• ?My simple Dmoz recommendation: Submit your websites immediately to Dmoz when you buy the domain name. They won’t be looking at it any time soon, anyways. You simply have no way of making Dmoz editors take notice of you and your website. If you pester the editors, they will ignore your site for even longer. Be patient and they will get to it when they can.
• ?Paid Directories: To gain traffic, the paid directories are the only ones you should worry about. The higher the page rank of the directory, the higher traffic it should have. These do not need to be niche specific. Any high traffic directory will work just fine. You can find a complete list of directories, their page ranks, and recommendations about which are worth the money here.
• Format your directory submissions to lure in a customer. Treat it like a PPC ad and they will click on your listing.

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Google is truly your best friend when searching for your audience. This method will find that elusive bunch of customers in a few minutes of your time. The first thing you do is search for your main keywords in Google.

Next, go through the results and look for communities! This can be forums, social networks, topic focused article sites and many other options. Offer free content to the site owners through forms or email. Most of these sites will have a “help” section that will tell you exactly how to submit your content.

Be sure to read all of the rules! Some sites won’t allow affiliate links, but will allow articles linking to your site. They, of course, cannot control the information you put on a site you own. Keep everything content based to ensure that you get your content published and put in front of their audience. Once they click the link to your site, you can promote to them as hard as you see fit.

Be courteous and cautious when you first start off at these sites. They have no idea who you are or what your intentions are. Provide answers and knowledge with no expectations and the traffic will start flowing. Remember that you are the new person and you need to prove yourself.

***WARNING***

Not reading pieces of this course due to your level of interest in the topic will lead to you missing important pieces that won’t be mentioned later. The PPC portion talks about how customers search for a product. This helps with other methods of driving traffic, too!

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Have you ever heard the term “Content is King”? It’s true, but the most important details is being left out.

The RIGHT Content is King!

What you should be doing is focusing on creating the content that will suck in visitors like crazy. Certain specific things will pull in visitors with little or no effort from you, outside of creating the content. This is exactly what you should be focusing on. The term Linkbait refers to creating the RIGHT content and here is how you do it.

Method #1: Controversy

What problems are your customers facing? Either create or have a tool created that addresses this problem and makes it easier to deal with. It could be a Firefox or Internet Explorer Tool bar, a desk top software, or a web based application. No matter how simple, if it works, you can expect tons of highly targeted traffic.

If you plan on selling the software, create a free version to ensure that you pull in the most interested people to your list and you will be able to contact them with follow up offers later, as well.

Once you have this linkbait created, you must ensure that your potential customers find it. Here is a visual process map that shows you how to spread this content out as far as you can.

The key is to remember that your Linkbait does not only have to go in one place. Post it to places like Squidoo, your social networking profiles and article directories to really make a difference. Next, social bookmark it everywhere!

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