campaign, driving traffic to your website can very difficult.
However, the situation is not hopeless. There are many ways that you can drive traffic to your website without being a search engine optimization expert, or having a large amount of capital to invest in expensive web promotion and marketing. Below are a few very informative articles detailing creative and inexpensive methods you can apply to increasing traffic to your website.
How To Succeed With Search Engine Optimization
The SEO Rules Have Changed
from www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com
Much has happened to search engine optimization (SEO) in the last years. It has become much more difficult to get high rankings for a web site. However, it's still possible to get your web site at the top of the list if you do the right things.
The Good Old Days Of SEO
When the Internet was young, it was enough to submit your web site to search engines to get high rankings.
Then webmasters found out that they could further improve their rankings by stuffing their web sites and meta tags with keywords. Search engines quickly discovered that this was abused by many webmasters.
Nowadays, the meta keywords tag isn't worth much anymore and search engines can quickly detect web sites that stuff their pages with keywords.
When Google entered the market, incoming links seemed to be the trick of the trade. However, many Google updates have shown that even a high number of incoming links cannot guarantee high search engine rankings.
What have you got to do to get high rankings in the current search engine situation?
The SEO Rules Have Changed
There's no single path to successful search engine optimization anymore. Most people know that it's pointless to submit a web site to search engines without doing further SEO work. However, it's likely that you also won't get good results if you focus only on incoming links or optimizing your web page content.
If you want to succeed with search engine optimization, it's important that your web page has all factors that are important for high search engine rankings:
Create a content rich web site with lots of information.
Optimize the content of your web pages.
Get high quality incoming links with the right link texts.
Host your web site on a reliable server.
Make it as easy as possible to find and to parse your web site. Good incoming links and optimized web page content are a must if you want to have high rankings.
Don't Try To Trick Search Engines
Tricking search engines with techniques such as cloaking, doorway pages and other dodgy tricks might be tempting because it seems that you can save so much time and effort with them.
Be very careful with that. Search engines don't like to be tricked. You might get away with this for some time but as soon as search engines find out that you're tricking them, they will ban your site.
Don't Go For Quick-Fix SEO Solutions
You probably get spam email messages promising you to get listed in Google within a few days, others promise you to submit your web site to thousands of search engines (although there are only a few search engines that really count).
Getting high search engine rankings with these one-shot-no-work-quick-fix solutions is as likely as getting rich with the hot stock tips you get in other spam email messages. Use common sense. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true.
Getting your web site into the top 10 results on Google and other major search engines is possible if you employ the right tactics. Further information can be found in our free SEO book.
Top 5 Tips for Choosing the Best Keywords
excerpt from article by Brent Winters of
www.marketposition.com
You've probably heard of people claiming significant traffic to their site after achieving a top ranking on Google or Yahoo. But sometimes you hear from someone else who also achieved a similar top ranking but they were disappointed when no one arrived at their site. How can two people achieve a top ranking and have such markedly different outcomes? Simple. The person in the first example selected a keyword or phrase that many people are searching on, and the second did not.
Unfortunately, it's all too easy to brainstorm your own list of keywords, only to find out later that they are not as popular as you first thought. Keyword popularity is essential to success in search engine marketing.
The question to ask yourself is how do you really know if you're optimizing your pages for keywords that Web surfers are looking for? There are several good techniques you can apply:
Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience.
For example, you may have a "clothing business" where you "sell clothing." While those phrases describe what you do, they are not necessarily the words that your audience would enter into a search engine to find you. How many times have you went to Google and typed in "sell clothing" in order to find a particular shirt or hat?
Therefore, you must change your point of view from the person selling the product to the person that wants to buy your product. For example, popular phrases to target in the clothing category would be "plus size clothing," "mens clothing," or "womens clothing." How do I know this? I used the new WordTracker Keywords module found in WebPosition. When I typed in the word "clothing," it instantly pulled up a wide range of related keywords from which to choose, all ranked by popularity.
I must admit, I was rather surprised to see such unusual terms like "medieval clothing" and "gothic clothing" was ranked high. However, that's the thing with keywords. It's next to impossible to simply guess what the most popular phrases will be today.
Target Niches.
While "mens clothing" in the previous example may be one of the most popular clothing related searches, it unfortunately has a lot of competition. If you do a search on Google, you'll find it returns over 1 million results for that phrase. While this type of phrase may gain you a lot of traffic, achieving a top ranking may prove difficult and time-consuming.
In addition, you will normally find visitors who search on very broad keyword categories purchasing less often than someone who knows exactly what they want. A good example of such a niche phrase would be "custom baseball hats." The benefit of "custom baseball hats" is that it's both a popular search phrase and it only has about 2000 pages on Google competing against it. That's much less competitive than the 1 million results returned for "mens clothing."
WordTracker calls the popularity and competition ratio the "KEI" or Keyword Effectiveness Index. The higher the KEI, the more effective the keyword will be for you.
Therefore, targeting relatively popular niche keywords has the following four advantages:
Niche keywords still produce a nice flow of traffic if you're careful to pick ones that still have good popularity.
Niche keywords will significantly increase your chance of success. Achieving a top ranking will be much easier with a niche keyword phrase versus a very broad, highly popular phrase. No top ranking can be guaranteed in an organic search engine like Google. There are simply too many variables. Therefore, you'll greatly increase your chances of success by choosing less competitive keyword phrases. Work smarter, not harder as I like to say.
Niche keywords will save you time. While you could use various tools and research to achieve a top ranking for "mens clothing," the time required to do so may not be worthwhile. Let your competitor waste their efforts on the ultra-competitive phrases. In the same amount of time they spend trying to achieve a single top ranking for your industry's most popular phrase, you could achieve top rankings on twenty other phrases.
Niche keywords yield more sales per visitor. That's because these keywords are more targeted. Therefore, these prospects have a better idea of what they want. If they find it on your site at the right price, then your chances for a sale are much greater.
Brainstorm for keywords in your category
There are many ways to brainstorm new keyword phrases. You can examine the content and the meta tags on your competition's Web site to see what phrases they consider important. While this is a good place to start looking for ideas, there's no guarantee they are targeting the best keywords. You must check these keywords against the corresponding popularity and competition factors. You could also consult with your thesaurus for synonyms and related phrases and correlate these to popularity and competition. Fortunately, WordTracker will do this for you within seconds. Simply type in the word "clothing" and it will return dozens of the most popular keywords, with the ability to drill down to hundreds more. In fact, the phrases you find here may trigger many new ideas to expand or grow your company's business into areas you had not previously considered.
Choose only relevant keywords
Just because a keyword is popular with a low competition factor, doesn't mean you should target that keyword or phrase. You may be tempted to optimize for phrases that are only loosely related to your site's content -- but DON'T.
The phrases you target must be relevant to what you have to sell. It must also be applicable to what you have to offer on the specific Web page you are optimizing. How many times have you searched Google, landed on a page, and then backed out within 5 seconds of arriving? That page had a top ranking, but it did not have what you were looking for.
Perhaps the Web site did have what you wanted, but the product resided elsewhere on the site. Unfortunately, your visitor may never know this. If you target a keyword or phrase, then the page they land on must offer the products, services or content that they expect, or you'll be wasting your time and your visitor's time. At the very least, the page should offer direct links to the potential products and services they may expect to find there.
How do you know what people are looking for on your pages? Simply check your Top Search Phrases report in WebTrends for a list of the keywords people searched on to find each page of your site. You may be surprised to learn that pages are ranking well on phrases that you had never considered. You can also see which keywords and phrases are driving the highest conversion and revenue, to ensure you maximize the return from your SEO effort. Once you identify these pages and search phrases, make sure you are giving the visitor exactly what they expect to find based on the phrases used to find the page.
Understand that keywords can have multiple meanings
If you have a travel business, then your first thought might be to target the word travel. However, if someone is searching on just plain old "travel" are they:
Helping their child with a paper on some aspect of "travel?"
Looking for the "travel channel?"
Looking to plan a vacation cruise?
Preparing to take a business trip?
Day dreaming about time travel?
Looking for driving directions for their travel across the country?
Looking for a travel club such as AAA?
Looking for the perfect backpack or hiking supplies for a travel expedition?
If you own a travel agency that specializes in vacation cruises and optimized your site for the single keyword "travel," only a limited number of the people identified in the example above would be qualified prospects. This of course assumes that travel was not too competitive to begin with.
While a top ranking on travel would yield a great deal of visitors to your site, many of them would select the "Back" button in their browsers, turn around and effectively walk out of your store! That's not the outcome you're looking for. When you select more targeted keyword phrases such as "Alaskan Cruise," there is a much higher likelihood that you have focused in on exactly the right audience. It's the difference between attracting actual buyers versus tire kickers.
Doing a quick search in WordTracker is a great way to get a feel for all the keyword variations that your audience may be searching on. You'll also discover which are the most popular, and least competitive. This is not only invaluable in regard to search engine marketing, but for your marketing efforts in general. If you haven't tried WordTracker yet, simply download the free trial of WebPosition and click on the WordTracker Keywords icon.
What can I do to increase my link popularity?
from www.searchengines.com
The best way to increase link popularity is through a linking campaign. Other tactics of boosting link popularity, such as "Free-for-All" sites and exchange programs, have pros and cons. We outline them below.
Warning: Some search engines, such as Google, say that FFA sites are an artificial and illegitimate way to increase link popularity. Google considers "link farms" spam, and may ban your site for participating in an FFA or link exchange program.
Developing links
FFA sites
"Free-for-All" sites are created to capture your e-mail address and offer you a link in return. You can choose a category for your link. Most of the tools that submit to FFA sites, such as Worldsubmitter.com, submit to more than one, but that doesn't necessarily increase your link popularity.
Although links from "Free-for-All" sites aren't particularly relevant (see our discussion of link relevancy), you can control the link's text. Most FFA sites will use your own description of your site as the text of their links. The descriptions you provide to such sites should contain several keywords. They don't even have to be in the form of a sentence.
One downside to FFA links is that they're temporary. These sites receive new links all the time, and your link will quickly be superseded by new submissions. If you plan on using FFA sites, resubmit often -- daily, if possible. Also consider submitting the URL of the FFA page containing your link to search engines to make sure the new link is indexed.
Another downside to FFA links is their poor quality. Most search engines use sophisticated formulas to evaluate links between sites. For an overview of the factors that determine link popularity, see our article on the subject.
Finally, since FFA sites are in the business of gathering e-mail addresses, whatever address you provide will be deluged with confirmation messages and spam. If this is a price you're willing to pay, create a new e-mail box just for FFA submissions. That way you can delete the contents every morning without having to sort through all the junk.
Note: Some search engines, such as Google, disapprove of FFA sites.
Exchange programs
Exchange programs are comprised of webmasters who agree to link to one another. As a new member, you will be asked to upload pages of links to your server. About once a week or so you will receive new pages with links to new users. Linkstoyou.com and LRSxpress links are two examples of exchange programs.
If you enter an exchange program, pick one that groups its links into categories, thus improving link quality. The more specific the category, the better. Find an exchange program that allows you to place your site in a category related to your business. However, we do not recommend becoming a part of a link exchange program because of a possible ban.
The downside of exchange programs is that they oblige you to link to them on your site. Many will request a link from your home page. This link can be either text or a graphic, but in either case it can make your site look less professional.
If you don't want a link in the middle of your home page, look for a way to hide it. Create an invisible link by using the same color for the link and the rest of the text, or make the link a one-pixel-square image. For specifications, refer to the exchange program's guidelines.
Although exchange programs can be more permanent than FFA sites, they are no longer effective. Search engines consider exchange programs "artificial link popularity" and may even ban your web site for participating in such a program.
Relationships with other webmasters
Many webmasters choose to develop high-quality links through simple arrangements with each other. If you know of a company that is related to your business, contact its webmaster with an offer for a reciprocal link.
When you send another webmaster a link request or reciprocal linking offer, let him know what you would like your link to say. We suggest including a piece of HTML code in your e-mail such as the following:
<a href="http://www.yoursite.com">Your Keywords</a>
Avoid using images as links from other sites. Not all engines index ALT tags, and the use of an image can mean giving up keywords. If you do decide to use an image, ask that a text description be placed at the bottom. For more on ALT tags, click here.
Don't expect every webmaster you contact to link to your site. Be prepared to contact lots of webmasters before you see results.
Which method should I use?
Since search engines are now discouraging the use of FFA sites and link exchange programs, we suggest that you focus your efforts on contacting webmasters with link requests. Although FFA sites may have been effective in the past, they are now considered "spam" by some search engines.
Avoid spam
Once again, avoid FFA sites and link exchange programs.
An overview
Increasing link popularity
Don't use FFA sites or exchange programs
Suggest keywords in link's description
Check who links to your competition and contact them
