Targeted Web Site Traffic – Dramatic Web Traffic

by Tricia on February 11, 2010

The world wide web is a highly competitive market. Companies vie for the attention of billions of internet users in the search for more revenue. A lynch pin to the internet marketing war is the search engine.

Search engines are internet venues where billions of people congregate to search for information. The most prominent search engine giants are of course Google and Yahoo. The kind of traffic these dot-com companies receive per hour is phenomenal.

So naturally, companies would gravitate towards placing their links and sites in an attempt to garner more visits to their web sites.

In order to maximize ranking and placement, companies have used tools such as search engine optimization or SEO. Search engine optimization is the method or process of improving a web site’s ranking in a search engine listing.

Legitimate search engine optimization practices focus on the improvement of a page’s ranking in the search engine list by improving site content, usability and using legitimate methos of promotion through web phenomena such as viral marketing.

Search engines all use complex algorithms in keeping their relevancy in the web and to keep illegal and abusive search engine optimization methods from prospering. However, “black hat” SEO users will always be around so it is expected that search engine giant such as Google and Yahoo will continue to make more complex algorithms to filter the garbage out.

Search engines display different kinds of listings on a result page. The more common ones are pay-per-click (PPC), advertisments, paid inclusion, and organic listings. Of all these listings, SEO concerns itself foremost with organic listings for a variety of keywords. This can increase the quality and quantity or visitors to a desired web site.

Getting   or trying to increase   traffic to web site requires  a plan and  effort. The rewards are well worth it.

Organic searches are searches conducted by web users in a search engine that is free from solicitations. A study from Jupiter Media stated that 5 out of 6 commercial online purchases were from organic searches versus paid online ads.

This has made SEO much more in demand in creating revenue for companies as SEO is not a paid ad but a method of intrinsically improving content.

Here are a few tips on improving content for a much more improved result in organic searches:

1.    Expertise. Follow your strengths. Sites you set up must be on subjects you consider yourself an expert on. People can smell an amateur a mile away.

2.    Plan the site. A good layout for the site can improve usability. This in turn will not unnecessarily aggravate the browser.

3.    Research. Check out the competition and see what they have set up. See what works and what does not. If possible try to communicate with users in forums and get feedback on what should or can be improved further.

4.    Decide on important keywords. Decide on the most important keywords to use for your sight. Include these keywords in the copy page, metatags, page title, and file names.

5.    The Search Engine is your friend. Make friends with your search engine and don’t give it a hard time. Being nice and friendly to it will make its job easier to serve your site up to your target audience.

6.    Focus. Focus on the topic at hand and nothing else. The rule is one topic per page.

7.    Join the directories. Directories are repositories of knowledge done by human hands while search engine are huge databases collected by mostly machine methods. The relevancy of your page when joining the right directory may shoot through the roof. Of course, make sure you know what you are talking about.

8.    Start a linking campaign. A most effective SEO method. This is a must do. Ask your allies, strategic partners, friends and acquaintances to place your site’s URL link on their sites. With a short description this can draw traffic from other sites and increase exposure. Google especially ranks the importance of its sites by the number of sites linked to it. 

9.    Repetition is the key to victory. Keep repeating the above tips, supporting and increasing what works and killing what does not as fast as possible until the desired result is achieved.

In the world of search engine optimization, content matters a lot. If a site has amateur or worse falsified information, fewer and fewer visitors will want to visit it. They will spread bad news even faster than they spread good news, so expect a garbage site to be ignored even in a week’s time.



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Social Networking 101: How Internet Marketers Should Use Social Networks

by Tricia on February 11, 2010

Social media in the form of social networks and online social bookmarking are incredibly popular these days. It can be a little difficult, however, when it comes to knowing which to choose. This is why many Internet users find social network reviews valuable. When reading these reviews, though, you might be shocked at how people’s points of view vary widely. Some people would fight for their social media choices to the bitter end. That might be because they were ignorant of the options, so all their time was taken up with one site before they knew what was happening. Some people defend their choice without even knowing the differences between online business networking sites, social bookmarking sites or sites that offer online social networking just for fun. Many people don’t know that there also are free social media sites, like Yuwie, that pay for people to use and promote them.

Many social media users aren’t aware of the variations between online social networks because there is enormous overlap of features on the various sites. Sites such as MySpace can be used just for fun or for serious business networking, or both! And there are literally tens of thousands of Ning sites, such as Vintage Life Network, which specialize in narrow niches. These type of social networking sites are significant due to their emphasis on people’s niche interests. Communities focused on niches, such as book readers, abound. Social networks , like Shelfari have book reviews and other features created just for people who love to read. Another powerful form of online networking is online social bookmarking, which has become a standard for people who work and play on the Web. Sites that feature social bookmarking, such as Reddit, allow logged-in users to save their online bookmarks for free. Social bookmarking sites also are a great help to Web searchers, because tags that allow for easy searching can be assigned to each bookmark. This ability also makes these sites tremendous for Internet marketers, because backlinks result from the use of bookmarks. A single social bookmarking link isn’t that valuable but when there are many of them, search traffic often increases. And with sites such as Propeller, if a URL is posted on one of these bookmarking sites that has good pagerank, high Google rankings can result if it is submitted properly and has the right keywords associated with it.

Blurring the line even further are sites like Mixx, which allow online social networking and social bookmarking. They are quite useful for bookmarking URLs but they also provide a tremendous platform for online social networking and marketing. You can make a lot of friends on these sites and links posted to these online social networking platforms sometimes rank well in the search engines. These powerful benefits are just some of the reasons that people who make their livings online love social media sites.

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The Top WordPress Plugins for Your Blog

by Tricia on December 13, 2009

If you’re one of the millions of WordPress users today, you’re probably thankful for the existence of plugins, those little chunks of code that enhance the functionalities of your blog. These plugins, however, aren’t just there to help you manage your blog. Plugins can improve your visitors’ experience of your site, and some of them are even made specifically to help you make money blogging.

The only drawback about plugins is the fact that there’s so many of them lying around the blogosphere, and not all of them are necessary to the success of your site. But how will you know which plugins are worth installing and which ones are better off left on the shelf? Here’s a list of winning WordPress plugins that can breathe new life into your blog!

1. Akismet A perennial favorite, Akismet is every WordPress blogger’s first line of defense against nefarious comment spam. This plugin effectively blocks bogus comments from infiltrating your comment box and clogging it up, making comment management an easier job for you.

2. All in One SEO Pack This tool raises your capacity to make money blogging by providing you with a whole suite of features that optimize your blog for search engines. The All in One SEO Pack takes the most significant page-ranking factors that affect your site’s search engine rankings, and lets you tweak with them to make your blog shine in search engine results.

3. WordPress 2.3 Related Posts Plugin Definitely a must-have, the WP 2.3 Related Posts Plugin ensures that each of your blog posts comes with a list of links to related posts. This list also appears in your blog feed, so your feed subscribers don’t miss out.

4. Lucia’s Linky Luv This tool does a great job of managing your comments, and is best known for its “dofollow” function. Essentially, this means that people who comment on your blog are automatically rewarded with backlinks, so that their blogs can benefit from your own sites’ page rank. However, it also enforces a “nofollow” rule on comments that are likely to be spam. Brilliant!

5. cformsII Finally, a tool that gives your readers a secure way through which to contact you. cformsII is a neat plugin that lets your readers establish contact with you safely and securely. It boasts of an impressive set of features, and is even shielded against spam.

6. Tell a Friend The Tell a Friend plugin by Social Twist goes beyond the functionalities of your old “Bookmark/Email This!” button. It doesn’t just cover e-mail and social bookmarking services. With this tool, your readers can now share your blog posts through instant messaging, their own blogs, their social networks, and through their own content management systems.

7. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress What’s great about this plugin is that it automatically makes an XML file of your blog’s site map, so that major search engines like Google can pick up on it quickly. So what’s the big deal about this? When provided with a sitemap that outlines each URL within the blog as well as their corresponding metatags, a search engine spider can crawl through your site better and come up with more relevant search results as far as your blog goes.

If you haven’t taken advantage of these plugins yet, don’t you think it’s time that you finally did? Keep in mind, however, that maintaining your blog’s quality is only half the story in professional blogging. You also have to pump up your site with tools — such as these WordPress plugins — that will eventually make a big difference in your blog revenue.

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