With well over a billion web pages worldwide, there is only one sure way to get a web surfer’s attention. It’s not banner ads, popup windows or any number of gee-whiz marketing gizmos. It’s content–pure, solid, usable information that will make visitors come to you again and again. The Internet is driven by information, and the fact is, people are more concerned with information than they are with how fancy your site is. That’s what makes article submission the number 1 way to drive targeted traffic your site.

There are hundreds of “free article submission” sites that will gladly accept your articles written to provide readers with useful information. As long as these articles are not thinly disguised sales letters, but provide solid content, these sites will accept them for publication, copyright free. In turn, they will then make those articles available for reading–and for publication–for anyone else browsing their article archives.

Ezine publishers hungering for good, quality information to provide to their subscribers will include some of these articles in their own publications. Soon, your articles are making their way across the Internet. And at the end of each article (and as a stipulation for free publication), is your resource box, a brief description of you–and a link back to your web site! Soon, you are getting targeted traffic from visitors who have read your article, found information about you in the resource box, and clicked on your web site link provided there. It doesn’t take long for the famed “viral effect” of marketing to take place, and you’ve got traffic coming from all over!

David and his team developed Article Post Robot, http://www.articlepostrobot.com, the software which can post articles to hundreds of article sites and mail lists automatically.gsfdgsfgsfg

I bet you already knew this.

The two largest problems that online home businesses face in 2005 is creating traffic and creating a profit. It seems like everyone has great “ideas” about how to help you increase both your website’s traffic and profitability, but when you try these “ideas” yourself they don’t seem to work as well as “they” said they would. Well, finally…. You’re going to learn some simple tactics using free website content to create either traffic or profit (your choice) that are GUARANTEED to work as long as the internet exists.

The reason that these simple tactics will work is because they’re based on an even simpler formula. If you remember nothing else in this report remember this:

GOOD FREE CONTENT + LINKS = TRAFFIC or PROFIT

All too often the elegance of the above formula is devalued, but the truth is… the above formula IS the internet. When you search the internet for information you’re using the above formula to find the information that you seek.

Here’s what I mean, when you put a search query into one of the major search engine and press search you get a list of content and links. Here’s how the above formula applies to the major search engines. You ONLY use the major search engines to find whatever it is that you are searching for because you TRUST the websites that the major search engines bring you are the most relevant to what you’re searching for (or in other words high quality free content). Because you view the content of the major search engines as valuable you click thru on the links. The reason major search engines are credible and seen as valuable by you is because you value the quality of the free content that they provide. Google and Yahoo make billions of dollars a year ONLY because they are able to give you the quality content that you seek. I don’t mean to belabor the point, but I just want you to see the value of relevant free content.

The major search engine use complex mathematics to bring you relevant information to get your clicks – you, on the other hand, have to take the other route. You must provide the high quality content FIRST then give your links in order to get the clicks. The simplest way for you to do this is by picking a topic that you know a great deal about then find out if that information is something that will be of interest to others. If that content does hold some universal interest then you simply create an article or report based on that topic plus add a link to whatever you want at the bottom in your “resource box” and then distribute that content to those that would be interested in the information that you provide. At this point your content hungry audience will take care of the rest for you.

Let’s break down the steps just so they’re simple for you to implement…

Finding a Topic and Determining its Value:

Think about something that you know a great deal about and then brainstorm around that idea. After you have a few good ideas based on your brainstorming you’ll want to determine whether or not there’s an audience hungry for information based on your ideas. You do that by going to http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ and checking a few keywords based on your topic for traffic. If your topic seems to produce a good deal of traffic then you’ve found a hungry audience that’s ready and waiting for your article or free report.

Creating the Article or Report:

Now for what you probably think is the hard part, but honestly writing an article or report based on something that you know a great deal about will not be much work at all. The hardest part will be organizing your ideas and getting yourself to actually sit down and start writing. After that the thoughts will just flow onto the page for you.

Here are some article writing guidelines and tips…

First: Determine what type of quality content you want to create.

• Tips: The simplest strategy is simply to write a report by simple gathering a few tips and then writing a few sentences about each of your proposed tips based on your topic. I’m sure you’ve seen these articles all over the internet. They generally follow the format “7 Tips to…”

• Tutorial: Another Strategy is to write a tutorial to help your audience do something that you may know more about then they do.

• Resources: The last strategy that I will provide to you here to help you get started is to create a report full of valuable resources that your audience may like to know about. This strategy is generally not one that I would recommend because it less personal than the other two described and will be less effective.

Second: Organize your content.

Now that you know what type of content you want to create take a few minutes to write out an outline. You want to have an opening paragraph that will describe what you plan to achieve with your article or report, and then a few body paragraphs to elaborate your major points of discussion.

Third: Create a strong headline.

In an effort to keep things simple, a title that is structured as a question or begins with “how to” generally pulls a better response than headlines that don’t. If you’re stuck on this point here is a great article to help you along:
http://www.perfect-home-based-business-opportunities.com/20050126091533.html.

Fourth: Flesh out your outline.

Now that you know what you’re going to write about, all you have left to do is flesh out each point in your outline with a few sentences. Honestly, you can cheat at this point if you want by hiring a ghostwriter to flesh out your content at www.elance.com, but I would advice you to go ahead and write your article yourself. The truth is you’ll probably enjoy doing it. So, don’t be scared give it a try!

Last: Add Your All important link.

At the end of your article you get to add a link to whatever you want. If you want that link to refer your audience to your web site for personal site traffic then use it for that. If you want your link to refer your audience to an affiliate program then use your resource box link for that purpose. Immediate cash or site traffic it’s all up to you!

How to Distribute your Content to Your Hungry Audience:

Now that you have your quality content ready for your audience you need multiple ways to distribute it to them. I contend that there is only one online method that is worth your effort so I will discuss it here.

Submit your Article to Article Content Directories

Article directories are the internet’s free content hubs. These are sites that many web marketers use to pull free content for there audiences. These sites contain multiple categories – more than likely you will be able to find a suitable category to submit your article or report. Once you find the correct category simply submit your article.

These sites are truly great in my opinion because once you have submitted your content your done. Other webmaster will find your article and post it to there site or use it in there online newsletter. The result is this will expose your article to more webmasters and web publishers who will in turn use take your content. If you’ve done your homework and delivered an article to an audience that is hungry for your information the results can be truly amazing. Posting your article once can literally start a chain reaction that can lead to your article being posted on hundreds or even thousands of websites which in turn means more free links and traffic to your desired site or affiliate program.

There are literally thousands of content directories online and the trend looks as if these types of site are going to be on the rise in 2005. Where should you submit your content? I say start with the www.goarticles.com, www.ideamarketers.com, and www.ezinearticles.com. You’ll find more specific sub directories for your topic by doing a few search engine searches for your specific topic + “submit articles”. As a general rule you will probably get the largest amount of traffic from the major article directories, but more is always better. The more places that display your content with your links the higher the probability that someone will find it and use it. A quick tip… as you find new directories keep a running list as this will come in handy for you as you get the hang of using free content for profit and traffic and start creating more articles and reports to give away.

Tips to Help You Help Your Audience Distribute Your Content FASTER:

Now your content is in front of your hungry audience and things are going well. You’re getting traffic and or you’re making a few affiliate sales. Here are a few tips to help you speed up the distribution of your content so you can get more traffic and more sales per article or report faster.

Tip 1: Let your audience know that your article or report is available for reprint.

I know you probably think this is too simple to really matter – your audience already knows that your content is available for free reprint because it’s in a FREE content directory. Your right, but we have to think ahead… what about when your article is picked up by other webmasters and they post your content on there site? Will the new audience know that your article is freely available for reprint? Some will and some won’t. To make sure that everyone knows that your content is available for free reprint no matter where it’s posted you have to let them know. Just add a short blurb in your resources box that say that the article the reader is currently reading is available for free reprint. Now no matter where your article is posted there will be no question as to whether or not it is available for free reprint.

Another point on this tip, many who read your articles may not be in the mindset of seeking content to publish. By letting your readers know that they can freely republish your content you open an entirely new possibility to many of your reads that they had not considered (just a subtle behavioral psychology point to consider).

Tip 2: Show your audience how they can benefit by using your free content.

Money talks! Show your readers how they can make money by republishing your content and they will be much more likely to use it. How can your audience make money using your content? There are two simple ways to help others make money with your content; show them how to add PPC ads to your article so that when they post your article to there site they’ll generate revenue from clicks-thrus or allow them to change any affiliate links in the article or report to there own so that they are able to profit from affiliate sales generated (if you do this I suggest that you use 2 tier affiliate programs so that you profit as well).

Tip 3: Make it as simple and easy as possible for others to use your content

The easier you make it for people to use your content the more likely it will be that they use it. Keep things simple! One thing I like to do to keep things simple is I keep a page on my website that displays all of my free web site content for reprint so that my visitors can easily find ALL of my resources available for reprint in ONE place. On that page I add a copy and paste version of my resource box (which of course included a link to my free web site content page) so my visitors don’t have to worry about doing anything more than copying and pasting what they want to use. To get e better idea of what I’m talking about check out my free web site content page here:
http://www.perfect-home-based-business-opportunities.com/free-web-site-content.html.

Conclusion: That’s it…

If you want to profit from free content I have given you everything that you need to make a pretty penny online using free website content the same way the major search engines do. Do you remember the formula I gave you before?

GOOD FREE CONTENT + LINKS = TRAFFIC or PROFIT

Remember this and you cannot fail!

However,

I have a confession to make…

What I have given you here is incomplete. There is no doubt that you can use the above information to create a good income from free content, but if you want to take your info publishing skills to the next level. If you want to create a large residual and growing income from your content publishing efforts you’re going to need more help than I can give you here in this report. You’re going to need proper guidance and best in industry info content publishing tools. So, as a final recommendation and to make this report truly complete I’ll leave you with one final recommendation.

To make the above system complete, even easier to follow, and exponentially more profitable my final and strongest recommendation to you is software, tools, and instructions available by mailing to comlev1@getresponse.com

==========================================

Wanna Learn the Secret of Creating Passive Income
Online
From a man who made $3,244,842.32 from the Internet
in Only 27
months? => http://www.the1andonly.biz

Presented by:
Perfect Home Based Business Opportunities

Generate Website Traffic that will Blow Away Your Online Internet Marketing
Competition by having a plan and putting it into action!

If You Build It Will They Come? Well, Yes, and NO!

The period of time between launching your Internet Marketing Venture and watching your traffic explode can be the most exciting time you have, provided you lay the groundwork properly.

Failure to provide for Traffic will torpedo every one of your early efforts!

With the overwhelming task of developing a site (or multiple sites), hosting, publishing, and testing, many newbie Internet Marketing entrepreneurs breathe a sigh of relief once their efforts are underway and then the light goes on: How am I going to get Visitors?

In the spirit of focus – which I have written about recently, I can’t say enough about planning your website traffic needs in advance. And again, just like all the other Internet Marketing options you have for building profitable programs, there are an equal number of means, methods and tactics for increasing your website traffic.

And once again, not all methods suit everyone and you must rise to the research challenge I’ve discussed in my maintaining focus chapter. But rest assured, there are methods and combinations of methods that will have massive amounts of traffic flowing to your website in no time and you don’t have to be an expert to succeed with most of them!

The best overall tip I can give you is Stay the Course and never let up.

Structure your days (or weeks) to spend a specified amount of time on building traffic and it will reap rewards ten-fold. Do a little, and then coast for awhile and you will never see the numbers you envision.

Remember, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, My Friend!

Stephanie Mulac is a Motivational Coach and owner of http://www.90PercentAttitude.com, a website dedicated to helping Marketing Professionals Make Money With Websites on the Internet by developing a positive, winning attitude and providing online encouragement to others who don’t have a support system in their lives.

There are a number of ideas about what are the best ways to promote a website and about the best ways to attract more visitors to a website. In my opinion, it is important to start up a link building campaign to increase the number of websites which have a link to your site on their site. This is one proven method which has been successful in achieving high rankings for many different sites, however there are some important factors to keep in mind when attempting to build up this link network.

If you have a new site and are desperate to achieve top rankings on the top search engines such as google, think again. Most of these search engines will probably not give your new site a high ranking until it has become established. This is where the age of the domain is important. You can not in reality expect to be placed in a higher search position than a site which has been around for eight years and which has been building up links, during this period. This is where patience is required, you should see your site as something which is going to be online for a long time and hopefully in time, some of the other sites that you are competing with will have dropped out etc.

This is the same attitude that should be applied when building up the number of backward links pointing to your site. Going from only a few, to a few thousand in a short space of time may not be the best idea. Regular increases are in my opinion the way to go and quality is just as important as quantity. Decide the ways in which you are planning to obtain your backward links and try to ensure that you obtain roughly the same amount each month, where possible of course. Over a long period of time this strategy is sure to pay dividends and your search engine position should steadily improve. You will then have an authority site, which all new sites will be aspiring to compete with. Like many areas of life we do not really want to wait for our success and want immediate rewards, such as high rankings. On some search engines this may be possible but on most it will require hard work and this type of patience.

The links that you obtain should where possible be from sites which are in a similar industry or subject matter, to your own site. This is a lot easier said than done however. If your site is very well written, optimised and of use to a large number of people, you may well receive links on other sites without the need to request the link. This is of course exactly what you want and is why it is important to spend time thinking of how your site is written and presented.

A good way of obtaining a link to your site is to write a reference or testimonial to owners of other sites with which you have had dealings with. Offer to write them this testimonial which of course will be of great benefit to them, on the understanding that they will include a link back to your site at the bottom.

I personally concentrate on obtaining one-way links as I believe these to have the most value. One way I do this is by writing articles such as the one you are reading. There are a great number of benefits of writing articles which can be read at most of the article directories such as ezinearticles. I would certainly recommend it to other people who are thinking of starting up a link building campaign.

In this third article, we continue to dig into the patent application of Google regarding the method used to rank sites in search results. Interestingly, Google asserts in the application that it “might” consider user data as a factor in organizing search results.

What Is User Data?

Without being rude, you should already know what user data is as part of your site evaluation. Any owner of a site on the web should be constantly looking at user data found on site servers.

The site server should have an administrative program telling you what searches are being used to reach the site, better known as “search strings.” The program should also be telling you how many pages the user looks at on each visit and where in the site they go. By reviewing these statistics, you can identify the sections of your site that appeal to potential customers. If clients are leaving after visiting only one or two pages, such statistics should tell you that you have an abandonment problem. The new information from the Google patent should motivate you to closely monitor your site.

Essentially, Google is also looking at your server statistics to determine the value of your content and factoring it into the rankings. Specifically, Google claims in the patent application that it tracks the amount of time that users spend accessing a page on your site. Having filed a few patent applications in my time, what this really means is Google is looking at how long a user spends on your site and how “deep” they go into it.

Expanding on this subject, Google details an additional factor. As with the Adwords program, Google is monitoring the click through rate on search results. The more click-throughs to your site from its listings in Google, the higher it will be moved in the search results.

Every Little Bit Helps

Google claims that it looks at what users are bookmarking. The apparent jist is that Google considers a site with a lot of bookmarks to be “worthy” of a higher ranking. In short, get out there and bookmark your sites!

Conclusion

The effort of Google to look for depth in a site should be commended. There is nothing worse then clicking onto a promising search result to find one crappy page full of links. With this new policy, Google rewards sites with healthy amounts of relevant pages. In short, content is king again.

Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing firm – www.marketingtitan.com – a San Diego Internet marketing and advertising company.

Over 90% Visitors Leave Your Site Forever.We all know this truth and live with it daily. Even when we promote the most successful affiliate program or highly optimized Adsense website we lost over 90% visitors everyday.

Did You ever wonder how to utilize this traffic and made money from this running away source? Typically You get your traffic from search engines, users type a few keywords and check first site which appear on search result page. If this site contain what user want maybe he buy products from this site. If not user click back button and check second (and next) sites from search listing until he found what he looking for. We all do this the same way everyday.

We can change a little this scenario and add one step between return to search page. When user it’s not satisfied with what You offer on Your page and click back button he don’t return to search result but will see another page with more offers but related to keywords he enter in search window. We all know that it’s high probability he checks this offers. If he don’t find what he looking for and press back button second time he back for search result.

The good thing is that even he don’t buy products from this second page You get money every time when user leave Your page! You loose customer for Your product but anyway You earn money. This concept it’s not new (You can see this when You visit any adult related pages) but contains two new strong points: user get keyword related ads and You get paid even user don’t buy anything from second page. I implemented this feature on many of may web pages and for my surprise I now sell more products because customers see my pages more interesting and often return.

Jacek Michalak makes a good living writing online. Find a more detailed version of this article (and also starting point for all his web pages) at this link: http://www.FairFrugal.com/

If you own a business online, would like to increase
targeted traffic to your site but simply don’t have any free
time, hiring someone to submit your URL to niche directories
may be what the Dr. ordered.

I hope the following interview with Tim Mathews who owns
http://timmathews.com a Directory Submission Service helps.

Before we get started Tim tell us a little about yourself.

I am an avid web designer at heart. I have been in the
computer industry for about 10 years – back when AOL 2 was
the bomb, and if you didn’t have a 14.4 modem, you were
cruising slow. (Wow, how times have changed). I really enjoy
taking the mom and pop 100 product site and building it into
a powerhouse ecommerce site. I love building sites, then
getting them listed in the search engines and directories,
and watching the sales roll in for the client.

How did you get started in directory submission services?

I first stumbled into Directory submission services when I
was trying to get a companies site listed in the search
engines. I was trying and trying to get it listed, but no
use. After numerous reworking, I finally got the site
listed. I was then thinking… Huh, this was tough for me,
and I am a pro! I was wondering if others were having
issues, and alas, THEY WERE! From then, business has spawned
from current local clients to all the seven seas!

For those new to the internet could you explain what a
directory
submission service is?

A Directory Submission Service, in my opinion, is a company
that will submit your website to directories. Now, the
client must be careful when selecting a company. Many I have
seen say something along the lines of “We submit you to over
800,000 Search Engines and Directories”. This statement
alone lets me know that they are not trustworthy. We can all
fire up ANY free/shareware submitter and boast the same
statement. What I LIKE to see, when checking my competition,
is a listing of directories they will submit to. And, of
course, no one can guarantee inclusion.

What was your motivation for offering directory submission
service?

Well, to be blunt, I was thinking this could make us some
money. I was thinking of my stumbling in the submissions,
and how long and hard I worked to get sites listed. I
learned what to do, and definitely what NOT to do. I figured
it would be a great service.

What problems did you have to overcome to start your
directory
submission service?

Our main problems are the sites that boast hundreds of
thousands of submissions to directories… This confuses the
client to thinking there are this number of “separate”
directories. After explanation that there are far less, (We
submit to as few as 20 directories up to around 200 for some
clients), so you can see why this would be a problem.

How did you overcome these problems?

We overcame the issues by explanation of the services that
the “other guys” provide, and most importantly, we overcame
the problem with RESULTS. We do what we say, and get it
done.

What impact can using a directory submission service have
on
ones online business?

Directory submissions can make the business, LITERALLY.
Submitting to search engines is fine, and SHOULD be done.
Submitting to directories is definitely a necessity.

What kind of gains can one expect to make by using a
directory
submission service?

Once Directory listings take, you can expect to probably
double your traffic. Double traffic could mean double
sales/leads.

What could the downfall be of using a directory submission
service?

Well, un kept promises. Many “other guys” make big promises,
but deliver seldom few or none altogether. Do your research.
How long has the site been in business? Do a “who is” look
up and see when they bought the domain name just to be
certain.

Can you give 3 tips on successfully submitting to
directories such as DMOZ for example?

With Pleasure!

Tip 1.) MOST IMPORTANT
Proper Category Selection is KEY
You MUST submit to the applicable category. This is the most
overlooked, because we think we have a site selling Sports
Blankets, like http://www.blanketmall.com/tim and they
wanted to be listed into the “sports category” After
research, I decided it be best that they be submitted into
the Shopping: Sports: Theme Merchandise category.
If I would have submitted the site into the root of sports,
I can GUARANTEE it would have not been accepted.

Tip 2.) Wait.
Do NOT submit your site to ODP (dmoz.org) again in a month.
Give it 2 months to see results. If after 2 months, you are
not listed, rethink your submission, drill down to a deeper,
more relevant category, and resubmit.

Tip 3.) Do not hound the guides.
I have seen people talking about “direct relationships with
guides for category “****” They say to email the guide and
bug them. We disagree with this. If your site is properly
submitted, you will not have a problem. We have clients that
tried this tactic, and have never been listed. We submitted
them, and got them listed.

Thank you for the opportunity to give my feedback in this.
It has really been a pleasure. Thanks!

Brian Holte
Email: theebookking@shaw.ca
Copyright-Brian Holte

Have You Been Thinking of Creating E-books?
Brian Holte is a freelance writer/researcher and owner of
http://www.theebookking.com. He publishes a newsletter which focuses on brainstorming and
researching techniques for e-books.

If you have a website the chances are you receive e-mails from Webmasters asking you to make a link exchange with them. But how do you know whether you should link to their website or not? Well here are 9 rules of thumb, to help guide you through the linking maze.

1. Is their site relevant to yours?

This is key, and more and more important these days. If the answer is YES then it’s worth thinking about. If it’s off topic then you may want to think twice before swapping links. A link from a relevant website to your site is the preferred choice as it can help reinforce your website theme and potentially send some useful traffic your way.

2. How many links is too many on a links page?

When your link is being placed on another website, you ideally want that page to contain as few outbound links as possible. 15 or less outbound links is good, 150 outbound links is not so good. If there are a high number of links on a page [such as 150] then the value of each link out is weakened.

Whilst we can only make assumptions about ‘link weight’ some Webmasters will use a cut off point of 50, 75 or even 100 links on a page as a top end maximum. Anything over 50 outbound links on an average resources page is certainly quite high. However if your link will appear on the page of a good quality site or ‘authority website’ an exchange can still be worthwhile.

3. What is the Page Rank of the site on Google?

Some webmasters focus a lot on Google’s page rank as a measure of a website. If you download and install the Google toolbar you will see a measure of 1 to 10 shown via a horizontal bar for each site you are on. Typically the higher the page rank, the more important a site is perceived to be. A link from a Pr 5 page is often seen as a more powerful link than one from a Pr1 page. However, Google’s Page Rank is only meant to be a rough guide and should not be taken too seriously. Tip one should always preside – a relevant link is always what you want.

4. Should the links page be categorized?

Personally I prefer a well organised links page. If your citing a resource in context of an article you would link from the paragraph, but for the purposes of resource links it is a good idea to organise your pages into relevant themes relating to your website and business. If the site containing the link you are being offered is placed on a page with 200 links all mixed up and covering every topic under the sun, then it’s not ideal. If you’re an online shop selling Art Prints should you really be on the same links page as Hosting Companies and Travel Agents? Make the effort to organise your resource pages, even if some link partners don’t.

5. Is the links page being read by search engines?

It is important that the page your link is on can be found and read by search engines. The page should be no more than 2-3 clicks away from the homepage. You can even test if the web page is in the Google index by visiting www.google.com and
typing into the search bar cache: with the full domain and page name extension after it.

So your query in the Google search bar could read: cache:www.mywebsite.com/thelinkspage.html.

The page should then show in the Google index. If it does not then there are a couple of possibilities. 1/ The page is very new and hasn’t been crawled yet or 2/ the site has a problem being crawled by search engines due to poor internal linking.

6. What if a Webmaster asks me to link to one site, but links back to me from a different site?

This process is sometimes referred to as ‘3-way linking’ or a ‘linking triangle’. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with 3-way linking as it can sometimes be done for convenience. However the first thing you need to do is 1/ Evaluate the site you are linking to and 2/ Evaluate the site and page you are getting the link from. So is the outbound link destination relevant to your site, and is the inbound link you are going to receive also coming from a quality related website?

7. Do I want to associate my business with this particular site?

It is a simple question to answer and this should form part of your decision making process. If you think you have been approached by a good website then the chances are others will feel the same and possibly the search engines too.

8. How do I know if my link partners are still linking to me?

You can do this manually by keeping the information for each link partner in an Excel spreadsheet or similar and then periodically check the exact URLs your link should appear on. However if you get to the stage of having hundreds of link partners this may become rather impractical. At this stage a reciprocal link checker might be advisable. www.linksmanger.com offers a link management system that includes periodic checking of link partners as well as a link exchange system for around $20 a month.

9. So what are the best links?

One answer could be “the ones that deliver lots of relevant traffic”. However links can mean different things to different people. Natural linking [when people link to you without you asking] are a great reward, but it is also wise to ensure you have some links from quality sites in your industry. Teoma can be a good place to find such sites as it focuses more on human edited results than say Google for example. Simply make a search with a good key phrase on www.teoma.com and you will quickly see which websites are the ‘authority’ sites. Set about trying to get listed on as many of the best ones as you can.

About the Author

Gareth Davies is a web design consultant at GSINC Ltd based in London, UK. GSINC deliver practical web design solutions and effective online marketing strategies for business. For more information visit http://www.garethsketty.com or if you have any questions you can contact Gareth at garethsketty@yahoo.co.uk

Traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is everything.

You have no doubt seen dozens of offers similar to “10,000 hits
per hour driven to your website!”. This type of website traffic
is completely untargeted and will undoubtedly result in a very
low conversion ratio. It’s basically “throw it up against the
wall and hope something sticks”. The big incoming numbers give
the illusion of progress, but you will achieve better results
with a lower volume of highly targeted traffic.

I speak from experience because in the early days of developing
my home business, I went for the big numbers instead of focusing
on targeting prospects. It took me a while to appreciate the
importance of targeting (quality) instead of just going for the
big numbers, but it was a lesson well learned.

Exchanging links has been an important part of generating website
traffic for quite some time, but the vast majority of people
looking to trade links don’t understand that just wildly swapping
links with any willing webmaster is not the way to go.

For the last few years, most webmasters have been in a “pleasing
Google” mode since Google had such a dominant position. Now that
challengers are emerging, most notably Yahoo, MSN, and Ask
Jeeves, the search engine ranking landscape is becoming much more
complicated than just marching to the tune Google played.

Many website owners seem to be of the opinion that the sole
purpose of exchanging links is to try to improve the search
engine ranking position of their website. While it is true that
links pointing to your website can help your search engine
ranking, the reason for obtaining inbound links goes far deeper
than that.

In my opinion, the targeted traffic that relevant links pointing
to your site will bring can be as important as the traffic that
comes to your website from people using search engines. This is
where linking philosophy comes in. If you limit yourself to
exchanging links only with websites that have a theme highly
relevant to your own, the traffic you receive from those links
will be far more targeted (valuable) than traffic you might
receive from links with websites that have nothing to do with
your theme.

Not only do highly relevant links bring you more highly targeted
traffic, but they also play a “customer satisfaction” role for
visitors to your website who arrived there as a result of a
search engine query. If someone arrives at your website after
performing a search for, lets say “work at home” and then finds
your website full of links to a bunch of off topic sites (Viagra,
online casinos, hotel reservations, sports betting, etc, etc)
the impression is often not favorable and may actually drive
your visitor away before they consider whatever it is that your
website itself is offering.

Keep your eye on the bullseye and develop highly targeted traffic
by having good content on your website and exchanging links with
highly relevant sites that also offer good content. Remember,
traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is everything.

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Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and
coaches others seeking to start their own home based business.

Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.