I build small niche websites, and then count on search engine traffic to sell products/services from my sites. To do this I have to do some keyword research to make sure it’s possible to dominate that term. I also have to do some great SEO tactics on my page.

More than that I have to build backlinks and tons of them. I do a variety of things to build backlinks, some are boring and tedious and some have been outsourced so I can focus my time on more profitable endeavors.

I know there are some basic ways to build links and I have been brainstorming some other ways as well. I think I have come up with some interesting ways to build some links, so I’m going to share them with you.

Free Link Building Ideas

Article Marketing ~ add your link with keyword anchor text in your resource box

Forum Posts ~ add your link with keyword anchor text in your sig file

Blog Comments ~ keyword in the “name” area, and then your url. (will create a hot link with anchor text)

Comments at Ezine Articles ~ this one just occurred to me recently. I checked the source code and they do not appear to use the “no follow” attribute, so google should count these links. You may even get traffic from these too. I just enter my main keyword, and add a relevant comment to the article. I use this like I would a blog comment with my keyword in the name area and then my url. You have to wait for EZA to approve your comment, but it’s worth it.

Set up Google Alert for keywords ~ each time I set up a new site I also set up a google alert for the keyword. I only choose to get alerts from blogs. Now each time someone posts a blog on my keyword I know about it and can get over there and add a comment.

Build free Blogs ~ Build a blog at wordpress.com, blogger, tumblr or wherever. You can do this blog on a related topic and add your site in the blogroll. This will give you a link for each page you publish on this blog. I use PLR for these blogs, and just change up the articles a little bit so they are more original. You can also add links within the articles to your blog for added links.

Hubpages and Squidoo ~ build pages at both of these free sites. Make sure to add a link to your site using keywords as your anchor text. At squidoo you can also add a link to your product or service you are promoting. Depending on how you want to use Hubpages I would be careful adding links to affiliate products over there. I just use hubpages as a way to get one more link from a quality source to my new niche site.

Myspace ~ set up a myspace profile and only add friends that are related to your niche site. You can quickly and easily do this with myspace friend adder software like Friend Blaster Pro. You can then use any/all the article you have written for your site and/or blogs as bulletins to send to your friends list or on your myspace blog. This will get you nice backlinks as well as targeted traffic.

Zimbio ~ this site is new to me. I have used it for my squidoo lenses, by adding my lensmaster RSS feed url from Squid Utils it will post each new lens I write on Zimbio. You can do this with the RSS feeds for each of your sites, including your main niche site, as well as any free blogs you set up. Make sure to do this first so it will catch all your articles as you put them up.

Directory Submission ~ there are tons of directories you can add your site url to. I set the timer for 30 minutes and just go as fast as I can submitting. I do this at least once a day for 30 minutes.

Wis.dm ~ A fun little site where you can ask a question. There is space for you to submit a url where people can find the answer. Just think of a question that relates to your niche and then add your site url in the space provided.

Twitter ~ not sure how good this is for backlinks, but if you have some people following you, it might be worth sending a quick tweet about your new site. You might just mention you found a cool site etc, so as not to give away all your niches

If you want to take things to the next level there are also services you can join to build links. They work a few different ways. You generally pay a monthly fee to join.

I keep remembering recently reading a comment that really stuck with me. It was said you should be spending 90% of your time building links. When I thought about how much time I was spending in this area it was probably about .5%. Stay focused, and set up a system for yourself and you too can build tons of great backlinks.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, Better, building, engine, Link, More, Placement, search

These backlinks will not only generate traffic to your site by giving web surfers an active link to get to your site, they will also increase your page rank. Page rank is Googles way of measuring the value and relevancy of your website.

You will achieve a higher page rank based on the amount of inbound links coming to your site. So therefore, the more links that come in, the higher page rank you will receive. With a higher page rank, you will attract more websites willing to link with you.

So, as you can see, by increasing the backlinks to your site, you will be driving up the number of visitors to your website as well as attract more websites willing to link with you.

Here are a few ways you can increase your number of backlinks:

1. Visitors to your site could very well have their own website or blog. Ask them to link with you. Youll be amazed at how well this works, as long as your site offers good content that is useful and informative.

2. Create a Link to Us page to make it easier for others to link to you. Provide the html code for them to put on their site so all they have to do is cut and paste. The easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to exchange links.

3. Write some articles and submit them to various article directories. In exchange, you will receive a link back to your site. This is usually done through your Resource Box that will be submitted with your article.

4. Go to Link Directories and submit your link. There were no search engines back in the early days of the Internet. Most people found what they were looking for by searching through directories. These directories were broken down into categories, making it easier for the searcher. Today, most people prefer to use search engines to find what they are looking for, but that does not mean that directories are dead. There are people that still use them and the links will still count towards your page rank. Do a search for Link Directories for a list of directories where you can submit your site to.

5. When you agree to link to a website in exchange for that website linking back to you, is called a reciprocal link. As with directories, many website owners have all but given up on reciprocal linking. They argue that the search engines have devalued reciprocal links to the point where theyre not worth the time it takes to obtain them. On the other hand, there are others who still have great success with this method. The key is to not just link to anyone for the sake of linking. Link to sites that are truly useful and relevant to your visitors.

When done right, reciprocal linking will work for everyone and both websites will receive an increase in traffic.

Backlinks do take some time to set up, but once done, are a great way to bring traffic to your site.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, Generate, More

As a bonus when using all of these methods, you’ll not only get Free Traffic, but you’ll attract Targeted Traffic, which is the holy grail of online visitors. Make it a point to use all of these methods as often as you can cram into your schedule and you’ll start to be rewarded handsomely after a couple months of patience and diligent work.

Backlinks through Comments on other Blogs

Search for high-ranking blogs in or related to your industry and leave regular comments on their posts. Get the Google Toolbar when checking out each site so you can see the PageRank. Really, when you’re just starting out, pretty much anything that has some history and pagerank will help, but if you want to supercharge your results, aim for high pagerank posts that use similar keywords as you. Just make sure you’re actually adding to the conversation and not just typing a couple words for the sole purpose of getting a backlink. Also, check the source code for comments to make sure the links aren’t rel=”nofollow” so that you’re getting credit for all your posts.

Niche Forums

Find forums that are related to your site and become a regular contributor to them. Edit your profile and add a quick call to action with a link to your website in your signature so that everytime you make a post or reply it will automatically insert a backlink for you. Don’t be spammy with your writing; add value to the community.

Social Networking

I know this one is mentioned everywhere, but still holds true today. Sign up for accounts on Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, and Twitter and draft quality information with links in your profile back to your site. Concentrate on useful content with emphasis on building lasting relationships with everyone you meet.

Article Marketing

There are numerous Article Directories where you can submit your work to that all include a Resource Box containing a brief sales pitch and link back to you. Some of the more popular directories can be found at Ezine Articles, Buzzle, GoArticles, and iSnare. I recently wrote an in-depth post on how to Get Free Traffic with Article Marketing if you’d like to find out more about this topic (link to blog below this article).

YouTube and other Video Communities

Open up a YouTube account and spend some time filling out your profile with links to your site and start posting informative videos related to your niche. Make sure to use the description field to your advantage whenever posting videos because it allows you to add more info and keywords that will help your video get ranked higher in the search engines, especially Google, since they own it. Don’t forget to put your web address at the beginning of your description, including the “http://” so it can show up as a clickable link in the “more info” section of the page.

It may seem obvious, but remember to edit your web address into the video at key moments to further expose your site and gain popularity. My Videos are more than Moving Pictures when it comes to Internet Marketing post gives more info (link to blog below this article).

Yahoo! Answers

Get a Yahoo! Answers account and fill-out your profile with website backlink and start answering questions related to your niche. Really try and provide quality responses that help their problems and you may even get picked as a “best answer” and drive a good amount of traffic back to your website.

Additionally, you can link your Yahoo 360 account to this profile for even more exposure. Give great advice, while posting often and you can expect a great response for your efforts. As you complete more and more answers, you have a rating that increases to further boost your expertise in that topic.

Link Exchange with others

The age-old link exchange still has its place in building free traffic and can really thrust your site into stardom if you can build a friendship with the right person. Try opening up the lines of communication between several key owners of popular sites in your niche or a related one and work on building up a trusting work relationship. After some time, go ahead and ask for the link or to write a post as a guest author and see what happens. You don’t know what someone will say or offer if you don’t try in the first place.

Use of these methods will really help with getting Free Website Traffic to your site and the great thing is that all of them will provide long-term results. They build upon one another and each and every link is an additional small boost in traffic. Eventually and with determination, you’ll grow a river of continually flowing traffic that will ultimately allow you to Make More Money Online.

Technorati Tags: free, Money, More, Traffic, Ways, Website

The web site owners making the real big money use the power of leverage to bring in huge amounts of traffic on demand. They leverage the work of other people and pay them a commission for any traffic they send to their website that turns into a sale. This is called an affiliate program.

Today its not just about setting up an affiliate program, sitting back and just hoping that your affiliates will drive traffic to your website. Anybody can set up an online affiliate program and get a few affiliates signed up. Thats the easy part. Sure, its a great way to generate more website traffic, but what you really need to do is to train your affiliates on how to bring loads of traffic to your site constantly which will in turn generate more sales and profit for them and, more importantly, for YOU! Having an affiliate program where hundreds of people sign up is a whole different ball game and could shoot your profits through the roof.

Why have an affiliate program? Three reasons: Traffic, Traffic, Traffic.

Every darn website out there in cyberspace wants more website traffic because more traffic means more money. Its a no brainer. You may have the best, biggest and greatest website on the net but if nobody knows its there youre wasting your time. You need visitors (your customers) to make it work.

So how do you get more website traffic?

Recruit an army of affiliates and train them to send YOU tons of traffic. If you motivate and train your affiliates to earn revenue for themselves this will ultimately drive new customers to your site. Keeping your affiliates pumped up and selling isnt easy. But their success is paramount to your online success.

If you are already running an affiliate program from your website you already know that most people who sign up for your program are never heard from again. From my own experience in the early days I would sign up to various affiliate programs, get the link and then not really know what to do with it. It felt like they were saying: Well heres your link now get on with it.

You need to remain in touch with your affiliates constantly by reminding them of their usernames and passwords and showing them how to log in to check their figures to see how they are doing and keep them informed of new products that they can promote and any changes in procedure.

Most affiliates need leadership, guidance and training to perform well. Giving them nothing but a text link and banner wont generate enthusiasm or excitement. They need to feel part of your business and enjoy promoting it.

Provide up to date sales copy and new material to your affiliates on a regular basis and inform and help them to succeed and make money with your program. If they dont make money then you dont either.

These are difficult and uncertain times. People are looking for new and different ways to earn extra money to look after their families so there has never been a better time to recruit and advertise for affiliates.

Just remember and always keep in mind that their success is also your success.

Technorati Tags: More, Need, Traffic, Website

Although buying traffic and borrowing traffic are effective traffic strategies, there is one major flaw in both of these methods – You are not creating traffic that you OWN!

In both cases, you’re asking for permission to use someone else’s traffic for a short-term period. This means that once you stop paying that advertising fee or when the joint venture agreement ends, you will no longer get any traffic from these sources. This is all because the traffic is not truly YOURS.

Bottom line is… “You do not want to RELY on someone else for your own success!”

This is where creating your own streams of free targeted traffic becomes so important.

Only through creating lasting streams of free targeted traffic can you enjoy increasing long-term sales. Remember, free targeted traffic is strictly your traffic. It’s traffic that you own and control. You don’t need to share this traffic with anyone, and you don’t have to pay someone else to get it. This traffic is yours and yours alone. The best part of this traffic is that it’s FREE!

Yes, you will have to put in a little effort and time to build it and maintain it, just like with any type of business. However, once you set a solid foundation for it and get the snowball rolling, it will gain momentum on its own and get you even more traffic and sales for years to come. This is the very beauty of free targeted traffic.

The rule of running an online business is:

“The more successful you become the less work you do.”

So the big question is …

How do you get FREE TARGETED TRAFFIC?

There are literally thousands of ways to get free targeted traffic. However, one of the fastest and the most effect ways to get free targeted traffic is leveraging the immense power of Web2.0. Web2.0 simply refers to how information is transferred, shared and found online through interactive virtual platforms, web communities and global networking.

Sites like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg are attracting hundreds of millions of users online every day. Endless information is rapidly distributed and shared on these social sites every second. These social arenas have very much become an integral part in the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people across the entire globe. Think about the traffic and revenue potential you will have by harnessing the raw power of social traffic.

Have you ever noticed that when you visit the homepages of world class marketers and organisations, you will often see prominent links to their social networking profiles on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and other social sites? This is no coincidence. In fact, every top level marketer in the world pays much attention to building and maintaining their online social profiles, because they have seen and experienced the power of Web2.0 at first-hand.

Dell has made $1 million in revenue in the last 18 months from Twitter alone! And it’s a completely free platform. Social traffic is simply too large a revenue source to ignore as part of your traffic strategy.

In the first part of this article we said that getting targeted traffic is making your offers easy for your potential buyers to find. These red hot social media sites allow you to do just that. When you fully grasp of the true capacity of Web 2.0, not only will you boost your website traffic and sales fast, you can also build customer relationships and retain buyers that last a lifetime. The benefits of social sites do not just stop at traffic; it also provides you with a powerful way to brand yourself and your business.

Mastering the use of social media creates a seamless combination between your short-term and long-term business strategies. The best part of this is that social traffic strategy can work just as well for newbies as it does for established gurus. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s targeted and it’s free! There’s no financial risks attached at all.

So go ahead and start building your social profiles now! Take full advantage of unlimited social traffic and get more buyers to your website. Start creating streams of free targeted traffic and boost your sales today!

Technorati Tags: Boost, Guaranteed, More, PART, Sales, Traffic, Website

This has several distinct advantages to an individual, but for us that are involved in Internet marketing, it is a literal gold mine. The people that leave their bookmarks on the Internet and the social bookmarking websites typically do it out in the open in order to share their bookmarks with other individuals. The fact of the matter is, the search engines love these websites just as much as their users do and this creates a unique opportunity for us to be able to get recognized by the search engines quickly. The only hard part about this is that posting the information to these websites can be a very time consuming task. That is, of course, unless you have some social bookmarking software that will automate much of the process for you.

A good piece of social bookmarking software is going to be able to automatically log into all of your accounts and add a bookmark of your choice. The only difficult part about all of this is typically going each and every one of these websites and signing up for the individual accounts. Some social bookmarking software has actually overcome this by automating the process as well. The best part about it is that once you put one of these programs to use, you are going to find that you are not only recognized by the search engines quickly, you will rise through the ranks quickly as well. It is certainly one piece of software that anybody who is involved in Internet marketing should make good use of.

Technorati Tags: Bookmarking, Gaining, More, Profit, Social, Software

I often get asked if there is any backlinks software that people can use to promote their websites or blogs. Of course we all know well that any website that doesn’t get some inbound links is never going to be that popular with the search engines.

Now if you look around the internet there’s lots of automatic submission services or software available but inevitably all these do is submit your website to the thousands of free internet directories on the web.

The value of appearing in these sites is at the very best negligible, Google often states that the value of links from these sites is worthless simply because free directories don’t offer any value at all to the searcher.

I suspect if it wasn’t for the possibility that people would submit their competitors sites to these directories then many of the search engines would actually penalise websites to having links from these directories. The origin of the backlink is of utmost importance in boosting your website, you should only try and obtain backlinks from reputable sources.

There is of course a fundamental problem with getting backlinks for your website, ideally you would be best to obtain these links from important websites in your own particular area. However it’s fairly obvious that these are quite possibly your competitors and the webmasters are unlikely to give you a boost by linking to your site. The importance of getting one-way backlinks is well known to most webmasters and everyone wants them.

There are many other ways of getting links however and the ever adaptable SEO industry is always coming up with some new method.

Some methods of Gaining Backlinks to your site

Yahoo Directory- a link in Yahoos Directory will definitely give your website a huge boost. Unfortunately there is quite a high cost of $299 for a year but if you want ot invest in your website you should consider this. If your site is non commercial though then submit as it’s completely free!

Forum Posts- try and hang out in forums on your specific subject. Answer questions when they occur and try and be helpful, in your signature include a link back to your website

Blogs – There are blogs on just about any subject you can think of. Join in discussions with useful posts and where appropriate use a link back to your website to illustrate a point
An example of a great way to get a link is to sign on to something like Yahoo answers where you can attempt to answer peoples questions. Search for questions in your area and put a link in the resource box at the bottom to a page on your site that helps answer the question. It’s also a great way to get ideas for new pages as real people are asking these questions and looking for answers.

There is one more great way of obtaining good quality bookmarks to your blog or website and that is by harnessing the power of Social Bookmarking. There are hundreds of social bookmarking sites which can give you many quality backlinks to your website and boost your traffic. These sites are actually great for getting your new website pages indexed quickly as well as the search engines spider these sites many times a day.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, Getting, More, Software, Traffic, Using

To be more precise, TARGETED TRAFFIC is what makes you the money online!

What is targeted traffic?

You need to realize, people are constantly faced with problems. Hundreds of thousands of people search online every single second for solutions to address the problems they have. These problems include a wide range of topics such as health, finance, technology and self-improvement. In essence, these different problems form different MARKETS.

Targeted traffic simply refers to potential online BUYERS who are searching for the type of solution you’re offering to resolve a problem they face. Getting targeted traffic is all about making your offers easy for these potential buyers to find, regardless of where they might be searching from across the entire internet.

“If people can’t find you, they can’t buy from you.”

When it comes to getting targeted traffic to your website, you really only have 3 options.

You can:

1. Buy traffic
2. Borrow traffic
3. Get free traffic

Buying Traffic

Buying traffic refers to paid online advertising. Targeted traffic can be bought via many channels, such as banner ads, pop-up ads, pay-per-click (PPC) ads and more.

Running a PPC ad is one of the most effective ways to buy targeted traffic to your website, and it’s a technique widely applied by organizations and internet marketers alike. You can find PPC ads in the search results when you enter a particular search phrase into search engines. These ads are positioned at the very top and also to the far right of the organic search results with a tag “sponsored links” above them.

Since these PPC ads are prominently positioned in the search results, they tend to get clicked on a lot more, thus bringing high levels of targeted traffic to the advertising websites. As the name Pay-Per-Click suggests, the advertiser needs to pay for every visitor attained from somebody clicking through the PPC ad displayed in the search results.

PPC ads are one of the fastest methods to drive a large number of targeted traffic to your website. If done correctly, the traffic is almost instant and you will see sales very fast given that you have a converting sales letter.

However, you should not expect to see major results with PPC if you have limited experience in the field, as PPC is by no means an easy method to implement successfully. Running profitable PPC campaigns takes a great deal of knowledge, trial, testing and experience.

To make profits with PPC, you will need to achieve good Return-On-Investment (ROI), where for every cent spent on advertising, more money is made back through sales. In simple words, your total sales revenue should outweigh the total cost of advertising. Reaching a positive ROI requires that you have mastered the following skills:

- Niche research
- Product trend analysis
- Product selection
- Keyword research
- Negative keywords
- Keyword selection
- Keyword grouping
- Keyword bidding
- Ad-group organization
- Campaign building
- Campaign launching
- Campaign management
- Split testing
- Campaign optimization
- Campaign tracking
- And more…

Given the amount of learning and experience demanded, it’s no surprise that PPC is one of the fastest ways for a newbie to lose a lot of money.

Having said that, you shouldn’t discount PPC advertising altogether. In fact, you should learn PPC skills and incorporate PPC campaigns to your traffic strategies at a later stage to maximize website traffic.

However, if you’re only just starting out making money online, PPC campaigns should not be the main focus in your traffic strategy, unless you wish to quickly burn a hole in your pocket and lose your shirt in record speed.

Technorati Tags: Boost, Guaranteed, More, PART, Sales, Traffic, Website

The best way to get targeted website traffic is to use Pay-per-Click (PPC) services such as Google AdWords, or Yahoo or a host of other pay services. You also need to know what you’re doing or you could find yourself spending lots of money, getting poor results and losing money very quickly. Also, when you’re first starting out, you have a limited budget, and starting with PPC campaigns may not even be an option for you at this point in time.

That’s where free traffic exchanges come in. Free traffic exchanges can be a great way to get traffic to your website. You should also know there’s really no such thing as free because you must spend your time surfing through other websites to earn credits. Free traffic exchanges are a great way to get lots of visitors to your site however, so spending an hour a day surfing, is not a lot to ask if you’re making sales from your efforts. And isn’t this why your in this business to begin with?

Free traffic exchanges are a great marketing tool for a many reasons. The best reason is that you get lots of people looking, and hopefully clicking on your website or promotional pages. But there are hidden benefits to free traffic exchanges you may not have even considered.

Search engines love free traffic exchanges because of all the incoming and outgoing links they generate. Plus the rapidly changing content is another reason the search engines love traffic exchanges. Exchanges that have more content also generate a higher page rank, and therefore more traffic, and increased memberships. The key is to find exchanges that are very active and have lots of members. The more members they have, the more potential customers you get looking at your offer and your chances for sales conversions are that much better. But bigger isn’t always better.

Some free traffic exchanges may do very well for one marketer, and be a complete waste of time for another. If everyone were promoting the same website or affiliate program in the same traffic exchange for example, then chances are you would not make many sales. Even if you were promoting the best product or service on the internet, if everyone promoted the same thing, your chances of someone purchasing through your website or links, are slim to none. Also, when people see the same ad over and over again, they get desensitized to it. Don’t fall into this trap. It’s one thing to try and sell a very popular product/service/ebook etc, but it’s another thing when a million other people are trying to do it too. Competition is a good thing, because it validates your market, but too much competition is tough and it’s time to move on to something else.

We all know clicking on ads in a free traffic exchange can be very boring, monotonous and can take a lot of time. That’s why you need to make the best of your opportunity or you will just be wasting a lot of your time and effort on something that just isn’t working. If you have your own niche website, then you already differentiated yourself from the pack. If you are an affiliate marketer, then you need to find products/services that everyone else isn’t promoting, especially within that particular traffic exchange.

One way to use free traffic exchanges to your advantage is to join a few at first, and see if your sales pick up. If your sales aren’t doing well, then test out a few more. When you do find a few traffic exchanges that appear to be generating sales for you, then narrow those down until you find the one, or two that are working. Now concentrate your efforts on those because they’re the ones you want. At least for now anyway. Things may change, so keep an eye on your campaigns and if sales seem to be falling off, then it might be time to change your offer or find another traffic exchange that could pick your profits up again.

As I mentioned, your individual promotion is everything. If you’re trying to promote something everyone else is, I don’t care what traffic exchange service you’re using, your sales conversions are going to be very low, or nothing at all. You cannot always blame the exchange. Sometimes you have to look at yourself and think if you’re doing all you can to make sales.

If you’re going to use multiple free traffic exchanges, and I recommend that you do, you should get yourself a multi-tab web browser. Many of these browsers are free and run on PCs and MACs. The tabs feature allows you to have one web browser open with multiple tabs each going to a separate website. You could easily put 5 or 6 of your free exchange sites in these tabs, and earn credits for all of them at the same time. So instead of surfing for 1/2 an hour or an hour earning 200 hits for one exchange, you could earn 200 hits for 5 exchanges in the same amount of time. This is a huge time saver and multiplies your earned hits by 5X or 6X.

Getting free traffic to your website can be a lot of work. If you don’t have the money to spend on full blown PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns like Google AdWords or Yahoo, free traffic exchanges are a great way to get the traffic you need, for Free!

Technorati Tags: More, Traffic, Website

The easiest way for you to overcome this is to employ the use of social bookmarking automation software. This will help to cut down on the amount of time that it takes to get your webpages listed on the social bookmarking websites and to get them listed in the search engines themselves. Since there are a lot of different options as far as the software is concerned, I thought that it would be important to cover some of the basics of the software and discuss some of the options so that you know what to look for.

First of all, any good Social Bookmarking automation software is going to be fully automated, every step of the way. After all, the last thing that you want to do is to try and automate a process and then to have to manually go in and micromanage every step that you take. A good software program is going to get you signed up on the social bookmarking websites automatically, post the links automatically and then follow up on any changes that come about in the social bookmarking websites themselves. This is the only way that you’re going to find your success by using one of these software packages and not end up frustrated in the process.

Looking for various reviews of social bookmarking automation software will help you to be able to make a wise decision. After you have the software up and running, you would be surprised with how efficient it is and how much time you will be able to save by not doing these things manually. You will then be able to take the time that you save and put it into efficiently running the rest of your business.

Technorati Tags: Automation, Bookmarking, Generate, More, Sales, Save, Social, Software, Time, Using