May 22, 2013

Link Building Isn’t Dead – It Changed

Link Building Isn’t Dead - It Changed

How many times in the past 2 months have you read a post about link building and SEO? I ask this because I have read 5 in the past day and most of them are saying that link building is dead. Now, is link building dead? No, link building is not dead, it has just changed.

The problem with the way most people would build links a few months ago is that they were getting links from very poor websites and this in turn go their websites penalized by Google. What you need to understand is that link building is something that doesn’t stop and there is no quick way to rank on the top of the search engines. If you ever hear somebody tell you that they will guarantee your rankings, and then just know that it is a lie and all they are going to do is get your website penalized. Trust me, I know because I hired somebody to do that with one of my experimental sizes about 8 months ago.

So, how has link building changed?

Link building has changed because now it is all about building a reputation. For example, if you have a blog then you should have reviews about that blog. This is where AngliesList comes in and even Yelp. The problem that many people have is they are too focused on building links on other sites just like theirs, through comments, through forum links, and even social bookmarks. What you need to realize is that everything is changing because now Google is not the only one running the internet, Facebook is there too.

Ways to Succeed With Link Building

Guest Posts – One of the best way to get more links is through guest posts. The best part about a guest post is that your link will show up on another person’s blog and with more than a million blogs out there, you are bound to get some on high ranking websites. Where most people make the mistake here is they submit their posts to really low quality blogs, if you want to succeed, then you need to put yourself out there and publish only on high ranking sites. One piece of advice that I have for you is to make sure you create a post that people will want to read and not just something that has been talking about for forever and a day.

Reviews – Yes, reviews are making a big hit these days. The reason review sites are starting to pick up as far as links go is because Google has realized that these are generated by users and that is the best way to tell a users experience on the site. If you have a few reviews on sites like Angieslist or Yelp, then you will notice that your rankings will be higher because of it. Now, don’t go out and plaster reviews all over the internet, instead, build a few each week.

YouTube – Yes, YouTube is a great way to get links. The best part about YouTube is that you can put your link on their site and when somebody comes and uses your video, your link will show up on their site. The reason I like this method is because more people are using video now than anything else. Trust me, this does work and that is why I suggest using it.

One thing that you will notice about link building is that it is only going to get harder and harder to affect your own rankings. Many people could do this without any problems a few years ago, but with all the changes you will notice that it is not easy anymore. Just remember, link building is a long and tedious process that you need to work at.

3 Proven Ways to Increase Website Traffic

3 Proven Ways to Increase Website Traffic

To many people it doesn’t matter how they get traffic to their blog as long as they get it. For me, this is somewhat true and that is why I do more than just write blog posts and build links. There are several great ways to increase your website traffic but I want to just focus on 3 of those methods today.

The problem that so many people have when it comes to increasing website traffic is they don’t take the time to figure out what really works for them and what doesn’t work at all. This is why I am showing you 3 proven ways to increase your website traffic without doing something that won’t get you anywhere. Just know that all 3 of these methods work but you have to use them.

3 Proven Ways to Increase Website Traffic

Blog Commenting – Blog commenting has been used for a long time and more and more people are forgetting about it. What most people think is that blog commenting doesn’t work anymore and to be honest with you, it doesn’t, in regards to SEO. Blog commenting should be used to get direct traffic from that blog you are commenting on right to your own website. I love blog commenting because it gives you the ability to get in front of other people without spending countless hours writing a post for your own site.

Tip: When blog commenting make sure you are commenting on blogs with high traffic. The reason you do this is because it is more effective than commenting on a blog with only a few readers on it.

Forum Posts – 5 Years ago forum posts were the best thing for a site. The problem now is that forums don’t pass much link juice to your site, but they do get you in front of different people. The way forums work is that somebody asks a question or needs help with something and then you respond to their question/post. Once you have enough forum posts on a certain forum you will start to get traffic from there.

Tip: Don’t post on dozens of forums; just stick to two or three larger ones.

Hard Work And Dedication – After everything I have learned since I started blogging the one thing that has stuck with me is hard work and dedication. Without hard work and dedication I am not sure exactly where I would be today. There have been many roadblocks that I have had to overcome and it is because of my hard work and dedication that I am still able to do what I love and blog weekly. If you want to do what you love, whatever that may be, then you need to understand how important hard work is and where dedication will get you. Trust me, without both of those things you probably will have a tougher time.

Tip: Never think that you will get lucky someday, so you don’t have to work hard. Most people are not successful because they are not dedicated to what they do, but all of this can change as your passion for life and blogging change as well.

Without blog traffic you will have a very lonesome blog. If you are serious about taking your blog to the next level or at least making sure people are reading your posts, then you need to increase your blog traffic now. I know that not all blogs will thousands of visitors each day but you can at least build it up to a couple hundred visitors per day.

Just answer this one question regarding website traffic before you go – What would 1,000 visitors to your website mean to you? Your site?

 

Benefit of Using Micro Niche Sites to Boost Your Traffic

Benefit of Using Micro Niche Sites to Boost Your Traffic

Getting traffic is what all bloggers are currently struggling with. Whether you have a three month old blog of one that has been around for eight years doesn’t matter, what matters is that you provide quality content that readers want to read. Without this quality content your blog will be very lonely as you will most likely be the only person there.

Now, quality content is great but you must utilize it the right way. This is where micro niche sites come into play for you. Where most bloggers fail is they think that all the content they write needs to be on their website but that is not true. My advice to you is to utilize micro niche sites in order to target specific keywords and then direct the traffic from those sites towards your main website.

If you have not heard about this strategy before, then you are in luck that you landed on this article today. I started blogging without much luck many years ago and it wasn’t until I started using micro niche sites to help boost my traffic that my blog started to really take off. Below are some tips to help you setup your micro niche sites the right way and absolutely crush your competitors by stealing all their traffic.

Tips on Using Micro Niche Sites to Boost Traffic

Use An Opt-In Page – If you are getting traffic to a micro niche site, then you need to use an opt-in page to help capture their email addresses. The benefit of getting your readers email addresses is that you can now market to them over and over again. What most website owners don’t do enough of is try to build their list and that is why I am adamant about you doing this. Trust me; you will be glad that you build your list now than waited until it was too late.

Always Target Multiple Keywords – Creating a new website can sometimes be tough, especially if you don’t know which keywords to target. It is because of this that I suggest targeting multiple keywords for each micro niche site because some of the articles that you create will not rank on the search engines right away. Just know that when you target multiple keywords you will then have a better shot at ranking for at least some of the keywords that you wanted to rank for.

Don’t Create Junk – I am not going to talk much about this, however, I do want to make sure you are not creating junk and putting that on your website. When a reader see’s that the site that is linking back to your site is just a bunch of junk, then they will assume that your site is the same as well. Trust me; this is a terrible way to get long term traffic to your blog.

Create Multiple Sites – Something that many of my colleagues have done is creating multiple sites and seeing which one works the best. Sometimes they would create 5 different sites around a similar keyword but using different URLS and link building techniques in order to get at least one that will work for them. Once you find out what works best in your specific niche you can then use that strategy over and over until you are satisfied with the amount of traffic that you are getting.

When using micro niche sites to boost your traffic you need to keep building new sites in order to expand. A lot of people just assume that having a few micro niche sites is enough and they can just add hundreds of articles but that doesn’t always work. My advice to you is to just find what works for your specific niche and then recreate that process over and over again.

As you can see, getting more traffic than you have ever had is not that far out of reach. My only recommendation is that you don’t create more micro niche sites than you can handle at first because in the beginning you will need to build them up so that they actually rank on the different search engines.

So, are you ready to boost your traffic by using micro niche sites?

8 Amazing Rewards of Using Google Analytics

8 Amazing Rewards of Using Google Analytics

Oh, yes, you need search engine optimisation (SEO) to boost your website’s presence and hopefully increase your earnings too. Other than that, you have to combine your methods with social media to capture the attention of more individuals.

But do you stop at these?

No. You don’t just end with the application of strategies; you must also find out if your online marketing campaign is indeed working out well. What is more, you have to know if you are truly able to reach your objectives.

With that said, it goes to show that you have to keep track of your site’s performance.

If you have SEO to enhance Web visibility, what can you use to monitor your success?

This is where Google Analytics comes in.

Analytics

What Is It?

In general, it is an application, which is much like the ones you have downloaded on your smartphone. However, GA is much better.

Why do I say so?

While it doesn’t let you play games or listen to music, it helps you keep a close eye on your website’s visitor activity including page views. It also gives you insights on traffic source and length of stay on a certain page. Most of all, it allows you to analyse the data it provides and save this as future reference.

What Does It Require?

You need to consider this question before using GA, especially since its tools typically call for the integration of a source code on your site. This way, you can obtain real-time reports and data.

Given that, you are probably wondering if the details it provides are difficult to understand.

The answer is no. You can actually adjust its parameters to obtain insights tailored according to your needs. This is possible through predefined segmentation or variable classification, which shows analysis reports in different methods.

What Are Its Advantages?

After going through the information above, you have probably made an assumption already that is highly important.

You are right! It is indeed essential. To prove this, let us have a look at its benefits, which are specific for each analytics features.

Content – Through it, you can generate reports to know which of your website’s pages are performing well, so you can give the users/customers a better navigation experience.

Conversion – Through it, you can determine how many viewers you get, how they engage with your site’s offers, and how much money you make.

Mobile – Through it, you can calculate how effective your mobile commerce strategies are and how it affects your business. To top it off, you can measure both basic and high-end Web-enabled phones. As a note, this feature is only applicable if you are promoting through mobile.

Advertising – Through it, you can widen your marketing reach by determining how successful your search, social, display, and mobile adverts are. You can also find out how efficient and effective your promotional and Web campaigns are. And, once you get the data results, you can come up with even better tactics.

Social – Through it, you can learn how well your social media methods work. You can also discover how the people in your network respond to the widgets and buttons on your site e.g. Follow, Tweet, +1, Like, etc. Moreover, you can determine how they interact with your updates on various profile or fan pages.

What Are Its Tools?

Instead of enumerating everything, let us focus on the most vital. These usually include the following (together with each tool’s benefits):

Dashboard – Through it, you can come up with personalised widgets or plugins to measure visits, goal transaction, bounce rate, and traffic source.

Real-time report – Through it, you can check out the unfolding of visitor activity on your website. What is more, you can look into the most active pages as well as geo locations and keywords that generate more traffic.

Site speed – Through it, you can determine your site’s average page loading time. The best thing about this function is that you don’t need to use a source code. And if there are issues, this tool can provide you with ideal solutions.

Event tracking – Through it, you can find out user activities such as PDF downloading and video watching. To top it off, you can obtain data without disrupting other metrics.

Final Insight

It is quite a long list, right?

Well, we can go on and on about the features, functions, and tools of Google Analytics. But let me conclude our topic by pointing out its greatest reward—it allows you to monitor your website’s performance conveniently.

So, are you going to include GA in your online applications now? Don’t hesitate to tell us what you think about it.

 

About the Author: Emma Tomlinson is the Head of Retail at Smart Traffic, an SEO company Bristol, which provides search solutions and services to clients from different countries worldwide.

 

Shoot the Messenger: Author Clout to Play a Role in Google Search?


Over the course of the past year, sweeping changes to search engine rankings — largely concerning Google’s changes to its own online platform — have forced businesses and publishers to change how they produce content. For marketers, these changes have created a mix of challenges and opportunities. Google’s Panda update, the centerpiece of its search refinements, garnered the biggest attention, but the increased integration of social media into publishing has also had its hand in changing how marketers think.

And if all goes according to plan, another milestone shift in the Internet landscape is on its way, and yes, you can once again thank Google. The company is planning on bolstering the reliability of its online search results by instituting “author tags” to determine page rankings. The plan has been in the works for more than a year, and the new tool has split professionals and consumers into proponents and critics of the new system.

What is an author tag?

While content is currently organized in online search results according to the quality of the domain it is published on, Google is hoping to implement “AuthorRank,” a new approach to ranking content that values the authority and reputability of an author’s content more than it judges the website the content is hosted on. Known more casually as author tags, these could have huge implications for authors, publishers and marketers alike.

These author tags will be utilized through Google+ profiles, through which users can link to online content they have authored. Google’s author ranking system will use these author profiles to rank Web content authors in terms of their value and following. It also attempts to link together the entire body of work of a content author, making it easier to browse and review that work.

The author tag, once fully operational, will be a small bit of code that can be included in a page’s code to identify an author. A separate bit of code can be used to indicate that all of the links presented on a given Web page represent content produced by the author. The code can then tag the content to that author, thus boosting his or her status as an online author and allowing the resulting content to rank high in Google searches.

There are still some unknowns about exactly how the author tag will work, but a few things are clear: authors’ reputations will be weighed more than ever, and not only by the publisher of their content. Publishers and marketers, meanwhile, may find certain advantages in publishing content attributed to certain authors. Depending on how exactly Google handles this author ranking, there exists the potential for marketers to take advantage of the system, to the benefit of themselves and the companies they represent.

The author tag’s impact on marketing

No one is totally sure of the degree to which the author tag will determine search results rankings, but if it factors in heavily, search marketers could have a heyday. Although it could be frowned upon in some circles, marketers could exploit authors of currently significant repute and/or create social profiles accompanying their content in an effort to develop a strong authorial presence online. Pay-per-click marketers could see a particular advantage in utilizing author tags in this manner, although the changes could affect operations for all online marketing efforts.

This could be overcome by Google, but if the author tags are heavily weighted, the process could be very complicated. Most experts believe that author tags will make a noticeable difference in search results rankings, but they won’t turn online searches upside down.

Even so, a PPC management company can be useful to online businesses hoping to maintain a competitive edge in marketing and advertising efforts even as the conditions of online marketing undergo another significant change. One thing is for sure, even though content rankings may be unpredictable, Google will always be willing to help out its PPC customers.

 

About the author: Dawn Altnam lives and works in the Indianapolis area, and she enjoys following the tech and business worlds. After furthering her education, she has spent some time researching her interests and blogging of her discoveries often.

 

Steps To Proper Blogging After Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty

Steps To Proper Blogging After Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty

As you probably already know, the Over-Optimization penalty was introduced the other day. If you are like me and most of the internet, then you felt the impact of the penalty. Just to give you an idea Google’s, Matt Cutts said that this would effect roughly 3.1% of all English sites but from reading other blogs, forums and even getting emails I am convinced that this effected much more than that.

Now, Google is not going to come out and say they are going back to the pre over-optimization days, so we all need to get ready to change our sites and do things the Google way. Below, you will see a video that outlines what you should do first in order to get your site ranking again in Google’s search engine. It is highly recommended that you start there and then follow the steps below in order to blog the way that Google wants you to blog.

You can also see the video on Youtube – Get Rankings Back After Google’s Over Optimization Penalty

Steps To Proper Blogging

Write Quality And Unique Content

If you are not already doing this, then you need to start right now. The benefit of writing quality and unique content is that you will not be able to get more natural links and that is what Google wants. What you need to remember is that we are all playing Google’s game now and you have to follow their rules. Google loves quality and unique content and now, so should you.

Create A Community

Do you participate in Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and all the other community driven sites? If not, then now is the time to start. We all know that social media will be the future of the internet and Google is smart enough to consider that in their rankings. Whether they go by Twitter followers or Facebook interaction isn’t sure yet, but what is sure is that they love social interaction.

Build Quality Links

Google has always stated that they rank quality over quality and that is a for sure thing now. Instead of creating hundreds of article links or blog comments, create one web 2.0 article and link to that. Doing this will take the risk away from your website yet you will get all the benefits from it. I know this sounds a little strange but creating one PR2 link on a web 2.0 property is much more valuable than 50 PR0 links pointing directly to your site.

Blogging after this most recent Google update will be different but that doesn’t mean you won’t make it through. Just stick to what Google has told us already and make sure your site is compliant with Google’s best blogging practices.

 

Author Bio:

This is a guest post by Adam Snyder at DormRoomCash.com. If you want more articles like this, then you can get all DormRoomCash’s articles by email.

Why You Need to Link Your Google Analytics and Adsense Accounts

Why You Need to Link Your Google Analytics and Adsense Accounts

Though discussion of AdSense advertising has slowed some in the blogosphere, especially since the latest Panda updates, Google’s ad placement program still remains one of the key ways bloggers monetize their sites and bring in revenue from their blogs.

Another of Google’s products, Google Analytics, has also revolutionized many bloggers’ marketing strategies, by continuously monitoring traffic and reporting various data about that traffic, allowing bloggers to adapt, to figure out what’s working and what’s not, and to keep improving their sites.

While it may not be breaking news that you can link the two accounts for you blog, a very large number of bloggers who use both programs have not linked Adsense and Analytics, and are missing out on some potentially very important new data that could take their blog to the next level.

If you are using both Google Adsense and Google Analytics, but haven’t linked them, stop reading right now and go link them.

All linked up? Perfect.

In your Google Analytics account, you will see a separate section for Adsense.  Given a little bit of time, you will start to gather a good deal of data in more categories than you will know what to do with.

One of the first things you’ll probably want to do once the two programs are linked is find out exactly where your money is coming from.  With these programs linked you can even determine which content brings in the most money.

To do this, simply click the “Adsense Pages” tab, which will bring up a report that lists all the pages on your site that brought in income during the last month, and then organizes them highest to lowest.

The most important advantages of linking the two programs are finding out:

  • Which kind of post brings in the higher paying ads
  • The content that succeeds best, in terms of bringing money in
  • How the length of your posts affects conversion rates, and income
  • What pages you should focus your linking efforts to (ones that are performing well are already optimized, so you should capitalize on that fact)
  • Where you can fit extra ads to bring in even more money and maybe improve page performance

Again, the fact that you can link the two programs may not be news to some bloggers, but the potential that you gain by linking them might be.  Blogging is certainly a business built around data points and modifying strategies around these data points.  If you’re using both programs already, there is no reason you shouldn’t have them linked — unless of course you don’t want to succeed.  If that’s the case, go ahead and leave things exactly the way they are.

By-line:

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.

 

Why Every Blogger Should Use Google Analytics

Why Every Blogger Should Use Google Analytics

As a blogger, there is a lot that you need to know about your site. That is why I highly recommend every blogger uses Google Analytics. The best part about Google Analytics is that it is free, which means that you don’t have to pay anything in order to benefit from it.

A lot of bloggers think that Google uses their Analytics and Analytics software to spy on your blog, however, Google is smart enough that they already have all your information even without you using one of their free services. It is because of this that you should stop worrying about Google spying on you and just sign up for both of these free services.

If you want to know why I highly recommend Google Analytics to every blogger, then here is why.

Benefits of Google Analytics

Search Engine Queries

One of the things I like about Google Analytics is that they let you know where your site is when somebody types in a given keyword and how many times people click on it. This is important to know because you might need to change the title of your article, the description and maybe do a little bit of link building to get you higher on the search engine. Knowing what people type in to find you is extremely important because oftentimes it is the long tail keywords where you will rank high.

Time on Site

Yes, the time that somebody spends on your site is important. Many bloggers only look at the amount of traffic that they receive; however, the time that somebody spends on your site is just as important as it shows how people view your content. If somebody doesn’t like what they read, then they will immediately click off.

Bounce Rate

Do you spend much time trying to improve your bounce rate? For people who focus on Google AdSense and affiliate sales, the higher the bounce rate is the better. As for people with a community feel in mind and a focus on getting more comments and page views, a lot bounce rate is essentially what they want. Without Google Analytics, all of this is tough to figure out.

Customizable Reports

With the ability to create reports on any of your key metrics you’ll be able to quickly and easily see just how your visitors are arriving, and integrating with your website.

And so much more…

Google Analytics is a great piece of software that you need to utilize. Not only will it give you all the insights that you need, it will also help you figure out where your blog is going. Knowing what people like to read, where they usually land on your site and how much time they spend on it will give you a good idea of how your blog fares to the others out there. If you ask me, there is no other free online tool that does what Google Analytics does and that is why I highly recommend it.

7 ways to Generate Web traffic for your own website

7 ways to Generate Web traffic for your own website

Generating Traffic for Success on the Internet

To successfully unite the words: internet, marketing, and income, you’ll require another term: traffic. This is the reason why there is so much conversation and even total obsession with regards to the subject. Let’s assume that you are about to sell a product or service and the basics of the website are well ensured, what you will do now is to attract traffic into your site. Needless to mention, other websites desire traffic as well which include your opponents, therefore, getting traffic must be your top priority.

To aid you in getting traffic, below are a few techniques which are reliable if applied appropriately.

Ways to Obtain Traffic for your Website

  1. Promote on search engines – Microsoft AdCenter and Google AdWords supply ways to obtain traffic immediately. Of course, the most reliable way of obtaining traffic is by paying out for it. But whether you’ll have sufficient cash leftover to male income after traffic has arrive isn’t so sure. A catalog site or sales letter should be very convincing to create a worthwhile generation of traffic.
  2. Viral Marketing – Another of the no or low cost site promotion methods is viral marketing. It’s quite a tricky method; however, it could be relatively effective. The concept is connecting the link or name of your company to a specific kind of media like funny video, entertaining game or interesting article.
  3. Trade links with some other websites – Through trading links with various other websites, both websites benefit from the marketing efforts of each other. Theoretically, you could expect more traffic if you’ve exchanged more links. But actually, Google is frowning on link exchange for its personal sake.
  4. Use keywords effectively in the content of the site – Search engines are displaying content within their results on the basis of keywords which are entered by individuals. Select keywords which are regularly searched, but don’t have too several other websites supplying information for the keywords.
  5. Join online forums and communities – Present suggestion within forums that relate to your field of expertise. A few forums will permit you to include signature line into your post having links back into your website. Ensure to always give helpful information and suggestion, not only bald-faced ads for your site. Nonetheless, this method would function better for a few topics like Internet Marketing compared for others.
  6. Write articles to obtain traffic for the website – Submit articles about topics that are related to the subject of the website. For instance, if your website is dealing with iPhones, you can write regarding popular iPhone tricks and tips and apps. Ensure to incorporate your link and site description at the ending of the every article you submit.
  7. Present newsletter to the visitors of the website – It is essential to get individuals on the mailing list. To encourage individuals to sign up, you could offer incentives like free valuable e-book. Ensure that the form for signing up is on each website’s page.

Be Careful in Using a Method to Get the Best Outcomes

You can try all of the methods that were mentioned above to generate traffic. However, because you’ve a limited time, you’ll likely desire to focus on two or even three methods that appear to present a good number of prospective for you. Carefulness in whatever technique you select would bring the most excellent results.

(I am Susan Hannan from Pass Certification Looking for Exams key exam assistance? Let’s take benefit of Pass Certification self-paced Cisco Certifications training material and clear your IT certification on first try.)

 

Long Tail Pro – Easy Keyword Research

Long Tail Pro – Easy Keyword Research

Do you know the best way to do keyword research? In my opinion, it is to use Long Tail Pro. Yes, you can use Market Samurai, however, Long Tail Pro offers more and is much easier to use. Watch the video below to see exactly what I mean.

You can see in the video that finding easy to rank for keywords is very fast. Unlike Market Samurai, I don’t have to put in single seed keywords. This saves a lot of time because now I have the ability to insert 5 different keywords and filter them out in bunches.

In the video you saw some of the benefits to using Long Tail Pro and here are some other benefits that you should know about.

Benefits To Using Long Tail Pro

Easy To Use – If you have used Market Samurai or Micro Niche Finder, then you know they are not the easiest to use. With both of these there is a learning curve that you have to get through first. With Long Tail Pro you won’t have that. This is a very simple to use piece of software that will take you only a few minutes to get acclimated to and then you are ready to go.

Multiple Accounts – Do you have multiple websites? If you do, then having multiple accounts to do your keyword research will be beneficial to you. This is another thing that Long Tail Pro has. The best part about this is there is not a limit to how many accounts you can have on the keyword research software.

Frequent Updates – Spencer Haws over at Nichepursuits.com has done a great job at updating this software. If you don’t know who Spencer is, then you should really check him out. He has created hundreds of niche websites, so he knows what other people are looking for when it comes to keyword research.

Faster – My favorite reason to use Long Tail Pro is because it is much faster. Being that I write a lot of articles and try to limit the amount of work I do per day to only 4 hours, I don’t have time to waste. Time is one thing that you can’t get back, so being able to do keyword research very quickly is very important to me.

Now, if you want to do keyword research without wasting a lot of time, then you should consider getting Long Tail Pro. It is not a requirement in order to do keyword research, however, I do highly recommend it.

This is a guest post by Adam Snyder. Adam runs DormRoomCash.com where he teaches his readers different ways make cash online. In one of his lastest posts Adam shows How To Earn 100 Dollars Fast.