1. Keep It Simple, Stupid The KISS rule is essential for success in the online business world. Spiffy Javascript and Flash effects may look nice, but they’re more difficult for search engine algorithms to understand, which will ultimately lower your page ranking. Because search engine optimization is all about tailoring your website to search engines, you want to make sure to keep your site simple enough for the engine to understand.

2. Content is King – Put lots of content together! Niche content is the best – simply defined as articles about things that everyone wants to know, that nobody already knows. Blogs are great, because they’re a regularly updated source of content. If you need to develop lots of high quality content, go through a freelance writers’ site and put out multiple requests – this way you can get a huge amount of content quickly.

3. Share Links – Send emails to the owners of established quality websites with similar content to yours and offer to share links. Chances are, as long as your site looks professional, like it’s going to make it big, they’ll accept, because they got where they are by sharing links. Search engines track how many sites link to yours, and use that to determine how valuable your site is.

4. Proper Sitemap and Meta Tags – When you submit your site to search engines, they will want to see that your site includes a sitemap that meets their search engine’s parameters, and that each page contains meta tags to help the engine categorize your site. The big engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Bing all offer programs to help you figure out the most relevant meta tag keywords, so definitely make use of these.

5. Keyword Optimization – When you’re creating a page that you want people to “land” on from the search engine, you want to make sure that the keyword density on that page is sufficient. You can figure out the best keywords by downloading a keyword generator from Google or other engines. Once you know what your content keywords are, make sure your page contains a 1-3% keyword density – or 1-3 times per hundred words. This may seem small, but keep in mind that very high keyword densities often make your content unreadable. Trying to “game the system” often results in penalization by search engine algorithms.

Researched and developed by Ratelines.com, find the best interest rates in the money market.

I am quite new to gust posting: particularly I heard about it a few months ago, first in the form of a blog world tour from Nicole Dean, and then learned more about it from a challenge Lynn Terry had for her elite mastermind members.

This past month, Famous Bloggers had a guest blogging contest, and I took the opportunity to participate.  There are some great prizes that will be awarded by these sponsors:

* FamousBloggers.net – contest organizer

*MyBlogGuest.com our contest media partner

*WebmasterFormat.com - Webmaster Resource

*MMO social network – making money online tips

*DesignGizer.com a new design bookmark site

*Better Blogging for Bloggers blog

*DennisEdell.com - Dennis Edell

*IBlogZone.com a making money online blog

*CrazyEgg.com heat mapping tools

*SimplyFreshThemes.com Fresh Journal WP theme

*Kiesha @ WeBlogbetter.com Blogging tips & tricks

*JohnPaulAguiar.com - Twitter Dummy Guide

I’ve already seen a nice spike in traffic from my guest blogging, and I know I will make it part of my business marketing. I’d love to hear from you if you’d like a guest post from me.

Make this a goal today: guest post at least once this month (more if you can). If I can do it, anyone can.

Who wants a website without traffic? Let’s face it: you need traffic to your site or there is no reason to having it.

But how do you get traffic to your site? We all know about content, but are there other ways to increase traffic?

1. Answer questions - if you see the same question asked over and over again, write an answer to it, and then direct those who asked it to your post. This way, not only do you have new content on your site, but now you have someone happy that they found an answer to their question. They’ll promote your post, letting others know about the answer to their problem.You can find all types of questions on Twitter, FaceBook, in forums, etc.

2. Write a Glossary for Your Niche – there is always a term someone doesn’t know: why not write a list of terms specific to your niche and define those terms. This information will be a magnet for links, and it’s not hard to do.

3. Invite Guest Bloggers -  there is a lot of buzz about guest blogging these days, so why not ask people you admire and follow to guest post at your blog? It’s not hard, and the worst that can happen is that they’ll say no. But if they say yes, you’ll have a nice traffic boost when their post goes up, as most people would let their followers know about the guest post.

4. Use Tags for Your Posts – I am not sure how many take advantage of the tags on their blogs, but I get a lot of visitors that come through tags I created for my posts. And  if I see enough visitors come through a specific tag, I create a blog post for that specific term: give people what they want!

There you have it: all of the above methods are easy to implement. What methods do you use to increase your traffic?

There’s no doubt, social networking gives you access to your audience but what else can you accomplish with this tool?

Social gives business owners the ability to:

• Build an online presence
• Increase website traffic
• Boost SEO
• Establish credibility
• Connect with your audience
• Glean valuable information to grow your business

Whether your online business is just starting out, or you’re a large corporation, adding social networking to your marketing strategy will help you promote and grow your business.

Options to Use Social Networking to Promote Your Business

There are a number of ways you can use social networking to promote your business. Let’s take a look at the most popular and powerful.

• Drive Traffic to Your Blog or Website - Post a curiosity generating or attention grabbing headline and include a link to your website.
• Promote – Launching a new product? Announce it via social networking sites. Offering a huge holiday discount? Let people know.
• Share Lessons and Experiences – Social networking is about connecting. If you have something relevant to your industry to share, share it. Start conversations and partake in them.
• Share Pictures, Audio and Video – Many social networking sites embrace visual forms of posting as well. YouTube of course is a video social networking site but even Facebook lets you link to and post audio and video messages. And Twitter developers have created picture and video sharing applications.
• Share Information – Post interesting and relevant statistics, quotes, or headlines and start a conversation. When appropriate, link to your company website.
• Advertise – Many social networking sites also sell advertising space.

Building up an online presence is an ongoing process, one that requires consistent maintenance and patience. However, just because it does take some time to achieve your presence doesn’t mean to say that every single tactic and strategy you employ will take up your entire day. In fact, here are a number of social media tactics that take no more than 5 minutes each!

Tweet

Twitter has a 140 character limit, so there’s no space for essays. Of course, condensing your message down into 140 characters might take a few minutes to do, but a regular Tweet relating to your niche area, wider industry or some of your own specific business/website news can keep people informed. Make use of hash tags (for example #blogging) so that people seeking Twitter users who regularly update on a particular topic area can easily locate and follow you. Follow people in your niche and respond to their Tweets. It’s a quick thing to do but is essentially a micro-networking strategy.

Blog Comment

Find websites and blogs in a similar niche to your business. Read and comment on posts. Again, this is quick but is a great means of networking and getting your voice heard within your niche. Becoming familiar with other people operating in a similar area to you could lead to contacts and exposure opportunities.

Update your Profiles

If you don’t already have Facebook/LinkedIn profiles (or other social media website profiles) you should. Spending a few minutes each week making sure it’s up to date is time well spent. Bear in mind that anyone seeking more information about you or your business may well start with a search around Facebook or similar sites.

Check your Online Reputation

Google yourself or your brand name (or both)! Keep an eye on what’s in the top twenty or so results. If anyone mentions you on a forum or a blog and this comes up, get in on the conversation, whether positive or negative. If it’s negative, you can respond and handle the situation. If it’s positive you have the opportunity to thank people for mentioning your name and accomplishments.

Forums

A less spoken form of social media these days, the forum, has been somewhat overshadowed by Facebook and Twitter. But they’re still well used and very convenient discussion platforms from which to voice your opinion on an area you are knowledgeable in. If you come across forums relating to you niche, why not register and start taking part? A comment here or there takes just few minutes but gives you the opportunity to prove yourself an authority on your niche area.

There’s no such thing as overnight results where social media is concerned. It’s a long term process of building up a profile for yourself. But once you have done so, it really is an invaluable asset which will undoubtedly lead to some incredibly useful contacts and potentially to sales too.

1. Do a thorough overhaul. Do all of your internal links work? Is everything pointing where you want it to point? Are your marketing strategies working to drive traffic to your website and social functions and features? This process should be taken care of thoughtfully and carefully with attention to detail.

One or two broken links may mean the difference in hundreds of visitors. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to go through every page of your website and make sure your links are working and if you don’t want to go through all of your marketing efforts to make sure your links are working, then outsource it to a virtual administrator who has careful attention to detail and move on to #2.

2. Start participating in relevant forums Network. Drive traffic to your website and engage people on your website as well. Be personable when you’re networking on forums. Create a profile, actively participate in discussions and be sure to create a link in your signature to drive traffic.

3. Participate in social networking sites. Just like you participate in relevant industry forums, do the same with social networking sites. Be sure to link to your website occasionally in your posts.

4. Send out invitations virtually and by word of mouth. If you want to get more activity and life on your social website, then invite people to stop by. You can lure them with promotions, contests or sweepstakes, just make sure you follow through once they’re at your website.

5. Blog all about it. Start creating a stir on your website. Blog about newsworthy topics, incite a heated discussion, post valuable content that people will link back to. And guest blog too, just make sure to include a link back to your social website.

6. Offer something free. Sometimes all it takes is a little incentive to get people motivated again. If your social website is gasping for breath, put some life in it by offering a few good freebies or a new feature that will add some energy to the website.

7. Be vigilant about participating and keeping the conversation going. Social websites fail when people stop talking to one another. Many people may still visit the site: however, if they’re only reading and not engaging with others then the silence can be deadening and one by one the readers will trickle away.

Give them something to be excited about. Give them something to discuss by participating and keeping the conversation ball rolling. One by one the conversations will pick up and you’ll have a website that no longer needs CPR or life support.

Getting started with an online business can be a stressful task. Once you’ve jumped through all the hoops and have gotten your website up and running like a well-oiled machine, you are left with the question: how am I going to get people to look at my website? It goes without saying that no matter what your business is, if you want it to succeed, you are going to have to discover a way to get people other than yourself to look at your website.

How can I increase targeted web traffic?

There are several things an online business owner can do to increase the amount of viewership to their website.

Write Articles – When writing articles for your website, you want to make sure that they are well-researched and provide your targeted viewers with factual and useful information about the given topic. You want to make sure that the content of your articles is high-quality and unique so as to encourage viewers to return to your website. Additionally, a website with quality articles is more likely to get bookmarked and passed along to other viewers. Of course, don’t just write articles for your site: write some that you’ll submit to article directories.

Guest Post – Probably one of the fastest ways to increase targeted traffic to your site is to be a guest blogger. It may seem hard to find places to guest blog in the beginning, but don’t get discouraged:  the worst that can happen would be a “no” answer. And if that happened, you just go onto the next blog owner and ask again. Sooner that you know, you’ll have your first guest blogging gig, and the second will be easier. Make sure you familiarize yourself with the blog where you want to guest post, and offer some of your best content.

Partner with someone who has a list in your niche -  and either offer a great article just for their list, or even pay for advertising. To make sure your content is appropriate for that list, sign up yourself and study every email you receive form the list before you send your advertisement.

Search Engine Optimization – Write posts for long tail keywords that you can rank for easily, even if there are only a few searches a day: it’s a lot easier than trying to rank for a highly searched for key phrase that has a lot of competition. Some of the basics for ranking well are to use relevant keywords in your title,use relates keywords in your post, add tags  and acquire links to your post.

No matter how great your online business and website are, if no one is looking at your online content, then your business is not going to be very successful. After putting all the time and labor into creating your business and website, keep the ball rolling with the above tips on generating web traffic so that the rest of the world can see what a great service or product it is that you are offering.

So you have just successfully launched your website and you are feeling extremely good about yourself for such an achievement. Of course, you have just jumped one hurdle (building your website) and are now moving towards the next one which is actually getting internet users to view your website daily. How many visitors would you like to get to your site daily? 100? 500? 100? More? Let’s see how you can increase traffic to your website.

There are several effective ways to increase traffic flow to your website: PPC, article marketing, video, social media, etc.

Increase Traffic With PPC

Many website owners don’t use PPC at all for fear of costing too much. But if you really think about it, PPC could actually save you lots of time and money. How, you may ask? With PPC you can test niches easily without wasting time on the other traffic building methods, only to find out that your pages don’t convert, or the keywords/key phrases you chose are not buying phrases.

Set up a PPC campaign that is very specific to your key phrase, and send a few hundred visitors to that page: then assess if the phrase you chose is profitable. If so, go on to some of the next traffic generation methods.

How Article Marketing Can Boost Your Traffic

Everyone knows about article marketing, yet so many ignore its benefits. Try this: write one article a day for the next 3 months and submit it to the top 5 article directories. Then take a look at how your traffic improved. I am sure you’ll see it’s an activity worth taking the time for. Of course, make sure your articles have a great call to action, or you’ll waste your time. Forget about writing your entire life story in the bio: be short and to the point and offer something related to your article that the reader can’t ignore.

If you want to get even more out of your article writing, why not re-purpose your articles? You could create short videos, pod-casts, and even mini eBooks to give away.

Video Traffic

Another excellent method of driving traffic to your site is creating video. If you have an ecommerce site, you can create product review videos. If you sell software, you can create a video about how to use it, and if you have an info product, you can create a video with all the benefits you’ll get from reading the eBook.

Of course, there are the fun videos that serve to endear YOU to your audience, and Lynn Terry does this beautifully with her mail opening videos. If you can come up with your own “get to know me” fun video, take that opportunity!

Social Media Traffic

There are lots visitors to be had from the social media: from twitter to Digg, Squidoo and Hubpages, and everything else in between. Of course, you can’t just throw a link on twitter and hope to get a lot of visitors: you need to build relationships, participate in discussions, be helpful, etc.

What is YOUR best traffic generation method?

If you pay attention to what the Analytics tool tells you about what your market is doing, and if you make the appropriate adjustments, you are on your way to higher profits.

So, how can you understand your audience better with the Analytics program?

Firs of all, you can see where your traffic is coming from: on the left side of the dashboard, there is a link for “Traffic Sources”, and once you click on that you’ll see this:

As you can see, there are several types of traffic to check for. Let’s take a look at the traffic I have for this site form referring sites:

Now, do you think that information is important to me? Of course it is: fist of all, I know that my top traffic referrer is Lynn’s SSWT forum. Do you think I’ll be inclined to participate more in the forum there? You bet!

M6y second source of traffic is Twitter, so there I have an incentive to continue to build relationship over there.

Now, if you click on the “Content Link”, located under the “Traffic sources” link, you can see your top visited pages, which are also called entry pages. How can you use this information? Two ways:

1. Create specific pages for keyword phrases you were found through, but you don’t have a specific post for.

2. Check your top entry pages to make sure your visitors gets the best experience when they land on that page. Do you have broken links? Is the page monetized porp0perly? Do you have a call to action?

Are you using Google Analytics? Do you have questions? Do you use it differently than mentioned above? I’d love to hear your thoughts.