Keywords and Phrases for Traffic Generation

One of the biggest components of a website’s success in search engine rankings is the proper selection and use of keywords. Emphasizing the right keywords can make your website stand out in the right circles, getting you traffic and revenue. That said, finding the right keywords can be a tough task.

Selecting the right keywords and phrases relies on two things: research and specificity.

For the research part, go to websites that offer similar services to what you will provide and look at its keywords. Often you can see them by right mouse-clicking on the page and selecting “View Page Source”. But there are also a lot of online keyword analysis tools, like Spyfu, that allow you to enter a web address and return a keyword list, so make use of them. Such a list will provide you with a starting point.

Once you have the list, it is time to get specific. Basic one-word keywords generally face very tough competition. For example, if you wanted to start a successful website about independent music acts in your city, then the keyword “music” would not be one to focus on. You will face tough competition from online music distributors, online merchants like Amazon, record companies, music magazines, etc.

If, however, you use that starting keyword and make it more specific, you can have better success. So, instead of music, try “music in New York” or “New York indie music,” or any other variation that will include the base keyword and make it specific for your topic.

Search engine users have become sophisticated enough to realize that in order to find the content they want, they must enter specific search terms. If your keywords reflect variations of those specific terms, then you will be able to generate traffic, and that traffic will be made up of the exact people who are interested in your topic/product/service.

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Author:
Colin Klinkert
One-Way Link Generation

The one-way link to your website from somebody else’s is one of the main factors for search engines in deciding whether or not your content is important. When other web users decide your content is worthwile, they create a link to it either on their own website or a social bookmarking site – or so goes the search engine logic.

With that said, here are a few proven strategies that you can use to begin generating links to your site in no time:

• Article marketing through sites like ezinearticles and other similar sites provides you not only with the ability to link to your site, but also a way for you to give people a preview of what sort of content you offer. If people read your articles and then decide to click over to your site, they will be highly relevant traffic.

• The AddThis and ShareThis buttons are small widgets that you can insert into your webpages. Visitors to your site can then use these widgets to submit your articles to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, etc. If you have regular content updates and readers who will click these widgets, then you can generate links without doing any actual work yourself.

• Link directories are kind of like the internet version of phone books, as they separate websites into different categories that you can submit your link to. Some are free to submit links and others require a payment. It’s a good idea to stick with the free ones at first, until you learn more about what kind of traffic you can potentially generate and what sort of descriptions and advertisement-like text you should enter. Once you have this refined, feel free to try out a paid site, or avoid them, if the free ones are having a good effect and spending extra money wouldn’t be worth it.

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Online Marketing Blogs

Blogging has become an incredibly popular way to distribute content in the past few years.  Though subjects may vary, all successful blogs have two certain things in common:  regular content updates and content that is valuable to the reader.

While many who are looking to start a career in online marketing may use a blog as an occasional medium for releasing content, many underestimate just how powerful a good blog can be for developing a “hub” presence for online marketing.

Why spend your time developing a blog instead of working on other aspects of online marketing?  There are a few reasons.

First of all, a blog helps to put a personal face to your online business.  If people are able to regularly read things you are writing, and have access to an About or Contact page where they can learn about you or get in touch with you, that makes you an actual person in their minds, instead of a faceless internet entity.  People are more likely to want to do business with “Bill Jones” instead of “productnameplus.com.”

Second, if you provide quality content on your blog, you are able to attract more customers.  For example, if you build a blog about pet training that provides solid resources for web users, then when you use the blog as a platform for promoting a related product, people will value you as person knows what they’re talking about and who has provided a lot of free information to them already.  Having established this credibility, they will be more inclined to try it if it is recommended by you.

You can also add an “opt-in” box where people can sign up for a newsletter or email updates.  This allows you to set up a customer list and have people ask to be on it!  A strong blog with quality content can provide a central hub for all of your online marketing ventures, and can attract quality customers.

A Good Tip:

You can signup to my Optin Box top left to see the process I use. Another good Idea would be to follow me on Twitter. Doing so will trigger a DM sent to you on Twitter from me and you can see how I handle my new twitter followers with the video I send them to and the incentive I give to optin

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Traffic Generation With Online Classifieds

Using free online classifieds, like Craigslist, can be a good way to get your online business started and generating traffic. What makes these online classifieds worthwhile is the fact that they generally provide highly targeted audiences.

Let’s say that you are promoting a product that teaches people how to cook. Depending on the type of classifieds site you go to, you may find an entire category devoted to culinary instruction. Otherwise, try to fit your advertisement into the most applicable category.

There are pluses and minuses to online classified ads. First, the pluses: most of them are free, so they’ll fit any budget; as discussed above, the traffic is targeted to your specific audience; they are a way to test out your ad copy before starting a pay per click (PPC) or other paid advertising campaign.

Okay, now the minuses: they’re free, so there’s a lot of people who post classified ads, meaning yours could get lost in the clutter; in advertising, you generally get what you pay for, so the amount of time and effort you put into these free ads may not provide the amount of traffic that a paid ad would.

Before posting your ads, make sure to familiarize yourself with the classifieds site’s rules. You don’t want to go through the trouble of posting an ad only to have it deleted a few moments afterwards because it violated site policy.

So are online classifieds right for you? That depends on your current progress in building your business. If you can afford some other, more traditional forms of internet advertising, they’ll probably give you more traffic.

If you are just starting out and don’t have much, or any, money to put into an advertising campaign, online classifieds could provide you with business that can make you the money to pay for other means of advertising.

Brute Force marketers say that doing it all is best, so maybe it’s worth having a look at Craigslist or PRweb for your business?

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Author:
Colin Klinkert
Focus On Content

When the internet was young and web programming languages like JavaScript were first coming out, a flashy website was a big customer draw. Now, all those flashy graphics and design structures are passé. These days, internet users are far more sophisticated and are very skilled at finding the exact content that they are looking for. With that in mind, here’s a piece of advice: Forget flashiness, focus on content.

The term “bounce rate” refers to how many people dig into your site. If people link to one of your pages, but then immediately click out to another site, that is a bounce. If they look at one of your pages and then click through to another section of your website, that is a stick.

Which is more likely to cause people to stick around on your website, flashy graphics or compelling and informative content? If your content is well-written and engaging, and it provides the value of either information or entertainment to your audience, then people will stick around and spend time with your site.

Whether your website is designed to sell a certain product or makes its money from advertising, the longer a viewer stays on your site, the better. If the viewer immediately leaves, you won’t be able to charge top advertising rates on the site, and if they leave immediately, you never have a chance to sell them a product.

Compelling content is one of the most important, if not the most important, factor when it comes to creating a website that will be profitable.

Look at websites that attract you. How is the content delivered? Where are the big pieces of information located within that content? How easy is it to link from one piece of content to another interesting article or webpage? Apply the techniques that work for you to your own site.

Something I plan on doing in future is adding a training series via email for my members to opt-in to. try to deliver content in as many different ways as possible to appeal to all your readers prefered viewing and learning methods.

Author:
Colin Klinkert
What is Effective Forum Marketing?…

This is a follow-on from a post I recently made about blog commenting. Today we are looking at Effective Forum Marketing. You can watch an intro to this post:  http://viralnetworks.com/view/rVIwm

Forums are a great way to get in touch with potential customers.  There are various forums all across the internet that are devoted to an incredible range of topics.  That means that regardless of the type of product you are working with, there is likely a forum somewhere that is devoted to that field.  The people who frequent that forum are a highly targeted demographic  – they are ‘warm’ prospects, with high conversion potential.

Establish a Presence

But you need to work at establishing a presence.  Forum marketing is not about just posting a couple links and watching the sales come rolling in.  Forums have moderators and administrators who look out for marketing scams and immediately delete those posts and ban the user who posted them.

So how can you use forum marketing effectively?

Trading value for value.  The value that the forum users offer is their attention to your product and possibly buying it.  The value you provide is determined by the nature of the forum.

For example, if you are selling a how-to product that teaches people how to use Photoshop software, then look for forums for beginners to the software.  They will ask questions about how to do certain things, you find the answer and post it.  That is the value you give them.  When you post in a forum, you are usually allowed to have a link to a website either in your user profile or as a “signature” – text or images that appear automatically at the bottom of each of your posts.

Don’t Blatantly Sell

As long as you provide value to the other forum users and don’t blatantly try to sell your product, you will be allowed to stay.  And the people that you advise will often follow your link out of curiosity, or the need for more information. If they see that you have a product that solves their problem or enhances the reason they are in the forum, they are more likely to buy that product.

Forum marketing is being used more and more by internet marketers, and while it does take time to establish a credible preference in the forum, the benefits are great if it is one that is very finely targeted to your niche.

Have You Tried This Yet

Have You Used a Technique like this before or during your product launch? Maybe you have used it as an affiliate for other products… What Results have you seen from Forum traffic?

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Blog Comments Can Help Build Your List

A Short Video Into To This Post Can Be Found: http://viralnetworks.com/view/XPuSc

If you’ve ever read a blog’s comments section, then you’ve probably come across a comment that was submitted for the sole purpose of generating a backlink. The comment usually reads like gibberish, but has a whole bunch of keywords and links peppered within it.

In order to neutralize these sorts of comments, there are all sorts of spam blockers for blogs (with Akismet being one of the most used) and there are NoFollow HTML codes that prevent search engines from giving any credit for these comments.

That being said, commenting on blogs can still be a great way to build buzz and traffic for your site.

Add Value

The idea of blog commenting is to some sort of valuable contribution. For example, if you read a popular blog in your niche and you have an opinion or idea related to a post, then comment on it and feel free to leave a link to your website. When the administrator of the blog sees your comment, the value of what you wrote in advancing the blog’s community far outweighs the small favor of providing a backlink, so they will likely keep the comment live.

If you comment regularly on a certain blog (or series of blogs), then you can begin to develop a relationship with other people in your niche. These people will visit your site and may even link to you or reference you in their posts if the content you provide is worthwhile.

Commenting in this manner, helps out both parties. The blogger builds his community and makes it more likely that other readers will engage in a conversation and keep coming back, and you get a valuable backlink to your site from a blog that focuses on your niche, ensuring targeted traffic.

Another Place Worth Adding Value

Social Networks that have a target audence is a good place to use to add value. It is for this reason I built ViralNetworks! The idea is that you build a reputation among your peers and make those million $ ventures you hear about, as well as getting people to like and trust you. (These are the only reasons people will buy your products, if they know, like and trust you or of course, your product).

Come join me on the online business social network today!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Online Marketing Partnerships

The Power of Partnerships

So you’ve heard about online and affiliate marketing and have learned that they are a great way to make money online, but are you new to the process and don’t know where to begin?

If so it’s time to objectively take stock of your skills and learn what you need to in order to succeed.

At its most basic, online marketing breaks down into two principle parts:  search engine optimization (SEO) and sales copy.  The SEO will drive traffic to your sites, and good sales copy will convince those visitors to buy the product from you.  When you begin to get traffic and sales, you will have the basis of your own ‘list’ of clients. But what if you don’t know a lot about either?

Focus on one or the other to start with and once you have something to bring to the table, you can look for someone to partner with for a campaign.

Sales copy will likely prove to be the valuable skill, and as such is a great place to start.  Look for online resources, books from the local library about copywriting, anything you can get your hands on.  Also, read through the websites that other online marketers have produced.

For every person that wants to be an online marketer and has good sales copy skills, there is another person who is good at SEO but has problems stringing together words into compelling sentences.  Check with forums devoted to online marketing, and you can probably find somebody who is willing to team up with you.

Especially in your early stages of internet marketing, it is better to split all the profit generated than not make any profit at all.  Once you gain some experience, you can strike out on your own, or you may find that you like the partnership and continue with it.

Either way, by combining your skills and somebody else’s at the beginning of your online marketing career, you can start making sales faster.

Where To Find People

For Viralurl, Frank and I teamed up as we had skills that complimented eachother. Viralurl has been a big hit and we have plans to take it to the next level as well. I met Frank a while before we partnered through networking. A great new business social network that you can use to meet people to partner with is ViralNetworks! I am on ViralNetworks as well as 18,000 other marketers, so come join us and get networking! 🙂

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Bonuses and Affiliate Marketing

Offer Bonuses When Promoting a Product

One of the best ways to get sales in affiliate marketing is to develop an attractive bonus offer.  If a customer is thinking about buying a product, they will usually search around and try to find the best deal possible.  This is a great opportunity for all affiliate marketers, as you will have people searching for specific keywords and terms, and they will be looking into the deeper pages of search results instead of just the first one or two.  If your bonus is attractive enough, you will get the sale.

So how do you create a good bonus?  There is one main rule:  if your bonus is not good enough to sell as an individual product, then it is not a good bonus.  People look for worthwhile bonus offers, not a group of cheap ebooks that are free, often PLR products, that are often totally unrelated to the product on sale.

Good ideas for bonuses can usually be found in the product itself.  Are you marketing a software program?  If so, then providing instruction about using that program, support on the software, or extra content to be utilized by that program are good routes to try.

For instance, if you’re marketing an SEO Guidebook, a good idea would be to create a few websites that follow the instructions in the book.  Include all relevant files as well as traffic data as a bonus.  That way your customers will see concrete examples of the abstract principles discussed in the book.

Affiliate marketing is a great equalizer.  Everybody starts with the same product and information.  The amount of profit that you generate is completely dependent on how much extra work you are willing to put into it.  Creating a good bonus offer is not an easy process, but once it is complete, you will reap the benefits when the sales start rolling in.

The Sort of Bonuses I Offer

When we promote a product that we think will really help our member base, we offer ‘credits’ to viralurl members, or ‘Guaranteed Visitors’. These are two products in our membership site: Viralurl that we sell every day to members. They convert well and get members good results, so it is a bonus of real value. We sometimes even offer Bonuses to the same value of the product, so it is almost like them getting the product free.

To see offers that we put out with bonuses attached, we have posted a few on our blog, you can see them in this section here: http://viralurls.com/category/bonus-offers/ Simply scroll down to see them all

Colin Klinkert Is on ViralNetworks… You Can See His Profile & Contact Him Here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/2YfSO

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Keywords Needed For Internet Marketing?…

Video Intro To This Post Can Be Viewed Here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/CCI0x

Keywords are Important in Marketing

Before you begin an internet marketing campaign, it is crucial to have a specific set of keywords that you will be focusing on.  If you don’t have a list of keywords, your efforts are likely to be ad hoc and aimless, and your campaign could lose focus.  It is far better to have good rankings on a select set of keywords than mediocre rankings on lots of keywords.  Brainstorming is an easy way to come up with keywords.

This is an exercise many of you might remember from grade school, but it works, so give it a try.  Write the name of your product in the middle of a sheet of paper.  Around it, write down the first words and phrases that come to mind, connecting those words to the original with a short line.  Then, for all of those words and phrases, write down what comes to mind when you think about them.

This is called a Cloud Diagram or a Cluster Diagram, and it will give you options you didn’t know you had.  For example, if you were selling web design software then you are already focusing on keywords like “web design” and “how to design a website.”  But you may have missed more focused keywords like “writing HTML” or “coding PHP.”  These are more specific, meaning a smaller audience, but that also means less competition.

If you are conducting a PPC (pay per click) or PPV (pay per view) campaign, using the right keywords and key phrases is imperative.  Choosing the wrong ones can cost you dearly, but by being more focused, you can target your prospects (potential customers) with laser-like precision.

There are also some great tools available to help you select keywords, many are free, like the Google Keyword Tool, which, although designed for Google’s Adwords, can be used by anyone. It is powerful as it shows searches so you know what ones are worth your time and what ones aren’t. Rule of thumb, if it gets less then 1,000 searches a month, scrap it (Unless you are doing PPC and it is a very targeted term that will lead to high conversions.)

You can also use the Google Keyword Tool if you are doing SEO strategies to try and get to the first page of google on those terms. If you find one with a decent amount of searches, search it in google with “keyword” and see how many competing sites there are… of course, the less the better.

Researching and using the right keywords can make or break an internet marketing campaign, particular in the launch phase in affiliate marketing.  So it makes sense to include  keyword research in the early stages of your project planning.

More Tools

As well as the Google tool there are other, more advanced tools available. I use PPCBully to spy on competitiors who are bidding on keywords I have brainstormed to see if they are profitable or not. PPCBully works well, but does take a bit of time to gather the data

Network With Me

If you want to say hi, please feel free to join ViralNetworks, my Business Social Network of choice. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Author:
Colin Klinkert