Here’s a little foundation for what I’m about to cover here. A while back I bought a stupid domain name. It was one of those fairly useless domain names that might have been good for maybe selling cellphones or something. The thing is, though, I’m a poor guy. I don’t have time to taylor a site for cellphones with the pitiful amount of money I have. This was my thinking not long ago at least.

After sitting on this domain name forever I decided to put a site up there and give myself to the study of SEO or search engine optimization. It seemed like an interesting subject and I knew to those that managed to learn SEO, marketing, and some web design would fall infinite riches. It really sounded good to me.

So I went for the throat so to speak. More precisely I picked out some search terms that I will probably never be able to get traffic for in my lifetime. Smart I know. This had the grand side effect of having the site sandboxed by Yahoo and Google until pigs flew.

Recently they flew, however, and I’ve come out of the sandbox altogether and hit face to face with a few SEO surprises. I did manage to get a tiny trickle of traffic but not from the terms I tried to get it from. After trying to optimize those pages for the key terms I received traffic from I got more traffic. This of course started me down a long road of speculation and hair pulling.

After many a night of such I’ve come up with a few things that I believe will give anyone the power to eventually pull traffic off the net and covert it into a good decent living. I’ll probably write an ebook and make millions one of these days.

Optimize by the page
Don’t fall into the trap of focusing totally on building this far flung and far reaching site that will rule the world or make you millions instantly. Unless you have lots of money you’re going to need to work for your traffic. Plan your site out carefully and make sure each page is a precision crafted piece of art.

I love serverside scripting and dynamic websites but I’ve come to realize there is a danger that people will overuse it. I know I have. If your site is dynamically generted, make sure every page isn’t a total cookie cutter image of every other page. It’s good to have the same navigation and same general layout but each page also needs to be special. Each page should have careful, proven SEO techniques applied to maybe a single key phrase.

Don’t try to optimize one page for a handful of phrases. Just focus on one phrase. Do your keyword research and, whatever you do, don’t haul off and pick a key phrase with 2 billion wealthy competitors in Google. Pick something that can be attained and can get you some traffic relatively fast. Select a phrase that is as specific as possible to your particlar niche and still gets a couple thousand or so searches per month from Yahoo.

Whatever you do, make sure that one web page has good, solid, desirable content that is keyword rich and one of a kind. This will help make it special. At the same time your content obviously needs to lead the customer toward your intented goal for monetizing your traffic.

Keep it simple
I’ve found to my dismay that building a complex web site with all the content management stuff and all the database thrills isn’t exactly what really gets the attention of search engines. Weirdly enough this can be true for internet surfers too. A nice, clean layout with very accessible content and intuitive navigation will be recognized by both search engines and surfers alike. If you can figure that part out you’ve just pinned down about 90% of SEO in my opinion.

Engineer your site for your traffic
When you start getting search engine traffic to your site take a very close look at what they are searching for. I assume you have some kind of statistics program and can mostly see what search terms people are using to get to your site. When someone comes in on a keyword or phrase you haven’t optimized for do a little research. Does the page they are coming to need touched up to include the search term or would this search term merit its own search engine optimized page to handle the traffic.

Conclusion
With every page you add you are gaining another potentially valuable piece of internet real estate. If you’re doing your job right then eventaully each page should get its own traffic and you should begin to attain your goals. Patience and learning are the name of the SEO game.

Source: Samir Kamble

After much trial and error, here’s how I connect and re-purpose all of my social marketing strategies:

1. Set up accounts. Make sure that you have current accounts with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, and any other social networking platforms you regularly use.

2. Open an account at Ping.fm. The Ping.fm service automatically updates your status on all of your social networking sites, 21 of them at the current count. Depending on the number of networks you use, it will take you 10-50 minutes to connect your Ping.fm account to your various social network accounts. However, once everything is set up, you simply log into your Ping account, post your status update (no more than 140 characters), and your status is automatically updated on all of your social networking profiles. Rather than posting updates directly on Twitter or Facebook or MySpace, I instead use Ping.fm as the starting place for my daily status updates.

3. Display Twitters on other accounts. If you go to your Setting tab in your Twitter account and then down to “More Info URL”, you will see a link to “Add Twitter to Your Site.” By clicking on this link, you’ll be taken to a page where you can add your tweets in a separate box (not the Status updates area) in your MySpace and Facebook profiles, on your blogger or Typepad blogs, or get the Flash or HTML widgets to add to other sites like Squidoo lenses or to your website. Just follow the instructions connected to each application. If you use Typepad for your blog, you can also do this through the Widget gallery by finding Twitter widget in the “Publishing Tools” section.

4. Connect your blogposts to Twitter. Twitter Feed, http://www.twitterfeed.com/, enables you to feed your blog posts to your Twitter account. Simply create an account, go to “Create New Twitter Feed”, and enter the RSS feed of your blog. You can control the frequency with which Twitter displays your blog post, as well as the text used to preface your blog feed. I use “Blog update” to preface my posts.

5. Connect your blogposts to Facebook. I use Typepad for my blogs, so if you use a Wordpress blog, there are probably plugins that handle this, as well. When you create a new blog post, you can choose to send a link to that post into Facebook. These links will appear in your Mini-Feed on your Facebook profile, and may appear in your friends’ News Feeds.

In your Typepad account, go to Weblogs > Configure > Publicity, select “Prompt me to share new posts on Facebook.” When this item is selected, TypePad will automatically display a prompt from Facebook when you create and publish a new post on TypePad. The Facebook prompt will only appear if you have selected the option in your weblog’s publicity settings, and only when you create and publish a new post. The prompt will not appear when you save a post as draft, when you edit a post, or when you change the status of a post from Draft to Published.

6. Update your EzineArticles.com account. Article marketing is a smart and easy way to drive traffic to your site. If you’re submitting articles online to article directories, you definitely want to be using EzineArticles.com, the biggest and most popular article directory online. To connect to Twitter, click on “Profile Manager” in your account, then “Edit Author Bio” in your Author’s Area. Add your Twitter account information here. Each time a new article is accepted and published at EzineArticles, a post is automatically made to your Twitter account.

7. Update your aWeber account: I use aWeber as my email marketing service. You can now send an automatic Twitter post to all your followers on Twitter with a link to the HTML version of your ezine. When you create a broadcast in aWeber, select the option to publish a broadcast via RSS feed or to an archive, and then enter your Twitter account info, When your ezine is published, all of your Twitter followers will be notified.

There are probably others ways to connect the social networks and to re-purpose content on social networks, but these 7 steps are all I need at the moment. Take 30 minutes out of your day to connect and re-purpose your social networking, and watch your traffic and list begin to grow!

Source: Samir Kamble

How to Use Twitter to Increase Blog Traffic???

Twitter, a widely popular Web 2.0 client has many uses. Some think of it merely as a virtual water cooler, which allows you to talk to others, throughout the day via Twitter’s homepage or one of the several Twitter programs such as Twirl or Snitter. However, it can be a useful tool for your business or as a way to promote your blog or website.

Here are a few ideas for promoting your blog or website using Twitter, without being too spammy.

Ask questions. Once you have updated your blog why not cruise on over to Twitter and ask your virtual friends and colleagues what they think about the subject. Write a post about the state of the economy, ask, “What is your take on today’s economy?” and then link to your blog.

Use your comments. Maybe your blog has already received a few comments from your latest entry, peek interest from others by commenting on Twitter regarding the comments you’ve received.

Most importantly when using Twitter you want to make sure that is not just a means by which you promote your blog posts, but that you are also engaging in the virtual water cooler conversation with others. The more engaging and enjoyable you are to be around on Twitter itself the more likely those you visit with there will venture over to your blog to consume even more of your thoughts and opinions.

Another good idea is to always repay the favor. So you get visitors to your blog from Twitter, they leave comments, be sure to go and visit their blogs and do the same or reply when they too post links to their blog posts on Twitter.

Twitter can be a great place to get your thoughts out there and to drive traffic to your blog if you do it right.

Sources : Samir Kamble

Your visitor expects your site to work in their browser/platform at all times.

Solution – provide a site that works in all modern browsers and platforms.

Benefits – He or she can now wait for your site to load knowing that – at the least, they can access it. (First base is a major step!)

2: Load time

Your visitor is very very impatient and has the attention span of a 15 year old grey haired dog with arthritis in it’s knees and a bowl with no dog food in it.

Solution – provide him/her with a super quick loading web site.

Benefits – He or she will be so pleased they may just look further into your web site and see if it holds them to interest.

3: Design

Your visitor is very critical and expects a professional design at least for their time.

Solution – provide him or her with a very nice, clean and professional layout.

Benefits – He or she will be impressed and may decide to venture even further.

4: Navigation

Your visitor is on the prowl and wants to find what they are looking for yesterday.

Solution – provide him or her with a navigation system that enables a quick and an effective route to what they are looking for.

Benefits – He or she will be very pleased they may spend some time on your site discovering if what they found is of value to them.

5: Content

Your visitor demands the very best – best being 22 carrot gold not that awful gold plated rubbish.

Solution -provide him or her with up to the date content that is easy to understand, writing and produced well and to the point.

Benefits – He or she will be very pleased they may even bookmark your site for future reference.

Access + quick loading + professional design + excellent navigation + great content = a very competent web site that should serve the purpose of both yourself and more importantly your visitors.

In these days and age people are demanding more from a web site and so they should. There is no excuses any more. We have all the tools available to build competent web sites to a professional standard. We don’t have to be a pro we just need tounderstand the visitor more – and boy are they/we demanding.

Source: Samir Kamble

Black Hat search engine optimization is usually defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. Either by tricking visitors or search engine spiders.

The most common forms of black hat seo are:

Keyword stuffing: Keyword stuffing is the overuse of keywords in a piece of content. Generally, this is repeating the same keywords over and over just to achieve a higher search engine ranking.

Invisible text: Quite a few cheap sites use this tactic, which involves making keywords to be the same color as the background, so readers can’t see the massive amounts of keywords, but search engine spiders can.

Doorway pages: These are pages that regular visitors cannot see, but search engine spiders can. They are used to trick the search engines so that the site gets a higher ranking. Not only do they go against the rules, but they also hurt the visitor’s experience. Who wants to see a site stuffed with keywords?

Cloaking: Its a deceptive method used to cheat search engines in order to rank well for certain keywords. A user identified as search engine is shown a specifically prepared and optimized website with only purpose to rank well for desired keywords. If a user is not a search engine they are presented with the “real” websites content which is often spammy and of lesser quality.

Cloaking is also used to trick users to visit websites based on their description in search engines. For example a user searching for a particular product could click on a website in search engine due to its description and title. The site in question will not be the one described in SERP’s. It can be totally different or irrelevant.

RSS Spamming: I recently noticed more and more people using their RSS feed in comments instead of their blog’s URL. What that does is tricks people into subscribing to your feed when they only wanted to visit your blog By doing so people don’t realize they can get their IP black listed from any site in a click. So don’t try it, it’s rude.

Does Black Hat SEO Work?
Yes is it does but only temporally. Eventually the search engine spiders catch on and your site can get permanently banned from search results. It might look like a good idea to the novice but it hurts your site and its credibility on the long run.

Why is Black Hat Unfair?
Black hat practices do not not follow the rules and regulations of search engines. Black hat tricks spiders and users into clicking and viewing content with poor quality or content. This in turn leads to a poor user experience, what Google is striving to avoid. Lets keep the web a fun place filled with useful information.

Sources : Samir Kamble

Start with gathering information on web hosting packages within your budget. You will have a lot of options, so you might want to reduce the number of options by picking service plans offered by reputable – and of course reliable – web hosting companies only. Once you get the right options to choose from, you can continue.

Start with comparing features according to your needs and wants. Look ahead and consider possible future needs when you are comparing. You should be able to pinpoint the best web hosting packages to choose for your site in no time at all with this approach, you can start your site right away. Since you’ve already choose options within your budget, you don’t have to worry about choosing an option that is too expensive.

Unquestionably, even here at Blogussion – we try many new things, in combination with the old to help build on the traffic from search engines. Whether it be validating the site using the W3C Markup or just typing a new category-description, Search Engine Optimization is a never-ending process that evolves on a regular basis and it is our duty to keep up with it.

However, in trying new things – we shouldn’t forget that some techniques will never die out and must be practiced as regularly as possible. I would just like to outline 45 tips that will help you build quality back-links to your site, with minimal to no costs!

Quality back-links serve two main purposes. Firstly, it helps crawlers find and locate your site. Once this is accomplished, the search engine crawler goes about indexing your site. The next purpose; back-links help crawlers identify how important your blog really is.

The first purpose obviously only applies to new blogs, but the second one will still be valid even 10 years down the track. These back-links also help the Google Crawler to assign your pages with a Google PageRank. Simply to put, the more authoritative websites that are linked to your site, the more important it is perceived to be.

List of 45. Starts Here.

Getting Links for Writing Content

1. Write content that is useful – Writing resourceful content will always attract links, hands down. If you write an article that is overflowing with useful and resourceful information – people will link to it.

2. Don’t forget trackbacks – This handy feature for Wordpress can be great way of returning the compliment for a dedicated link.

3. Remind your readers to link to you – After each posts, just throw in a quick reminder that your article can be socially bookmarked or linked to.

4. Make a Top “X” List – Alex’s post on “100 Lists To Become A Better Blogger” is the most successful post on Blogussion, to-date. This just goes to prove how much people love “lists posts” such as your “Top X [Something]”

5. Debunk a Myth – There’s only one thing better than coming up with an idea, is to prove someone else one wrong. People love opposition and to see a debate bubble up, so don’t be afraid to challenge other people’s opinions.

6. Write with a touch of conspiracy – Just reinforcing tip #6. If you can create that atmosphere of retaliation, it will always raise a few eyebrows.

7. Spread the Love – Dedicate a post or two per week to link to other blogger’s posts that you found useful. More often than not, they will tell their readers “Mr.X linked to my post, how cool!”

8. Trade articles with webmasters – Similar to guest posting, just swap articles with a fellow webmaster.

9. Release a Press Release – This guide shows you how to write + submit a good Press Release.

Freebies/Giveaways for Link-Baiting

10. Hold a contest with an incentive. Contests are great for link-baiting because when people talk about it, there will always be “Check it out here” tagged along with it.

11. Release a free design. If you can make/buy a custom WP-Theme then release it for free to your guests, you can really kick off on a viral market. Just don’t forget the “Designed by [YOUR LINK]”

12. Release a free plugin. This serves a similar purpose as a design, but not so much with a direct back-link. Instead, if your plugin is useful, the incoming links will just grow exponentially.

13. When running a contest, reward your referees that bring the most referrals. This will encourage them to blog about your contest.

Connecting With Communities

14. Become active and post on relevant forums

15. Become active and comment on relevant blogs.

16. Try not to forget your signature on forums, otherwise the whole thing is an epic fail.

17. When commenting on blogs, try to use post URLs instead of just your Blog URL – This can help regulate your links evenly amongst your blog, and not just solely to your front page.

18. DON’T spam communities with your links to your site, offer a reason for them to visit and contribute with a purpose.

19. Submit your blog to directories – These are still helpful when it comes to getting indexed, especially these directories listed here.

20. Search up DoFollow Blogs/Forums – These will carry the most significant back-links.

21. Browse Craigslists and they can provide you with a free or cheap link.

22. Build on your Technorati Profile

23. Become a Sponsor – Whether it be a theme, whole website or a small project; the sponsors always get mentioned.

24. Run for Charity, and request others to help spread the word.

25. DON’T spam. This tip cannot be reinforced enough. A deleted comment will server no purpose.

Directories, Social Bookmarking + Discussion Groups.

26. Write content for Article directories – Publish content for directories such as eZineArticles, GoArticles or iSnare. In the “About Author’s” area, you can leave a link to your website.

27. Build a Squidoo Page – It’s easy and if you have the time to develop it, it can be very authoritative. If you don’t there’s heaps of services out there to help you out.

28. Join Discussions over at Yahoo! Answers – Providing useful answers, along with a link is an easy way to earn a back-link.

29. There’s also Google Groups – It’s almost the same as Yahoo! Answers, but owned by Google.

30. Submit your voice on Digg – First build a solid profile, where you have a network of loyal diggers. If you can hit the Digg front page, you are likely to get linked to by a lot of web-masters.

31. Build on your Twitter profile then link to your site using your “Bio Area.”

32. Tweet about your posts using Twitter, then request retweets from your followers.

33. Offer a “Tweet This Post” link on every post your write, this will make Tweeters easier to tweet about your article.

Direct Link Building

34. Contact your fellow bloggers with a personalized email – asking for an reciprocal link exchange. However, keep this to a minimal and be very selective in who you choose to trade with.

35. Post around on forums asking for reciprocal link exchanges, but yet again be warned on your selection.

36. If you are a part of organizations, clubs or schools – Ask them if they can link to you, because these types of websites are more often than not; authoritative.

37. DON’T ask Darren Rowse, ShoeMoney, Matt Cutts or Yahoo, MSN and Google for back-links. It’s just a waste of time, especially the last three “contacts”

Paid Link Building

38. Buy a Review – Most sites that offer reviews will naturally link to the reviewed product/site.

39. Many webmasters buy links on popular blogs for authority, even though it’s against the Google TOS (Use at your own risk)

40. Rent links from others website – Text-Link-Ads is most likely your best option.

Using Blogussion for Link Building

41 Leave a comment – All our comments are do-follow, so the link you chose as your URL will get link-love automatically.

42. Top Commentators  – As you can see on the sidebar, we use this awesome plugin. Every month, our most contributing members will be rewarded with a link.

43. We use CommentLuv – Every comment you post, will carry a link to your latest blog posts.

44. Link to our posts – We utilize the uses of ‘trackbacks.’ Hence any links to our posts, will automatically be rewarded with a back-link to them! So, Why not share this post with your readers and followers?

45. Buy a Paid Review – We link to our reviewed sites/products.

That’s it!

There’s many more link building techniques and tips that I haven’t mentioned in this post, but these are just some of the ways you can always rely on for Link Building.

Naturally, following these tips will reward you with a higher PageRank too!

Lastly, is there anything you want to add to this list? Please leave us a comment below.

Source: Blogussion.com