Write A Press Release

Creating a press release for your website is a good way to get it off the ground. Once created, be sure to submit it to a press release distribution service such as PRWeb. What this will do is get your website on major websites (google, yahoo, authority sites, etc..), in the eyes of the search engines it gets your website link associated with major websites on the Internet.

Build Links Slowly

When people find out that building links is the most effective / important part of SEO, they go out and try to get as many as they can as fast as they can by submitting their websites to the search engines, directories, link exchanges, and in some cases buying links. My advice is if you do so, there are two important things you want to avoid. The first is do not get too many links at first, I generally try to get 25 - 50 links to a new website in the first month and build it up from there. The second is mix up the anchor text on the links pointing back to your site. This gives a more natural image to your link building process, it has been suggested that early on if all links have the same anchor text, the search engines will apply a filter to your website in effect putting you in the sandbox.

Keep Adding Content

When a search engine spider first visits your website, it will visit quite often initially to get an idea of how often you update your content. The more you update, the more a spider will visit your site to see the new content. Many of the top ranking websites in search engines update their content daily suggesting that they give a “boost” to the sites that are active.

For a new website these few tips can have a huge impact on your marketing efforts. Successful application with probably result in some immediate traffic and set the foundation to an effective online marketing strategy.

Navigation

Search engines give you credit for links pointing within your website. Create a user friendly navigation system that links to as many pages of your site as possible. If you are sensitive to the look of your menu, consider adding a quick links or popular pages menu that lists important pages to your site you wish to rank for in the search engines. Also be sure to create a site map that has all of your pages listed on it and link the sitemap from every page of your website. This ensures that every page of your website is only 1 level deep which should provide for a boost in ranking.

Other Sites

If you have other domains / wbesites, be sure to cross link them transfering value to one another. It’s importnat not to overdue it and be selective in the process. I recommend only linking from one site to another and not both ways. I typically take a new or important site and use my other sites to link to it.

Another option is to go out and create some blogs using the free services such as Blogspot.com and Wordpress.com. You can create a site for free like yoursite.blogspot.com then as it builds value point links back to your main site.

These tips are applied by the heavy hitters in the SEO game that often have a network of websites setup to be able to get their ranking high for any site they choose. There is a detailed article on BlueHatSEO.com that breaks down the whole process of building links internally, look for the SEO empire post.

Consider 3rd Party Service

Although common blogging software such as Wordpress includes RSS feeds, you should consider using a 3rd party service to add additional benefits to your feed. For starters, the free service allows you to get detailed statistics and demographic information on your subscribers. You also get to use additional features such as indiviual news reader signup and email based feeds. There aren’t many negatives to the service and it’s used by many of the leading bloggers on the Internet.

Make It Noticeable

Placement of your feed subscriptions is important. Consider adding an image or rss logo to the feed and place it somewhere above the fold of your pages. When you reach an amount of subscribers that will help promote the feeds, switch to the image that dynamically inserts the amount of readers in your blog. This site is waiting until it hits aroung the 500 subscriber range.

Links In Your Posts

Full news feed readers sometimes grabs your entire post for viewing through the reader or website. In this case you won’t get the traffic value and in turn advertising is not shown to the reader. By placing links to other posts on your blog or to sites you mention (with affiliate code), you can benefit form additional traffic or revenues derived from your subscribers.

Summary

These are the basic optimization techniques for your feeds. In the future i’ll discuss more advanced strategies that allow you to promote your website on the Internet. For now, implement these concepts and you’ll benefit from the results.

Microsoft Adcenter

The is a recent addition to the mix and I have yet to try a campaign with them. Based on what i’m hearing from other however. It’s an opportunity to get good traffic at a low cost. The program is new but their reach is much good, it appear that now is the best time to test it out as you’ll probably be getting great value.

Yahoo

Formerly overture.com, Yahoo has its own paid listings program which is probably number 2 in the industry right now. Depending on your industry, you can get good long tail keywords and a good rate. This can equate to good value if you carefully manage.

Others

Let’s not forget about the tier 2 options out there. Although the traffic levels are lower and the quality of the visitors is not as good, you should have a look at them and test out a compaign to see if it works for you. Some of the popular tier 2 engines are ABCsearch.com, Findology, and Enhance. Each have their own network and can deliver some quality traffic to you over time.

Text Link Ads

The Text Link Ads service is the most popular way to buy text links. It’s a marketplace where you can search for websites related to yours who offer a link on their site for a fee. We promote this site cause it’s a proven way to get quality links to your site and has become an industry standard source to purchase text links.

Sponsored Templates

This is an up and coming tool that allows you to purchase links on templates that are created to use with wordpress which is a leading free blogging software. This method has its pros and cons, you want to make sure your link will appear on a template that you think with want to be used by websites. Get a sponsored link on a site that is used by 2000 wordpress users and that equates to alot of quality links.

Sponsored Posts

This is a new service that allows you to sponsor individual blog posts on popular websites. The pricing is based on the pagerank of the page and starts at around $10.

Site Reviews

ReviewMe is a service where blogs are willing to review your website for a fee. Within the review are several links to your website which serves as a link. It’s important to note that they do not guarantee a positive review so make sure your website can stand up to the critiques.

In summary, these are some of the popular ways to go out and buy links to your website. I haven’t done all of these methods myself, but I can say that most work.

Comments Are NOFOLLOW

There is a tag built into most blogs that instruct the search engine not to follow your URL in essence not giving you the link credit you may think you are getting. This is not great for you but if it is a high traffic site, you will get a steady stream of traffic.

Top Commentators

As you comment on the blog, eventually you can hit the Top Comentators list where your links are followed and based on your anchor text, are given the search engine popularity credit. If the site has a good pagerank, this equates to good value for you saving the costs of purchasing a text link on the site.

Summary

Search out the potential related blogs in your industry. If you see they have a Top Commentators section in the sidebar and they have good traffic / pagerank, consider actively participating on the site in hopes of making the Top list.

A few of the bloggers out there took the opportunity to try and get some traffic by quickly creating a post about the HD key and posting it to Digg. Sure enough, some of the blogs received a steady stream of visitors for the little time their posts hit the frontpage.

The moral of this article, be creative and constantly look for mainstream issues to write about. In the end it’s what hits the frontpage of Digg. Based on your blog, keep a close eye on what’s happening and take advantage of any opportunities related to your blog that people would want to know about. Then Digg it up and see what happens.

The study asks about the main strategies of SEO, they rank the importance of the factors on a scale to 1 to 5. The questions also include some of the controversial elements of SEO. Each element is given a rank and comments from each of the 37 experts is included.

Summary

A majority of the top factors are in the areas of link building both from external inbound links, as well as internal linking within the website itself. Aside from the keyword in the title tag factor, the important factors are all around linking strategies.

I won’t bother summarizing the rest, this is a must read for anyone serious about search engine optimization. Take the time and read the Search Engine Ranking V2 study.

Google Adwords Training

Some people don’t know but Google has a pretty good tutorial available for free that teaches you step by step how to create and setup an Adwords campain. The first few videos are pretty basic but they cover some good topics as well such as tracking, optimization, and targeting. They even have videos on setting up campaigns for their video, local, and mobile ad units.

The videos are short allowing you to view the ones that you are interested in getting more information. Videos are between 4 - 8 minutes with a few of them longer. Check out the Google Adwords Training videos.

This blog will be broken down into several sections that focus on the current ways to generate traffic. Within each section, i’ll be talking about the strategies some of the best online marketing professionals use to build traffic to websites. The following are the sections to be covered:

SEO

Search engine optimization if the staple of any online marketing strategy. I am always on the lookout and testing new techniques used.

Blogging

Blogs are now commonly known to be a good marketing tools for almost anytype of website. The benefits are widespread but are primarily based on the fact that the search engines tend to index and give result preference to blogs.

Link Building

The process of link building is still a major part of effective search engine optimization. As such, there is a section dedicated to the process and strategies.

Other Areas

We will also be covering other topics including:

- Product / Service Reviews
- Content Development
- Strategic Partnerships

I hope to provide valuable information to you in the near future. I will be as open as I possibly can by providing detailed case studies.