#1: Change the Default Logo

After creating your small business Twitter account, change the default logo to one that represents your style and helps to brand your small business. Twitter is not a ‘join it and they will come’ small business marketing tool.

If you are hoping to reap the rewards and added blog traffic that Twitter can offer, then you have to be willing to put in the time to build trustworthy relationships with potential customers. To that end, when it comes to any business on Twitter, people want to feel like they are engaging with real human beings.

The profile picture is the first thing that new followers will look at. You need to create a logo that quickly gains follower interest if you want them to carry on further and check out your small business blog. By all means, if you use a personal picture make sure it does not portray you as an axe murderer.

#2: Show Up

As noted in the intro above, there can be a steep learning curve when it comes to using Twitter to drive traffic to your small business blog. According to a recent article in Adweek:

Only 17 percent of Twitter users updated their accounts in December — an all-time low. An earlier study by the Nielsen Co. revealed 60 percent of Twitter users do not return from one month to the next.

When business owners don’t get any @ replies, identify any new customers, or gain new traffic to their small business blog they feel like they are wasting their time and are gone for good.

Using Twitter properly as a tool to drive blog traffic requires a long term outlook, persistence, and a consistent effort every day.

#3: Complete the Bio Profile

Similar to a mini ‘About’ page, Twitter gives you 160 characters in your profile so you can write a brief Bio to describe who you are and further specify your business. Make sure the link to your small business blog appears somewhere in this section. Or, even better, include your blog as the one html link you are allowed to have.

I am amazed at how many small businesses skip the Bio step. The results of not taking the time to fill out the profile section will give your business a look similar to the one below. Ask yourself, would you visit the small business blog of the ‘iamabusiness’ profile?

If you are not getting targeted traffic for your small business blog from your Twitter Bio, try spicing it up with something similar to SmileMakers INC. When I read the profile for SmileMakers INC I don’t have any questions as to what business they are in.

#4: Brand Your Small Business Twitter background

The available Twitter background space is like getting free real estate where you can create an online billboard. When properly used, the background can help to build your small businesses image and highlight your brand. If you struggle with design work then use one of the many online background creation tools that are available, such as, TwitterImage, TwitBacks, and TwitrBackgrounds.

Although ProBlogger is not a ‘brick & mortar’ small business, Darren has an easily identifiable Twitter background that helps to pique interest in what he is about and can drive casual follower traffic to his blog.

#5: Social proof matters

When it comes to getting traffic for your small business blog on Twitter, the ugly truth is, social proof absolutely matters!

The number of followers you have, the number of people you are following, and the number of Tweets you have sent out will all be a determining factor in the minds of potential customers.

You don’t need to wait until your small business account has as many followers as ProBlogger, Chris Brogan, or even John Jantsch. Although, it certainly helps to have a few hundred followers and to be following a few hundred (see: #2 show up above) before you promote your small business blog on Twitter.

#6: Be Sincere

If you are sincere in your interactions on Twitter, after the initial frustration and dip of feeling like you’re in an echo chamber, you will slowly gain a following that you’ll be able to direct to your small business blog.

When you interact and engage on Twitter in a sincere manner, and follow Jeff Pulver’s 95% giving & 5% taking rule, potential customers will slowly begin to trust you and this will gradually open them up to visiting your small business blog.

#7: Use Twitter Search

Twitter Search is a valuable tool for any small business owner who wants to increase traffic to a website or blog. Searching for relevant keyword terms related to your business niche, and finding traffic for your blog, is made much easier with this tool.

However, when using Twitter Search the key is to provide valuable and helpful information in your @ replies and to not press people with spam.

For a bit of a real life example, the other day on Twitter I was looking for some input on web hosting companies. The amount of spam I got back in my Twitter stream was unreal. The reply below stands out in particular as an example of ‘How not to drive traffic to your small business or blog’ when using Twitter Search.

I know you are going to be absolutely shocked! But when you click on the link included in @forsgren’s Tweet you find out that he actually OWNS the company and website that the link directs to.

For the record, I have absolutely no problem with him directing an @ reply to me. However, please be honest and disclose up front that you own the hosting company. In this particular case, my trust has been lost and the potential for him to gain my business is gone. Additionally, I will never look at his blog. Period.

#8: Collaborative Relationships

When attempting to get more traffic for your small business blog, find out who the thought leaders and influencers are in your industry and connect with them on Twitter. It does not always get discussed out in the open, but collaborative partnerships, particularly with people in your industry, can send a tremendous amount of targeted visitors to your blog.

As a personal example, the actress Alyssa Milano happens to be a passionate animal rights advocate. At present, I help to do the social media activities for the animal rescue organization on my tiny island, and through the magic of Twitter I was able to connect with Ms. Milano.

The animal rescue organization has (what is essentially) a small business blog, which is used to update people on stray animals who need help and any current rescues who are looking for a home. On a couple of occasions now Alyssa has been kind enough to help get our message out over Twitter. In fact, back in June she Tweeted about one particular dog that was really in dire need of some help.

Because many of her followers are also animal lovers (i.e targeted traffic), below you can see the spike in visitors that was generated to the animal welfare blog from her Tweet, which is a site that typically gets about fifty visitors per day.

#9: Useful Links & Hashtags

Once you have gained a few followers and created some collaborative relationships, you should start sharing useful links that are related to your small business. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit make it easy for you to search and discover the best of what’s on the web in your niche.

If you’re sharing good stuff and educating your followers, then their natural tendency will be to investigate your profile further and visit your small business blog.

For example, if I owned a bike shop and wanted to drive traffic to my business blog, I would begin Tweeting all of the useful links that I could find on the subject of bikes and bike riding.

When it comes to increasing follower count, resource posts always seem to get ReTweeted well. Be on the lookout for ‘Best of’ and ‘How to’ posts. When Tweeting links, if space provides, you might want to create a branded hashtag for your small business as well.

#10: Power of the Picture

Who you are and what you do on a daily basis at your small business matters to your followers. Tweeting pictures provides a contextual basis to your daily activities, which goes beyond the normal status update.

In order to gain more targeted traffic to your small business blog, I would highly recommend utilizing a Twitter photo-sharing site like TwitPic or Yfrog. These sites allow the small business owner to share cool photos from their typical business day, or while plying their craft, so that people get to know you. Photos help to build social trust and intrigue, which leads to more traffic on your small business blog. Have a look at this Tweeted photo that I just sent this past Friday and one of the responses I received.

As a final note, I have said this before, but its importance cannot be overlooked. It can take a very long time to develop a trusting follower base for your small business on Twitter but it only takes one Tweet to alienate and lose the trust of your followers.

What other suggestions would you offer to those small business owners who are looking to use Twitter to drive traffic to their small business blog?

Source: Problogger.com

Have you ever had a issue with promoting your website or blog?  Have you tried everything and are still not seeing any results?  Maybe the issue is that you are promoting your website in the wrong fashion.  Maybe you are using 1 or more of the wrong techniques explained below to promote your site.  Take a look at the information below and keep it in mind the next time you want to promote your blog.  It will help you get a long way to getting quality traffic that WILL generate you income if you keep at it.

10. Using a little too much Java script can actually hinder crawlers from catching up with and identifying your page for inclusion in the search results of top internet search engines. This means that your website will be relegated to some bottom place on the list that comes up on results of searches by engines. This also happens with indiscriminate inclusion of Flash and frames.

9. You are neglecting linking to related content on other sites. It is often surprising just how powerful including relevant articles and pieces of information from other sites or blogs can be. Besides providing a different insight into something you may have already covered, it also allows you to begin establishing a relationship with other website owners in which you may both eventually benefit off.

8. You are not subtle enough. When promoting your website or blog on forums based on similar interests, you have to take care to go about it in a subtle manner or else your target audience may actually be repulsed by your tactics.

7. You did not include relevant keywords. Keywords are what will get your website or blog listed on any search result when a user types in that keyword in the browser of a search engine. Include enough of these and you are sure to get a high listing.

6. Keywords again. You need to select keywords in which you can actually compete for. There’s no point targeting the most popular keywords because chances are you will find it extremely difficult to attain a decent ranking for them. Keywords should be selected carefully, if need be, invest in programs (like Keyword Corral) that are designed to make the process much simpler and effective. This is also covered in page 42 in Building a Business NOT a Blog.

5. You rely on SEO alone to fuel your traffic flow. Explore other methods too, like social media, social book marking, participating in forums, PPC and link baiting. This brings me to my next point.

4. You are incorrectly using social media to promote your site. The key behind using mediums like Facebook and Twitter to effectively promote your website is building relationships. Neglecting this will substantially impact on your social media promotion efforts.

3. Your content is boring. If you want word of mouth promotion by visitors, you have to supply them with content that is interesting, fresh and which the visitors can talk about.

2. There re just too many pop ups. This is something I’ve noticed with many websites lately. Get rid of pop up ads, whether your site hosts them or whether you use pop ups to promote your own site.

1. You seem too desperate in your promotion. This puts potential visitors off.

Source: Johncow.com & Insane Profits

Hello Everyone,

Every month I receive around 100,000 visitors to my websites just from Twitter alone and so can every single one of you! I know a lot of you enjoyed the tips I shared in my FREE eCourse about making money online blogging and driving traffic to your blog from Twitter so today I decided to do an updated twitter guide so you can benefit more from Twitter like myself. The great thing with Twitter is the people using it are so diverse, whatever your business is about, you can find people related to your business. I remember a friend was talking to me just before we went for dinner about how he thought Twitter was just for Internet Entrepreneurs and he wouldn’t be able to get people related to his business to follow him on Twitter. He runs a clothing company online offering some of the top brands for great prices. I quickly started a fashion focused Twitter account and before we went for dinner I started adding some followers. When we returned from dinner he had already had sales from being on Twitter for 1 hour. I was happy because he let me pick some shirts from his warehouse for showing him how to do it.

Got you interested now? OK, let’s take a look at how I did it for FREE:

Driving Traffic From Twitter To Your Blog

When I use Twitter, I use it so I can update my readers about what’s new on my websites and what I’m doing, just like everyone else seems to do. The different, everyone else has around 100 followers and so it doesn’t really make much of a difference to the traffic that goes to their website. I have around 80,000 followers now and I will share how you can quickly catch up.

Now before I go too far, I think it is important to say that while I am a huge fan of Twitter (being able to search real time about current happenings or events is awesome) – I should say that of late, Twitter has also been the subject of spammers or automated accounts set up to drive traffic to less than good websites. What I am about to reveal is not about being a spammer, it is about legitimate business people getting the best out of twitter and also about legitimate business people being fully up to speed on the techniques other Twitter users are using.

Lets get Started:

The first thing you need to do to get more followers is add more people, but adding 80,000 people must take for ever… Luckily there are tools you can use to automatically add people, now most of these range from $80 to $200, some even charge that monthly and well I’m not that kind of guy. So here is how you set up Twitter Friend Adder, firstly you need FireFox Browser and then you need to have the plugin, Greasemonkey. Once you have that, click here and down our FREE Twitter Friend Adder. Once you have done this you are all set to go to start adding people.

This is the way I add people, it doesn’t mean it’s right, it’s just how I do it. Firstly find some big names in your industry that will have people following them that will also be interested in following yourself. For example if you have a Celebrity blog, you may want to go Perez Hilton’s twitter profile, then click on followers, now in the top left will be a button saying “Add All Followers”. It will automatically start adding one of his followers every 2 seconds till its added 1000. Then after 1000 people it will stop adding, this is because Twitter has a limit to only being able to add 1000 friends a day. Now you do this every day, usually at the same time, I recommend between 4 – 6pm (that is UK time) as this usually is the most active time on Twitter and you’re more likely to get people follow you back if they are online at the time you add them. Usually from adding 1000 people, I will get around 400 view my profile and click my website URL which means I get 400 highly targeted visitors in 24 hours. Bare in mind this is just the first point of contact, they will also revisit when I tweet and more people will visit when my followers retweet my tweets to their followers.

Finding Twitter profiles related to your niche can begin to get hard, when I struggle to find people related to my niche’s I use a website called WeFollow which basically lists top Twitter users in different groups, for example in Social Media category Mashable is the top profile, he runs the top blog about social media which means if you also have a blog about social media, you would do good to follow his followers.

Deleting People On Twitter Can Be Important

A lot of the stuff I’m about to share with you is stuff I don’t use myself because its not necessary for me but it is definitely something you should know about, even if you don’t use it all. The first thing about adding 1000 people a day is that you will be following 600 people more every day then will be following you back so your account will have a lot less people following it then your following which will not make you look very popular. With Twitter, you want to make yourself look as popular as possible so people will be more likely to follow you, think about it this way, would you follow someone who is following 500 people and only has 200 people following him back? probably not. But if the person is following 500 people and has 50,000 following him back then he will look like he has something good to say so you will be a lot more likely to follow him, so social proof is really important! Below are some tips and tricks you can use to cut down the amount of people you follow on Twitter.

Automatically un-follow everyone who doesn’t follow you back is the first step to getting down the amount of people you follow. Now I don’t recommend you do this every day as it won’t give your new followers enough time to follow you and check your profile out so you should do it perhaps twice a week. The script you should use for this is Twitter Mutuality, you can unfollow everyone not following you or choose to unfollow everyone.

The next thing I do and do recommend you all do is use a site called UnTweeps which will allow you to automatically un-follow anyone you are following who hasn’t updated their profile in a few days, you may choose any amount of days you like but I think a fair amount of days would be 7 because for some reason they could just not of been able to get online. This is a great tool because if they haven’t updated then they won’t be seeing your Tweets, a lot of them will be following you back so it will make you look even popular because they won’t un-follow you because they don’t use anymore.

If you do get to the point where your following 40,000 people and you realize you really don’t want to be following all these people, then to delete everyone is really simple. Its something I don’t 100% agree with but I do see this happen a lot and then people will think your super popular. If you want to do this, the tool to use is Twollow which will allow you to delete 2000 people at a time.

Using Twitter and Blogging Together

As I mentioned above, using Twitter to drive traffic to your blog is super important and is one of the reasons for my success. To get more out of Twitter, you want to promote Twitter on your blog in a few different ways. One of the most well known ways is to add a TweetMeMe button which includes a counter of how many times people have retweeted your blog post and it allows other people to automatically retweet it themselves. To use this counter and others TweetMeMe have, click here.

For those lazy people or for those who like everything automated this next resource is really good. If you pre-publish your blog posts like me when you go away on vacation or when you have guest posters and won’t be around then you can automatically tweet when new posts are published on your Wordpress blog. Twitter Poster will take the title of a new post and will submit it to the Twitter account specified in the options. It will also add the link back to the post, allowing your twitter followers to access the post details

Other Twitter Tools I Use

Managing 80,000 Twitter followers is impossible, you can’t see what your real friends are doing and the updates that are important. For me its important to see what Young Entrepreneurs, Gurus and Web Designers are saying so I set up a group for each and added the necesary people to each group so I don’t miss a tweet – you can do this using TweetDeck.

As a lot of you know, I went away for a couple weeks and didn’t really update my sites for a month, over that time I still wanted to boost my traffic so I asked my VA to pre publish 100 tweets, a new tweet had to be sent every 2 hours and once the 100 tweets have been published, just repeat. To do this I used pre-publishing software, TweetLater. You can also use TweetLater to send automatic messages when someone new follows you, welcoming them and recommending your website. Although this is great to do, it isn’t really effective anymore as it seems everyone does it (I have over 10,000 messages, I guess 9,950 are automatic).

To Our Success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. What are your honest thoughts about Twitter because everyone has different opinions I would like to invite you to voice them so everyone gets the full picture and perhaps I could prove you wrong

Source: IncomeDiary.com

How many products, blog posts etc. have you seen that offered the “Secret” to wealth or the “Secret” to server crashing traffic?

Those of us who know better, know that although all of these “secrets” may not be scams, 99.9% of them do not offer any kind of secret.

Most of us know that there really isn’t any kind of secret. The absolute only thing that will make you rich (unless you win the lottery or get a big inheritance) is Knowledge!

This is really something that shouldn’t need to be mentioned. I mean, it should be common sense. But, the average Internet Marketer is constantly asking how to get more traffic.

Short-cuts don’t work. There may be some that will increase your traffic in the short-term, but if your content isn’t worth their time they aren’t going to come back.

So What is the “Secret” to Traffic Generation?

Know more about your sites topic than the average visitor!

That’s it! You don’t even have to insert a special line of markup into your pages or sign up for a $1,000 course. All you have to do is research and learn!!

How many “my journey to making money online” blogs have you seen rise to the top? I could name a hand-full and those were done by people who had already been making money. So why don’t these blogs ever see success? Because they didn’t teach their average visitor anything. If I want to make money, why would I want to follow someone who isn’t making any? It just doesn’t make sense!

On the other hand, if I want to make money and you’re making more than me and regularly share your knowledge I’ll subscribe in a heart beat and read every single word you put out!

So the next time you think to yourself “damn, my blog doesn’t get any traffic,” think about what you have to offer! Do you honestly know more about your sites topic than your average site visitor? If not, are you providing them with something they can at least use? or are you just putting on a show, like so many others? Acting doesn’t work in this industry and those who realize that are the ones who make the money!

As with anything else online or offline, knowledge really is the key!

Source: Ez-onlinemoney.com/blog

There are a handful of niche topics in the Internet Marketing field, which are always talked about more than anything else:

1. List Building
2. SEO
3. Link Building
4. Article Marketing

In many cases each Internet Marketing Strategy is used along side another in one way or another and in all cases they are used with one very simple goal in mind, to generate TRAFFIC!

It’s no secret that these techniques work, but for some reason people are always looking for top secret traffic generating methods.

So, I’d like to share with you the #1 Traffic Generation “Secret” of all time!

OK, it’s not a secret. Actually, the secret could be that it isn’t a secret at all…if that makes sense.

Are there secret gold mines out there that will drive loads of traffic to your site? Probably, but is it worth it to spend hours, day, months or even years looking for them when you may or may not find one…and if you do, will it be long-lasting or a short surge of traffic?

The most important thing I’ve learned over time is that the most important aspect of traffic generation isn’t to get loads of visitors to your site from one traffic source, it’s to get a little here and there and RETAIN those you do get!!

You can work your butt off fighting the Search Engines, Writing loads of articles, trying to convince others to link to your site etc. etc. and do it over and over again just so you can duplicate the traffic you got yesterday, today, or you can retain the traffic you get today and add it onto the traffic you got yesterday and the day before that and so on!

So, continue to write and submit articles, continue to post to forums, continue to do everything you’re currently doing to drive traffic, but get a good auto-responder so you can implement a system within your site/blog that collects names and emails and/or do SOMETHING to retain them!

Simply creating interesting, valuable content is the best way to do that, they’ll come back simply out of will, but giving away a free report in exchange for their name and email is probably the most valuable!

Any way in which you can automate contact between you and them will work. Whether you build an email list, maintain an RSS subscriber base (this blogs lifetime RSS growth in image above) or use another technique to do it, you simply MUST retain your visitors. If you don’t you have a very long, steep hill ahead of you!

Source: Ez-onlinemoney.com/blog/

Just a quick post to show some really cool stats and to introduce a technique I’m using to actually promote one of my hobby sites primarily through Twitter!

As you know, Twitter is widely recognized as a powerful networking tool. It isn’t a direct traffic or sale generator in most cases, but as I explained the other day, Twitter could have direct sale/lead/traffic generation potential!

In that post I didn’t mention a current “case study” (I guess you could say) I’ve been doing with a Geocaching hobby blog of mine. A little while back I thought of a way in which I saw (in my head) Twitter as being a powerful traffic generator.

So I spent about an hour implementing it and so far I’ve accomplished the following directly from Twitter:

1. 69 unique visitors directly from Twitter (See screenshot below.)
2. An upcoming interview with the IndyStar (a very large Newspaper publication in Indianapolis.)
3. $20.75 in sales through the phpBayPro shop I have on the blog.
4. Found and got acquainted with a Geocaching shop owner who is going to set up a custom affiliate program just for me!
5. Received at least one blogroll link from another Twitter user, who geocaches and owns a geocaching blog!

None of that is extremely impressive until you consider the amount of time and effort I’ve put into that twitter account, which you can see at http://twitter.com/MadCacher.

Here’s what I did

I created about 10 random Tweets about Geocaching then I went to Twitter Search, did a search for “Geocaching” (without quotes) and for about 1 hour I added every person who mentioned Geocaching.

After that I just updated with questions every now and then… updated when I went out and found some geocaches etc. The traffic came mostly through the link in my bio… in other words I probably could have plugged my blog a bit more and drove more traffic! But I’m trying to build authority and trust in this niche, so I don’t plug my site too often.

As you can see, I only have 92 updates at the time of writing and each update takes about 20 seconds, so the time investment is very minimal, especially when it’s in a niche I love talking about.

I invested a total of about 90 minutes in that Twitter account. So, is 90 minutes worth 69 unique visitors, an interview with a big newspaper, which WILL indirectly drive much more traffic and exposure, $20 in sales (so far,) at least one sitewide link pointing to my blog and a custom affiliate program set up just for you? I know my answer!

Will this work in ANY niche? I seriously doubt it! Twitter users tend to be more technically inclined (Geocaching is a GPS game,) so if you go searching for people talking about vacuum cleaners you probably won’t get very good results.

BUT if you’re open minded about Twitter in general, I think you’ll find that it has far more benefits than just networking!

Source: Ez-OnlineMoney.com/blog

A lot of “us” focus on Google for traffic… which is smart, but is there a point in which it might be causing more harm then good?

I am not by any means suggesting that you do not focus on Google. There is no doubt that they provide massive amounts of traffic… but what would happen if suddenly Google decided to remove you from their rankings?

Would your site or blog be dead?

Over the past 30 days, the following non Google sources have provided traffic to JohnCow.com:

• 19% –> eMail – Mailing list & RSS
• 15% –> Affiliate Links promoting my free ebook
• 13% –> Stumbleupon – Was a few times but the biggest was to my free “Planning 2009 Guide”
• 12% –> Twitter – All over but two spikes are CPA Arbitrage post and “Planning 2009″ post.
• 7% –> Digitalpoint Forum – To the post about CPA Arbitrage
• 4% –> Digg – “2009 Planning Guide”
• 3% –> Tumblr – Consistent and mostly to the index page
• 3% –> Wikipedia – I owe Ranked Hard for this one… this is a link to a guest post they did

That is 76% of my traffic for the month of December!

In fact, Google only provided 14% of the traffic(the other 10% was a bunch of little things like yahoo, msn and so on).

So, whats my point of showing this?

If you want more traffic to your website or blog, do NOT put all your eggs in one basket, DO think outside of Google alone and DO get people talking!

Here are 5 things for you to think about:

1. Are you building a mailing list (You NEED to do this for long term sustainability)?
2. Are you building up a solid presense in different social media outlets (I have over 1600 followers on twitter now)?
3. Do you create controversial content that will cause people to act (share, comment and come back for more)?
4. Do you give away valuable free content that will cause people to act (share, comment and come back for more)?
5. Do you offer an affiliate program of some sort to “encourage” people who promote you?

Ok, I know there is nothing earth shattering here… but if anything I hope it makes you think a little about how you are currently doing things and how you may be able to do things better!

The bottom line is it comes down to balance. Do not focus everything on Google… but on the other hand, do NOT ignore them either.

What are your thoughts on this?

Source: JohnCow.com

This is Jerry West again from SEO Revolution and as promised from my last guest post, I would cover one of my ways to effectively market my content. I use the power of Blogs. You see, my experience has shown that people want to be served. They would rather have content delivered to them than have to go out and search for it.

Search = Work

RSS feeds and other ways of delivering content on the web today looked like a clear answer. After all, webmasters can sit back and have the content dumped in their laps in minutes without having to think about what they want and go looking for it. Sounds good, but I have talked to the big bloggers in many industries and their biggest gripe is all the SPAM that is sent to them via RSS. One blogger mentioned that he was getting so much SPAM through RSS that he just killed the feeds. “It was to the point that I was getting ten SPAM articles for every legit one.” It’s too much work to go through.

What should you do instead?

From those I spoke with, they only rely on a few key outlets for their content. I suggest you find the main bloggers in your space (Google Blogsearch).

Read their blog. Get to know it.

Then post comments that are good and insightful. Use your real name or a pen name, but leave a full name. Don’t post your site as a way to get some free “links” Don’t “kiss up” either. If you disagree with what the blogger said, say so and back it up. Contrary to popular believe, nobody likes a “kiss a$$” so don’t do it. If the Blogger really knows their stuff, and you come up with a counter point that is well thought out and delivered, that will get their attention. Once you feel you have their attention, call them. Tell them why you like their Blog. Be direct and to the point. Then, get down to business.

What To Do:

First, don’t ask for a favor from them. You provide the favor. Tell them you would like to sponsor their Blog, or advertise on their Blog. That will open up the conversation. They may ask what site you want to advertise, and once you tell them, they will know you are in a similar space. PayPal them the money right then, don’t wait. If they are being receptive, ask for them to review one of your articles (it must be killer and reflect the same well-thought out approach of the comments you made on their Blog). But make sure they understand you aren’t asking for the article to be posted, just commentary with a link to your article.

Do you see the power of this yet?

It’s coming. Once you do this with the top 3-4 Bloggers, the secondary Bloggers, who follow the top Bloggers like puppy dogs, will pick up the article as well, and they will do the same thing … they will comment on it and link to your article. Using Digg and the other “Social Bookmarking” tools is fine … but you won’t even come close to getting the same amount of quality traffic as going direct to the top Bloggers.

Why?

Because they control the quality traffic on the web right now.

Let me repeat that: Top Bloggers Control the Quality Traffic on the Web.

Think about that statement for a moment. It isn’t the QUANTITY of traffic, it is the QUALITY of traffic. If someone you trust recommends a source, you are going to at least check it out aren’t you? You will also be more willing to spend more time on that site and really look into it, wouldn’t you? Of course. That is human nature.

Here is the kicker: If you sell a product or service, make sure the Blogger understands that you track all sales and if any sales are the result of his/her traffic, you will personally see to it that they are paid an affiliate commission for that customer for life. Yes, life. Make it worthwhile for them.

As my grandfather would always say, “Take care of the people who take care of you.”

Build and nurture these relationships and you will see great things happen for your promotions. Here are some actual stats that were achieved by getting three top bloggers to post their opinion on an article I wrote:

• Blogger One: 1,015 uniques
• Blogger Two: 345 uniques
• Blogger Three: 156 uniques
• Total Uniques to Page: 2,551

In just 30 days, 432 links were acquired. While most of those links will not be counted in Google’s new measurement, that is still an excellent achievement.

If we placed each unique visitor at a cost of 30 cents per and each link acquired at $2.50, this is our “projected benefit” from this campaign:

• Uniques: 2,551 * $0.30 = $765.30
• Links: 432 * $2.50 = $1,080.00
• Total = $1,845.30

This figure represents what it would have cost to deliver the traffic and getting the links. In other words, I can use that $1,800.00 for something else. Remember, all the links acquired are one-way links. That is a nice added bonus. And link builders, even those overseas, can charge up to $8.00 for each one-way link.

This technique gets better. Look at the referrers in your log files. Start at the top and work your way down. Those who are sending you the most traffic are those you want to contact first. Look at their site and/or their blog. Is this someone you want to do business with? To promote you? To advertise with?

Based on your needs and goals, you can decide if you want to continue and contact them. Remember that just because the page is a PageRank0 doesn’t mean you shouldn’t contact them. There could be an issue with the site, the Blog being new, or the owner not understanding how to get their site indexed. You would be surprised how many Bloggers don’t understand fundamental Internet Marketing. If they don’t, offer to help them in that area in return for their help to promote your business with their readers. It’s a win-win.

As you go through the list of referrers, your goal is to expand your own “PR Distribution List”. You have the top three Bloggers on your list, now you want to expand into the secondary level. While the secondary Bloggers tend to have a very small fraction of the readership the big Bloggers do, they are worth contacting. If you expand your circle to include 40-50 Bloggers, when you have your next great article, you have a distribution list that will give you immediate quality traffic … plus, you’ll get some great incoming links to boot.

If you are struggling with qualified traffic and getting solid links, this approach can breathe life back into your site.

It’s the dream of every blogger to get a lot of traffic, but something first time bloggers often don’t realize is that just publishing a few posts will not get them regular readers. I am no expert in getting traffic, but I have been working on a few things which has increased my traffic a lot.

When I first started this blog I used to get only about 10-20 visitors a day. After the first few months, I started getting traffic from Google and other traffic engines and my unique visitors increased to about 100 a day. Now for the past few weeks I have been getting about 550 visitors a day.

The sudden increase in traffic I had from about 100-500 visitors was mainly because my recent posts were linked back from many sites. So yes, linking can get you traffic depending on which sites link to you. Links can be thought of as the currency of blogs.

I received a lot of emails (even while writing this) from bloggers asking how they can get more traffic, I hope this helps…

Blog Design

A good design won’t bring you traffic but it will get your visitors to stay longer. No one will stay on your blog too long if the layout or navigation annoys them. So the first thing to do is to select a good theme for your blog and then design your own header. The goal is to have a unique blog that stands out from all other blogs (making your visitors want to come back again and again).

Often bloggers select a theme and forget about the design. The problem here is that your blog will look similar to hundreds of blogs that use the same theme.

Your design should allow your visitors to access the main pages of your blog and to contact you easily. Your blog should have an about page and an author photo. The more a reader knows about you, the more they trust your content. You can find more info on this on my recent post – Common Weblogging Mistakes.

Quality Content

Your blog should have good content inorder to keep your visitors coming back. By good content I mean well written posts that are unique and useful at the same time. Writing original content is definitely the key.

Do not copy-paste contents directly from other blogs to your blog. Re-blogging is a bad thing and will kill your traffic. The solution here is to write that content in your own words adding your own unique ideas to it. And don’t forget to link to the original post.

The more engaged you are with your content, the more interesting it will be.

Get Links

The more links you have the more traffic you get. Like I said before links are the currency of blogs. So how do you go about getting links to your blog?

Well written posts are often linked back by many sites. You are lucky if you get linked by heavily trafficked sites.

Another way is to get links from other bloggers. Link to their blogs and ask them politely to do the same for you. Also visit the ‘links’ section of a blog (if they have one) and check for a link exchange form. If there is, submit your blog after linking to theirs.

You may also take part in other link exchanging programs.

Join Conversations

Most of my first visitors came to my blog because I left a comment on theirs. When you comment on a blog leave your blog address. Often people like to know who is reading their blog and will come visiting you. Readers of that blog will also pay a visit to your blog. But do not comment just for the sake of it. Make genuine comments that relate with the post. In the process you will not only get visitors to your blog but might also make friends.

Take part in Blog Top Sites

Submitting your blog to Blog Top Sites like topblogsites.net, blogtopsites.com and top100bloggers.com is another way to get more traffic. These networks make your blog easier to find and search for as well. After you sign up for an account on their website, you just need to copy a bit of code and paste it somewhere on your blog.

You can also take part in blog traffic exchange communities like BlogExplosion and BlogClicker.

To join these blog traffic exchange communities – visit the site, sign up, confirm your account, add your blog to the member directory and then start visiting other member’s blogs.

Basically, you need to earn ‘credits’ in order to get blog traffic exposure. These credits are often gained by visiting other member’s blogs. When you have enough credits, your blog becomes eligible for promotion. Usually, a link or graphic to your blog will be shown on the main site or in fellow member’s blogs. This is how other people find your blog.

Of course, the more members there are in the community, the more potential visitors. So, if you are part of a blog traffic community, it’s good to promote the communities you belong to as well. Besides, when you promote the community through a referral system, you get more credits too.

Tag Technorati

Technorati is one of the best traffic providers for bloggers. People find your blogs easily when people search by technorati tags. Technorati will rank your blog based on the number of links from other websites.The higher your rank the easier your blog is to find when people search for things.

If you do not have a Technorati account, signup here. After you have setup the main settings, such as your profile, you need to claim your blog.

Make good use of Technorati tags by tagging every keyword in each of your posts. If you use WordPress, I recommend Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) which makes tagging Technorati a lot easier.

By tagging your post effectively you will get a lot of quality traffic to your blog.

Source: JohnTP.com

Follow these simple rules for search engine optimization and your blog will rank much higher in Search Engines.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

   The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in subdomains also helps. (unfortunately not something I’ve done with my blog)For example, if you want to start a HTML tutorial site then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is html. So choose a URL like www.htmlhelp.com.

   You can also use the keyword in subdomains like www.web-design.com/htmlhelp

2. Use your primary keyphrase in the title of your posts

   If your primary key phrase is html help make sure that the word html and help appear in your blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as well as the title of each of your posts.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

   If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a Webpage, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords.But do not overdo this by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Google bots can find out if a keyword is too frequent on a page and might just remove your site from their index.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

   Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages of your blog. Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

   Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or atleast the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs

   You need as many links as possible to link back to your posts or blog because it will help you build pagerank and get your blog to rank higher in search engines. The more links you have the higher your blog is ranked in Technorati helping your blog to be found easily.So how do you get backlinks?

   • The first thing to do to get high-quality links is to submit your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories.Start by submitting your blog to all the directories listed on this page:
     http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
   • Link exchanging with other similarly-themed blogs will help you to form richly interlinked networks or communities.
   • If you find an interesting article on another blog, link to it generously. The trackback will become a link back to your blog.
   • Lastly posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs will help you get backlinks. Regularly post legitimate comments in similarly-themed blogs with high traffic to get many backlinks.
7. Update your blog frequently

   Update your blog frequently using all the rules mentioned above and your blog will surely get top rankings in a short time.

8. Stick with your blog

   Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers.Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it’s about pets don’t suddenly switch to another topic such as Gadget’s because you will loose traffic.

Source: JohnTP.com