The SEO Blog - Traffic Generation Techniques

If we were to take a trip back in time to 2003, you’d notice that getting high search
engine rankings was a far simpler and easier task.

If you wanted to rank highly for a term, you’d just get as many reciprocal links as you possibly could and would use the identical anchor text on all the links. The title tag of your site would include only the keyword you’re optimizing for, and you’d make sure that your main keyword appeared at the top of the page, and showed up frequently in the body of your website as well.

This “Brute Force” style of getting high search engine rankings was as effective as it was simple.

The problem is that some people just haven’t caught on to the fact that it’s 2007 (almost 2008). The methods you use to get high search engine rankings have changed – using ancient methods just aren’t going to cut it.

You don’t want your website to appear perfectly optimized. Google has learned that perfectly optimized websites are rarely the best sites to put at the top of their listings.

Instead, the best sites tend to have a lot of related content that supports the main theme of the website, they have a variety of anchor text pointing to their websites, and the content of their website doesn’t scream “optimized”.

For example, I was browsing through the stats of a few of websites I’d forgotten about and hadn’t done anything with in several months. One of them had triple the traffic it had when I last looked, so I was curious and took a closer look.

As it turns out, the site had climbed up in to the top 30 of Google for the term “network marketing.” I was actually a little surprised since I hadn’t even been targeting that term. I had instead been targeting phrase “mlm training” and I’d gotten up to #1 in Yahoo for that phrase.

However, Google apparently thought I was trying too hard to get a high ranking for the term “mlm training” but they felt that I was doing a good job of covering the topic of “network marketing” and gave me a fairly high ranking for the term even though the site was not at all optimized for that particular term. One thing I will point out here is that I did have some links (not the majority) that used the anchor text “network marketing” when referring to the website.

This is just one of many examples where what I like to call Indirect Search Engine Optimization has come into play.

So just keep in mind that getting if you’ve been reading other search engine optimization information where it’s telling you to have a certain keyword density, and that 90% of your links should all use the keyword you’re optimizing for that you’re likely reading out of date information – information that’s going to accomplish the opposite of a high ranking.

Instead, I recommend that you focus on providing high quality content, get a variety of links to a variety of pages, and use the anchor text of the keyword you’re optimizing for 60% or less of the time.

Want to get more information like this delivered straight to your mailbox? If so, be sure to get yourself a subscription to my printed monthly newsletter - Traffic Transformation Monthly. Each month I examine strategies for generating traffic and converting that traffic into customers. This is one newsletter any webmaster or blogger can’t afford to be without.

When It Comes To Getting Website Traffic, You Need A System

When it comes to getting new visitors to your website, do you have a system in place?

If you’re like most online businesses, you don’t. However, you don’t want to be like most online businesses since most of them fail to ever make money.

Just like every business should have a business plan, every online business needs to have a system in place bring in traffic. (Yes, you still need a business plan too.)

For example, you should decide what methods you want to focus on to bring traffic to your website whether that be pay per click, search engine optimization, ezine advertising, social media, banner ads, joint venture, direct mail, or most likely some combination of methods.

Initially, you will want to experiment with methods, and track to see which methods are bringing you the highest return on investment, but once you’ve figured out with methods you’re going to use, then it’s time to start turning the use of those methods into a system.

That means you’ll setup a list of procedures that are to be followed. For example, if you decide you want to use articles to drive traffic to your website, the procedure may be as simple as writing an article, submitting it to a variety of article directories, and sending people who click on your links to a landing page for a free report. This is a simple system, but it’s important to have nonetheless.

The best part about having a system for bringing in new traffic is that once you have it setup, you can hire someone else to do parts of it or even the whole thing. It can free you up so you can spend more time working on your business than in your business.

For example, if you take the system I just mentioned about articles, you could take that system and outsource the entire task to someone else to do for you. You would simply hire someone to write the articles, they would submit them, and they would link to your landing page.

The ultimate goal of systems, of course, is to make it so that your business can grow and function without you. I know that may be a horrifying idea to think of your business thriving without you, but that’s exactly what you want. Not only does it free up a lot of your time, it also makes your business substantially more valuable in the event that you decide you want to sell your business.

Even if you don’t want to setup systems for you entire business just yet, at least start with one for getting traffic to your website. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.

If you’re ready to learn techniques and strategies you can start using right now to start systematically your website’s traffic, then sign up for my printed monthly newsletter at www.TrafficTransformation.com/monthly/ - this is one resource anyone serious about getting more traffic can’t be without.

Long Tail Search Engine Optimization Strategies

If you haven’t yet read the book, The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, you’re missing out on a fascinating book about how markets are being more and more niched and fractured. The tagline of the book is “Why the future of business is selling less of more.”

One very real application that the book has is in the world of search engine optimization. Back when search engine were far less mature and the search engine user was far less sophisticated, most people would search for information by typing in a single word or two word phrase. The websites that were at the top of the search engines for those phrases got the bulk of the traffic.

However, today the search engine user is far more sophisticated. They know more about what they’re looking for and they know how to use the search engine to get the most relevant results that they’re looking for. For example, a search that 7 years ago might have simply been “real estate” is now “make money investing in apartment complexes.” While the second term might generate a lot less traffic than the former, it is almost certainly a higher quality visitor who is probably more serious about investing and willing to spend money on your site if you have exactly what they’re looking for.

What that means to you, the website owner, is that you need to focus on providing more specific and detailed information to your visitors to get traffic. You also need to start offering a wider variety of products to meet the demands of today’s more sophisticated customer.

When it comes to optimizing for these “long tail” phrases, there are some challenges involved. First, there are so many long tail terms that will bring in a small amount of traffic versus the few primary terms that will bring in a lot of traffic that most people will just focus on the primary terms and ignore the long tail side of things.

That is a huge mistake because the long tail searcher is likely more likely to be the person who is likely to spend money at our website and also getting ranked well for long tail terms is far easier than it is to get a top 10 ranking for primary terms. If we look at our “real estate” example, the average Pagerank of a site on Google’s first page is a 7. Conversely, for the term “make money investing in apartment complexes” typical Pagerank is about 3 and there was no one who was optimized for the exact term so getting ranked would for that phrase would be extremely easy.

In my own business, long tail search engine optimization is the area I focus on. I’d much rather have a little traffic from a ton of low traffic phrases than I would from one or two primary phrases. Sure, as a search engine optimization expert, getting a top 10 ranking for a difficult term is a nice feather to put in my cap, but I’m much more concerned about actually making money than stroking my ego.

You see, if I have one or two phrases ranked in the top 10 of a search engine like Google that’s bringing in nearly all of my traffic and hence revenue, then if I lose that ranking, my earnings are going to plummet. On the other hand, if I have 500 terms that each bring in just one or two visitors each day, then if I lose one of those rankings, I won’t even notice the difference in traffic.

Let me who you some traffic stats from two websites that I’ve been working on lately. The first is a website devoted to pet snakes. This site has excellent rankings for its primary keywords, including a #1 ranking in Google for the term “pet snakes.” This ranking does bring in a fair amount of traffic to the website, but if I look at the actual stats, I can see that 65% of my visitors are using terms that aren’t listed by this stats program. Each term may only bring me 20 or 30 visitors for the entire month, and some may only bring on one visitors a month, but because there are so many of them, over 1000, that traffic greatly exceeds the traffic I get from being ranked #1 for the term pet snakes, and to be honest, I’d much rather be ranked well for those 1000 or so long tail terms than I would for pet snakes. And to be honest, when my site went from being ranked #3 in google for pet snakes to #1, the jump in traffic was hardly noticeably because I get such a large portion of traffic from my long tail keywords.

On another site I’ve been helping to build on the topic of camping, the long tail traffic is even more pronounced. The site has a top ten ranking for the term “camping tips”, but only a small portion of the overall traffic on the website comes from that ranking. In fact, 85% of the traffic to the website comes from long tail phrases. Why? Well, on this site, we devoted a great deal of time to developing content that I would consider to be expert quality. If you read the articles on the website, you’ll realize that not only were they well researched, but they were written by someone who an expert on the subject matter.

That’s one thing you really need to focus on when building websites now – expert quality content. You may not be an expert on the subject yourself, but you can almost always find someone who is an expert to write the content for you. The reason you want someone who is a subject matter expert is because they will bring up topics that you wouldn’t have though to include, but are related to the subject.

For example, when I was building a site about guitars for a client, I hired a guitar player to write the articles and I actually had her select a lot of the topics because while I’m good at keyword research, a guitar player is more likely to know what topics are relevant to guitar players than a keyword research tool.

Once you’ve got the expert quality content on your website, the other important factor in ranking well is that your website has sufficient authority. What I mean by that is that your website has a lot of quality one way links pointing to it. Try not to focus on getting links to your homepage, but rather focus on getting links to your expert quality content pages. The more links you have to these pages, the more top ten long tail rankings you’ll pick up for that article. It’s not uncommon for a high quality article to have 20 or more top ten rankings for long tail phrases and it doesn’t take long for all those phrases to add up to more traffic than if you were ranking well for the primary keyword of the article.

So to recap quickly, the future of search engine optimization is really going towards long tail optimization since the visitors are of higher quality and you’re less likely to see all your hard work undone by the next algorithm update. Getting ranked well for these terms is relatively easy as long as you focus on having expert quality content on your website and if you focus on getting quality links to your pages.

That’s long tail search engine optimization in a nutshell. It’s the focus of my work as an SEO expert, and if you’re really serious about making money from free search engine traffic, you’ll stop worrying about getting that top ten ranking for “real estate” and you’ll start focusing on the long tail phrases that are where the real money is.

Want to learn the secrets of long tail search engine optimization, then visit my website at LongTailSEOSecrets.com for a complete guide to Long Tail SEO.

When it comes to getting high search engine rankings, it seems like everyone wants their #1 Google ranking right now. I guess that’s just how our society is right now. We want it all and we want it all right now.

The problem with that “gotta have it now” mentality is that when it comes to getting high search engine rankings, especially for competitive terms, is that they take time.

I look at getting high search engine rankings as more of a marathon you have to run than a sprint. The problem is most people treat it exactly the opposite way. They’ll read a book on search engine optimization, and for the next week or even a month, they’ll be taking massive action getting links and building up great content.

At the end of the month when they don’t have a stampede of traffic busting down their doors, they say that this “search engine optimization” stuff is a bunch of crap.

The problem is they simply didn’t give it enough time, and sometimes that’s all it takes. It may not take another link, another article, or anything else besides another month or two. I’ve had websites that I’ve forgotten about for a few months, and when I decided to check my rankings just for the fun of it, I’ve found that I’ve got top ten rankings for highly competitive terms even though I didn’t do anything except give the website more time.

That’s the nature of search engine rankings these days. The search engines tend not to trust new websites. So even if you have done everything else right to get the number one spot on Google in your niche, you probably won’t get it until you site has “aged”. This can take anywhere from 3 months to a year. This phenomenon is called getting caught in the “Google Sandbox”.

If you have an older website, then you likely won’t have to worry about this problem, but even with older sites it can still take time to dramatically improve search engine rankings simply because it can take time for the search engines to update their listings. As long as you’re seeing your rankings go up, you’re on the right track even if it is only from 500 to 400. Just stick with it.

And if you see your rankings suddenly plummet – don’t panic. If you’ve been aggressive with your link building or if you’ve been trying to have perfect keyword density, you may have tripped some red flags with the search engines. Just back off a little bit, and your previous rankings should return.

So my advice to you is that if you’re looking to get great search engine rankings is that instead of taking massive action for a week and then quitting, do small daily actions over a longer period of time and you’ll find yourself having the success with your search engine rankings.

I’ll leave you with a quote that I think applies here rather well – “The race does not always go to the swift, but to the ones who keep running.”

Keep on running.

I share more advice like this on building traffic in my printed monthly newsletter - Traffic Transformation Monthly - if getting more traffic to your website high on your priority list, then you’ll want to get yourself a subscription today.

Natural Link Structure - It’s a term you hear search engine optimization gurus through around a lot. They speak of the importance of having a natural link structure, but just what the heck is a natural link structure?

That’s an excellent question, and it’s one you need to know the answer to if you want your website to achieve its full potential in the search engines (i.e. you want to get top rankings). If your link structure looks “artificial” to search engines like Google, then you’re always going to be playing catch-up instead of getting ahead in the search engine ranking game.

Having a natural link structure means that you have a large variety of links pointing to your site, your links use a variety of anchor text, and those links point to a variety of different pages.

Examples of sites that have natural link structures would be websites like WebMD.com, Wikipedia.org, and Youtube.com. These sites don’t need to go out asking for people to link to them.

If you want to have a perfectly natural link structure, then you need to “attract” links just like those sites do. To get people to link to you, it’s important to understand what makes other websites owners link to you. Webmasters and Bloggers will link to your website for a variety of reasons – perhaps you have an article that is really informative; maybe you offer a free tool for download on your site; or maybe you have a hilarious video that people need to see. And there are a whole lot more reasons why someone will link to someone else’s site. Heck, sometimes people who hate you will link to you. (It’s happened to me more than once.)

Websites that have a natural link structure tend to rank highly in the search engines. For example, Wikipedia tends to rank in the top ten for just about every general term these days – a lot of this is due to the sheer number of quality links coming into that site.

Making a site’s links look natural should be the goal of anyone optimizing their website. That means that you should focus on getting links from a wide variety of places. Get links from articles, directories, social media sites, blogs (very important), press releases, and just about any other place you can think of.

If you have control over the anchor text, make sure you use a variety of it. For example, if you have a site about coins, a good variety of anchor text would be “coins,” “coin collectors,” “numismatics”, “gold coins”, and so on. The point is to mix it up.

Also, don’t have all your links point to you homepage. That doesn’t look natural. Sites with a natural link structure have links pointing to a huge variety of internal pages on their website. (See my post on deep linking) For example, if you had coins.com, you’d want links pointing to coins.com/silverdollars/ coins.com/gold/ and so on.

Of course, the best way to get a natural link structure is to get it naturally. By that, I mean that your website is just so interesting and offers such great content that people can’t help but tell others about it. If you have a website like that, you’ll have new links pouring in all the time and your website natural search engine rankings will skyrocket.

For more ideas on how to write content people will link to, just take a look around this blog - I write about it frequently (check out my post on linkbait for more specifics), and try to be an example of it myself.

Want to learn a whole lot more strategies for building links? Then be sure to check out my link building guide at MissionUnlinkable.com.

Ask some people to write an article for their website and they’ll look at you like you just asked them to get a tooth pulled with anesthesia.

Most people understand that unique content like articles (or blog posts) are very important for getting good search engine rankings and free traffic from the search engines.

But for some people, it is an incredibly time consuming and difficult task despite being knowledgeable on the subject.

However, writing articles doesn’t need to be difficult – even if you hate writing.

Writing articles, even a lot of them, is actually really easy especially once I explain my system to you.

I call it the OTTR system. (pronounced “otter” - like the animal)

You simply Outline, Talk, Transcribe, and Revise.

Sounds simple enough, right?

Let me explain it in a little more detail.

Step 1 - Outline

First, start with a topic that you’re knowledgeable about – hobbies usually make great choices. Just about everyone could talk for hours about their hobbies. If it’s cars, then choose a car topic. If it’s golf, then choose a golf topic.

Next, jot down a few ideas that you’d like to cover in your article. This is the outline phase.

For example, when I did the outline for this article, here’s what I started with:
• 4 Step System To Writing Articles
• Writing Articles is Easy
• OTTR
• Pick Subject You Know
• Outline
• Talk
• Transcribe
• Revise

Piece of cake, right? At that point I’ve written a grand total of 18 words. Even if you can’t type to save your life, you can probably handle 18 words.

Step 2 – Talk

On to step two – Talk. This is where the magic happens. Instead of taking that outline and writing an article from it (which you could do if you prefer), you get out a microphone and load up a program like Audacity (a free piece of software) on your computer and you start talking.

Just talk about all of the subjects in your outline until you feel you’ve gotten your point across. When you’re done, stop the recording and save the file.

Step 3 - Transcribe

Now onto step 3 – Transcribe. Now if you really hate to type or just don’t have the time for this step, give this job to someone else. This is a very easy task to delegate or outsource. In this step, you simply play back the recording and type out everything you said in the recording. Don’t try to edit it at this point – just get it all down.

Step 4 - Revise

Once you’ve got that done, you’re ready for step 4 – Revise. Now all you need to do is take out any phrases that don’t’ belong, for instance, “umm”, “like”, “you know”, etc – basically all of those filler words you use when your mind is coming up with what to say next. If you hire a transcriber, you can have them take care of this step for you.

And that’s it. You’ve got you entire article written.

And if you’re feeling more ambitious, you can use this method to write an entire book. Just use the same process, and you could write an entire book just by outlining the key ideas and talking about them.

Also, for those of you who do teleseminars or live training, be sure to record those sessions, and you’ll have a ton of valuable content right at your fingertips.

Want to learn more strategies for using article marketing? Get my entire link building course at MissionUnlinkable.com and you’ll never run out of strategies for getting more links and traffic to your website.

When it comes to getting your site to rank well in the search engines, a lot of advice you’re likely to read is the latest flavor of the week or loophole that someone’s uncovered that will help you get great search engine rankings for about a week.

It’s also true that the world of search engine optimization moves at warp speed. What worked last month may not work well this month. What worked last year may work against you now, and keeping up with all these little changes requires you to constantly be immersed in the world of search engine optimization.

So does that mean that you can’t get great search engine rankings if you don’t become an SEO expert or hire one?

No. But it does mean you’ll need to stop focusing on the little things, like tweaking your keyword density, or changing your meta tags, and focus your efforts on the factors that are going to matter long term.

Fortunately, there are some basic principles that you can apply that can help you weather the storm of constantly fluctuating search engine algorithms. These are methods that have worked for years, and will work for the foreseeable future so if you want to take this video and store it on your hard drive for a few years and play it back to see if the advice still works, I’m confident you’ll still find these methods work.

So here goes, let’s cover long term four long term seo strategies.

1) Write Great Content

Make the focus of your site on having really good content. I know that if you’ve watched any of my previous videos you already know that I continually harp on the importance of having great content. Well, the reason is that the search engines want to rank the sites that have the best content the highest. Also, people will naturally link to great content. Give the search engines and people what they want - quality content. Avoid quickly thrown together crap, and if you hire writers, make sure they know the subject matter they’re writing about.

2) Update Frequently

Your website should be updated frequently. A website that just sits and stagnates for years isn’t likely to rank well in the search engines. Make sure there’s something new for the search engines spiders to see - I have a friend who calls this feeding the spiders.

3) Make sure your site grows.

This goes along with frequently updating your site. You should be consistently putting a steady stream of new content onto your site. I like to use blogs for this purpose since they’re really easy to use and maintain, but use whatever method works best for you and your site. Forums can also be a great source of new content as long as they’re properly moderated.

4) Get Links

Build up your links. You should always be seeking out quality one way links.

The best links are frequently the ones you didn’t ask for and got simply because someone noticed your site and felt it was worthy of a link so when building your website, try to keep in mind that the quality of your content will affect the quality of the links you get.

While the methods for effectively getting links will continue to change, the fact that you need links to rank well isn’t likely to change anytime soon so make sure you’re always working to get quality links to your site even if that means you’re simply focusing on providing great content people will want to link to.

Once you start focusing on long term optimization methods, you’ll find that your rankings will improve without you having to go in and make little changes every time you read about what the search engines are favoring that month. Your content will rise to the top over time without you needing to constantly mess with it.

If you’d like help with building links and getting traffic to your site, you might be interested in my link building packages and if you need help building a website, take a look at my premium content site building service.

Today I want to provide you with a guide to linkbaiting, and how you can use it to drive more traffic to your site and achieve better search engine rankings.

Just to warn ya - today’s video is almost 10 minutes long so make sure you’ve got a nice comfy chair to watch from:

Linkbaiting isn’t really a new concept - people have been using it for years, it’s really just the term describe the use of website or blog content to generate one way links to that website.

And other than well crafted press releases, there really isn’t a more powerful or effective way to drive massive amounts of traffic and get tremendous boosts to your search engine rankings quickly. So if you’re serious about getting more eyeballs to your website, then you’ll add linkbaiting techniques to your link building war chest.
While any page can be linkbait, these days it’s most frequently associated with blog posts since a blog posts tends to allow a little more interactivity with your audience. So just keep that in mind when I’m talking about some of these techniques.

Linkbaiting, just like press releases, is all about getting attention. So let’s talk about some ways that you can get attention.

1) Great Content

This is the classic way of building links. All you need to do is provide great content. But what is great content? Well, it’s not the type of content you get by buying private label articles or by hiring some cheap writer in India. Just take a look at some of the top sites for very competitive terms in Google and notice the amount of content these sites provide not just on that page but ho many related pages they link to. For example, I was recently doing research on the term chapter 7 bankruptcy for a website I was considering developing, and found that I had to temporarily shelve the project simply because the content on the top sites was well beyond anything I could simply hire a cheap writer to create. Many of these pages had several thousand word descriptions of how it worked - I think one even exceeded 10,000 words - and all would be considered genuinely helpful to anyone who stopped by to read it.

When you’re creating your content, especially if you want it to be linkbait, you need to make sure that instead of just writing to get some words on a page that a person will really learn something on that page, even if they don’t buy anything or opt-in to your newsletter. Essentially, you need to create expert quality information that’s easy and interesting to read. It takes more time - a lot more time - than just quickly throwing up a blog post, but you’ll find that almost all the best sites in every niche take the time to do this.

2) The case study

This can be another great way to attract links. Take the time to do some research on a product or service and see if it lives up to its hype. For example, you could compare spam services and test how accurate each is, then publish your results. Heck, there’s one guy who taste tests energy drinks, and publishes the results. Do some research, find something in your niche that you could do a case study on, publish the results, oh and include pretty charts and graphs – people loves charts and graphs.

3) Controversy

Say something to stir up some controversy. For example, if you’re in the search engine optimization niche, and you call all SEO specialists snake oil salesmen, you’re going to get some attention.

I have some personal experience with this topic. In 2006 I recorded a video promoting a social bookmarking service, put it on video sharing sites, and went about my day. Imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning about two months after recording the video to an inbox full of hatemail. Apparently an influential blogger found my video offensive, used it as an example of what not to do, posted it on Digg.com and got a huge response for referring people to my video. Most people would consider being insulted in your niche an awful thing to happen to their business or reputation, but for me, I got a lot out of it. I got a lot of traffic to my site, a bunch of new links, several new subscribers, a new customer, and an interview request.

Saying something controversial on your site or making a video about it can be an extremely effective to generate discussion, and hence get you links.

Some people say that if you try to do this too often it can damage your credibility, but then again, there’s people like Howard Stern who’ve made a pretty good living being controversial 100% of the time.

4) Current Events

One way to get traffic is to tie your website into current events or to offer your own take on current event within your industry. The trick with using current events is to make sure they’re current. In this day of 24 hour news stations, constantly updated news websites like CNN.com, news that happened last week is already old news. Also, remember that it’s not enough to just cover the news, there are plenty of other sites that do that already. Give your own take on things and don’t be afraid to ruffle some feathers with your views.

5) Competitions

Start a contest on your site. I run an American Idol fan site just for fun, and one thing that we did to boost traffic to the site was run a competition to predict who the top three finalists were going to be, and we gave away CDs to everyone who got it right. This promotion got my site featured on several giveaway sites and was linked to in several other American Idol themed blogs. It resulted in a lot of traffic while the competition was open and we ended up getting a low more loyal readers to the site as a result. And with a fan site, you need as many readers as possible.

However, just having a competition or having great content isn’t always going to be enough, especially if you don’t already get a lot of traffic to your website.

You’re likely going to need to take matters into your own hands and do a little bit of self promotion. Also, keep in mind that not every type of linkbait you try is going to work. While I don’t like to use the term luck, since it implies you have no control, luck does play into things a little. Wildly successful linkbaiting campaigns require the right person or people seeing it at the right time.

Some estimates that I’ve seen are that for every four attempts at linkbait, not just regular blog posts, but actual attempts to create linkbait, one of them will get some links. Maybe one in twenty will be homeruns. So this is kind of like baseball you’re going to strike out more than you get a hit, and only once in a while hit one out of the park, but when you do, be ready for massive traffic and links.

One thing that you should do when creating linkbait is to think like a copywriter. For example, the most important element of a salesletter is the headline. If you write a compelling headline that attracts attention, you’re halfway there. Linkbaiting is the same way you need to write great headlines that will attract attention. Fortunately, it’s really easy to see what type of headlines are working, just head over to digg.com or netscape.com and read the headlines of the items that have made the popular pages.

Also, you don’t want to write like you’re trying to get in a scientific journal. Again, write like a copywriter. Use short paragraphs, informal grammar (i.e. write like you talk), use slang when appropriate, feel free to insert pictures and videos.

Also, don’t be afraid to do a little self promotion. Don’t wait for someone else to submit your post to digg or netscape do it yourself. Post in related forums and ask what people think or even email other bloggers and ask them for a critique.

And that’s linkbaiting in a nutshell.

While it’s not quite as simple as article marketing or directory submissions, it has tremendous upside, and is well worth learning how to do.

If you’d like a detailed lesson on linkbait with numerous examples and plenty of specific advice, then you’ll want to get my link buidling course - Mission Unlinkable - and watch video 9.

One of the most powerful ways to bring traffic into a website and build links is to use press releases.

And when you’re using a paid online service for your press releases, you’ll find that they bring in traffic and links every single time you use them.

Even if you don’t have reporters calling or Oprah knocking down your door, press releases will still help you.
A great press release can completely change your business and bring in a flood of traffic, links, and even get you on CNBC or Larry King.

Even when given all the benefits of press releases, however, the press release remains one of the most underused tools when promoting a website despite its tremendous potential and low cost.

So why don’t more people use them, well, people have they’re excuses - I don’t have anything newsworthy; My business is different; I don’t know how to write a press release; and this one really befuddles me because someone might call me and want to interview me I’d have to *gasp* actually talk about my business to someone.

Of course, they’re just that - excuses. Coming up with something newsworthy is relatively easy. Any business can benefit from the use of press releases, they’re even relatively easy to write. And for those who are afraid you might actually have to talk to someone, though, I’m not sure what to tell you a lot of times, no reporters will call, but they might.

But if you’re convinced that you should start using press releases to promote your website, then here are a few tips for successful press releases.

1) Headlines Are Vital

Just like a great headline can make or break a salesletter, the headline of your press release can is the most important line of text you’ll right. When people are looking for stories, they’re skimming headlines, and if your headline doesn’t grab someone’s attention, then it doesn’t matter how great the rest of your press release is because nobody’s going to read it. Fortunately, you’ve got volumes of great headlines at your disposal if you subscribe to a local newspaper, or any magazine. Look at what they’re writing so you can see what works.

2) Not An Advertisement

Remember that your press release is not an advertisement. While you can and should certainly use them to promote a new product or service in your business, the actual press release should read like it’s being written by a neutral third party. Think of yourself as the reporter writing the story about the product, why it was created, and a little history. Don’t hype up the product with your marketing message. Just give ‘em the facts.

3) Quotes

Have you ever noticed how just about every article you read in a newspaper has a quote from one person or multiple people? That’s because quotes make a story more interesting. Instead of being a general story, it adds a more human touch to the writing. Always include a quote from someone in your press release and if you don’t have anyone to quote in your story - quote yourself. And you can even use the quote as a way to insert a little bit of the marketing message if you like.

With the potential benefits that press releases have to offer, you’d be a fool not to take advantage of them in your business.

If you’d like to learn more about how to write press releases with numerous “paint by numbers” examples, then you’ll want to get my link building course - Mission Unlinkable - and watch video 6.

Today I want to talk about directory submissions. I think that a lot of people get into the mindset that building traffic and links to your site is always best done by the latest and greatest new method or software.

They neglect “old school” methods of building links in favor of the “flavor of the month” method of building links.

One of the most neglected methods I see is using directory submissions.

Why?

Well, this is very much and old school method and it does take some time and work to do well. Also, there isn’t a lot of money in the directory business, so it tends to not be in the limelight when people talk about how to build one way links to a website.

Which is really unfortunate because using directories can be a great way to improve your search engine rankings.

First of all, with just about all directories you get a one way link to your website. Some directories will want you to pay a one time fee or annual fee for the link, and for really popular directories, the fee is definitely worth it, but there are literally thousands of other directories that you can submit your site to for free. So if you’re short on cash and you want a way to build links to your site for free, try this one out.

Now let’s talk about the benefits of using directory submissions.

Now I try not to get too hung up on Google Pagerank, but for a lot of people, having a higher Pagerank not only means better search engine rankings, but it’s simply a matter of pride. Getting links from directories can be an easy way to boost your Pagerank up a notch or two.

Getting in the higher quality directories can also help you get a better Trustrank score with Google. This is one of the algorithms that Google uses to rank your site, and it’s especially important if you want to rank well for competitive terms. While most directories won’t help you get a better Trustrank score, the best ones certainly seem to (Google never says which sites are in their list of “trusted” sites so people don’t try to manipulate them). I’d recommend getting yourself a Yahoo Directory listing and trying for a DMOZ listing until you get one.

And while you’re not going to get rich off of traffic from the directories directly, you can get a nice little stream of traffic flowing into you site from directories if you are consistent and keep getting your site in more and more directories over time.

So if you want better search engine rankings and more traffic to your website, then be sure to add directory submissions to your war chest of link building methods.

Want my complete guide to building links with directories, then you’ll want to pick up a copy of my link building course - Mission Unlinkable - and watch video 3.

If you need more links to your website, be sure to check out one of my premium link building services.