Make Money with Your Brain » Traffic Generating

Get High Search Engine Ranking with More Backlinks

Suzanne Wells — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:02:01 +0000

In order to get organic traffic to your blog, which results in more ad and affiliate revenue, your blog must place high enough in the search engine ranking to be found. One way to achieve a high search engine ranking is with quality backlinks – links that are directed towards your website. Backlinks are very important for search engine optimization because search engines, namely Google, gives more credit to websites that have a high number of quality backlinks. A “quality backlink” is one that comes from a site with relevant content.

Here are some easy ways to build quality backinks to your blog or website to achieve a high search engine ranking:

Visit eZine Articles and search for articles within your niche – leave comments. You can enter your URL in the comment section. To leave a comment, click on the COMMENTS link in blue just under the title.

Look on the front page of DIGG and visit the top stories. Do any of the stories relate to your blog’s content? If so, visit the sites and leave comments on the articles.

Watch your Facebook news feed for people posting links to their blogs. Look for blogs that are in your same niche or relate to your blog’s topic. Visit those blog and leave a comment with a clickable link.

Visit Squidoo and search for your niche keywords. When you find relevant Squidoo lenses, leave comments on those articles with a link back to your site.

Building backlinks to your blog is a job that must be done on a regular, consistent basis. Remember, backlinks are permanent. These links will start to accumulate over time and start working for you, but it takes patience and persistence to achieve a high search engine ranking. Click here for more tips on how to make (more) money blogging.

Get More Website Traffic Writing for the Examiner

Suzanne Wells — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:00:51 +0000

Are you looking for more ways to get backlinks and traffic to your website or blog? Do you enjoy writing articles? Do you want to make some extra money each month? Do you have time to write about two 300-word articles a week? If the answer is yes, you should consider writing for the Examiner website.

Everyone is good at something, and you can get paid to share that information on The Examiner. Maybe you are a great internet marketer, know how to work on vintage cars, have knowledge of the legal system, or are good with animals. The Examiner will pay you to write for their site. I have been the National eBay Examiner for several months and can tell you first hand, it is a great way to get more website traffic and establish an internet presence.

There are several benefits when writing for The Examiner. First, it is a highly indexed site and you will get great exposure. Second, you are allowed to include backlinks to your website (which means more website traffic for you!). Third, you are allowed to include affiliate links on your articles. Finally, you make some money. I only make between $25-$50 a month from my articles, but the exposure is unparalleled. Readers find my blogs and click on my affiliate products. It is a win-win situation.

Anyone can apply to write for the Examiner. You can apply for a local or national position. And if you don’t see a category that fits with your expertise or interest, you can create one! There are some crazy categories out there – Hotdog Examiner, U2 Examiner, even a Farmville Examiner. The possibilities are endless.

If you decide to apply, would you include my name as the referrer? Click here to watch a short video about the application process. (Name – Suzanne Wells, Examiner Title – eBay Examiner.) And please contact me at suzanne@makemoneywithyourbrain.com if you need any help getting started.

Increase Traffic to Website – Use eZine Articles

Suzanne Wells — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:51:53 +0000

There are hundreds of article sites online where you can submit articles. Most writers do not make the big bucks from these article sites, but we can use them to to increase traffic to our other ventures. For example, click here to see my profile on eZine Articles, one of the most highly trafficked article sites on the internet. I don’t make any money from writing here – but they did send me a nice mug like in the picture above. I have about 60 articles and all of them lead to something else that makes money for me. The idea is to go to where the traffic already is and lead them back to your site rather than spending money on advertising.

How do I know this works? Here is a snapshot of my article reports. Look at the number of views and the number of URL clicks. I also study my stat reports on my websites and blogs and see incoming links from eZine on a regular basis. Articles that I wrote 3 years ago still send me traffic.

Anyone can submit articles to eZine. Here are a few pointers:

Keep your articles around 300 words. The minimum for eZine is 250.

Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. If your article is going to be much longer, break it down into several more specific articles. You will get more traffic posting several shorter articles with different titles than posting one very long article.

Use your website or blog address in the resource box. You may not use any affiliate links. You are only allowed 2 “self-serving” links (which are links to your own stuff) in the article itself. Always put them in the last paragraph. See my articles for examples.

Here is a trick for getting lots of views on your articles. Go to eZine Articles, pick a category, choose an article, and scroll down to the MOST VIEWED articles in that category. You will see what topics are popular and you can follow suit with your own articles.

Small Business Marketing – Using Forums Effectively

Suzanne Wells — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:02:53 +0000

Using forums to promote your product, service, website, or blog, is a very effective way to promote your small business. Marketing on line can reach a large number of people with a small amount of effort in a short amount of time. Watch this video about small business marketing using groups and forums:

Summary:

Step 1 : Find appropriate forums that correspond with with your niche and contains your target audience assembled in one place..

Step 2 : Find opportunities to answer questions and be helpful. Do not blatantly post about “buy my product.” Be subtle.

Step 3 : Professionally reply to threads in a helpful way. (Do not just ask them to go to your site.) Add link anywhere in the middle of the thread or use signature link to let them visit your site.

Small business marketing can be effective if you choose your strategy carefully.

Blogger Reviews – Free Promotion for Your Product

Suzanne Wells — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:39:16 +0000

Do you have a product or service you want to promote, but can’t afford expensive advertising? Are you interested in getting the word out on the internet but don’t have time to sit on Facebook and Twitter networking all day? Try this technique -blogger outreach. You are going to leverage the blogosphere to market and promote your product.

You have probably seen blogs with product reviews. When a blogger reviews your product, she is exposing you and your product or service to her readers. The trick is to choose blogs that are already talking to your audience.

1) Visit Google Blogsearch, Blog Catalog, Techorati, and Twitter and search for blogs that talk about your topic. Let’s say your product is natural homemade soap. You won’t want to target other soap makers, because those are your competitors. You want to target blogs that discuss natural health and beauty products, non-toxic beauty products, chemical-free skin care, sensitive skin care, or environmentally conscious products.

2) Look for blogs with lots of traffic. To determine how much traffic a blog gets, look for the SiteMeter widget and click on it. Or, look for the Feedburner widget that says how many readers the blog has. You also want to look for blogs with lots of comments on the posts, which is an indicator of the blog’s popularity with its readers.

3) Contact the blogger and ask if she will do a product review. If she agrees, you will need to send her the actual product so she can use it and form her opinion.

4) Understand that she doesn’t have to like your product. She is going to give it an honest review.

5) When the blogger reviews your product, she should provide a link back to your site so that customers can buy it.

Using Giveaways to Make Money on Your Blog

Suzanne Wells — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:53:17 +0000

You see blog giveaways all over the internet. But do you know why people are REALLY doing them? It isn’t out of the goodness of their hearts (I hate to disappoint you). Blog giveaways can do a lot of things for your blog:

1. Help Google ranking (page rank)
2. Build backlinks
3. Get traffic
4. Lead new loyal readers to your blog

Follow these steps:

I want to stress focusing on gift cards for several reasons. Most people will want them. Anyone can use them. They are easy to mail. Do you have any other strategies for your giveaways?

Did you enjoy this post? If so, please share it with others using the share button below.

How to Get Thousands of Links to Your Blog with Very Little Work

Suzanne Wells — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:52:16 +0000

This strategy is not about buying links, trading links, or sitting at the computer all day on forums. This is a very cool strategy for getting backlinks to your blog – it is free and takes very little time. Remember, one of the criteria for getting to the top of Google search results is the number of sites linking to your website or blog. So the more sites you have linking to you, the better your chance of appearing on the first page of Google. And that is what we want so that we can get organic traffic.

Try this strategy. It has to do with commenting on other blogs that contain a WordPress widget called “Top Commentators.” Here are the steps:

1) Find a blog with the Top Commentators plug-in with thousands of posts (I have a few examples below).

2) Make 10 or so comments on that blog over a few days time.

3) Repeat the process daily adding new blogs to your list.

Some blogs with the Top Commentators plug-in that you can comment on:

John Chow

Riceblogger

paystolivegreen

jonlee.ca

blogtrepreneur

I found this tip in the eBook “Blogging to the Bank” – a comprehensive 58 page eBook that explains how to monetize your blog the smart way. It has some really creative strategies for traffic building and monetizing your blog. Skip McGrath recommends this eBook on his blog and I have to agree, it is very good.

Keep your eye out for the Top Commentators plug-in as you make your way around the blogosphere, and add any that you know of in the comments section below.

Easy Traffic Generating Tip Using Facebook

Suzanne Wells — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:03:40 +0000

This may be a no brainer, but I guarantee somebody reading this hasn’t done it. If you are on Facebook (and if you aren’t you better get there), make sure you have all of your blog and website addresses on your info page. It only takes a few seconds to add them. They will be clickable and direct the reader to your site. You never know when somebody is going to click on your info page and check you out.

I do this all the time, but not in a stalker-ish way. I am just curious about what kinds of sites people have. You can add links to your ecommerce sites, article writing profiles, and any other URL that you want to promote.

If you aren’t on Facebook already, or you have signed up but have no idea what to do, click here for an article about how to use Facebook for business. And be sure to add me as a friend! As my daughter says, “Mom, everyone is your friend on Facebook.”