Some Free Methods To Promote Your Website

"What are some free methods to advertise my site" is a question that comes up frequently in the forums, yahoo answers, askville and virtually any web 2 site visited by Internet marketing newbies.

So lets just go through a few of the free methods that actually work

On website

Factors You should implement on your web pages

Great content.

Nothing really beats this. You must have genuinely useful and unique content. I recently reviewed the website of an affiliate marketing beginner which was on [no surprise] making money on line. [I don't know why newbies seem to go for the Internet marketing niche. How can you teach it when you have yet to make any money with it?] Anyway this poor blokes site was so dull and just did not speak to me. You need to avoid making this error.

Master your topic, and generate great content on your site. There is no boycotting this crucial step. You may be wondering how having great content can attract visitors. it's all about search engine optimization. The more unique and useful and relevant your content is the better you will do in the search engines.

On page search engine optimization.

Again really important if you are going to get anywhere in the search engines. We are not talking here about invisible text or keyword stuffing or such black hat methods. The focus now is on naturally generated content and latent semantic indexing [LSI]. Read basics of on page SEO for more on this.

Visitor Participation.

In the current era of web 2, Internet users expect to be able to "have there say" on the majority of websites. Comment boxes are a goldmine for any website or blog. Apart from satisfying your visitor's need to be heard and have an opinion, your comments box has two really useful functions

1. Ideas for new content. They tell you what they want to read about. Seems like good fodder for new posts
2. Increased content. Doing well in the search engines is very much about content. Content on your pages and the content of the sites pointing to you. By allowing visitors to comment on your articles or posts you are naturally updating your content. How is that for updating your site without having to lift a finger.

Frequent Updates.

Be it a blog or a traditional website, the search engines want the pages with top ranking to have updated content. You need to go into your sites and update your content from time to time. Edit articles, add new posts, edit a profile.

No longer is it enough to build the site and then forget about it, while it continually generates money, hand over fist for you. Just does not happen these days.

An option to ensure that your websites have frequently updated content is to put an RSS feed on it. Feeds are frequently updated so it will appear that your site's content is being updated if part of it's content is via an RSS feed

Off your web site.

These are things you do elsewhere on the net to help increase the visibility of your website. Unfortunately there is so much focus on this that on site factors tend to get neglected

Back links.

These are links that point form other websites to pages on your site. The idea is to get as many back links as possible from relevant websites to boost your website's position in the search engine results pages [SERPs]. Again the higher your site is in the SERPs, the better your chances of getting free traffic from the search engines

Social bookmarking sites.

Our post on social bookmarking and niche marketing websites goes into some detail on this. But the short version is build a network on bookmarking sites and then submit your URL to these sites. The bigger and more targeted your network, the better the results

Free Classifieds.

Not a favorite of mine. The free classified sites are just over run with really poor quality ads. So one wonders what sort of people use them. At the end of the day you want to promote your site to people who are ready to buy. There are a few free classified sites that are worth looking into. They are Gumtree [if you are targeting a UK audience], Craig's list [probably the largest of it's kind], and USfreeads.

Free directories.

Directory submission has become less popular lately than it used to be. Questions have been raised about it's SEO value especially with regards to google. Having said that directory submissions are still a free and easy way to get word out there about your website. If it's a blog you are trying to promote, there are free blog directories online, just perform a google search

Blog participation.

This is not the same as blog spamming. The relevant word here is participation. Blogs are great for interaction because the majority of them allow readers to leave comments.The comment box often requires you to enter your name and email address. Some go further by inviting you to enter your website's address. This could result in a link to your site. This comment boxes are great for helping you build a reputation for your website.

Find blogs in your niche that have a large following and frequently participate in discussions [I have participated in a 200 comment discussion on one blog post recently] on these blogs. Be sure to make your comments factual and useful. Let readers of your comments get the feeling that you are someone who knows what you are talking about, an authority on the topic. Your own sites will soon get a reasonable readership based on the comments you have left on other blogs.

There is a ton of other methods you can use to promote your websites free but the handful described above should get you well on your way

Are Blog Carnivals Any Use

Blog carnivals are not new to most of us online marketers but for the newbie, a blog carnival is an article referencing blog posts as sources of information on a particular topic. It is a major blog event.

The carnival host decides on a topic to host a carnival on. Submissions are invited from the public. Webmasters who have blog posts on the topic submit their posts to the carnival host. He then reviews all the submissions and picks a handful that are considered high quality. The host then posts an article with citations from the accepted posts.

A carnival in any niche reflects the pillar blog posts on that niche, or at least that's the idea

So say there is a blog carnival on Niche marketing. Blog owners who have posts on niche marketing can submit there blog posts to the carnival for consideration for inclusion in the carnival

When the blog carnival is published it usually contains a little introduction followed by snippets of the accepted posts with links to the full post at the authors blog

So what does this mean. In a word, backlinks

But are blog carnivals worth investing in to help promote your blog?

Again, in a word, yes. Blog carnivals are very popular and tend to get a ton of traffic when published. Getting one of your blog posts cited in a carnival is like putting your link right under the noses of your targeted visitors.

If your post is decent, a single inclusion could take you from average blogger to super blogger status.

The down side is competition. Getting a blog post accepted in a blog carnival is similar to getting your site into dmoz.

Writing pillar posts that are well thought out with excellent information is a must but unfortunately does not guarantee inclusion

To find out when next a carnival in your niche is scheduled for go to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/

Google Insights. Great Keyword Tool

Great free keyword research and niche discovery tool. We are talking about Google insights for search which is at http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
It's free and from Google and it gives you the trends of search for any word or phrase you type in.

Why is it great?

Imagine you are trying to do some niche research. Your possible keyword is say 'dog collars' for example.

For most keyword research tools, if you type in Dog collars, they will return a recent search volume and maybe the search volume for related words. And that's great

But how do you know whether this is a keyword term with a search volume in decline, for example. Yes the numbers look good but are they the worst they have ever been and declining.

Or is it a keyword with seasonal popularity and you just happened to be doing your research during the keywords 'Boom' period.

Or is it a keyword or niche on the rise or just about to break out. So although there is little search volume currently, the trend indicates possibility of an emerging niche.

The usual keywords really cannot answer these questions at the click of the mouse

Enter Google insights for search. A mouthful but never mind.

This tool shows you the trend for the keyword you are querying. You can format it to show the trend over the past week, a month or 4 years. there are other options, you just got to check it out for yourself.

Also it allows you to check trends for specific regions. If your market is in Mexico, then you really are interested in your keywords search volume in Mexico. Insights allows you to do this

So take a look at Google Insights for search. It's a free tool by Google and I am finding it quite useful

Till next time

Forums For Backlinks And Traffic

Forums marketing is something that a lot of Internet marketers are aware of but not many are using effectively. And the key term here is effectively. Forums are great for niche marketing sites in a number of ways

• Online Reputation. By participating actively in forums in your niche you can actually establish a reputation of being the guy in the know. It really all depends on the quality of your postings on the forum. There is a forum that I visit everyday where one of the members has really caught my attention. The chap just posts some amazing stuff. I find myself scanning threads for his responses because there is bound to be something useful in it. This is the kind of reputation you want to build in your niche forums.

• Human visitors. In most forums you are allowed a signature which most marketers use by including a link to one of their sites or a site they are promoting. Not all forums offer this feature and some forums insist that you have a certain number of posts before they allow you a signature. All this being said, once you are able to get a signature, put an anchor text link in it to a website you wish to promote. I suggest your own site, preferably a page with an opt in form on it. If you are someone that posts accurate and useful answers, your forum signature can result in a ton of traffic to your site, simply from people clicking on that link in your signature. You have to have captured their interest with the quality of your answers before this will occur. I think this may be why a lot of marketers say forum marketing does not work. I think they do not understand that just putting up any old rehashed shpill and adding a signature does not do it anymore. There are hundreds of signatures with thousands of links in each of the forums online. You have to start thinking, In what way can I make my signature the one to click on?
• Backlinks. The SEO lifeblood of any niche marketing site. We all know that to win the SERPs war for our chosen keyword, we need a ton of relevant backlinks pointing in to our web pages. And forums are a great way to get in coming links. But not all forum links are created equal. Some forums, actually the majority of forums, have started using the no follow attribute. I know this because my backlinks analyser tells me which links are do follow or not. So if you are using forums purely for backlinks for search engine optimization, you will need to do a little research to find which forums in your niche do follow and which do not.

Before we finish this post, forum etiquette is something you need to pay attention to as well. The large forums have forum moderators whose job it is to ensure that the forums are not used inappropriately. Forum etiquette is a big deal. The penalty for misusing the forum can vary from your post being deleted [not too hash a slap on the wrist] to getting banned from the forum. Hmmm! all those posts and links gone overnight.

Promoting Your affiliate marketing sites on forums. has a funny video on forum etiquette

Till next time

A Ton of Website Traffic. No Adsense Clicks

Ever had a website that is getting a large number of unique visitors but no-one is showing the least bit of interest in your adsense ads? This is a recurring thread in most Internet marketing forums. The adsense gurus tell us that the key is to get a ton of traffic to our adsense websites. And up to a point this is true.

If you read making money with adsense. The traffic question you will see that targeted traffic does play a big role in making a significant amount of money with adsense

But you have mastered the traffic issue and still no clicks!

There are certain things that you must do on your website to increase the click through rate of your adsense ads. Now I will say this from the start.

STICK WITHIN THE TOS OF GOOGLE ADSENSE.
BLACKHAT METHODS WILL LOSE YOU YOUR BUSINESS.

Adsense conversion tip 1: Test your ad format. You must test different formats for your ads. If you have watched any good adsense training video like adsense decoded, you will know that testing is everything. I will admit that the title of this post applied very much to me before I learned this one simple fact. There are several different formats for adsense. You could use the links unit or adsense blocks. You will need to test each format to see what works.

Adsense link unit.

This has a list of keywords and clicking on one of these takes you to a page with a list of adsense ads for the relevant keyword. your visitor need to click on one of these for your site to be credited for the clikc. SO this means you need to clicks from your visitor to make any money but in some situations this actually works well

Adsense Ad Block.

These are the traditional blocks that we are ore used to they have a description and a URL. with these you will need only one click from your visitor to be credited with the click. But these blocks come in different sizes and shapes ranging from skyscrapers to banner format. You need to try different formats of these ads to find what works on your site

Adsense conversion tip 2: Adsense code. In the old days the general advice was to blend the colors of your ads to merge with the color of the text on your website. So that the ads don't look like ads. But with some experience I have found that this doesn't always hold true. Through testing, some of my sites actually have better click through rate with ads that have colors that clash with my text. Again it all comes down to testing

Adsense conversion tip 3: Hot spots.There are certain areas on a webpage that the eyes are naturally drawn to.





Put your adsense blocks in the hot zones

Just these three tips could help improve the exposure of the adsense ads on your adsense monetised sites and increase your click through rate

Till next time

35 Backlink strategies. Do I Need That many?

Recently read a post on a forum about 35 backlinking strategies. And the list is quite good. Some of the methods do not get you a do follow backlink but hey, live visitors can follow links too.

The post got me thinking about this fevered search for as many backlinks as possible.

Acknowledged, at the moment, backlinks go a long way in your quest to 'dominate the search engines'. And as at least half of the marketers out there are 'slaves to Google', the quest for backlinks is big business.

But seriously, do you really need 35 methods of building backlinks to your site to make things work?

This business is supposed to be about passive income. You know! It's about setting it up and letting it run. And it actually does work.

Yes admittedly, the set up process involved building the site and getting some incoming links, but then it really should be self perpetuating once the initial work is done. Leaving you free to build your next campaign

With 35 backlinking strategies, wow you are going to be busy for the rest of your life, and still only have one online campaign running.

With my websites, On page search engine optimization is the major focus. Yes then I build some backlinks using 4 or 5 time proven methods. And that's it.

Your online projects that need frequent and long term attention should be your blog and your membership site be it forum or training site.

Till next time

About Adwords

Regular readers of this blog would have noticed the emphasis is on making money as an affiliate marketer using free traffic from the search engines and other sources.

Having said that pay per click is something you must consider as well. Mainly adwords although I used other less well known services as well

And Adwords rocks, but you really have got to know what you are doing to make a profit with adwords. In an earlier post, we discussed the Googlecash method i.e writing adwords ads and sending the traffic straight to your affiliate link. In the past this worked and worked well. Nowadays this method still works but you really have got to be well versed in the workings of adwords.

I'll admit, when I first tried the Google cash method, I lost money. A lot of money. But with some training came the understanding of testing and sourcing out what will work and what is not likely to turn a profit. I used this training guide. There is a free email course to try before you buy, so to speak.

If you do a google search for any big affiliate course, you will find a long list of adsense ads sending traffic directly to affiliate links. So google cash must work for some. .

An alternate use of adwords in niche marketing is to set it up and send the traffic to your opt in form. If the ad is well written, you should get a significant number of opt ins.

This means there is the possibility of recurrent earnings from one adwords click

Makes sense to me

Till next time

Facebook Privacy Issues?

Just came across this article via twitter. By the way Twitter is fast becoming addictive. If you don't have a twitter account it is worth considering

But back to the Facebook thing. As affiliate marketers a lot of us like to maintain our anonymity just because we are rather private people. And on Facebook we are assured that no one can read your profile details unless you have approved them as a friend first. So privacy ensured, right?

Imagine my alarm when I came across this story in the telegraph titled 'Networking site cashes in on friends'

And the subheading 'Facebook founder finally finds a way to profit from its 150m members' private data '

The thrust of the story is they are planning to allow multinational companies to selectively target it's members based on the details you put in your profile

Hey?

Guys, should we be worried?

The link for the story is http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/4413483/Networking-site-cashes-in-on-friends.html

Please share your thoughts