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Search engine marketers spend too much time looking for links. Instead, they should let links come looking for their website. What’s the best way to do this? Give people something to link to, and make it easy for them to do so. What types of web pages do people freely link to:

• Websites that give away something useful for free. An example would be a website that gives away a free counter in exchange for a linkback. The same applies for many scripts which run the “Powered by” link on each page. If you have programming and design skills, you can custom craft a script to give away to get links.
• Websites with high quality and deep content. People link to Wikipedia and its’ articles all the time because of indepth info contributed by volunteers.
• Websites that “do something” tend to get a lot of incoming links. If people can use your website, they’re likely to link to you. Think of how well Google has done by offering a simple website where people do something (search)

What other tactics can you think of for “attracting” links as opposed to looking for them? There’s a big difference in the mindsets between attracting them and longing for them. Indeed, if you desire links too much, you might even drive them away. Lot’s of times it’s better to concentrate on improve the unique selling proposition of your website, and let incoming links come to you at their own pace. It all depends on your SEM goals.

Do you get a lot of natural links? Why?

If you’re into search engine marketing, you’re already very familiar with the concept of niches. Niches relate pretty closely to keywords, for the most part, but with some more thought, you can define them even better. If you’re really new to internet marketing, your best bet is going to be to build a website that targets a tight niche. There are several reasons:

1) There’ll be less competition than in a major keyword category, so you can learn the art of internet marketing and actually stand a chance to make some money
2) You can keep focused as you build your website easier, so site construction is a simple task. Since you’re learning, you want to be able to conceptualize your design quite well, so you can develop techniques for acquiring traffic that you know work

What’s an example of a niche?

Web design => idaho web design => idaho flash web design

The four keyword phrase is pretty specific. If you are a web designer, living in Idaho, and specializing in Flash designs, this would be the killer keyword category for you to land. As you become more specific in your marketing and targeting, you’re more likely to experience an increase in conversions. Your traffic might be low, but the people who come to the site are really and truly looking for your product! It’s up to you to close them, but you have a much better chance when you target a specific niche.

Do you target specific niches, or do you attempt to be broad in your appeal?

Yahoo is the first of the major search engines to figure out that Shoemoney has been replaced. MSN and Google are acting stupid, so I might need to force feed them the right answer. You know how Google is: always moving around, ever shifting. The Google winner might just come down to the last day.

The competition has been heating up. It looks like I’m making ShoeMoney famous, which is what he hoped for. He’ll be even more famous when I replace him.

I see more people joining the ShoeMoney competition and these guys are some of the best in the business. Who knows, I might have to bring out the Tommy Guns of Optimizing…a weapon so fierce, I would hate to unleash it on an unsuspecting internet. But I will…if I have to.

The new Shoe revolution is underway. Get on board.

I get to look at a queue filled with “SEO articles” all day, and I have to tell you: what luck to have found such a gem of a job Article writers are a new breed on the internet: many of them are keyword spammers posting as “expert authors”. Everyone loves a great writer. I envision a world where SEO article writers become the new media.

When I grow up, I wanna write keyword-stuffed drivel for the ‘Net!

Picture a small child, who’s waiting for her latest installment of “7 great tips about hair replacement” from her favorite author, Article Man, to appear on her BlogLines. We’ll call her Little Kimmy. Little Kimmy just loves all of Article Man’s latest stories. In fact, Kimmy is quite advanced for a child her age, and she finds AM’s articles to be top-notch. Her favorite series by him is “Breeding Labrador Puppies – in 21 parts“. She also thought his classic “Bird Flu – an epidemic flu” to be scintillating. Little Kimmy only dreams of doing one thing when she gets olders: writing SEO articles for the internet.

Wow! I knew taking ShoeMoney’s money would be easy, but I never had any idea just how easy.

I assumed the best of the best were going up against me, in a cataclysmic contest of ShoeMoney Supremacy. Now I’m not so sure. I mean, I debuted in the Top 30 in Yahoo within 12 hours of the contest announcement. This is without the actual page! Wait until the page is fully indexed. At what point will it debut?

Furthermore, the page is at number 41 in MSN. Could we be looking at a search engine trifecta?

The best part is: I haven’t even brought out the “big guns” yet. If I can win this one easy, I will. I’d hate to unleash the fury on an unsuspecting internet. Gentle reader, you too can help me take Shoemoney’s dough. In the meantime, we’ll see if my current SEO tactics can stand the test of time against the big boys of optimizing.

Here’s a list of 9 ways that you can get more traffic to your website today

1) Use PPC. Sure it costs a lot of money, but if you’re careful and do visitor analysis, the payoff might be well worth it. The big advantage of PPC is that the prospects come to your website immediatedly. You don’t need to wait around to get feedback. If nothing else, use PPC to test your website’s usability and conversion rate.

2) Acquire links from successful and related websites. Websites that are already number one in your niche are arguably the best source of traffic to your website. If you run a community style site, then people who already belong to another community are great sources of traffic. The easiest way to get a relative site to link to you? Some sort of financial inducement should be just the right ticket.

3) Purchase high quality backlinks and category sponsorships from successful web directories. The next best thing to a one-way link from a related website is a link from a strong related web page on a well-established directory. Most web directories make it very easy to get listed with a payment, so this will allow you to build backlinks quickly that will build SOME related traffic, and will also give you a big push in building link popularity and website reputation.

4) Do something newsworthy and issue a press release. Notice I didn’t tell you to just issue a press release. The most impact from a press release will come if the item is picked up by traditional media sources. This will only happen if there’s something worth reporting on. If you come up with something newsworthy, a press release can be a big boost to your traffic.

5) Advertise offline, but only if your ROI spports it. If you can, it’s sometimes worth paying for off-line advertising, especially in the form of printed materials which can be left out. But only go this path if your business model supports it. There’s no guarantee a coffee mug will really help sales, so track your expenditures carefully.

6) Word of mouth from existing visitors. A referral is a powerful tool to get more visitors to your website. A satisfied user of your website serves as a soldier in your marketing army. Give your users tools that make it easy to recommend your website to others. If the revenue supports it, you may offer inducements to loyal customers who refer others.

7) Give away something useful free. Obviously, it could be expensive to give away a durable good, but you can always invent a tool or write an ebook that can be given away freely. If you’re a good writer or programmer, you can make a decent presentation that actually DOES something for your users. The better the tool, the better the free publicity. If you can’t do the project on your own, you can always rent a coder of writer and have them do the work for you.

Encourage return visits to to your website. The people who already know who you are, are the most likely to be receptive to marketing messages from you. Contact the customers and give them a way to stay in touch with you. Make sure not to hassle anyone, and always follow the social mores and legal situation where you live. Make sure you use permission marketing only, and grow your list over time.

9) Write high quality content that is useful to visitors. If you do this frequently enough, your website will begin to get a ton of traffic from search engines. Considering how much traffic the big social bookmarking websites get, you can always add a blog, and update as much as possible. Clearly, adding a blog to an existing website can have huge marketing potential and has to be considered for any legitimate website owner.

All of these tips are extremely easy to implement (depending on your budget). If your budget is low, then eschew the advice that requires payments and go for the free option. The only thing limiting the amount of traffic to your website is determination, imagination, and desire. Good luck building traffic to your website.

Search engines can be baffling at times, and all of the different search engines work slightly differently, but they have a lot of factors in common. If you do certain things extremely well, you can end up ranking relatively high in the search engine results pages. Here’s a few principles that almost never miss:

1) Make specific internal pages that go into detail about a topic. One of the biggest mistakes a neophyte search engine optimizer often makes is attempting to configure one page for too many keywords. You’re best served creating a targeted page for each term. Sure, it’s a lot more work, but you have a much better chance of ranking. Plus, the more targeted pages you have, the less likely you are to suffer depression if you stumble a bit.

2) Diversify your search engine strategy as much as possible. You do not want one page that is featured prominently ahead of all others. Rather, you’re better off having a huge stable of high ranking pages, on a wide diversity of keywords. This way, you’ll find your traffic is much more likely to convert, and in general is worth much more overall than less target traffic that hits a main page.

3) Concern yourself with revenue, and ignore ego-stroking but time-wasting activities. Focus yourself on the battles that actually win the war, and don’t become obsessed with winning a certain keyword phrase. If you spend too much of your time battling for certain keywords, you may find yourself getting into a battle that you can’t win, and that will leave you very scarred and battered. Go for the most phrases that can bring in the most money.

4) Pick fights you can win. This is a good strategy whether you’re in the streets or on the internet. Don’t start battles that aren’t winnable. If your website is new, you have to work your way up to the top, so you can’t expect to make a ton of money on your first day. Accept the fact that you may have to put in a ton of money and time to beat an ensconced competitor. But even if you’re David going against Goliath, you have a shot at winning. But life is a lot easier if you’re battling for big keywords with a decent income. Win the small stuff first so you can assess your skill levels.

Now this is definitely cool for search marketers. Google Trends gives you an idea of the historical tendency of certain keywords over the last few years. The system looks a lot like a stock quote with historical prices. This can be interesting for a few reasons:

• 1) It gives you an idea of the relative volume of a search
• 2) It shows you whether the keyword is trending down or up

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The application has that typical unfinished/broken look like most Betas from Google. The language information appears to be clearly wrong. At the very least, this tool could be useful considering that it gives you an idea if a keyword has “no traffic at all”. If a word you enter has too little volume, Google Trends will tell you. If nothing else, this could save a lot of time when you decide to target certain keywords.

I’m sure Google Trends will be a big hit the SEM crowd.

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