Easy Marketing With Traffic Exchanges

Everyone is after the hope of running a website where the cash falls from the heavens by the hordes. Of course, not everyone has such luck as to realize the dream, but there is a concept where improved traffic is guaranteed if a few simple guidelines are followed. Increased traffic offers more business, and more business means more cash. Nothing could be simpler, correct?

Traffic Exchange Defined
A Traffic exchange is a fascinating contemplation in website marketing, and while there has been controversy in the past, the evidence remains traffic exchanges are more familiar than ever. A webmaster will find a traffic exchange, and submit their web page to the exchange. Now things get interesting.

The webmaster has a final objective in mind of having his or her website visited in hopes of making a sale. The traffic exchange network has your website with many other websites. The webmaster will need to visit other websites on the exchange. The traffic exchange records the visit, and adds credits to the webmasters account.

The credits the webmaster accrues can be utilised to exhibit his or her website to other members of the traffic exchange. The more credits the webmaster has the more times their web page will be displayed.

Each traffic exchange has its own requirements and specifications. Ordinarily, signing up to a traffic exchange is free, but many exchanges offer a premium alternative where extra benefits are offered to the paid member.

A traffic exchange network will change how the analysis of a visit is circumstantiated. Many exchanges will use Turin to prove human interaction, and others may use alternative authentication methods depending on the exchange and membership levels.

Search Engine Optimization and Traffic Exchanges
Search engine optimization, SEO, is a popular plan of progressing the quantity and quality of traffic to a particular web page by improving the position of the web page on search engines. The webmaster uses particular keywords and phrases on a web page in a particular style so when the researcher is hunting for something, the web page will be one of the first returned when those keywords and phrases are used in a search.

SEO is a principal tool for compelling potential consumers to any web page, and that is where traffic exchanges come into play.

A traffic exchange is designed on the concept of surfers visiting different sites on the exchange to gain credits. This means a traffic exchange has the capabilities of sending tens of thousands of visitors to your web page. Each of these visitors may actually put a link to your web page if you offer something of interest.

So what do webmasters find compelling? That's the million-dollar question. Without doubt, what two webmasters find compelling is not necessarily going to jive

A web page selling Granny’s Best Kept Blueberry Pie Secret within the traffic exchange is not going to interest many webmasters on the exchange. However, if a webmaster has 10,000 displays of his or her web page, and only 5% find Granny’s Best Kept Blueberry Pie Secret to be fascinating and relevant to his or her own web page, there is a possibility for 500 direct and permanent links to their web page.

Incidental to the ranking of those 500 other sites, the webmaster for the Granny’s Best Kept Blueberry Pie Secret will find out the web page promptly has a higher ranking because of those links.

The added publicity of a web page because of the traffic exchange plainly has its compensations, and the price is a limited amount of time, effort, and money.

Alexa and Traffic Exchanges
Another popular reality about traffic exchange is how Alexa and traffic exchanges are related. Alexa provides a unique technology which provides webmasters participating in a traffic exchange more publicity. Alexa crawls a site taking particular note of images, information, and importantly, links both internal and external. A snapshot of the web page is added to Alexa’s database. A captivating concept , eh?

Perhaps of more interest is the information Alexa provides if a web page is included in the database. Alexa unmistakably provides a simplistic method for tracking changes and trends of all sites within the database.

The Concept
A web page needs traffic to have any sort of success. The idea of free unlimited traffic with a ding of the mouse is unmistakably awesome, and the recognition of the website is not a bad idea either. Webmasters can spend thousands of dollars advertising and promoting a web page only to slip into debt because of the extreme costs.

Traffic exchanges provide a free or low cost option for promoting a web page with small toil involved. While nothing is guaranteed, traffic exchanges provide a real course for improving traffic with little money. The added shows of the web page promotes the position on various search engines, and the website’s Alexa rank will improve as well.

The New Website
A traffic exchange proves advantageous to those sites just starting out as well. When a web page is just starting out, locating the objective can be tremendously dear and time-consuming. However, with an aggressive traffic exchange campaign, a site will have the tools necessary to evaluate the visitors determining many important facts necessary for continued marketing and promoting.

There is positively the mammoth obstacle of web page promoting and advertising for webmasters to overcome. Traffic exchanges provide a feasible, steady, and recognised means for improving traffic and improving the SEO of a web page. With a traffic exchange, the webmaster achieves literally what is put into the exchange. So when it comes to website success, a good traffic exchange campaign puts the control right back into the hands of the webmaster where it belongs.

Internet Marketing: -Make Your Videos that Much More Effective!

Video is king and it's here to stay. Did you know that YouTube just vaulted to number 2 on the Alexa hit parade? Yes, it's true. If you're an Internet marketer, you need to make a note of this because video isn't going to go away any time soon and if you want to be in on the craze and make the most out of your marketing efforts, for more details visit to www.outsource-beginners.com you might want to pay attention to some of these cool tips. They will make your videos that much more effective.

The first tip is probably the most important. Make sure the quality of your video is as good as you can make it and still make it manageable to work with. YouTube has limits as to how long your video can be and how large it can be. If you go over 10 minutes, your video will be rejected. Also, if you go over 100 meg, your video will also be rejected. By creating your Camtasia video in FLV format instead of AVI or MOV format, this will greatly reduce the size of the finished video. This is also important if you're going to upload the video to your own site as bandwidth can get sucked up real fast with large videos.

The second tip is to make sure that your audio source is as clean as possible which means using the best microphones. Camtasia audio has a tendency to be a little scratchy with certain microphones. If you find that your audio quality is less than stellar, you might want to first try recording the audio into Audacity, for more details visit to www.forum-marketing-videos.com which is a free program, and then import it into Camtasia. You will find that the quality will be much better if you do this.

The last tip, which is a really cool one, is to use the callout feature in Camtasia to create URLs that the person watching the video can click on. This is done by creating what is called a Flash hot spot and entering in the URL into the hot spot that you want the person to go to. You can either have the URL open in the same window as the video or a different window. This is great for your Internet marketing efforts because this way, the prospect doesn't have to write down or remember the URL. He can just go right to the web site from the video itself.

Where to Market Property on the Internet and Why - Some Simple Rules

If you are an estate agent in Spain, then you will not need to be told about internet marketing because you probably get enquiries every day from companies telling you how they can provide leads through this portal or that. Spinning you with figures about how many hits their website is getting and their page 1 ranking for this key phrase or that keyword.

To the novice, this all sounds too good to be true and can be a little daunting. The jargon of the internet only becomes aware to those of us who use it, when you try explaining something to your grandparents and get a blank faced response of 'Yes Dear'. It's a humbling experience!

So lets explode a few myths, explain some jargon and give you, the estate agent, the tools required to ask the right questions, so that when you are spending your money on internet related exposure, you are getting the right exposure, in the correct market to attract the buyer clients you want.

I am using the Costa del Sol as an example, but is good for most property markets in Spain.

The first question to ask is where do your clients come from?
On the Costa del Sol the largest proportion of buyers come from the UK. So the market you should be targeting exposure in should be the UK Search Engines of the major companies. As Google owns about 70% of all the search traffic then we will focus on Google, but do not dismiss Yahoo and MSN who carry the majority of the rest. 30% is still a lot of traffic.

If you are searching on a computer in Spain and type in Google you will be sent to Google Espana, the Spanish version of Google. This is the most common mistake most people make. These results are NOT what people in the UK see when looking for Spanish Property. This is not the version of Google you will find if you type in Google from a computer in the UK. The results from any search will be different on Google Espana where the majority of searches are for words and phrases in Spanish.

To check the results on Google UK, you need to specify www . google . co. uk . This will give you the results that your buyers are looking at and is where you will need to be seen if you want to attract their business.

The second question is how does the potential website that is after your money rate in the scheme of things.
One of the best comparative measures is the Alexa ranking of a website. Alexa(dot)com ranks millions of websites and rates them in terms of worldwide traffic. The LOWER the alexa ranking figure, the more important the website is, in terms of the amount of visitors it receives.

One note of caution. When you compare websites in terms of the amount of traffic they receive, be sure that the website is property only related. A website that acts as a directory for everything Spanish may have lots of traffic and a good alexa ranking, but if only 5% of that traffic is looking for property with 95% looking for the best place in Spain to buy a toothbrush, then.... well you get the point I am sure.

The other measure of traffic is the number of unique visitors a website receives. This is NOT the same as the number of hits a website receives. If fact I would be bold enough to say that anybody that tries to sell you something on the back of the number of hits their website receives should be dismissed immediately. Why?
Well, a hit on a website page counts the number of images exposed on a web page and is not a reflection of the number of people that visit that page.

A webpage may have 25 pictures or other images on it. Every time a person visits that page it will register as 1 unique visitor or 25 hits. People who sell on the back of their hits per day figures are trying to mislead you and blind you with zeros.

Unique visitors on the otherhand will give you a good indication of how many people are visiting any particular site. Add to this the average page views per visitor, a figure that shouls easily be available in this day and age of Google Analytics and you are well on the way to getting an understanding of which websites matter and which don't.

How To Find Link Partners

Rather than creating a bogus link directory and filling it with 25,000 links, link to partners with pages that are actually indexed by search engines and have page rank. Additionally, ask them for inbound links from their pages that are indexed and have page rank. Both of you will gain more from this exchange.

There are two major ways in which you can use links. You can use them to improve your natural search engine rankings. You can do this through reciprocal link exchanges, triangular link exchanges, and viral techniques that get your links on sites. You can also purchase links on other sites or exchange links to get traffic.

While Google claims that your competititors cannot negatively affect your search engine ranking positions, there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Some unscrupulous webmasters will use a technique called 'Google bowling' which involves sending an unnatural amount of links to your site to knock out of a good position. If this happens, contact Google directly with a petition.

Always avoid bad linking neighborhoods when working on a link exchange campaign. In general, if the site contains spam content (i.e. generated content), too many links per page, or a massive, irrelevant link directory, it might be part of a bad neighborhood. Setting up a reciprocal exchange with such a site could get your site de-indexed or at least penalized.

Exchanging links with other webmasters to increase your page rank is an excellent way to build an asset that you will later be able to sell or to use to generate revenue. Simply creating a high page rank site qualifies as an 'asset', which other webmasters will be interested in purchasing or at least purchasing links from it.

If you have a high page rank, but little traffic, you can use that to barter link exchanges with sites that have a lot of traffic, but need better links, so they can switch over to receiving more natural search engine traffic. The best way in which you can do this is to seek out webmasters who own low PR sites with low alexa ratings.

The real purpose of a link directory is not to slam random links into a page, so you can make exchanges with every site on the Internet. Instead, it should be to provide an actual real, useful resource for your site visitors. If you create your directory with this in mind, it will help you improve your search engine rankings. Otherwise, it may get you banned.

If you have an usually low alexa ranking (i.e. a lot of traffic), but a low page rank, you can leverage your alexa rating to get high page rank links. You can do this by contacting webmasters will reciprocal link exchange offers and you can explain to them that they will get actual traffic by linking to you, rather than page rank.

Making Money From Writing Blog Reviews

What if I told you that there was a way to make lots of money from your blog without you having to write a single word. The only thing that you would have to do is promote it. No, I’m not talking about those crappy blogs that use RSS feeds which aren’t always relevant, to update your blogs, but good, well written, optimized copy. Well you can. Making money from blog reviews is an easy way to make money.

There are companies that specialize in acting as the middle man between blog owners and internet marketers that are looking for ways to promote their products. The only requirement, in most cases, is that you have to have a blog that is getting traffic. The more traffic that your blog receives, the more money that you can charge. Some blog review websites do require that your blog has been in existence for a certain period of time but that depends on the individual site.

The rules are also different for each site. Some blogging review sites will ask you to write the review for the internet marketer, while others will allow the marketer to do it. If you would rather not work with a company, you can strike out on your own. To drum up business, you should visit internet marketing forums and offer to either write blog reviews for marketers or post reviews that are already written. Make sure that you require all posts to be unique. Put the post through copyscape to make sure. Again, to make your offer attractive, you need to be either be receiving traffic or have a blog with high PR. To shortcut the process, consider purchasing a site that has a PR of 3 or higher and then post some ads on Google adwords. This will entice marketers to pay for reviews. You can find reviewers at places like the Digital Point Forum.

If you decide that you would rather work with a blog review company, here are a few of the best ones.

Payperpost.com: You can receive up to $30 for a blog review. Individuals can choose which blogs they want their reviews on based on a blogs PR (page rank), Alexa ranking and niche.

Blogvertise: This site pays between $10-$20 for a review post.

ReviewMe: This site can really help you bring in the money with your blog. Some reviewers pay thousands of dollars but most pay in the $40-$80 range.

Making money from either writing or posting reviews about other’s people website can be a good way to bring in some extra dough. However, your blog has to either be receiving a lot of traffic, have a high Alexa ranking and/or high page rank. If you blog does not qualify now, go ahead and start working on it so that in a few months time you can take advantage of this very simple way to earn with your blog. If you want to shorten the process consider purchasing a domain name that already has page rank and a decent Alexa rating.

The Number One Secret to Internet Marketing Success

The number one rule in internet marketing is: Target your market.

This is good advice. If you don't know who your target market is, you will have a lot of trouble selling your products or services.

However, before you can determine who your target market is, you need to know who your competition is.

My Mom always told me, "Actions speak louder than words". What she was saying is that you can listen to what other people are saying, but if you really want to know what they are really thinking, you need to watch what they are doing.

A lot has been said about internet marketing gurus, and how they will never tell you their real secrets to internet marketing. If they did, you could easily become their competition. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, just market better, and offer more value. This is how you put your competition out of business.

I believe this is true. I also know that many of the top named internet marketing "gurus" took offline marketing techniques, adapted them to the internet, and used these techniques to catapult them to success. They also continue to use the same techniques offline.

Understanding what your competition is really doing is your first, and most important step, to success.

So, how do you get started?

First, you need to do a search in the search engines. I use Alexa for this because Alexa delivers a lot more information about websites than standard search engines. To me, Alexa is a marketer's paradise because of all the information it offers.

Start by selecting the market your site fits into. You can be as general or as specific as you want to be. However, the more specific you are, the more likely you are to nail down your market.

For example, if you sell fishing equipment, put the search term in quotes and then do a search for "fishing equipment". This will help you really narrow down the sites that will be your competion.

Next, you really want to study the sites you are competing against. This is especially true if you sell anything related to internet marketing. You really want to find out if the person really "practices what he preaches".

(I personally am always skeptical of buying from marketers that don't provide examples of their results with products they are promoting. This is especially important with each new trend we see in internet marketing.

If you can't find examples in action by marketers who are touting certain products, don't buy. This is especially true with blogging scripts and tools, Adsense (you want to see one of their sites), or any other marketing techniques.)

Now, you're probably wondering what you're looking for when you visit your competition's site.

Here are a few:

1. What is the site's Alexa ranking?
One of the factors Alexa uses to rank sites is the amount of traffic they get. As long as the traffic is targeted, lots of traffic should lead to lots of sales although this isn't always the case.

The further you niche, the lower the raniking may be. This doesn't necessarily mean the site doesn't get a lot of traffic or that its not making any money. This is only one factor you need to consider.

2. How many sites did you find for the search term?
Depending on the search engine, you'll find different search engines offer different results. In the case of our term fishing equipment (in quotes), Alexa returned 718,000 results. The number one site returned had no traffic data, so you'll definitely want to study sites like these. If the site achieves a number ranking for the term, but it has no traffic data, definitely studying it will give you insight into how the site is being marketed.

You can do a search by URL and get more detailed traffic rankings. You can also find out what sites link back to the site. This will tell you if you the site is using an affiliate program to increase sales, as well as any partners the site may have.

Once you get to the site, there are several factors you may want to consider:

1. What keywords does the site use?
You can find out by viewing the source of the site. This isn't about copying or stealing. You are doing this for informational purposes only.

2. What type of site did you find?
Is it a content site, a sales letter, a sales site? This is an important question because it will help you in creating and formatting your own site.

Although sales letter sites are great for making sales, they don't do well in the search engines. Also, the idea of giving people only one choice isn't the only way to make money either. Internet searchers are looking for content too, and they have a minimum of two choices on your site. Depending on the type of site, they can accept your offer or click away.

If you're offering what the potential customer is looking for, you have a better chance of making the sale, and as long as your potential customers doesn't have to dig too deep to find what they're looking for, you won't have too much trouble making the sale.

3. Does the site offer a list?
The site owner is leaving money on the table without one. You need a list.

If the site does have a list, join it. See what type of messages the site owner sends out, as well as frequency. Some site owners will even tell you how many subscribers they have on their lists.

While you're at it, put yourself in your customers' shoes. Try to look at the site from your customers' viewpoint.

There's a lot more you can learn from studying your competitions' sites. Studying a few internet marketing gurus' sites will definitely help you too. It won't take you long to discover how they market their sites, and what you learn can easily help you increase your bottom line.

Link Placements - How Often And How Fast

When you first start submitting articles or links to article and directory sites, you need to make sure that you don't over do it. Even if you have great content, and your site is 100% legitimate, the speed at which you submit your articles and links can get you filtered out as search engine spam.

Below I've outlined a process to effectively and efficiently submit your articles and links and stay on good terms with article and directory site owners.

Before You Submit

Instead of trying to find submission sites on-the-fly, it's much more efficient to do your homework first. You need to gather your resources, determine where you want to submit, and compile your list.

How you do this? First, if you're submitting articles, my rule of thumb is to find article directories with a PageRank of at least four. It's okay to submit to lower pagerank directories, just make sure they're legitimate. Also, you might want to check out the Alexa rating for the sites you're submitting to. One way to detect a possible link farm is to look at the site's Alexa rating and compare it with its PageRank. If the Alexa rating is high (not as good) but the PageRank is high, then you know something is awry. If a site has a high PageRank it should also have a lower (better) Alexa rating.

Check the site's cache in Google. Has it been awhile since Google has been around? It's probably not a trusted site. Does the cache show a different site? Could be a PageRank redirect site. Avoid these at all costs.

Some common, high PageRank article directories include eZineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare. I don't recommend signing up for article distribution services. You have no control over where your article goes if you submit to these sites. All it takes is one article on a spam site to ruin your reputation.

Your Submission "Speed"

I recommend that you submit one article at a time to at least 10 different directories. Don't submit all the articles you've written to one site at a single time. By the time you've finished submitting one article to 10 different sites, you can go back and submit your other articles, moving down the list as you complete each one.

Make certain you read and understand the terms of service and submission guidelines for each article or link directory that you submit to. Some article directories only allow a few submissions per day. You need to adhere to the submission guidelines. It's much better to be able to submit fewer articles per day than to do a massive submission and risk getting your articles deleted, or worse, losing your account.

After you've submitted to the first 10 directories, find 10 additional directories to submit to. Repeat the process I described above. Use should not submit a single article or link to more than 50 directories per day.

Maintain a Clean Submission Process

Your article and link submission process is a very important part of your linking strategy. You have to make sure that you understand what the directories want and that you follow their rules. You may think the rules are stiff, but it actually helps maintain a clean community.

Because of the proliferation of mass submission software, commonly used by those webmasters who are trying to make a quick buck, submission sites have come down hard on anyone who even hints of being a spammer. If you submit too fast to too many directories, I can guarantee that you will be labeled a spammer and your articles, or links, will be deleted.

So, do your research, compile your list of solid web and link directories, submit your articles and links like I've described above, and you'll not only increase your search engine rankings, you'll become a valuable part of the article and link directory community.

What Comes In Must Also Come Out

When working on your linking strategies, you must make sure that you have a two way street going. In order words you need to have links going out as well as links coming in.

Develop An OUTgoing Link Program. Links go both ways, in and out. But why would you want to link out of your site? For a couple of main reason. It's a nice break when you are tired of writing great keyword intense web pages or articles. Seriously though, linkage counts both ways with the engines, Incoming and Outgoing. If your outgoing links go to an income-generating source for you, even better! This way you are not only gaining popularity but also monetizing and it also means that you have really done your homework. Also, links OUT count with the human editors of directories and your visitors, too. If directory editors see you provide bona fide links to other quality sites, your site is more credible, a more valuable resource for their directory. Remember people always want to know what's in it for them so if you can help them by having you link there; you have a good chance of being added/accepted by them.

As for visitors well they appreciate being presented with quality, credible links to related material that further enhances their surfing experience or better yet lead them to a solution to their problem that they went on the net to find.

On the other hand, nothing is more damaging to you, your credibility and your ability
to build your business than linking to an inferior Web site. By providing a link, you are
in essence placing your seal of approval on the linked Web site. Should that site be of?
low quality, visitors will question your judgment. So while you can't always control
who links to your Web site, you must choose your out-pointing links wisely.
So don't make all Outgoing links purely monetary links. You only need a few to
establish that good credibility.

Here's one good strategy. for outgoing links:

Create a links page that sends links out to terrific, non-competing, high-traffic Web sites. Link out to...
1) theme-specific sections of the major directories
2) theme-specific minor directories
3) theme-related, non-competing sites

Note: You can use Alexa to help you find out the popularity of the sites you are considering.

4) links to your other domains, any that covers related topics.
Both linking in and OUT counts with the Search Engines. And, to strengthen the
impact of those links on your ranking results, include your Specific Keywords both in
the links out, and in the links that come into you. Whenever I start a new website, I have the luxury of linking to many of my other sites and I'm usually listed on Google with 48 hours. Keep working and soon you will be there too.

Why not Sell Internationally on eBay?

One of the incredible aspects about eBay can be demonstrated by the volumes involved.

Currently, there are 168 million eBay members - people who have registered to buy and/or sell. eBay.com is currently the 10th most visited site on the internet as measured by http://www.alexa.com. In the UK, www.eBay.co.uk is 102 on the alexa list.

The USA auction market is around ten times the size of the UK market. (Based on the number of items on auction at the time of writing - 1,105,667 on UK eBay and 11,025,326 on eBay.com)

In fact eBay has 27 different country sites.

If you're a seller, it may pay you to consider making your items available to the wider eBay market. Of course you need to consider issues such as delivery costs, export and import regulations and other matters. But if your items can be easily packaged, or are digital, and if the winners anyway are paying for the postage, you really should consider making them available to eBay bidders world-wide.

The way you do this is relatively easy. When completing the Sell pages to create an auction, on the Shipping page, either tick the box that says "Will post worldwide", or check the countries to whom you wish your item to be made available.

You should also give an idea in your auction description of the shipping costs relating to the countries you are willing to post to.

Selling internationally doesn't cost any more in terms of fees, and it exposes your item to a massive new market.

Definitely worth a try with the right items.

5 Top Places to Maximize Your Traffic and Sales for Free!

Do you want more traffic and sales to your site?

If so, do you want to know how to take full advantage of the internet to get your sales message out there without having to spend thousands of dollars?

There are thousands of high traffic sites on the Internet where you can market for free. The trick is finding these sites and using them effectively to market your business online.

Your best weapon in finding these sites is Alexa. You can use Alexa, http://www.alexa.com, to search by topic and compare stats on sites, as well as get the traffic ranking of a site.

The point of marketing on high traffic sites is that the more visitors a site has, the more likely you are to be seen. The more you are seen, the more likely someone will click through and visit your site.

Marketing on high traffic sites isn't enough though. The traffic has to be targeted. By targeting your market, and marketing on high traffic sites, you can quickly multiply your traffic and sales.

To get you started, I've included five of the top sites on the internet, with tips on how to market your site effectively so that you can increase your traffic and sales.

1. Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com
2. MSN - http://www.msn.com
3. Google - http://www.google.com

According to Alexa, these are the top three sites respectively. Although you should make sure that you submit your site to their search engine spiders, which is free, there is a better way to market on these sites.

It's called Groups.

Yahoo Groups - http://www.yahoogroups.com
MSN Groups - http://groups.msn.com
Google Groups - http://groups.google.com

You'll find thousands of groups at these sites where you can post your articles, advertise your ezines, and submit free classfieds. You'll also find discussion groups on just about any topic you can imagine, and unlike forums, you can conveniently read and reply to messages in your email.

You can share information and build relationships with potential customers. The beauty of these sites is that they spider each other. Yahoo also uses RSS, which can give you an opportunity to become syndicated, especially if you write articles.

Your promotions can quickly become viral.

4. Ebay - http://www.ebay.com - If you sell products and services on Ebay, you can use your About Me page to offer a subscription to your ezine, as well as advertise your website.

You need to follow the instructions on Ebay when using this feature. Build a relationship with both your customers and fellow Ebay marketers. If you haven't considered marketing here, you definitely want to consider marketing it because this site gets over eight million hits a month.

5. Myspace.com - http://www.myspace.com - Although this site considers itself to be noncommercial, and it has strict rules about promoting your products and services, this is an excellent place to network.

You'll find blogs, groups, free classifieds, and forums. You can send and receive email and private messages. There's a search function that allows you to find others with your interests.

As long as you take the time to get to know the site and follow the rules, you can effectively promote your business here by networking with others. You'll need an account, but it's free. You won't be allowed to post for the first seven days, but this is to keep spammers out.

In fact, there are currently over 2,800 business groups here, some with thousands of members, and you can post quite a bit of information in your profile.

If you're on a shoestring marketing budget, you can use these high traffic sites to help you increase traffic and sales to your site.

Free Traffic Gesyer - Video Marketing on Steroids

When trying to dominate your niche with video marketing, it is imperative not to make costly rookie mistakes like so many do. As many internet marketers are aware, Google can be an unpredictable beast sometimes but in other instances it can be very predictable.

Such is the case with video marketing. If you follow the basic rules, you will be heavily rewarded with exposure and a lucrative income stream. Myself and my students have been able to rake-in a small fortune over the past two years with this innovative approach to social media. I?ve kept it a secret for the most part but I?m letting the cat out of the bag now.

I always see the newbie make the same mistakes with online video marketing. They go ahead and submit to sites like TubeMogul and don't see any great results from this site. It's because their tapes get totally lost on sites like this, and their ranking isn't high enough to take them anywhere. Traffic Geyser does the opposite, as it sky-rockets you to the top of Google in less than a day.

For example, lets say you use Traffic Geyser, which submits to over 30 video sharing sites. If Metacafe picks the video up first, it will get indexed with them and their page rank and Alexa rating. At the present time, Metacafe's Alexa is 132 and their page rank is 7. Automated services typically do not let you select which sites you submit to first, they just blast everything at once.

But YouTube has a rank of 9 and Alexa of 3 and that makes it the third most visited site in the world according to statistics. Therefore, video content should always be submitted there first for it to have any power at all. Then it gets picked up and indexed. Immediately after, submit with the Traffic Geyser powerhouse and watch the income soar.

When you start with using YouTube, you can then get Traffic Geyser to up the traffic to your video. You could get more than 60 sites pointing to your video, which is amazing exposure.

So now you know, the higher the page rank and Alexa rating, the more your video will be indexed and come up on search engines like Yahoo, Google, and MSM. When you follow the simple guidelines of social media marketing, you're going to see some stunning results. You can earn extraordinary amounts of wealth from multiple locations, and destroy the competition in your field.

So if you want to seriously start a home-business or amp up your online marketing, you need to check out Traffic Geyser. You can't play with the big kids without this vital tool. The website is equipped with a FREE 30 day trial, so you simply can't go wrong. This is a limited time offer, so you need to take advantage of it today and see the potential for yourself.

Only Get Traffic Using Expiring Domain

Do you know that over 20,000 domain names expire everyday and can be used by others. If you want more hits or want to resell the domains for profit, these expired ones can be a valuable resource.

But before taking it over, you surely would like to know how many people have owned it before and the reasons for giving it up, right?

Well, an expired domain may have been used by one or more persons in the past. They may have designed a website, advertised it, linked it to search engines, done business deals on it and even had reciprocal link connections with other websites. The reasons for expiry of domain name may be :

1. Loss of interest of owner
2. Closing down of business
3. Registration was not renewed on time
4. The fees was unaffordable

There may have been any of the aforementioned reasons or any other cause, but whatever the case, the domain is now an available option for you. You can use it by designing a website on it or you may link it to your existing website,or add more cream to it by adding google Adsense to it.

The main advantage of taking over an expired domain is the traffic. There may still be visitors who, on finding the better alternative offered by you, can redirect their business. It is not possible to know the exact amount to expired traffic to a particular domain. However, the analysis of some specific aspects lets you gauge the amount of expired traffic. They are as follows :

LINK POPULARITY

This will give you an estimate of the number of portals or web pages that are linked to the expired domain. The more the number of links, the higher is the possibility of future traffic. Also, a higher link popularity betters the probability of quality traffic.

ALEXA RANK

An Alexa toolbar keeps tabs on the number of hits for a domain and then awards a rank based on this. If the site has had no traffic for the past three months, it is automatically dropped by Alexa. So, look for an Alexa rank to get an idea about the number of visits and the domain's worth.

To give you a rough idea, an Alexa rank of about 100,000 means that the domain receives at least 2 hits a day. A rank higher than 1,000,000 discloses that the domain hardly ever receives any visits.

GOOGLE PAGERANK

The popularity of a domain is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 and this is called a Google PageRank. This ranking system takes into account the number of quality web pages that contain links to a specific domain name.

A Google toolbar is required to obtain a Google PageRank. You can type in the website name in the address bar of your browser and get the PageRank.

YAHOO AND DMOZ LISTINGS

A domain owner may have been included in search engines. He may have paid for registrations on search engines like Yahoo and LookSmart. A domain also may have been approved by a Dmoz editor. If you take over a domain, these listings are automatically transferred to you. You can do your own research by visiting these search engines and typing the full URL in the directories section. Your results page will show you whether the domain is listed with them or not.

An inclusion in the top search engines does not ensure continuous visits but it certainly increases the chances of receiving worthy traffic. If you do not want to use the domains yourself, you can easily turn it around and sell it. It will certainly be profitable if the domain is registered with the top ten search engines.

We publish a list of expiring domains that is updated daily. There are tools to assist you to carry out an easy and hassle-free research absolutely FREE.

Acquiring expired domains is an inexpensive way of increasing visitors to your website. A HELPFUL TIP : Always try and get a domain that is related to the type of visitors required by you. If you want webmaster visits, go for relevant a domain name and not one that appeals travel enthusiast.

3 Article Directories Worth Submitting To

Some people write articles as search engine bait while others want to use their articles to create traffic. If you write to create traffic, you need to get them in to the best article directories as possible. This can create a couple of problems however

First of all if you manually submit articles how do you know what the top article directories are that you should be submitting to?

And secondly how do you get enough of them written to increase your traffic if you manually submit articles?

In the past I have used various article submission tools including software and article submission companies. I continue to use Submityourarticle.com, but in reality I could still create a flow of traffic if I just did article marketing to the right directories.

There are many good article directories on the Internet today, but you should submit your articles to the following top 3 article directories.

My basis for choosing these as the top 3 will be based on their Alexa ranking. It might as well be in one that is getting a lot of traffic if you are going to take time to submit an article to a directory.

1. Ezinearticles.com has an Alexa ranking of 334. That speaks for itself. If you only submit to 1 this should be it.

2. Associatedcontent.com has an Alexa ranking of 1077 which is pretty darn good too!

3. Searchwarp.com is at 6843 and is more than worthwhile to submit to.

Can you submit to more than three? You certainly can and you might even want to come up with a couple others to add to this list.

Here is the primary thing to keep in mind! You can write articles off the top of your head for most of the things in the niche that your website is in.

I would imagine that you can sit down and write an article in 10 to 15 minutes. If you concentrate your time on writing more articles, and in submitting them to the top two or three directories, this will then free you up to write more articles.

If you really understand what I'm saying you want to spend the majority of your time writing and not submitting. By getting your articles into a handful of the top directories you can increase your traffic and free up more time for writing.

This list of the three best article directories is just my personal choices based on the amount of traffic that they get. You may come up with a list of your own, but the bottom line is find a few you like and then spend most of your time writing and not submitting.

Make Money Online By Creating An Easy To Sell Website

An emerging internet marketing trend is creating websites that can be developed to create income and then sold. In the current market, websites and blogs can be sold for ten times monthly earnings. A site that is managed by a third party can often be sold for a lot more, since the new owner doesn't have to create content or do marketing tasks.

Creating a site that can be sold requires making wise decisions that maximize its ultimate value. There are a few key areas that can add to or take away from the resale value of a site. The first and perhaps most important, influencing aspect of the value of a site is its domain name. A domain name that can be branded is essential if you want to get the maximum price for your site.

You should never use a personal name in the domain name if you want to sell your site. I also wouldn't recommend using dashes. This is debatable, and actually is heavily debated between webmasters. I wouldn't recommend it because some people won't want to buy it, and that will lower its value. I would also try to limit the amount of words that are in the name. A domain with five words will be harder for a person to remember than a domain that has one, two, or three words.

The next thing you want to keep in mind is how your site is branded. If you want to sell your site someday, you should stay away from using your personal name in the branding of the site. If your readers read your site to learn from you, they will react negatively when the ownership changes. A simply trick you can use here is to use a pseudonym or nickname while writing for your site. The new owner can take over the nickname and the readers won't know the difference.

There are also a few key rankings that you can improve to make your site considerably more valuable. Improving a site's Google Pagerank is a key factor that makes a site more valuable. To improve the Google Pagerank of a site you will need to increase its inbound links. Google uses the number of links pointing to a site to give it a rating between one and ten.

Additionally, improving the Alexa ranking of a site can help it to be more valuable, because it is a significant sign of where the site's traffic is. There is really only one way to increase the Alexa ranking of a site. You will have to increase traffic to get a better ranking with Alexa.

Creative Ways To Build Backlinks

In order to increase your search engine rankings, getting backlinks is important. But getting links from other sites can be tough. Here are 2 creative ways you can try to get more backlinks.

Start a Community of Websites
One of the easiest ways to gain backlinks is to start other websites and have them linked to yours. Blogs are a great way to get traffic because there’s no cost, they provide free traffic, and are easily searchable throughout the blogging community. I’ve seen other various websites that target a younger audience even using myspace as a source of traffic and backlinks. And the list goes on and on for other quick sites you can start with a good amount of traffic.

Email Campaigns
Some people are hesitant to do this because they think no one would ever go to their site if the email even gets opened, or they have no idea who to email a promotion letter to. While the person who doesn’t have an idea of his audience can easily fix this problem, I’d say for every website that has updated content that isn’t gibberish, somebody has to like it and for every email sent out, there is probably at least 10% that the email gets opened if you target your audience precisely. Give yourself some confidence, and keep in mind that none of these techniques would get your website blacklisted or has any risk to it, except for wasting your time. But if you have the time to waste, research on who your audience is, get a list of emails of your audience and compile it in an excel sheet, and start your email campaigns. One person that I work with has a job site, which gets employers and job seekers together. Well all job sites needed jobs, so he started emailing to a number of colleges and got links for Rutgers, Harvard, and other colleges across the nation. Doing this boosted his Google rankings from 2/10 to 6/10. Just keep in mind that 1 email will not do the trick. You need to keep emailing the people in your excel sheet, but change the content of the email each time you do so.

Unless you don’t a good amount of time to spend on getting backlinks, I wouldn’t worry about how well your methods are working. Most of the techniques listed above as well as others you might think of should give you some increase in traffic that would last a very long time, as well as boosting your search engine rankings. These things suck up a lot of time, but the rewards can be high.

Assessing Your Competitors’ Traffic: Is It Worth It?

Assessing your competitors’ traffic is like chasing rainbows: you never quite get there and wouldn’t know what to do if you did. How do you compare traffic, and is it really worth doing?

A lot depends upon what you mean by the word ‘traffic’ and how you assess it. Every time you visit your own website you are ‘traffic’ unless you can measure unique visitors. Here are three ways of gathering approximations of the traffic that your competition is getting relative to yours, although ‘approximate’ is very much the appproriate word:

* Alexa Ranking: if you visit alexa.com you will be able to download a toolbar that provides you with what is known as an Alexa Ranking. This is a ranking of the web page you are viewing in terms of total traffic relative to other sites on the internet from Alexa users. The lower the figure the better, so you can compare your competitors’ with your own Alexa statistics.

* Compete Ranking: compete.com allow you to download the Compete equivalent to the Alexa ranking Many people prefer Compete because it uses a wider base for collecting data: in addition to toolbar users they also use data from ASPs, ISPs and opt-in panels. They also provide data on unique traffic that Alexa do not.

* Netcraft: this site provides information mainly on web servers rather than individual domains, and is useful only if you want to find information about your competitor’s server. The information is sketchy for any but the biggest sites.

These toolbars are free, and useful for the amateur webmaster to use. However, if you are serious about finding information about the traffic of your competition there are a number of commercial paid sites such as Hitwise and ComScore that provide you with more comprehensive information. The choice of such services is a personal one, and quite frankly there are few, if any, that provide a comprehensive analysis of traffic that could be of much benefit to you.

Finding traffic details about your compettition is all very well, but to what use can you put it? It is not the volume of traffic that matters but how much unique traffic you are getting, and what you do with it is even more important. That could depend on the type of business you have.

A B2B (business to business) website usually regards traffic in a different way to that of a B2C (business to customer) site, in that whereas a B2B website is often designed to showcase the products and services offered, much like it would use a trade show, a B2C landing page is generally more of a squeeze page, designed to maintain contact with the visitor with a view to completing a sale some time in the future.

Whereas one is designed to display technological or product competence and innovation to prospects who are perhaps already in a sales funnel, the other is designed to create and maintain interest with the traffic achieved and enter them into the funnel. It is not so much how much traffic you get to your site that is important, but what type of traffic you get and what you subsequently do with it.

OK, we all know about squeeze pages and how you must use an opt-in form to collect your visitors’ email addresses. But what else? Do you use a sales funnel for instance? Every visitor to your website should enter the funnel and be qualified to different levels the farther down the funnel they travel. It is a good tool to try if you are new to the concept.

You should have specific actions to take at each level in your funnel, and also pre-arranged means of injecting life into those prospects that appear to have become stuck! You will have to lubricate the funnel now and again, perhaps with free offers or money-off coupons your visitors can use to purchase some of your higher value products at low prices. That should get them going on their way down the funnel towards the area where you offer them products with real benefits at real prices. The money-making end!

That is one simple way in which you can use your traffic to your best advantage, and where, if your competitors do not do the same, their traffic is irrelevant to their income. If you can make every visitor count by using the proper tools, then assessing your competitors’ traffic might be time better spent on other things.

It is important that you keep tabs of what your competition is doing, but don’t dwell too much on their traffic: think more on what you are doing with yours.

A Review Of The Alexa Free Traffic Ranking Service

The Alexa free traffic ranking service is part of the Alexa Web Information Service. Part of the http://Amazon.com family of companies, the data found on Alexa is available to website developers and researchers all over the world. URL information, web search, category browsing and crawl Meta data are all part of the services Alexa offers. The ranking package included in the services is determined based on the usage of the toolbar users can download.

Traffic rankings are based on the usage of the toolbar over a three month time frame. A website is ranked based on the ease of reach of the website and how many page views are receives. Because this service is fee based package, the individual website reach is determined by how many Alexa members visit it. Page views are determined by how many times it is viewed in a day. Multiple views by the same user are counted as one. The site with the highest numbers is ranked at number one.

The traffic ranking service is for domains at the top level only. Subpages within a domain are not tracked or counted, and neither are subdomains unless they are personal home pages or blogs. These pages will be identified with an asterisk next to the rank number. These pages are also ranked the same way other websites are, so whatever ranking number a site gets is the rank overall among the service’s members.

Web developers who use this service will pay a small fee for what they use and nothing more. There is no start-up fee to get their site registered and for every 1,000 hits, users are only charged fifteen cents. Once the site is live through Alexa, members can find it by using the downloadable tool bar.

This causes a hit to be logged and adds to the ranking numbers. After three-months of information collecting, the numbers are then reviewed with the previous ranking and a visual graph is constructed so that the website developer and owner can see how they are doing. Graphs are also constructed for daily rankings as well.

Top ranked websites are determined based on the changes in the sites average number of users. The current week’s numbers are compared to the previous weeks. The bigger the change, the higher – or lower – the website moves in the rankings.

Users of this search engine site need to remember that the rankings of the various websites available to them are not an accurate picture of how the site is doing internationally. It is a picture of how it is doing in Alexa only. This service also only works with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Mozilla.

If the website is operated AOL or Opera, they may not have a traffic count at all because they are not supported. Usage of the software is another factor that must be taken in consideration when a site owner reviews their ranking numbers. This software may be used more in some areas than others. Also, sites with secure pages are not counted by the software.

Authority Sites Rank in Top 5% in Alexa: A Case Study of 56 Sites

This case study shows that seasoned Authority Sites rank in top 5% in Alexa. If you have been trying to rank high in the search engines and have only received mediocre rankings, maybe it is time for you to shift your focus from web promotion to producing quality research and content.

What is An Authority Site?

Dictionary.com defines "Authority" as follows:

Authority: Au-thor-i-ty [uh-thawr-i-tee] - noun:
1. An accepted source of expert information or advice: a noted authority on birds; a reference book often cited as an authority.
2. Power to influence or persuade resulting from knowledge or experience: political observers who acquire authority with age.

In internet terminology, an Authority Site is one that has a large empire of high-ranking pages linking back to it. Popular examples include About.com, Wikipedia.org, and so on. These are sites that others look to (and link to) as experts in the field.

In this study, "Authority Site" refers to any site that has been promoted with Authority Site Tools from Jack Humphrey.

Preliminary Study of 56 Randomly Selected Authority Sites

This study started by randomly selecting 56 sites that are being promoted with Authority Site tools. On average, these sites ranked better than 87% of all other sites tracked by Alexa.

A Look at Seasoned Authority Sites

One problem with the preliminary study is that Alexa uses three months of data to calculate its rankings. However, many of the sites listed in the random sample were only a few weeks or months old. So even though weekly Alexa statistics indicated that these sites were ranking extremely high, the three month Alexa ranking was lower. In order to fix this problem, the original list of 56 sites were inspected to see how many months each site had been in existence (as indicated by months of archived blogs). Then, only sites that contained over 4 months of blog archives were analyzed. These authority sites were found to rank in the top 5% on Alexa (on average).

Public Verification of the Results

Note: If you are not familiar with Alexa, please visit www.alexa.com and go to the traffic rankings section. Enter the url for any web site, and it will show where that site ranks within the 11.2 million sites that Alexa monitors. Alexa also provides a chart indicating the past history of traffic to that web site. Please use Alexa to verify the results of this study for yourself by looking up the traffic rankings for any sites that interest you or for any of the 56 randomly selected Authority sites listed below. The statistics were collected on June 25, 2007.

Authority Site URL................................ Alexa Rank........ Archived Months

http://addictionrecoverybasics.com .............135,505............... 6

http://barpubchat.com ...............................1,511,568............. 2

http://blog.esalesguru.com ......................... 205,676.............. 8

http://bugdugle.com .....................................189,845..............1

http://coincollectinginsider.com ...................3,819,470.............1

http://cruise.every1loves2travel.com ................292,408.............9

http://didyousmellthat.com ..............................174,431............2

http://e-businessadvantage.com ...................1,682,034.............1

http://fearlessdreams.com ...........................1,003,899...........12

http://fitnessblackbook.com ...........................2,203,895 ..........1

http://forexlearnguard.com ............................1,798,145............1

http://newpsychicreading.com ......................1,825,970.............1

http://niche-newsreels.com ...........................1,578,478............1

http://onlinesecurityauthority.com/ .....................354,392.........12

http://sayno2odor.com ....................................5,884,207...........1

http://sexandgaming.com ................................3,600,742...........1

http://shoppingcart.instantestore.com ..................72,462..........5

http://trafficmasters2007.com ...........................592,003..........4

http://visalusblog.com ......................................3,012,861..........2

http://www.abundancehighway.com .............1,639,877..........7

http://www.arkanimals.com ...........................1,274,297...........0

http://bestshowticketslasvegas.com .................271,201...........0

http://www.bigmarketingonline.com ..................747,425...........0

http://www.blog.marinerblue.com .....................838,222.......... 3

http://www.cheatcatcher.com .......................2,206,694...........4

http://completediabetesinformation.com .............256,895...........5

http://consumermortgagereports.com .............1,123,968...........4

http://www.copywriting.com .............................266,284..........0

http://www.dreambodynow.com .....................298,349............8

http://www.empowersu.com ........................2,324,067............0

http://www.every1loves2travel.com ...............292,408...........10

http://www.gojdhl.com ....................................1,128,887..........3

http://www.homemusicrecording.com ................604,644.........4

http://www.hotexercise.com ...............................111,673.......10

http://internet-home-business-blog.com ............1,273,082.........2

http://www.jackhumphrey.com .............................23,103........18

http://www.joyofcamping.com ...........................245,569...........2

http://www.lawfuel.com/ ..................................233,616...........0

http://www.lawofattractionsimplified.com .........259,634...........3

http://www.marriagesite.info ..........................1,891,783...........5

http://www.medcarehealth.com ......................2,869,639..........2

http://www.mywealthpuzzle.com ....................5,419,224.........4

http://www.mywritingblog.com ........................1,137,527.......20

http://www.neutralexistence.com ......................529,187.........4

http://www.onlineprofithome.com ...................1,316,275..........0

http://www.simplyantiaging.com/ ........................279,153........9

http://www.socialanxietycrusher.com .............4,823,082........1

http://www.successinspired.com ......................444,016........4

http://www.theassociatereference.com .............193,280........9

http://www.the-football-nut.com .................. 865,654..............0

http://www.the-golf-nut.com .........................455,044..............1

http://www.thelovebunch.com/ ..................2,602,671..............2

http://www.thevideowebsitewizard.com ........715,796...........3

http://www.theweddingwizards.com/ ............931,021............7

http://www.tobe-healthy.com .........................345,167.............. 0

http://www.workfromhomegroup.com ............542,008..............3

TOP Article Directories Article Marketers Should Focus On First

With article marketing being one of the most popular and leveragable online marketing practices today one often asks themselves how they can maximize there articles exposure once written and ready for publishing.

Article directories are always an article publishers first resort but today the internet is so saturated with article directories one often wonders which article directories they should submit their articles to first to get the most exposure to them so they can start receiving Traffic and Sales from their hard work.

I've been publishing articles online for a few years now and religiously submit them to the article directories I have listed below simply because they are considered the TOP article directories on the web today and is where I receive most of my traffic from.

From my experience I recommend anyone just starting out online with article marketing to submit your ready to publish article to the article directories listed below first before searching the web for all the other hundreds of article directories that only get a fraction of the traffic these ones get.

So with that said here's the list I've put together with the article directories Alexa Ranking and Popularity Rank.

And just so you know these numbers may change but as of this writing this is what they are.

TOP Article Directories:

www.EzineArticles.com (Alexa Ranking - 327 | PR 6)

www.A1Articles.com (Alexa Ranking - 78,153 | PR 4)

www.ArticleAlley.com (Alexa Ranking - 23,377 | PR 5)

www.Amazines.com (Alexa Ranking - 29,699 | PR 4)

www.ArticlesBase.com (Alexa Ranking - 4,007 | PR 5)

www.GoArticles.com (Alexa Ranking - 21,680 | PR 6)

www.IdeaMarketers.com (Alexa Ranking - 42,871 | PR 3)

www.SearchWarp.com (Alexa Ranking - 7,094 | PR 4)

www.ArticleCity.com (Alexa Ranking - 43,159 | PR 5)

These article directories should give you a good start and as you can see from the numbers above these article directories get great amounts of traffic and have good page rank which will also help you out with your Search Engine Ranking.

I have a few quick tips for you before I wrap this up and that is make sure your articles are at least 500 words or more. Article directories are starting to decline articles that are less then that number. I know this because it happened to me on a few occasions.

My next tip is try to write your articles around some keywords that are actually being search for. I recommend keyword phrases with three or more words in them. The reason being is these keywords have less competition which means your article will have a greater chance if ranking higher in the search engines for that given keyword phrase.

The last one I have for you is about Anchor Text. Most of the above article directories will allow you to use Anchor Text within your resource box so make sure you do your keyword research and find some good low competition keywords that you can rank for and link to within your resource box.

Hope this helped and good luck with your article publishing.

10 Free and Easy Ways to Improve Your Alexa Ranking

Alexa, which is owned by Amazon.com, gives away a free toolbar that you can download and install in your browser. Alexa is then able to keep track of the sites you visit and compute the traffic ranking of those websites, with a rank of "1" being the assigned to the most visited site.

If you want a more technical definition, Alexa explains it like this:

"The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users)."

(http://www.alexa.com/site/help/traffic_learn_more)

In April 2008 Alexa revised its methodology so as to "aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users".

How accurately this method reflects the actual surfing patterns of all Internet users is open to question. However, if you bear in mind that by the end of 2005 the toolbar has been downloaded well over 10 million times you will realize why many people still think that Alexa offers one of the best approximations that we have of website ranking, especially for the top 100,000 or so websites.

That is why Alexa remains an important measure of a website's status and is used as a quick way to assess the popularity of a website by advertisers looking for the maximum exposure for the their money. Websites with a higher Alexa ranking also tend to be trusted more than those with a low ranking, so it is in the interest of website owners to get their sites ranked as highly as possible with Alexa.

Here are some quick and easy tips to help you do that without spending a single dollar!

1. Install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as your homepage.

2. Copy and paste an Alexa rank widget onto your website. You can get the widget code at http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup. As well as informing your visitors about your Alexa rank, it will also keep Alexa updated about the number of unique visitors surfing your site.

3. Create a customized version of the Alexa tool bar, Then place a link on your site to the download page and invite your visitors to download it. You will also earn Amazon commissions every time a user shops on Amazon via the toolbar link.

4. If you have a Wordpress blog there is a plug-in for Alexa Ranking (wp-Alexa-redirect-0.3plug-in) that you can use.

5. Submit your site to web directories. Although a lot of directories charge a registration fee, you can still find many that are willing to list your site free of charge or in exchange for a reciprocal link. A lot of the webmasters who browse web directories have the Alexa bar installed, so if they click your link it will help your Alexa traffic rank.

6. Become an active participant on Internet marketing and SEO forums. Again, a lot of those forum participants are already webmasters and a high percentage will use the Alexa toolbar when they surf. Place a link to your site in your signature and your rank will improve when any of those people click through.

7. A lot of Asian and Australian websites feature in the Alexa top 100,000 and you can bet that a lot of website owners will have the Alexa toolbar installed, so it makes sense to join social networking sites that are popular in those regions, such as:

* http://www.orkut.com - Orkut is owned by Google and is the second most visited site in India.

* http://hi5.com - Hi5 has an Alexa ranking of 17 at the time of writing this article.

8. Become an Alexa expert and post articles that discuss Alexa ranking and SEO tips. This will attract people to your site who may be interested in downloading your toolbar, or people who have already done so. Either way, it will be good for your Alexa ranking. You could even build a whole category of articles on your website devoted to this theme.

9. Set up a freebie page on your website and post a list of useful tools to attract other website owners to your site. Include another link to your Alexa toolbar download page.

10. Get into the habit of using Stumbleupon and other bookmarking sites to spread the word whenever you post a new article on your website or blog. Set up a group of fellow website owners so that you can have run reciprocal stumbling campaigns for better results.

If you apply these ten quick and easy methods you will definitely see an improvement in your Alexa rank and you should also start to attract more traffic to your site!

What Do Alexa Rankings Really Mean?

In order to understand Alexa rankings, we must first understand how the rankings of web sites really work. There are many large and popular web sites on the Internet that specifically rank web pages according to their reputation and how many visitors they have each day. The rankings are then setup and published for all web page owners to see so that they will be able to expand and improve their sites for online business.

Owners of web pages that have the hopes of being successful know that they have to be chosen by giant search engines in order to be successful and obtain many more customers. Most popular search engines, as well as private ranking services such as Alexa, use top secret algorithms to sort through the millions of web sites that have been published on the Internet and rank the ones that are most important. These top web sites often have the best quality and best service available to customers that use Alexa and search engines.

Entrepreneurs who own companies that have been installed on the Internet should first realize and learn how Alexa ranks all of the web pages that are on the Internet. It ranks them according to the keywords that are displayed on the web sites, as well as how visible they are to a visitor and how many times those keywords are displayed on the page. Web site designers should remember to keep the web pages very clear and easy to use and also well organized so that Alexa has a much easier time locating them.

In order for Alexa to rank your business web pages you have to provide high quality content. Keywords should be carefully implemented into the titles and subtitles of the web pages that are designed and published. If a web site is carefully organized and designed, then that online business will be successful.

Another important thing to remember when trying to increase your Alexa rank is the type of link text that you are using. Links are easily picked up by Alexas secret algorithm and they will determine if the site is exactly what Internet visitors are looking for. Make sure to use keywords in the content of a web page as well as the links that are displayed.
Although many new blog owners look to Alexas rankings as a source of information regarding the status of their web sites, many experienced bloggers find Alexa to be inaccurate and difficult to follow. Alexa, in reality, provides rankings only on the traffic flow that uses Alexas toolbars and other online software. It often neglects all of the other unique Internet visitors to your site that use other search engines and ways of finding your specific blog.

Alexas rankings are a great way for new bloggers to start a blog and get it going, but as you progress in the online world and become much larger and more popular, you should not completely rely on Alexas rankings for complete and accurate information with regards to the status of your blog.

Advantages of Surfing with the Alexa Toolbar Installed

The Alexa toolbar is a free plug-in that you can easily install onto your browser and use when you surf the Internet. Well over 10 million surfers use the Alexa browser toolbar, which comes in two versions, one for Internet Explorer and one (called "Sparky") for Firefox.

So why would you want to download and install the toolbar?

Mainly because it has several useful features which make your browser a more versatile data-gathering tool that focuses your searches on the best quality sites, so if you search the Internet for information (and who doesn't?) you will immediately benefit from having this toolbar installed on your browser.

Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy when you install the Alexa toolbar on your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser.

Alexa's toolbar offers a faster surfing experience because includes an integrated Google search feature which allows you to search Google by typing your search phrase directly into the toolbar without having to make a separate visit Google.com.

When you land on a website you will immediately be able to see that site's Alexa Traffic Rank listed in the bottom right corner of your browser.

Alongside the traffic rank you will see a trend line that charts the traffic volume for the website over the previous few months. Next to that there is also an "Internet Reach" meter that gauges the percentage of Internet users that have visited the website.

You can also check out similar sites to the one you have been surfing by clicking the "related links" button. A drop-down menu appears with several related sites listed; it is a great little tool for researching a range of websites quickly and easily.

You can also make use of Alexa's "Wayback Machine" to "go back in time" and check out how a website used to look and track the changes the website owner has made to the design and layout over time.

Another cool feature of the toolbar is that it allows you to let a friends and associates know about the website you are visiting by simply clicking a button, choosing the e-mail address to sending the site.

The toolbar also has a built in link to Amazon.com (which now owns Alexa) which makes your online shopping even more convenient!

The Alexa toolbar can be downloaded from this site: http://www.alexa.com. Just look for the toolbar download link

Alexa's Ranking System Has Changed

I was checking my web sites, as I do weekly, and noticed some very different numbers than what I was used to. Normally, my sites move up or down a little every week. Today, the moves were huge.

Now, there will be those of you out there that don’t put any credence in Alexa ranking or Google's Page Rank. There are others who swear by them.

I am kind of in the middle. I like to use them both to track the ups and downs of how popular my web sites are.

I saw some of my sites jump from over 10 million to the 2 million range. Keep in mind that the lower the number the better. I try to tweak my sites to get them under 1 million and then work more to get them under 500K.

The old way that Alexa ranked sites was based on visitors that had the Alexa tool bar installed and running on their web browser. Not a very accurate way of measuring visitors, but it was the only way to track site performance for a very long time.

They have now changed this sole criterion and now are using "multiple sources" to rank pages. They don’t say what the additional sources are, but my rankings improved immensely after the change.

The sites I have that got a worse ranking were those under 500K, but they only dropped a little. The sites I have that are above 5 million improved immensely.

I don’t know what the other sources are but I am hoping that Alexa is now tracking visitors that do not have the Alexa tool bar installed. This should have a major impact on the rankings and hopefully provide a truer picture of web popularity.

Because of the new changes, the historical data is only listed for the past nine months. But, they are working on bringing that up to date.

Alexa plans to constantly look at the data and make minor adjustments but doesn’t see the need to make any major changes.

I don’t know what will be the end result of these changes but I hope that they reflect a more accurate picture of web visitors, not just those that have the tool bar installed.

I will continue to track my weekly results and see how the sites do. I am hoping that the rankings improve since there are many that base advertising rates based on Alexa rankings. The better the rank, the more they charge and the more I make.

So, take a look at what Alexa thinks of your site and track it for a month or two and see what the numbers reveal.

What Alex Ratings Mean For Your Site

Alexa is an online tool used to rank website traffic. The relationship between Alexa rankings and how popular a website is however, is not simple or obvious. They consider website ranking, links, traffic, and many other criteria known only to the most experienced Alexa users.

It can be mysterious optimizing a site for Alexa. One, it appears outgoing links to important, heavily traffic websites, matters. Relevant links are helpful to site visitors. Search engines want to know if a site is worth going to. If it is, they are happy to index it in a higher spot. This is a general rule of thumb that you should keep in mind at all times when performing SEO operations.

The simple difference between a site with moderate search results and a site with high search results is that the site with the higher results is generally more user friendly. Alexa Ratings and other rating systems try to emulate how a visitor will see your site. Once they've determined the worth of your site to a visitor they index it accordingly. This is why it is so important to have relevant links. If you are
linking to sites that your users would find interesting, Alexa will enjoy it.

By targeting sites that are similar to yours, but not exactly the same, you'll get relevant links that
Alexa will like. The best sites to link to are with content that complements your own. For example, if your site is dedicated to rock and roll and you link to a guitar sales web site, you'll probably get traffic flow back and forth. One way of ensuring relevant information is to link to yourself from other sites that you own: why try to hunt down other webmasters if you have 20 or 30 websites of your own you can use? Traffic flow is the biggest factor, however, as most of what Alexa does is traffic-based.

Alexa will also assign a site a ranking number.
The higher the ranking number is, the better traffic you are receiving. Many search results utilize Alexa Rankings in indexing their results, therefore, if you have a high Alexa Rating not only are you already getting a good deal of traffic, you will begin to accumulate even more traffic.

You can view a site's Alexa rating by going to Alexa's website. Use the Alexa toolbar and enter
the site information. For example, you might be considering whether you should exchange links with a site. If the site you're considering has no traffic then a link exchange won't be worth your time and it may even have an adverse effect on your Google Pagerank which is at least as important as your Alexa Rating.

Using the Alexa ranking system allows you to compare the traffic of your site or other sites with the
traffic of the web as a whole. Number 1 is the top rank, so the larger the ranking number, the lower
the traffic is likely to be. Let's say that your site's rank at Alexa is something like 1,578,459.
No matter how professional the website looks, or how high the Google PageRank is, your website just
doesn't have much traffic - in fact, Alexa knows of 1,578,458 websites that have more traffic than you do.

It is, however, important to keep in mind that a high Google PageRank will almost certainly increase your traffic. If you have a high Google PageRank and a low Alexa Rating, your site is probably new to the internet. It will take your visitors some time to find the site via Google and the links from other sites. Generally, the Alexa Rating is the second rating that SEO managers should worry about.

The Alexa Rating is very useful in analyzing a comparison between your site and others, but you must
also keep in mind that because Alexa ranks sites based on visits by users who utilize their toolbar,
these ratings can be inflated or under-stated.

Getting Your Site Indexed in Alexa

Although Alexa's search results are driven by Google, this is a definite must in your search engine marketing plan.

The reason is that Alexa will provide statistics about your website that no other search engine or web directory will provide.

These statistics include:

*Your site ranking on the internet
*What sites are linking to yours
*Detailed traffic statistics
*Site thumbnails
*Site Speed

These are just a few examples.

You can also use Alexa to search for your keywords. This will tell you who your competition is for the keywords you have selected. You can more carefully study your competition, find out who is linking to your competition, and use what you learn to raise your rankings in the search engines, as well as find better keywords for your website.

Alexa also has its own crawler, and eventhough you may show up in the search results powered by Google, you still want to have Alexa crawl your site.

Alexa, like Google, may discover your site on its own. However, it's been my experience that Alexa only updates my site when I visit Alexa and make updates. This includes the thumbnails.

The first step that you should take before submitting to Alexa is to type in the domain name of your site to see if you are listed.

If you are listed, study the thumbnail for your site and see if needs to be updated. You should also check your site description, as well as contact information, and if it needs to be updated, update it.

Alexa will require that you verify your website in one of two ways. The first is to enter your email address, and Alexa will send you a confirmation email. The other way is that you can verified is to create an info.txt file and upload it to the root directory of your website. You can then click the verification link and Alexa will verify your site.

If your site isn't listed for some reason, you will need to submit. Alexa gives detailed instructions, as well as information on creating a robots.txt file.

You can get more information, as well as submit your site to be crawled, at this link: http://pages.alexa.com/help/webmasters/index.html.

If you want to find out who your competition is, and get a competitive edge, then Alexa is an indispensible tool to help you. Use the detailed information you'll find on this site, and you can easily raise your rankings in the search engines and get more traffic.

Google Adsense Program is Favorite Internet Marketers!

Every Adsense publisher can significantly increase their Adsense earnings by choosing the best Adsense keyword and the top paying Adsense keyword. This article will discuss how to increase your Adsense earnings by at least 200 percent by using the best Adsense keyword. For more details go to: www.adsense-dollar-factory.com The Google Adsense program has become a favorite of many internet marketers in increasing their online income. One of the keys to increasing your Adsense income is by increasing the amount of traffic to your website. Another easy method for increasing your Adsense earnings is by placing the best Adsense top paying keyword on all your Adsense websites and web pages. As well as finding the best Adsense top paying keyword, the secret is making sure your website is relevant to your chosen best Adsense keyword. Make sure your main keyword is in your h1 header tags, in the title of your web page, in your web page description and also in your Meta keywords. Make sure your best top paying Adsense keyword is in your heading, and preferably the first words used. Make sure your best top paying Adsense keyword features prominently in the first paragraph of your web content, but make sure that the website copy makes sense.

If you have any images on your phrase use the alternate text image description as another place to put your best high paying Adsense keyword, however describe the image, don't just place the keyword in it. If you are an Adsense publisher then it's absolutely critical that you focus on finding the best top paying Adsense keyword for every page of your websites. The reason for this is pretty clear. One keyword may be worth $17.00, a very similar keyword may be worth $2.20. You of course won't get the full $17.00 every time a visitor to your website clicks on your Adsense ads. You and the Google Adsense program will share this revenue.

When you know what your potential site visitors are looking for and have optimized your Adsense web pages for the best top paying Adsense keyword, the more visitors to your website the more clicks you should receive. Another factor to bear in mind is that the older your website is, the better Google Adsense ads will appear on your site. For help visit: www.adsense-income-exposed.com Your Google Page Rank will also have an effect on this, as will your website traffic. Also don't just focus your entire website on your best top paying Adsense keyword. There is a lot of competition for certain Adsense keywords. By using certain Adsense keyword tools you can find more long tail keywords with very little competition at all which, when you add them up with other long tail keywords, will add up to a lot of traffic and more Adsense earnings. This article has discussed the difference between ordinary keywords and having your site optimized with best top paying Adsense keywords.

Now that you know how to do that you must find the right tools to optimize your sit another strategy you can use is to place the keywords in your Title tag. The first 250 words on your website is the second most important piece of information. Write a line then insert a double space. Place keywords in this space. Highlight the keywords so that it is white. This will cause the keywords to blend into the background. Do not use this for search engine marketing! It will hurt you in search engine optimization. It is only used to increase the price you earn from Google Advertisements. The Google spiders see these keywords. However, the human eye will not detect the keywords ESP. For the highest paying Adsense keywords.

Tips for Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue!

One thing I have to tell you from the beginning, and it can not be emphasised enough, is that you must always have the searcher in mind. This is very important, because if you do not do that you will follow some basic instructions on how to put Google Adsense ads on your websites. Which means you put the code on your website that Google Adsense provides, you upload your website and send traffic to it. Hoping that you will make money quick.

Nothing is further from the thruth. Although there is no general thruth for every website or blog available on the internet, there still are some killer tips I can give you to increase the revenue you get from having Google Adsense ads on your website.

Google Adsense tip #1:

Colors! One of the most important tips I can give you to increase your Click Through Rate (CTR), which means that visitors to your websites click more on the ads, is to adapt the colors of borders and links of the ads. So, if you want to keep the visitor in mind, you will have to ask yourself : ‘wether the visitor likes ads or not, I always want them to click on the ads’. The best way to attain that, for more details visit to www.google-atm-machine.com is by making the ads look like the content of your website. First of all you want to make the color of the border the same as the color of the background, so that it dissapears.

Second, to make the ad links look like the links of your website, you have to choose the same link color. The above described can be translated as blending your ads.

Google Adsense tip #2:

Tracking! The only way to know how small changes to your websites and ads help to increase your CTR is by tracking. You do that by using Google Adsense channels. The best option you can use, for more details visit to www.guardadsense.com in my humble opion, is the URL channel option. It will enable you to create channels for each and every individual page of your websites. If you have only 1 block of ads on your pages you can easily determine if a color or and ad placement improves you Adsense revenue.

On the other hand, to know if a certain ad placement, a color , or a format increases your CTR, using multiple ad blocks on a page, you still have to use the ‘Custom Channels’.
So, in a nutshell: use channels to track which ads, formats, colors and placements perform the best.

Google Adsense tip #3:

It should be obvious, but the use of quality content on your Google Adsense websites is a ‘must’. This could be one of the reasons why publishers complain about low ‘Adsense’ revenue. They have OR duplicate content OR low quality content , generated by sofware, OR the content is too general. Being too general or having a too broad topic content on your website will confuse the ‘bots’ and the visitors. After all, people always search for information on a specific topic. They are always looking for a way to solve their problems. So, give them just that. If it is not possible to write the content yourself, you can always let a professional copywriter do that for you. If you do a search for freelance copywriters you will find literally thousands of professionals to do the content writing for you.

Google Adsense is a Great and Easy Way of Income

Any web site owner or webmaster who is trying to earn a profit from their sites are likely familiar with Google Adsense.
Google Adsense is a great and easy way to make money from your site if it is done right. Adsense will allow any person with a blog or an informative site to earn money, simply by placing a little code on their site pages. Rather than trying to figure out exactly what ads to put on their web pages, Adsense gives web site owners the ability to concentrate on their sites content. For more details go to: www.googleadsense-empire.com
Many webmasters are able to make a living from Adsense; however, there are also quite a few who spend all their time just trying to figure out the "magic trick" used to earn from Google Adsense. Earning a living from Google Adsense ads, can seem difficult, but it's not impossible.

If Google Adsense is going to be your only source of income, you will want to do more than just taking some Adsense code and placing it on your site. That is just not enough; you will need to do some experimenting, with placements, formats and choice of keywords. You really should take care to build your page around a specific topic or keyword that is relevant to your site concept. This will ensure that any Adsense ads which are placed on this page are appropriate and useful to any visitors who want to know more about the topic and they will more than likely end up clicking on the Adsense ad.

You will want to take care where you place your ads. It has been proven that visitors often first look to the top left of a website when they arrive. Because this is were your visitors attention is likely to first, it is going to be one place where you might want to consider placing some ads. You can read the Google help on the Adsense website to learn more about the best locations for placing your adverts. Another consideration when placing your ads is to put them on high traffic pages. You can identify the pages visited most on your site by taking a look at your logs or your Google account, where you will get the page-by-page details of your visitors.

Although the skyscraper and banner ads may look good on your site, you may want to avoid using them. Often times, banners are ignored. For example, have you clicked on any banners of sites that you have visited lately? You will want to blend your Adsense ads into your web page by using the Adsense formats. Google supplies a variety of palettes allowing you to change font colors, borders and backgrounds. For help visit: www.google-atm-machine.com there really isn't much point in putting an ad on a page if it doesn't blend with your site. A very important resource that many webmasters ignore is the Adsense preview tool. This tool will allow you to preview the ads that will go on each of your pages and gives you sample ads and formats. Here is where the destination of your ads can be checked, as well as, geo targeted locations.
Remain focused on what it is that you want to achieve. However busy you may be, you must take some time and experiment with your Adsense ads so that CTR can improve. No matter what the experts say, just follow the basics that are the real magic to making more from Google Adsense.

Way To Internet marketing success on the web

Since the birth of the commercial Internet good writing has driven the development and search engine positioning of web sites. for more detail go to:www.squeeze-page-profits.com.Good web site content has been and always will be the King, Queen and whole Royal Court of marketing success on the web.

When you're trying to develop a successful web site you soon realize that your web site content is an important part of your success strategy. Web sites with great content are much more likely to get great traffic results than those which are filled with junk articles and lousy headlines.

The more interesting and diverse your content, the better traffic results you will have. However, when trying to get the right mixture of content, you may well become frustrated. This is especially true if you are not a strong writer. However the following tips/ strategies will help you appreciate the value of good web site content and the decisions you need to make to create the best content for your web site.

Far too often web site owners give very little thought to the content on their web site. This happens much more frequently than one might expect with people who claim to be web professionals. However, without good content on your site the repercussions are immediate.

If you want better web site traffic results then make the creation of good content for your web site your priority. Whether you write the content yourself, for more detail go to:www.tried-tested-marketing-strategies.com.or hire professional writers to develop this content for you it needs to be quality writing.

Someone who has passion for the subject should write this content. The more passionate the writer is about a topic, the better the writing will be. Usually, this is the web site owner and operator, because no one wants the site to succeed as much as this individual.

However, if you are not a great writer, you can always hire professionals to help you with this task. If your web site is a business then treat it as such and pay professionals to do the job right.

When adding content to a specific section on your site set limits on the word count. A web site is NOT a novel. Web site content is mostly scan-read by your visitors who are searching for solutions to their problems, so make your content accessible to them.

Give them what they want... good information that's easily digested (read) by the busy surfer. The easiest way to do this is mimic the structure of a newspaper article. The headline "pulls" you into reading the article, and the sub headers "pull" you into continuing reading a section within that article. If you scan read the article you should know what (in essence) it's all about.

Content which is to long can drive viewers away because they are likely to get bored, and it's just to much hard work to "digest' the information that's being presented to them. With the advent of multimedia technologies you can now very easily "mix it up" for the reader/ visitor as well.

Look at your site through the eyes of a potential visitor. Your purpose (with content) is to give the reader what they're searching for as quickly and as efficiently as possible. When you write to entertain yourself or show how smart you are you will quickly lose your audience. Be direct, to the point and give you reader the core facts.

The writing style of the web is "conversational". This is good news for the person who is not a natural writer. If you have difficulty writing then doesn’t... TALK into a tape recorder. Then, transpose what you've just spoken into words.

Natural flowing web content is like a good conversation. It flows back and forth between the parties involved in the conversation. When you're writing your content THINK of the visitor and speak to them personally. If you adopt this technique as a writing strategy then your writing with naturally flow and it will have "you" in it.