Devour The Web

I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me, “How to do I get my site to come up in the top ten of the search engines so I can get hits and sell my product?”

What they really want to know is, “How can I get people to show up to my website without spending any money on advertising my site!”

People usually don’t like my answer because accomplishing a “top ten ranking” on any search engine always requires careful thought along with a significant amount of work.

Three types of “Search engines” abound on the Internet. They include true search engines, directories, and links pages.

At last count approximately 10,000 sites referred to themselves as search engines, though only about a dozen sites rate your attention since they drive 97% of the Internet’s search traffic.

These sites include Google, Yahoo!, Overture, MSN, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Lycos, DMOZ, and a few others.

When a visitor logs onto a search engine looking for information, they enter “keywords” about the subject in hopes of obtaining a list of relevant websites.

Each search engine or directory operates with its own rules about judging a site’s relevancy to a keyword search.

Sponsored Links

Baseball, beer, peanuts…and water?

It’s all baseball all the time today (when the rain doesn’t ruin things, that is). Advertisers want to be a part of it all, too. Along with Bank of America, today’s MLB.com Opening Day sponsor, and several other advertisers written about here today, Aquafina is running an MLB.com-related effort, extending its campaign featuring everybody’s favorite curmudgeonly manager, Lou Piniella.

The water brand has created a widget featuring a digital bobblehead that’s supposed to look like Piniella. It doesn’t. At all. Bobble heads never look like who they’re supposed to, though, so maybe it was intentional.

Anyway, the Aquafina branded widget features a new message from Piniella everyday, the type of peaceful, pleasant statement you’d never expect him to say. Today’s is pretty ho-hum. I think I’d rather hear the angry Piniella personally.

I think it’s smart that Aquafina is running an Opening Day related effort since it’s campaign has a baseball connection, but I’m not sure what the value of this widget is exactly. How many of these things can people be expected to download anyway?

You know it’s a lucky day when you wind up sharing your lunch table with Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble’s hypersmart manager of interactive marketing and innovation.

What’s been on Ted’s mind recently? Brands that advertise on social networks. He believe these marketers are looking at short-term metrics to their longer-term detriment. Awareness is spiking for these advertisers, but at the expense of brand equity down the road. Users overwhelmingly regard social network ads as unnecessary and intrusive.

Short term wins. Long term problems. When someone of Ted’s stature raises this as an issue, Facebook, MySpace and their ilk would do well to prick up their ears.

Three Ways on How Content Can Attract Free, Long Term, Targeted Traffic to Your Website
 by: Mohamad Zaki Hussein

Many people out there said that “content is king” when it comes to web traffic generation. Even though, IMHO, content is not the only king, I tend to agree with them. If done properly, content can attract free, long term, targeted traffic to your website.

Here’re three ways on how content can attract free, long term, targeted traffic to your website:

1. Content attracts free search engine traffic

It has been well-known that the search engines love content. The more content you have in your website, the more keywords you can rank for, and thus the more traffic you can get from the search engines.

However, not every content can do well in the search engines. The search engines have sets of rules (also known as algorithms) to rank websites in their indexes and some of these rules go beyond content (off-page factors). You need to “optimize your site” to meet these rules if you want to rank well in the search engines.

In 1966, The Doors were trying to make it to the pinnacle of the Los Angeles music scene by scoring a regular gig at the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood. At the time, playing the Whisky was the LA way to land a record contract.

But you didn’t just waltz in and play the Whisky. You had to work your way up to it.

In the short film The Doors in LA, guitarist Robbie Krieger tells how Morrison and the band landed a regular gig at the London Fog. The Fog was lower on the nightclub food chain, but strategically close to the Whisky on Sunset.

Krieger says they convinced friends from UCLA and throughout the LA underground music scene to show up for the audition show at the London Fog. Naturally, it was important to show management that The Doors could pull a crowd.

Turns out, all these friends did show up. The place was packed, the crowd was knocking back drinks left and right, and the show was a raucous success. Needless to say, The Doors got the gig as the house band for the London Fog.

Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s president of research and media development, is presenting research at the ARF Re:Think conference essentially in defense of network TV. He’s claiming TV viewing hasn’t decreased as a resut of the Web, rather that people are absorbing more media simultaneously as they multitask.

He’s also showing eye-tracking scans taken of views as they fast-forward through :30 spots on DVRs. The graphics are supposed to indicate these viewers concentrate more intently on the center of the screen as the ads whiz by, indicating there’s no real conscious absorption of the ad message, but there’s nevertheless an unconscious message being conveyed.

This sounds dubious. Sure, networks are bound to conduct research in their own interests — why wouldn’t they? But the message coming through from Wurtzel (who’s still talking) is that while consumers certainly are still watching TV, they’re significantly less focused on it. In fact, they may even be most intent on the set when they’re trying to avoid something rather than watch it.

This raises questions about engagement, something the ARF is still working to define.

If you do business as an affiliate, then you’re constantly concerned with getting your name and your business information out there. You probably send a lot of e-mails, post on message boards, and submit articles to business e-zines. These are great techniques for making contacts, but are you taking full advantage of the visibility these forums create?

One of the best ways of creating new business is to include a Signature File with everything you post, send or submit. What exactly is a sig file? It’s that little paragraph beneath a person’s signature at the end of an article, posting or e-mail. This is your opportunity to let people know who you are and to direct them to your business.

Now you may already include your url at the end of your correspondence. That’s great, but is that enough? Not quite. Of course it’s great to have your url so that anyone who’s interested in what you’re saying can immediately check out your business site, but wouldn’t they be more likely to click if you included a short description of what you do? For example, rather than closing an e-mail or posting with:

Manny Jackson

http://rockoutandrollover.com

You won’t be involved in Internet marketing long before you see the term "Joint Venture." Perhaps you are familiar with the term from its application in the business world but don’t see how it would apply to Internet marketing.

Actually, it is one of the most exciting ways to generate targeted web traffic that you will find.

For purposes of definition, you could say that a joint venture is an operation involving two or more Internet marketers, each contributing unique resources for their mutual benefit. That may sound a little stuffy, so look at it this way. Say you and your neighbor both need to plant trees in your respective backyards. He only has a wheelbarrow and you only have a shovel. Neither of you can do the job effectively by yourself, but together you can accomplish the job for both of you. That’s a joint venture (backyard variety!).

How I Boosted My Monthly AdSense Profits from $673 to $21,398 in Just 6 Months
All of my keyword research/analysis and search engine optimization skills suddenly came together in October 2004.

I had just written my first book, and I just wanted to get some free traffic to my website so I could start selling the it.

Triple Your Income with Ad Layout Changes

I had been making about $600 per month from Google AdSense for a long time. As I was researching traffic and revenue techniques, I ran across a tip on how to triple your adsense income (by tripling clickthrough rate).

I implemented the change (relax, I’ll put all the tips below) and it worked! I went from $20 per day to $40, $50, and $60 days, with the same amount of traffic! My click through rate actually quadrupled in 10 days.

I then wrote keyword-optimized articles on 90 keyphrases I had found. This led to a 150% increase in traffic - no small feat considering that my website already had 300 articles.

What is creativity? It’s one of the deceptively simple questions.

One of the best ways to use Twitter is to ask questions. Keeping with the cocktail party analogy, which would you prefer… someone who wants to learn things about you, or someone who babbles on endlessly about themselves?

So, last week I asked people who follow me on Twitter a seemingly simple question: How do you define creativity? I picked out several of the responses and reprinted them below.

All italicized emphasis is mine.

Todd Mintz: Creativity is being able take a unique perception and develop it so others can understand.

Kristen Havens: Creativity = problem-solving with a unique point of view.

Lee Odden: To me, creativity is the ability to see and express unique perspectives

Rudy Amid: Creativity to me means getting the job done with minimal effort and the least amount of time.

Deb Ng: It’s a form of expression. For me it’s being able to use my words as a way to give others ideas and inspiration.

Gamermk: Creativity = the ability to create physical or intellectual property of value.