Independent Digital

by Bruce Swedal

The main benefits you receive when submitting your website to Quality Directories for review are traffic from the directory and a back link that will help your website rank higher in relevant search results. The general rule is that the more quality and relevant links you have, the higher you will climb in search engine results for relevant searches.

The first thing that you need to do prior to submitting your website for review in Quality Directories is to create the submission information. That means anchor text, keywords and site description.

The anchor text that you choose should contain varied keywords that you are targeting to increase search engine rankings with. Come up with many variations of anchor text to be used for different submissions. The text should be relevant to the site and not be too long or it may be considered keyword stuffing and be declined or altered by the Directory.

Your site description should be anywhere from 150 - 450 characters long. Do not use hype or make it sound like an advertisement. Just make it a nice description of your site. Make sure that you use proper grammar when writing it.

For keywords take five of the most important keywords you are targeting and place them here separated by a comma. Some directories may not provide a space for this and whether they do or not is really not all that important.

Article directories can also benefit your directory with link building. Some article directories will allow up to3 hyper links back to your site from the resource box from every article you submit. Often they will also allow for deep linking to pages within your site. The article itself will create content for the back link that is relevant to your website.

There are a few guidelines that you should follow when submitting articles to article directories. First just make sure your article is not already published there. Then make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors in your article. Fill out all the fields for the article submission when you submit it and select the most relevant category for your articles content.

By using these tips for submission you should be able to use these methods successfully for your link building campaign. They can guide you in the process to increase your acceptance rate with directory and article submissions. As your submissions to quality directories and article websites are accepted, indexed and your link count rises you will see that your search engine results are going to rise proportionally.

Link building is not a quick process, but a prolonged and ongoing process. By staying on task you will be able to attain your goals with a consistent, hard approach.

Visit the Authority Web Directory to increase your websites online marketing presence. Plus, you can read more industry information at the Authority Blog.

Article Source: Articlecrazy.com Free Content

Armand Morin Speaks at Dan Kennedy Superconference by John Braun

The leading internet marketing guru, Armand Morin, gave an eye opening presentation at the Glazer-Kennedy Superconference in Chicago on April 22, 2007. I got a chance to speak with him personally and was totally impressed with not only his knowledge, but also his down-to-earth approachable attitude.

These are the highlights of his presentation.

Do not get blogged down with Blogger.com
Blogger.com is affiliated with Google. There are millions of blogs posted daily on this site. Contrary to popular belief, Blogger.com is NOT the best place for your blog.

Why? For the most part, it uses its own search engine to find blogs. The reason is to prevent Google from getting bogged down with blog searches. There are too many blogs.

This is bad for you if you have a blog on Blogger.com because you will reduce the ability to get your blog listed on major search engines. It can still happen, but it is not quite as likely.

Your best bet is to use a program called Wordpress (often purchased FREE from your web host) and install your blog on your domain name. This way, the search engine will be able to locate the information on your blog and link it to your site directly.

Another tip about blogs: You can sign up with Google Adsense and place the ad near your blog. This can do a few things for you. First, it can make you a few dollars with the clicks you will get from the people viewing your blog. Second, it can help improve your search engine rank when you link to the site. Last, it can make your site look more professional because it is associated with Google. So, go ahead and give it a try.

Submitting articles on the internet
Submitting several articles to article directories will put you on other sites and give you a higher search engine status. The key is to submit articles that pertain to the subject of your website. Make sure the headline is relevant to your website as well. For instance, if you own a carpet cleaning company, submit an article on the subject of pet odor removal. Pet sites may pick up the article and other sites that are give spot removal tips on carpeting. It will give you huge credibility.

You can submit your article to directories that will make the article available to over 1000 different sites. One site, ArticleMarketer.com does this for a very small fee.

Submit articles often. At least once every week. It may take a couple months for you to see the benefit because Google may not send its robots to your site often if you do not have high traffic. But soon, you will reap the benefits.

Oh, by the way. If you do not like writing, you can purchase articles for as little as $3 from EzineArticles.com. I suggest you change the headline and parts of the article to fit your website subject matter. This is a quick and easy way to send out articles on a regular basis.

Final words of internet wisdom
If you decide to use Google Adwords, do it on the most highly ranked sites in your subject keywords. For instance, if you have a company in Atlanta, it is VERY hard to get on top of the search engine in Atlanta (or any city for that matter).

So, do a Google search for Atlanta. Find the highest ranked sites that offer advertising on the site. Place an ad there and you will instantly be linked with one of the tops sites in that subject.

Sure, you will get some hits directly from the site. But here is the best part of the deal. You will be linked to one of the top websites in that subject keyword. Which in turn will rank your site higher with that subject. Cool, huh?

John Braun is a copywriter with Hitman Advertising. To get your FREE REPORT entitled How To Choose The Most Profitable Advertising for your service business, visit www.HitmanAdvertising.com

Article Source: High Quality RSS Feeds and Articles on 350+ Topics

Website Content - Important For Your Website by Guido Nussbaum

As with any commercial venture, the nature of the game is to make money. Websites are no different and there are many ways to generate income from your online presence. Unless you are a well known and well established retail merchant, you will need to find a way to have users come to your website and (hopefully) purchase something through your advertisements. Whether you have your own product, utilize affiliate marketing or furnish pay per click advertisements, you need some bait to draw your potential customers to your site.

The adage "Content is King" is very true on the world wide web. Without articles and information to present to people searching the web for things that interest them, they would simply move on to the next site. There are several ways in which you can fill your website with information to hold your user's attention.

The first option many newcomers take is to write their own content or hire someone to ghostwrite the information for them. This will work well if you are articulate and can present your information in an easily understood form. If you are hiring someone to write the information for you, the cost of putting together a decent sized website can stretch a new webmaster's budget.

Another way to fill your pages with information is by using article directories. These websites are designed as repositories of articles on a multitude of subjects that you can pick and choose as you will to put on your own website. The advantages to using article directories is that you can quickly add content to your site that will be of interest to your viewers. The downside to using article directories is that for one, you cannot change the articles at all. These articles are provided as a service and either the author or the directory site retains the copyright.

Directory articles are provided free, but have hyperlinks to the author's own websites imbedded in the byline information at the bottom of the article. This provides the person who furnished the article an extra back link to their site which aids them in increasing their rating with the search engines.

A third option lies somewhere in between these two choices. A growing number of web companies offer article packs grouped into specific niche interests. These collections of articles are sold with "Private Label Rights". This means you can do whatever you want with them. You may put them on your site and attach your own byline. You can resell them to others and most importantly, you are permitted to edit and modify them to include your own unique details and information. This is the preferred method of utilizing these private label articles.

Most of the major search engines will discover and assign a lower ranking to webpages that have duplicate copy on them. In order to work your website toward the first pages of a search engine result you will need among other things, to keep your content as unique as possible. A packet of private label articles will generally cost less than if you had to hire someone to produce your content for you. The simple task of modifying the articles for your website can give you the satisfaction of being a part of your site's development. With just a little effort you can take the basic articles you bought this way and turn them truly into your own creation.

A new and unique program has just launched and you can be part of it. We provide you with lots of free content at the PLR Niches

http://www.plr-niches.com

Article Source: High Quality RSS Feeds and Articles on 350+ Topics

Know Your Visitors Through Website Traffic Analysis by Don Resh

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don't understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let's start by examining the most basic data - the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website's activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as "hits" and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it's time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor - meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase - the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed - or should I say misdirected - to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor's needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.

Don Resh is CEO of WebForce, Inc. A more detailed bio is available at:

WebForceSolutions
BizBuildSoftware
TurboMaxSoftware

Article Source: High Quality RSS Feeds and Articles on 350+ Topics

Using Blogs and Forums for Free Traffic

by Pj Germain

For every subject that you can possibly imagine and probably a few that you would most likely never want to imagine, there are people gathered on the Internet on blog and forum sites who are discussing it... at great length.

You can bet that no matter what the topic of your website or what product or service that you are selling that somewhere (and probably a lot of somewheres) people are discussing it right now as we speak on blogs and forums on the Internet.

Whatever your product or service is, there is a specific group of people who are the most likely to buy it. These are the ones who are gathered on blogs and forums discussing a topic for which your product or service is an answer to their problem. I use the word "problem" rather loosely here. "Problem" covers anything that a person wants but doesn't have... whether that thing is a new pair of jeans, a cure for cancer or anything in between. Problems are simply things that people want but don't have...and your product is obviously one of those things...at least for some of them. Now, your mission is to find these people.

Go to your favorite search engine and in the search box type in your key words followed by the word: forums. Hit search. You will be amazed at the number of forums on which your potential customers are discussing the topic that you are most interested in and the one where your product can actually be of service.

Repeat the search using the word: blogs behind your key words. You will likely get just as many hits using that term.

Now out of these two searches that you have done, choose the top 4 or 5 sites of each search that come up in the results. Visit these sites and determine if they are in fact discussing the topic that your product relates to. Choose three or four of the most active forums or blogs. Active, meaning those who have had the most posts made to them in the last 24 hour period or who have the largest number of members listed. Join the sites.

Remember that posting to blogs and forums is a time consuming task. It is an important task and it is a task that will help to drive traffic to your website but, I assure you, it IS time consuming. For each and every blog and forum site that you join, you will need to post 3 to 5 times each week and each post will consist of at least 300 words, probably more.

This is important! Do NOT start out posting blatant advertisements for your product or for your website. Think of each blog and forum as a neighborhood that you have just moved into. The people on each site will most likely know one another well and you will be the new kid on the block, so act like it.

Posting advertisements for your product or for your website is just rude. They will likely be removed by the blog or forum administrator as will you be removed from the membership list. Advertisements are generally banned from all blog and forum sites.

What you can and should do is include your website address in your signature tag. That is not considered an advertisement. It is simply a part of your identity and is viewed as such by the administrators as well as the members of blogs and forums.

You are going to have to go slow here. Introduce yourself to the group. Take your time to get to know each of the members who are the most active and who exert the most influence within the group.

Remember that your posts need to be thoughtful, considerate and helpful to other members and must never EVER appear to be advertisements for your website or for your products. You can suggest your products as solutions for problems within your posts but they must not look like advertisements. They must appear to be of the friend-helping-a-friend variety.

You may be tempted to use articles that you have written as blog or forum posts and sort of get more bang for your buck so to speak...don't. Articles and blog or forum posts are two different animals...and they are not interchangeable. The other reason for never using an article as a blog or forum posts is that search engine spiders may well identify one or the other as duplicate content. Duplicate content is NOT a good thing. Just don't do it.

Never include links to your website within the body of your posts to blogs and forums. This can be construed as advertising and it can get you tossed out on your ear. You must be satisfied with the link to your website that will appear just below you name in your signature tag at the end of each post.

You can safely rely on the human trait of curiosity to insure that the members of the blogs and forums will click on the link to your website in your signature tag. Most people come with a healthy and built-in supply of curiosity. They will not be able to resist clicking on the link below you name at least once.

If they find something that will provide them with an answer to a problem while they are visiting your website out of curiosity, they will return time and again.

We haven't discussed your website content and we don't have time to now but let me tell you that content really is king when you are talking about website traffic. You must not use articles that you have submitted to article banks and you must not use your blog or forum posts as content for your website. Be sure, however, that your website is loaded with a lot of good and relevant content.

Posting to blogs and forums who's topics relate to the topic of your website or to your product or service is an excellent way to create website traffic and do it for free.

Pj Germain
Affiliate-Success.Org - The Last Membership You'll ever need!

Article Source: High Quality RSS Feeds and Articles on 350+ Topics