Article Marketing is a Blog Promotion MUST

To continue on with the blog promotion theme, another highly effective way of redirecting traffic to your blog is through article marketing. I mentioned article marketing in the Blogging in Action book, but I wanted to call attention to it again because it’s a technique that I strongly recommend you utilize in your promotion efforts.

Short of purchasing links, article marketing has the potential to build more valuable backlinks than any other promotion method. I’ve been able to generate over 100 NATURAL backlinks in six months through the use of article marketing. These links “drip” in, giving them a very organic and valuable pattern.

To give article marketing the breathing room it deserves, I’m going to devote a few tips to it, covering strategies for article marketing, the directories to target, how to syndicate your content onto relevant blogs, and more.

For today, I just want to touch on a technique I use to make article marketing more effective.

Remember, from your resource box, you get a backlink from the article directory itself, and you get a backlink from each web site or blog that uses your article. But you can make those links even more powerful by targeting a subset of your articles as the keystone articles. You do this by posting your main keyword article first, deep-linked to your blog. Your supporting articles are posted later, pointing to your original articles and to your blog. This builds the PageRank of your keystone articles which in turn builds your blog’s PageRank.

Simple, clever, and almost no one does it! We’ll discuss this technique and a few other clever ways to build lots of traffic through articles in the coming days.

10 Sure-fire Ways to Redirect Traffic to your Blog

Okay, today we’re back to business and we’re going to talk about what might be your best friend or your worst enemy: traffic! I’m going to briefly discuss several ways that you can redirect traffic
to your blog, and we’ll review each of these ways in more detail in future tips.

Before we start, I want to remind you of an important concept related to traffic: you don’t push traffic, you don’t drive traffic, you don’t pull traffic — you redirect it. You can’t force it to go where you want — you find the source and you alter its path so that it meanders to your destination.

SEED YOUR BLOG PROPERLY: Traffic starts with content, so the best thing that you can do to redirect and KEEP traffic is provide your readers with exceptional content.

POST NEARLY EVERY DAY: You must post frequently if you want to create a six-figure blog. After six months, you’ll begin to notice declines in your levels of traffic that correlate directly to pauses in your posting frequency. As a side benefit, if you post frequently and update your XML sitemap after every post, you’ll soon see Google visiting your site within 1 hour of any updates you make. It really CAN be that simple.

USE TRACKBACKS: if you’re using Wordpress, this is handled automatically for you. If you’re not, make sure that you add a trackback for each article you reference. Also, make sure that you’re writing posts that are candidates for trackbacks — not every post, of course, but at least once a week.

USE THE BLOG LOVE FINDER: use the Blog Love commenting tool to leave comments on popular blogs. While there, if it’s highly relevant, mention a few direct links to your blog posts. It’s a legitimate way to earn both traffic and search rankings, provided you stay on topic and don’t spam. You can also use Comment Kahuna, which is free software, to help you find good blogs to comment on. Just make sure that your posts are on-topic and helpful!

BEST: Use an aged domain; GOOD: Use your own domain. You really must use your own domain name. It is a highly effective way to begin future-proofing your blog. You should also be using a quality platform like Wordpress. This is not to disparage other platforms, but Wordpress just happens to offer better features and performance, and will be around for the long haul.

Ideally, your own domain is also an aged domain; i.e. your domain has been registered for several years. I have some anecdotal evidence that shows that Google lets blogs out of the sandbox faster and backlinks are counted more quickly when using an aged domain.

USE YAHOO! ANSWERS: for each of your anchor posts, search Yahoo! Answers for related keywords. An easy way to do this is to analyze each post with a keyword analysis tool (you ARE using one by now, aren’t you?). When you find a question related to your post, answer the question and provide a link back to your post.

Hint: we offer a book, video, and audio course on Yahoo! Answers to owners of the Blogging in Action program.

ANNOUNCE YOUR BLOG WITH A PRESS RELEASE: the best free PR services are i-newswire and openPR. Be sure to read up on the format of a proper press release before submitting one!

WRITE FOR BEGINNERS: whatever your niche, be sure to include posts for newcomers to the niche, and use your keyword analysis tool to make sure that you’re serving all new readers, e.g. “Your-niche
101,” “Your-niche newbie,” “Your-niche beginner guide,” etc. Beginners make up the majority of readers and are hungry for your information. They are the most likely to become long-term subscribers.

BLATANT RSS FEED ICON: make your RSS feed icon big and bold so that it absolutely, positively cannot be missed. End each post with words similar to “for more blah blah, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed.” Sometimes that’s all it takes.

USE KEYWORD RESEARCH to effectively target your blog posts. Yes, keywords are THAT important. You should use keyword tools to help determine your niche, to help determine your content, to help
determine your blog post titles, and to determine the keywords that must appear within each post. Read more about the advantages of keywords.

Niches: The Keys to the Vault

Several days ago we talked a little bit about Micro Niche Finder, the cool tool that let’s you find the highest converting traffic for the least amount of money. But I forgot to mention the movies.

Guess I should have, since they answer many of the questions I’ve received.

Q. How does Micro Niche Finder locate the best keyword phrases for me?

A. When you type in a search term, Micro Niche Finder is going to find all of the related terms and display those, along with the number of times they’re searched for, and the number of sites that appear in the results pages for those terms.

Look for the video titled “Profit Stream #1, Create Simple Little One Page Articles to Promote Affiliate Products that Pay You Commissions.”

Q. How does Micro Niche Finder create AdSense pages for me?

A. Amazingly, with very little work on your part! Look for the video titled “Profit Stream #2, Create AdSense Content Pages that Pay You Residual Ad Revenue.”

You’ll be blown away by what you see. Imagine if you had a few hundred of these pages up, paying you month after month. THAT’S exactly what we’re trying to accomplish in this group. I’m about halfway there, with still a lot of work left to go.

Bottom line, regardless of how you’re making money online, with Micro Niche Finder you’ll have access to the exact information you need to bring highly targeted traffic to your site(s) at the lowest possible cost.

Plus, with Micro Niche Finder you can add numerous additional income streams to your money-making arsenal.

You already know why finding niches is important — you’re looking for topics that have high search traffic with low competition, allowing you to swoop in an dominate the search rankings. When all is said and done, it really boils down to . . . money.

Popular keyword phrases with little competition are sooooo easy to make money with!

Check out the videos that show Micro Niche Finder in action and watch what it can do for you, your traffic, your conversion rates, and your wallet.

Here are a few of the specifics to wrap your head around:

• Discover numerous super-profitable niche markets that marketers are overlooking.
• Find the most profitable affiliate programs for your niche. (I love this one — excellent complement to Hyper VRE)
• Easily find related keywords that have a higher profit potential than your initial keyword phrase.
• Create articles to promote affiliate programs for more income.
• Create Adsense content pages, eBay feeder pages, and Squidoo lenses for more income.
• Create private label rights packages for niches, and sell the rights to other marketers. This, by the way, is a great model that you can capitalize on in almost any market. Find a trend, and rather than attacking that trend, provide support or a framework for the people who are attacking that trend. It works!

If you’re mining for gold, you can settle for a pick, shovel, and a pan. Or you can get a machine that breaks up the rock for you, sorts it, and hands you the gold. They both work. One will give you specks of gold. The other will find you entire veins of gold.

Micro Niche Finder is that gold mining machine.

All right, that was cheesy. But you see my point. These are the kids of things that separate those of us who can earn a living with auto-pilot income, and those who only wish that they could.

Every Profitable Site Does This - Do You?

Before moving on again, I wanted to address niches one more time, simply because they and keyword analysis should form the core of your targeting strategy.

That means that in order to be successful:

• You must choose the right niche
• You must know how much search traffic and competition there is for a niche
• You must PRECISELY target the keywords to use to optimize your sites

Put it this way: if you choose the right niche, and then follow my traffic plan, you WILL profit. If you choose the wrong niche, you could spend hundreds of hours in promotion and never make more than
a few dollars.

You MUST choose the right niche. You MUST choose the right keywords.

In the keyword membership group, we talk about keyword topics in depth, and show you many different ways you can use them in your long-term blogs and your auto-pilot sites — or with no sites at all!

Divert and Convert

Every single site on the Internet that makes money does two things well . . .

They divert and they convert.

First, they divert traffic from one location to another. The first location could be almost anywhere, the second location is to the property making the money.

Second, they convert that diverted traffic into profit. Maybe it’s by selling products, selling clicks, or creating leads.

Doesn’t matter. The point is, step two isn’t that hard. Step one can be a freaking killer!

Suppose you want to make money generating leads for credit card companies. Discover, for example, pays $40 for every new card member you send their way. Sounds good, until you do a Google search for “credit card” and realize there are 56 MILLION sites in the results.

Ugghhh.

Kind of hard to compete, wouldn’t you say?

But Discover gives a 5% cashback bonus on gas purchases. And when you do a search for “credit card gas rewards” you get 56 results. Much better. Now you can not only compete, you can make money.

No matter what kind of marketing you do, it stands to reason that if you target overlooked, under-the-radar keyword phrases, you’ll divert more traffic and convert more of that traffic into profits.

Finding the Right Niches

So, how do you FIND these overlooked, under-the-radar keyword phrases?

Keyword analysis, yes. And by using a niche finder. Niche finders help you uncover untapped niche markets and completely dominate them in Google. You can find new keywords related to your base keyword that are more profitable than the keywords you’re using now.

You can rank higher in the search engines, thus bringing in more traffic. The traffic you get will be more TARGETED, thus converting at a higher rate. And if you use Google Adwords, you will pay LESS for more highly targeted and better converting traffic!

I used a niche finder to scout my latest auto-pilot site, and I’m the ONLY AdWords advertiser for it! I’m getting three-cent clicks on keywords that are converting like mad. Thank you Micro Niche Finder!

Attract a Flood of New Readers with Linkbait

Boy, do I love linkbait. A good linkbait post could drive more traffic to your blog in one day than you’ve had in the previous month. The best part about linkbait is its viral nature. For months after, you’ll find backlinks popping up here and there, gaining you more traffic and improving your search rankings in the process.

LINKBAIT IS TRAFFIC GOLD!

Linkbait: A Rough Definition

It sounds evil, doesn’t it? It sounds as if you’re setting a trap for your unsuspecting readers to fall into, ensnaring them within your blog. In reality, the practice of linkbaiting has morphed so much that today’s linkbait bears little resemblance to the linkbait of two years ago.

Linkbait is a unique, useful, and often provocative blog post that people respond to by linking to it and sharing with others. Linkbait targets link-friendly audiences, as its goals include traffic, visibility, branding, and backlinks.

Simple, right? Linkbait is nothing more than a good blog post that people want to link to, but it’s so very effective because it combines the practices of viral marketing with a popular topic or meme.

Linkbait: What it Isn’t

Linkbait is not the traffic silver bullet. It has limitations. Linkbait is terrible for converting browsers into long-term subscribers, it doesn’t work well for ad click-throughs, and is inappropriate for an emotionally sensitive topic (controversial is okay, however). Linkbait rarely makes much money or even pays for the direct traffic bandwidth, but you write linkbait for its indirect value. And therein lies the gold.

• Linkbait helps you gain mindshare and brand recognition.
• Linkbait generates powerful backlinks from web properties of authority.
• Linkbait can have a dramatic effect on your search rankings.
• Linkbait is great for capturing the attention of influencers.

Building a network of influencers is a major theme in the social media section of “Blogging in Action” because it is such a valuable concept. When you build a network of influencers, you can write your own ticket. It’s like being able to turn on a firehose whenever you want to drive traffic to your blog, and its value can’t be underestimated. The step-by-step plan I outline in the book will help you build this network.

How Linkbait Builds Traffic

Once a unique or trendy post is written about somewhere, it gets picked up and dragged across the web by citizens of numerous online communities. Social tagging and popularity ranking sites help give the post visibility to hundreds of content creators, who then happily link to you.

Everyone wants to be part of the “in” crowd, especially in the online world where people are trying to carve names for themselves. This attitude encourages linking — no one wants to be left behind, and everyone wants to appear like a leader, so your linkbait spreads widely and quickly like a virus.

Above I mentioned that the power of linkbait is in the indirect traffic. Here’s more of what I mean by that, described purely from the traffic perspective:

1) When your linkbait is launched, you get the immediate direct traffic spike.

2) Linkbait attracts a long tail of links. The long tail is the concept that our search traffic is shifting from a small number of keywords with huge traffic, to a massive number of niches with less traffic. It represents the sophistication of searchers and the specialization of the web.

3) Long tail links generate residual traffic, directly from those links.

4) Search engine rankings improve, driving more search traffic.

5) Steps 3 and 4 repeat indefinitely.

I refer to this phenomenon as the traffic boomerang.

5 Characteristics of Good Linkbait

1) Linkbait is remarkable. Your content needs to be amazing. Choose topics that other people wouldn’t like to touch — maybe it’s too touchy, little formal research exists, or it would require too much time to address — and do it wisely. If you are making a claim or a counter-claim, be sure you can back it up to avoid any bait backfires.

2) Linkbait is original. You must tackle something new, or tackle something old from a new perspective or it will not attract eyeballs and will never spread.

3) Linkbait is trendy. The “in” crowd likes to spread “in” ideas. Browse Digg, del.icio.us, and Twitter to see what’s getting a lot of press.

4) Linkbait is useful. The more useful your linkbait, the better your chances for keeping a percentage of the direct traffic, so be curious and information-possessed. Get as much information as you can.

5) Linkbait is long tail. Be laser focused. The more specialized your topic, the better you’ll do.

Add Linkbait to Your Arsenal

Whatever your blog’s focus, whatever your audience, whatever your purpose — write linkbait. It works. It requires an investment of time in writing the post and building your network of influencers, but pound-for-pound, you won’t find a better way to open the traffic floodgates than to write linkbait that connects with readers and spreads like a virus.

But don’t get carried away. All of your posts can’t and shouldn’t be linkbait. Stick with the posting schedule recommended in Blogging in Action and add a good piece of linkbait every month — AFTER you build your network of influencers. Your ideas won’t spread without them!

We’ll discuss linkbait in more detail at a later date, especially to give you some ideas on how to create the “hook” in a linkbait post. There are several tested formulas that I’ve found to work, and I’ll share those with you.

Essential Blogger Task: Research your Keywords

One of the first things that I tell anyone who is blogging — regardless of whether they are brand new or an experienced veteran — is that they MUST pay attention to the keywords they are focusing their content around. And if they aren’t focusing their content around a carefully selected group of keywords, they had better start doing it NOW.

For the same reasons that choosing an effective niche is so profitable, so is keyword selection. In fact, using keyword research to help select your niche is the best strategy for starting a new blog. Please do it. You will thank me later!

Ignore keywords at your peril. Weeks and months of hard work can be quietly undermined by poor keyword selection. Get it done right!

I use keyword research for these reasons:

• It enables me to focus my blog’s content tightly on a niche
• It enables me to gaze into a crystal ball and predict what story titles will attract the most new readers
• It enables me to find out how much competition I have in a niche
• It helps me bring in highly qualified traffic
• It allows me to see how much search traffic there is for a niche
• It saves me tons of time I would otherwise waste on research or deadbeat keywords

All of which lead to more relevant content, which is the cornerstone of highly profitable contextual advertising. Profitability isn’t everything, but we all have to eat!

Keywords are so important that I address keyword topics exclusively in another member group. To learn more about keyword research or to join this group, visit the keyword research group page. I am giving away two free e-books, “AdSense Arbitrage” and “AdWords Made Easy,” for new members of this group. I hope you’ll join us because we have plenty of great tips to share!

How to Get Your Blog Indexed in One Day

If you’re up for it, I thought we could discuss something fun today. This is one of my favorite white hat tips for new blogs, and why more people haven’t thought to use it is beyond me. Be that as it may, this is a great way for you to get your blog listed in Google’s search index in under a day.

Really, I’m not kidding! One day is all it takes to get listed in Google’s index if you use their bots to your advantage. This works consistently in most niches where there is already some high-quality competition. So let’s get out hands dirty.

The Traditional Method

To show up in the search results pages, your blog must be listed in the search index. Makes sense, yes? To get listed in the search index, you would traditionally go to a search engine’s ‘Add URL’ page, enter some brief information about your blog, and then wait for the spiders to visit your site.

Spiders are just bots that scour the web, moving from link to link trying to build up a listing of all of the content out there. The problem is, these spiders are busy, and your new blog isn’t on the top of their priority list, so it could be several weeks before they come knocking on your door.

With my technique, we’re going to convince these spiders that your new blog is their priority, because your blog serves their readers.

Theory Behind the Technique

Search spiders are so proficient these days that it seems silly to wait until THEY have a free moment to visit your blog, when you can just insert your blog into their high-priority work queue.

So we need to make sure that they have a clear path to your blog from another site in their index that is already popular and is being updated. If they have that clear path to you, they will want to index your blog as quickly as possible because the perceived value of your blog is related to the blog where they found your link.

So all you need is a backlink from a blog that is frequently updated. That’s it! And the easiest way to get a link on a blog is through the comments. Now, I’m not talking about spam or a ridiculous “blast your ad” approach. I’m talking about placing a highly relevant, helpful link on a popular blog that the spiders will want to follow.

The Technique Explained

So here’s how we’re going to proceed:

1) Your blog should already be seeded with content, and preferably you have a few days’ worth of additional posts at the ready for the next few days.

2) Find one of your compelling anchor posts, and search Google for a complementary blog post that would fit well with your post. For example, if your post is on rehabilitating a torn meniscus, you might search for a running blog that has a blog post discussing common injuries. Just make sure that your comment and post will add value to the readers of that blog. You are not spamming them, but participating in the conversation and offering them something of value. In short, you are being a good blog citizen.

3) Once you find a blog post, you’ll need to view the source of the page to see if the blog uses the “nofollow” attribute in comment links. Quite a few popular platforms, including Blogger and WordPress, use nofollow by default. If you remember from the “Blogging Revealed” e-book, nofollow tells Google not to follow a link to its source, and is commonly used to prevent a blog from “leaking” Page Rank.

4) If you find nofollow, move on. Otherwise, post your comment on this blog, pointing back to your top-level domain name in the name field and pointing to your individual blog post in the comments field.

When Google comes to this blog to index its new content, your link will be picked up by the spider as a related reference, earning you quick access into the search rankings!

5) On the morning after you perform this, query Google for your domain name. If you show up in their results anywhere, your blog has been indexed. Congratulations!

But We Can Make it Easier

You’ve already seen the downside to this approach: it can take some time to find a relevant blog where you can place a good comment. The hardest part is finding a blog that permits its links to be
followed, and this is absolutely critical to this technique’s success.

What would make this easier is if we could just search Google and let them tell us which blogs in its results pages allow us to post comments that will be followed by the search index spiders. And that is exactly the task that the Blog Love Finder performs for you. You can use this tool to:

• Keyword search the top 100 to 500 Google results, and return a list of blogs that do not use the nofollow attribute
• Find the Alexa rankings (to see how popular a blog is) for each blog returned
• Keep track of your comment campaign by indicating which blogs you’ve already commented on

It’s a very simple tool and it’s free for you as a member of this group. Every good blogger should have a healthy toolkit and I try to keep all owners of the Blogging in Action book very well-stocked with tools of this nature. They really can make your life simpler and your blog better — a winning combination. Download the Blog Love Finder here.

Download the file, extract its contents to your PC, and then run the installer, following the prompts. Once it’s installed, enter your Google search keywords in the first field and wait for the results. It’s guaranteed virus-free, spyware-free, and easy to use. For more information on how to use it and to see it in action, see this video tutorial I’ve created for your use.

If you could, I’d really like to hear from you. When it’s time to submit your blog to the engines, shoot me a quick note to let me know how quickly you got your blog included in Google’s index. So far we seem to be hovering around one day.

For more great tools and techniques, be sure to download the full Blogging in Action program.

« Previous Page