While it’s often less costly, this same scenario in the online business world happens far too often. Web developers optimize tirelessly to build high traffic volume only to find their bounce rates soaring. If you’re 100% convinced that people are genuinely interested in your product or service (they should be if you’re getting that much traffic), the hard part is over. Making the most of your traffic is not difficult, but it does take a bit of patience and a whole lot of testing.

Give the Readers What They Want

Let’s get something out of the way first: in this post-panda world, spamming still kind of works, and that’s part of the problem. Google has yet to really nail down a lot of the keyword stuffing and content mills that they targeted with Panda, and some web developers are still using the same old SEO content tricks to build traffic. Sure, things are looking much better. When’s the last time you saw a webpage on the front of Google’s SERPs that had nothing but a single keyword repeated over and over again? But the new world of Internet marketing still has the same basic principle it’s always had – create value.

Valuable content (not just words, but images, videos, widgets, etc.) creates trust, which in turn inspires conversions and begins to build a brand. It’s easy to say that web developers need to be focusing on valuable content more than SEO content. But what is valuable content, really? Google’s Amit Singhal published a blog post on May 6th, 2011 discussing what webmasters should be doing to create a high quality site. Among his most important points were:

• Content should feel like it was written by an expert or an enthusiast who knows the topic inside and out.
• Content should be free of errors (grammatical and factual) and make sense stylistically.
• All website content has to be original (Google is also expecting original research, not the same studies cited over and over again).
• A website as a whole should offer substantially more value than its competition.
• Could the content be published in a print magazine or book?

Once you have created unique and valuable content packed full of information, remember that bad monetization can do more harm than good. Website visitors are simply turned off by websites that are loaded with advertisements. If your website looks like it was built purely to get sales, your traffic will be less likely to trust you. So, instead of aggressively putting ads on every page of your site, chose the ads that make the most sense in context of the page.

Choosing the Right Products

Far too many web developers tend to grasp at advertisers. This is especially true with blog owners that simply sell their ad space to the highest bidder (especially with text links). But ask yourself one simple question – does the ad I’m putting in front of the reader make sense?

You would probably be surprised to walk into your local McDonald’s to buy a cheeseburger, only to find out that this particular location specializes only in fine Turkish rugs at discount prices. Why should this be any different online? If you have a page on your website that discusses the advantages of Clear 4G internet, how well do you think an ad for dog food is going to do? Furthermore, aim to keep advertisements in line with your content itself. Insert ads within the content where they make sense, not just in the sidebar. But if your ads are working just fine in the sidebar, don’t just move them right away. We’ll get to split testing next.

If you’re in a niche that has some tough sell products, or you’re having trouble finding the right product to fit your content, you have a few options.

Split Testing and CTAs

Split testing is the process of literally splitting different advertising techniques onto different pages and checking the click rates after a testing period. The length of the testing period depends on the amount of traffic you get on those pages. With a few hundred visitors a day, you’ll have enough data in a few days. Sites with less traffic might take a week or two. Google offers a great website optimizer for split testing.

Another good testing product is the CrazyEgg CTA heatmap. This tool shows you where your visitors are clicking on your web page. I’ve used this tool many times to test my own sites. One interesting thing I found was the amount of clicks I got on the header “About Us” link. You have no idea how tempting it was to redirect that link to an affiliate site, by the way… but something tells me that wouldn’t have turned out very well for me in the end. It’s not a free tool, but the basic plan doesn’t cost any more than your average hosting plan.

Open Up to Your Readers

It doesn’t hurt to ask your audience what they would like to see. If you’ve built a trusting relationship with your audience, they probably won’t mind if you ask them what products and services they would buy on your site. It’s certainly better to ask them than to suddenly see your inbox fill up with complaints about your new pop-ups and peel-aways that you thought they would love.

Most website visitors understand that you can’t offer a quality product for free. More often than not, ads that ask readers to personally try a product tend to do much better than a random advertisement on your sidebar. Try using anchor text like “click here to test the product yourself” to engage your visitors. It’s a pretty good feeling being asked how you feel about a change to a website as a reader, and then seeing the change happen.

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• Government and Educational Blogs. It is well known that Google tends to favor links that link out from .gov and .edu websites. This means that any links that you can score from government, university, or k-12 school blogs will most likely make your blog commenting campaigns even more effective. It may be tough to find relevant blogs with a .gov or .edu extension but the power of these links will likely offset the fact that they aren’t relevant.
• Deep Linking with TypePad. Most people build links to their home page. However, best practice dictates that you have lots of links pointed to your interior pages (pages that are not your home page) as well. So how do you get these? Well some blogs will let you put in a URL that points to one of your interior pages (ex. http://www.yoursite.com/interior-page/). TypePad is one of the only blogging platforms that allows you to post these types of URLs in comments but fortunately, lots of people use both the TypePad website itself as well as installing in on their own domain. To find these types of blogs, type in something like this into Google: “[your key word here]” “blog” “typepad” – “comments off”. This will return results that have your keyword mentioned which also have the terms “blog” and “typepad” on the page or in the URLs while also removing any websites that have “comments off” so that you don’t have to filter through as many blogs to find good ones to post on. This is a fabulous way to get interior links!
• Ask Questions. As we mentioned in the last post, you should be submitting comments that aren’t spammy. You should be adding comments that actually add value to the blog site and to the blog post. One of the best ways to do this is by asking questions within your comments. Often times on blogs, there is a check box that you can click which will cause the blog site to automatically send you an email whenever someone responds to your comment. If you are finding blogs relevant to your niche, this is a great way to start a conversation which can result in multiple links to your site and could even create a relationship with other readers or with the blog owner. These relationships can result in other link building opportunities such as getting placed on others’ blog rolls or working on guest posting arrangements.
• Very Your Input in the “Name” Field. You don’t want every single link coming to your website to have the exact same anchor text. To avoid this, you should vary the words that you type into the name field. Here are a few examples
  • Doug @ Best Pet Supplies
  • Doug – Pet Supplies Store
  • Doug Brown ~ Pet Supplies

  I recommend coming up with 5 to 10 of these names that include the keyword terms that you want to get ranked for and then rotating them.

• Save Time By Copying and Pasting. It may seem simple but if you create a document with your 5-10 lines that you want to use in the Name field and the URLs of your website and of the interior pages you want to point links at, you can just copy and paste the text into the appropriate fields. It’ll make the process faster and you’ll get more links!

And there you have it! A few of my best tips for making blog commenting an efficient and effective process. Stay tuned for the next installation of the Link Building 101 series.

- Marketer Matt – King of the Internet

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So how can blogs help you get your site ranked higher in Google? Well, most blogs allow people to comment on their blogs. A comment is just that, a comment. They generally appear below a blog post and give the readers of the blog an opportunity to voice their thoughts and opinions. And many blogs automatically create a link that links back to the website or blog of the one who is commenting (that means you!) You just write up your comment on the blog, punch in your name and website URL and submit!

Here are a few quick guidelines that you should keep in mind when commenting on blogs.

1. Make sure the blog links out. Not every blog allows readers to comment. Of the ones that do allow comments, not all of them allow you to enter your website or blog to get a link. Before you bother reading a whole blog post, scroll to the bottom of the post to make sure that the blog allows comments and that it includes a field for you to enter in your URL. If not, don’t waste your time.
2. Comment on blogs that are relevant to your niche. It is reported that Google uses relevancy as a factor in its algorithm. Simply put, if your website is about dog training, links from dog training blogs would probably be the most relevant links to get followed by other dog related blogs. Non-relevant links are still good to get of course, and you should work to get some of these linking to you as well. Just keep the 80/20 rule in mind and get most of your links from blogs related to your niche.
3. Actually write a comment. Yes, you may get away with a comment that says, “great post!” or “good information, I like much” but would you want those types of comments on your blog? Didn’t think so. When you are commenting on blogs it’s best to at least skim the blog post you will be commenting on. Once you are finished skimming, write a brief 2-3 sentence comment that praises the blog. Many blogs are moderated so writing non-spammy comments will keep your comments from getting deleted as often. Also, you may even spark a conversation on the blog that could results to more traffic to your site, partnerships with bloggers, or other great benefits.
4. Put your keywords in the “Name” field. While some people frown on this, it still works. As we’ve learned already, anchor text is important when building links to your site. So when you type in your name you may want to try something like: Doug @ [your non-spammy sounding keywords or your website/company name]. Doug @ Best Pet Supplies sounds fine and will make sense if you are posting on some type of pet related site. Doug – Bird Feeder Cat Food is a little more obvious and makes a blog look spammy which bloggers (including me) don’t really care for.

With these brief tips you should be able to create hoards of links linking back to your site from other relevant sites with relevant anchor text! What more could you ask for in a link? I recommend taking 10-20 minutes a day and getting 5-10 links from blog comments. Over the course of a year you’ll have upwards of 1500 links or more from blog commenting alone!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Blog Commenting in this series on Link Building!

- Marketer Matt – King of the Internet

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Social bookmarking is essentially the same things as bookmarking web pages using your browser with a few exceptions. Social bookmarking sites allow you to save your favorite bookmarked web pages online so that you can access them from anywhere. They are called “social” bookmarking sites because they also allow you to share the web pages you’ve uploaded with your friends or followers.

Okay that’s great, but how do they help you? Well, because these bookmarking sites are online rather than just on your internet browser, they provide links back to your website! Each site is slightly different but here’s a quick list of a few sites to get you started: Diigo, Reddit, Mixx, JumpTags and Delicious. You can find a more comprehensive list here: 125 Social Bookmarking Sites

To start getting your links from these sites simply sign up for their free accounts and start bookmarking your web pages! When prompted, enter in tags for your various bookmarks to help other people find your information. The more other people who bookmark your website, the more links you’ll get so don’t skip this step! (But don’t over-tag your pages either!)

Note: These websites were NOT created for you to just bookmark your own stuff. They are are meant to be places where users share interesting, fun, and valuable information with each other. Because of this, you should seriously consider bookmarking lots of other web pages in addition to your own. The best practice is to bookmark other valuable web pages that are along the same topic or theme of your own web pages so you aren’t just being a self-promoter. This also has the added benefit of increasing the relevancy of the page your link is on which is more of a Link building 200 concept.

Bookmarking your web pages is an easy way to generate links to your website. It is generally a great idea to bookmark every new blog post you make or any other new content that you make on your website. Not only will this get you a few links, it will also help the search engines to quickly find and index your website!

As you’ll quickly find out, bookmarking each page that you have on each of dozens of social bookmarking sites is very tedious and gets old fast. To help you move through the process more quickly, consider using a website like Social Marker to help automate the process.

Stay tuned for Part 3 on Blog Commenting!

- Marketer Matt – King of the Internet

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The million dollar question for many businesses today is the question, “How do I get my site to show up on Google?” The simple answer is to first optimize your website and secondly to build links to it. If you haven’t done so yet read Shane’s post on SEO 101, go do that first! His post will show you the major adjustments that you need to make on your website itself to help boost your rankings in Google and the other search engines. Often times the biggest increases to your rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages) will be gotten through doing on page SEO so do not skip this step!

Next to optimizing your website, the most important factor to increasing your rankings in the SERPs is the quantity and quality of other websites that link to yours. There are numerous ways to get other sites linking back to yours which is a process aptly named “link building” or “building back links”. This Link Building 101 series will cover the most basic ways that you can start building links back to your site starting today. Today we’ll start with directories.

Directories are websites whose job it is to link to other websites! This makes them a great starting place to get links from. Usually, all you need to do is just to submit your website to a directory and you’re done. Occasionally, you’ll have to verify your e-mail address so I recommend not using your primary e-mail address when you sign up so that you don’t have less junk coming into your e-mail inbox.

The Top Three Directories:

Some of the best directories include the Yahoo! Business directory, Best of the Web Directory, and the DMOZ directory. The first two cost about $300 to get a listing but the last one is free (however it can take months for your listing to show up) If you have the cash, these are worth investing in as they provide solid backlinks to your website that will help your rankings in the SERPs. You should take a little bit of extra time when submitting your website to these three directories to ensure that you have the best chance of getting a listing for your site.

Niche Directories:

You should also do a search for directories within your niche and submit your website to them as well. For example, if you are in the lawn care business, do a Google search for “lawn care directories” and submit your website to the sites that come up on the first page or two of results. This is a great place to start your link building because it gets you links from websites that are relevant to your niche which will help you climb the search engine rankings faster.

Paid Directories / Reciprocal Link Directories:

Other than the big directories that I mentioned earlier, I don’t submit any sites to directories that require me to pay for a listing or any directories that require a reciprocal link (a link on your website linking to the directory). If you come across directories that want money or a reciprocal link before you can get a link to your website, you’re probably best just moving on. For every directory trying to charge you money, there are another five that don’t so just move on.

I recommend that you get started link building TODAY by finding some good directories to submit your site to. Do a Google search for “top directories in [your niche name here]” or “[your niche] directories]” or even “Top online directories” to find directories that you can submit your site too.

As a final thought, please, please, please stay away from offers to submit your website to 100s or 1000s of directories. It’s tempting to try to shortcut the process but it’s rarely worth it and could actually hurt your rankings rather than help them!

Stay tuned for Part 2 on Social Bookmarking!

- Marketer Matt – King of the Internet

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How To Break The Top 500000

Really to be honest breaking the top 500000 is not as hard as it might seems. I am going to give you a 5 step way to get your site closer breaking the top 500000 in Alexa. This will start you on your way to getting closer to the harder mark of 200000.

Step One – Content Is King

The biggest way to get more people to your site is to make it bigger. Now I don’t mean go out and find the biggest image you can and put it on your site. I mean make more articles, more posts, more pages, and more places for people to interact. A great way to start this is to build a blog. Most people hear blog and think well am I going to have to post daily. NO, you could post one article a month and it would be good enough. The worst part about blogs is getting a blog that is hosted by another site. For instance Blogspot. Getting a Blogspot account is not a bad thing but it will not help your site much. You need a blog that is built into your website like WordPress.

Step Two – Sitemap Submission

What is a sitemap? It is a easy xml template of your site. It makes it easy for search engines to crawl your site. You can make one of these really simply by just going to Google and type in Free Sitemap Builder. Once you have your sitemap you will need to put it somewhere on your server. Most of the time it is in the root directory of your website. After that you can submit it to all different search engines and then they will know what is on your website.

Step Three – Meta Tags

Your meta information is not the easiest thing to do because you have to get creative and it takes time. But, if you just put up the mere basics, like title, keywords, and descriptions. Your site will start to grow rapidly. A really good place to start with meta tags is Search Engine Watch.

Step Four – Social Media

One of the easiest and fastest ways to get traffic to your site is with Social Media. Everyone knows that Social Networks are the big thing. I really only know a few people who don’t have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. The easiest way to get peopel to your site. Submit each page that you want people to find to StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Reddit, and many more. This is simple and takes but 30secs per submittion.

Step Five – Content Content Content

I know I mentioned this already and it is the number one way. But it is also the number 5 way because it is the best way to get people to your site. Really SEO, SEM, Submitting, and Social Media cant come close to a site that has a ton of content. If you don’t have content then you will not get many people.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If by chance you are in need of any web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me, or, you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are gaining popularity in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for individual/private clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

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Shane’s Opinions

I personally think that every person should have a blog or a place where they write about what they like. With this it should be a place that anyone can read and comment on. This is a great way to share your opinions about what you blog. This can create conversations that can lead to friendships and even job opportunities. Business owners don’t normally have a lot of time to read different sites but you will find that once they find a site they like. They will keep coming back. Let alone everyone should have there own blog. I feel that with everyone having a blog it will let them share everything they want with the world. If you are looking to get a blog or start a blog. There are a ton of different free sites out there that you can start blogging (blogspot, wordpress, and more). I think the best thing is to not only have a blog but have a website that houses your blog. This should be a personal site that is just about you. What I would recommend if you are in need of a website is to contact chosen. Chosen is a small company that looks to grow individuals and companies.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If by chance you are in need of any web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me or you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are growing in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

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However if you are looking to make more money and grow to a national level you need to do something bigger. There are some great ways to market yourself on a national or even a global level. Probably the best way is to build yourself a website. With a website you can reach out to everyone that has a computer. So you are looking at almost every household in the US and a lot in other countries.

Building A Website

Almost anyone can build a website. You could just ask your neighbor if they know anyone who builds a website. More times than not, they do, but very rarely can that person build you a professional one. But, if you are really serious about making yourself and your website known you need to find a professional. A company that I work for is Chosen. We are not just a business but we are a small business of experts. We do not charge high prices that you would get at a bigger company or even with a bigger name. Our prices are inexpensive, but our work is of high quality.

We also develop all our customer sites. So you are not getting something from someone halfway around the world. We pride ourselves in helping to build small to mid businesses not just with their website, but with business development altogether. We don’t just build you something and then walk away. We make sure that you are happy with what you get and periodically do checkups with our clients to see if there is anything that needs changing or updated.

Marketing Your Site

Once you have yourself a website you need to market it. Now some people wonder what this means and ask “isn’t getting a website marketing.” Well yes but if you don’t market your site then no one is going to see it. This is where SEO, SEM, sitemap building, PPC and other means of trafficking come into play. I will offer brief descriptions on each.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your site more visible by search engines. This is done with keywords, title tags, alt tags, heading, and other web elements. SEM or Search Engine Marketing is the process of marketing your site with the many different search engines. This takes place by letting these search engine know that you exist. Sitemap Building is the process of creating a sitemap for search engines. A sitemap is a easier and quicker way of showing search engines your site. So the faster they see your site the faster they bring people to your site. Probably the fastest way to build traffic to your site is with PPC or Pay Per Click campaigns. What these are, are the little ads that you see all over sites now. Most of the time they are Google Ads solicited through Google Adsense accounts. The process by you submitting your site with whatever company you are using. Most of the time Google. It also involves you select catchy keywords that best describes your site, and applying them to the account, and in time these words show up in engines, and lead visitors to your site. If someone clicks your ad, you pay for that click, but this can get expensive with the more keywords that you have or can be really cheap.

Probably the next most notable way of marketing your site is through Social Media network sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and others. There are many more ways to market your site and thus ensure it gets seen.

Summary

So if you are a company that would like to become a global company all you have to so is get on the web. Once you apply some of the above measures, talked about and you will see your sales climb. Who knows maybe they will climb enough that you can retire and have others run the business.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

Please check out Chosen. If by chance you are in need of any web design, web development, search engine optimization, editing, content creation or marketing done to one of your sites please feel free to contact me or Chosen. Chosen is a small, but growing national-based firm offering Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, Web Editing, and Web Marketing skills. We have done work for clients and companies, by preference, but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you. Please mention that you came from shanestrong.com.

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