FASTEST WAY TO BUILD TRAFFIC

Starting a new website is a lot of work. Trust me, I know. Writing
content can take a lot of time and energy but the most difficult
process of all is to actually build a regular audience.

We all want visitors streaming into the site from early on but
unfortunately, things don’t always unfold according to our expectations.

Traffic building can take a tremendous amount of effort but you

should know that whatever traffic building efforts you’ve done serves
as a foundation for future marketing or monetization plans.

When building traffic, you can learn from your personal experiences

and discern what’s works or what doesn’t. Every single visitor to your
website at this stage is likely to become a part of your regular
audience.

People are by far the most valuable assets you can accumulate.

3 Step Traffic Building Tactic for New Websites

I’m quite familiar with the process of building traffic for new

websites as I’ve recently launched quite a few of them myself. Having
experimented with a fairly large number of marketing tactics, I’ve
finally settled upon a formula which I’ve been using rather
consistently.

In my opinion, this is the fastest and most powerful way

to build a new website from the ground up. There are plenty of ways to
generate traffic but it’s important to develop a streamlined process
that gives you the maximum amount of returns for your efforts.

Ideally, you want a method that you not only get you some traffic

but links as well. Traffic can be converted in regular visitors and
links are absolutely necessary to tell Google or other search engines
that your new website exists or is important.

The following three steps are intended for new web sites but they can be just as effectively used for more established sites.

Step One: Set up a Bait.

Think of a bait as an attractive value proposition.

One that that appeals to your target audience and is unique enough to
stand out. A bait can also take the form of some incentive for the new
visitor and should be concurrently intriguing or tempting. The bait
should also represent your site in the best possible light.

Your bait should not be a one-off deal as you don’t want visitors

disappearing and not coming back. At the very least, you should promote some recurring behavior on their end. This can take the form of a feed or email subscription or an introduction to other products/content/webpages of your website.

Here are some examples of bait you can set up for your website:

• Well written and original article
• Contests or Awards
• On-site web tool or application
• An interview with a notable personality
• An industry-specific ranking list
• Free items and resources
• Free gifts, discount bundles or deals
• Widgets for a community

Step Two: Send traffic towards the bait.

After you’ve set up the bait, you’ll need to promote it extensively.

The aim here is to get as many people to view your bait as possible
through a variety of marketing methods. The ultimate purpose of this is to spread awareness of your website and achieve your specific goals.

Before you start to generate any traffic to your bait, you’ll need

to first decide what you want to gain from the traffic. Do you want to
build your email or subscriber list? Or are you primarily looking to
build links above everything else? You’ll need to optimize your website
so that the traffic you receive will help you achieve your goals.

Here are some ways and sources you can use to send traffic towards your bait:

• Social media websites (networking/voting/news community sites)
• Niche forums and bulletin boards
• Emails to bloggers or webmasters in your niche.
• Payperclick advertising for your website
• Purchasing ads on well-trafficked and relevant websites
• Submission of articles to article directories and industry journals/other blogs

Step Three: Build a Community and Repeat.

After you’ve sufficiently promoted your bait, allocate some time to
interact with your audience and produce follow-up content that fits
their expectations and needs.

Write specific articles or produce content that is similar to your bait. The goal here is to immediately build a community around your website. It doesn’t matter how small your community is at this initial stage.

Analyze how your audience interacts with your site and responds to
your bait. After a period of time, create a new piece of bait and try
to target new audiences through the two steps above.

In my opinion, the development ratio for a new blog should be a 30% focus on content with a 70% focus on marketing

and traffic growth. You can write your heart out and create a stunning
masterpiece but if no one is going to see it, it is virtually impotent.
You’re not making money nor building an readership.

Understanding the Value of Traffic for New Websites

Most sites have slow growth rates and some of them end up
languishing in the sewers of the internet, abandoned by their
exasperated owners. Know very clearly that a regular audience and web
traffic not only allows you to make money from your website/business
but motivates you to keep it alive.

Don’t underestimate the tangible pressure you feel when hundreds or

thousands of visitors expect to read a new blog post or see a new
website update. It makes it so very much harder to go bust and much
easier to succeed.

Original Articles by : DoshDosh

OPTIMIZING MAKING MONEY WITH ADSENSE 1

The aim with Optimizing your Adsense ads is to find your websites magic formula.

This "magic formula" will do two things:

1. It will generate the greatest responsiveness from your traffic - meaning your highest click through rate.

2. You will earn the maximum amount of revenue possible per click.

To increase your click through rate you will need to focus on your choice of ad format, ad color, and ad placement. You will also need to make sure that your Adsense ads are as relevant as they can be, as related ads inevitably generate more clicks than unrelated ads. The number of units per page and your use of adlinks will also effect your click through rate.

Ensuring that you are receiving the most that you possibly can per click is a little tricker and involves targeting higher paying adsense keywords through onpage search engine optimization tactics and the creation of supplemental content.

When you've achieved this optimum real revenue from Adsense comes from turning away from optimization and focusing on bringing more and more targeted traffic to your website to what will then be your optimized machine for converting visitors into Adsense money. The article - how to make real money with Adsense explores this in more depth.

1. Adsense Ad Format: Optimization

The trick with choosing the Ad Format that you are going to use is to actually choose it and not let your current website structure which you built before you decided to monetize your website with Adsense choose it for you.

This is what the average Adsense Publisher says to him or herself - "This is how my site is built - I can make that space available there and so I'll have to place Adsense there which means I'll have to use that ad format". This is not a choice and needless to say it will generally not convert aswell as rejigging your page layout so as to accommodate the ads that will perform best into it. What this also means is that placement is more important than format.

The basic Ad Format rule is that wider is better and Google gives a neat explanation of why this is so here. Note, wider doesn't mean width of the whole ad (otherwise we'd all be using leaderboards) but the width of an individual advertisement inside the ad block.

This means that the large rectangle - 336 x 280, the medium rectangle - 300 x 250 and the wide skyscraper 160 x 600, other things being equal all perform better.

In content sites I always try to use at least one large rectangle but remember that a webpage can often accommodate more than one ad unit.


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2. Adsense Ad Colors: Optimization

In line with my basic philosophy that integration is the key to Adsense success, I've always found that blending the ads by using the same colors that exist on your website works best.

This is often referred to as the three way match whereby:

1. The background color and the border of the ad matches the background color of the webpage.

2. The color of the link matches the color of the links on your webpage.

3. The color of the ad description (the ad text) and advertiser url matches your text color.

I generally only make three exceptions to this:

1. I make the actual ad link darker than the other links on the page but keep it in a similar color palette. For example, on this page I may use this color or this color. When a visitor is finished with the page they are on and are looking for someone else to go they tend to see darker colors before lighter ones. I believe Google makes the links bold for the same reason - intensity draws the eye.

2. I use the standard internet blue link. Although this isn't as widespread as it once was, internet users still often associate this color with being a link. On certain sites I've more than trebled my ctr by changing it from the link color of my actual site to the standard 0000CC.

3. I make the advertiser url a very pale shade of grey. It's still visible as it must be to conform to Google's policies but the link and the text draw the visitors attention and the ads appear more like internal links than Adsense ads. The success of this modification will often depend on the market your site is targetting. For example, webmasters know what Adsense ads are and so this change will have little impact. If your site targets people who are less familiar with the internet making the ads appear more like an internal link (ie simply a link and a description of what you'll find when you click on it) can increase your ctr.

The reason blending works better than colors that draw attention to the ads is that it's not a color that is going to make someone click on an ad - even if it's their favorite color!

Humans respond to words or better put still the meaning of words - and it will be the word or combination or words which your visitor connects to in the ad. This is why they will click on one rather than another.

Attention grabbing colors will only serve to put a barrier between your visitor and the words in the ad. More people may see them but less will click on them and Adsense is pay per click, not pay per view!

3. Adsense Ad Placement: Optimization

Placement is the fundamental factor that will effect an Ads performance - its click through rate. The first reason for this is simple - a visitor cannot click on an ad that they cannot see.

The second reason is that your traffic will interact with webpage and consequently your ads in the way that you want them to interact with them. This is obviously a generalization as not everyone will interpret your layout in the same way but the principle is sound.

For example, I generally don't like ads at the head of the page above your content and navigation nor at the very bottom below both of these. These postions are too reminiscent of the traditional banner advertisement and for me don't come close to taking advantage of what Adsense ads actually offer.

The bottom line is that Adsense works best when the ads are integrated into your website as additional content. Adsense generates ads that are related to the actual words in the content of your page. To perform at it's best they have to be placed next to these words.

If you think it through this is just common sense.

This leads us to two places where content is contained on each and every website.

1. The actual body of that particular page - If you've built your website correctly then each page will be about a distinct topic. As each page differs in what it provides the Adsense ads will vary to match these differences. For example, a motorcycle insurance page will generate different ads to a motorcycle parts page. This means that the hottest spot for Adsense on every page is roughly where I've included the large rectangle on this page. Inside the page topic and above the fold.

2. The website navigation - Your navigation includes further pages which may be of interest to your visitor. Relevant Adsense Ads will also be of further interest to your visitor and therefore, a good supplement to a large rectangle ad inside the content of your webpage is a 160 x 600 skyscraper in your navigation (this often works best in the left navigation although I have several sites where the conversion is good on the right). Adlinks work well here too.

Google has produced a heat map to assist Adsense Ad positioning which pictorially confirms what I have been saying here. You can see it and read Google's own answer to the question of Ad placement here.

4. Adsense Ad Relevancy: Optimization

There must be an ad pool for your market and on the assumption that there is, there are certain things that you can do to stress that your page is about X and not about Y: Stressing it in this way will improve the relevancy of the ads generated on your webpages and improved relevancy will result in an improved click through rate.

1. Include your target keywords in:

- Page title

- Meta tags

- Description tag

- H1 heading tags (plus include related keywords in H2)

- Body of the text several times (top and bottom)

- Bold and / or Italic tags a couple of times

- A link to the home page with the keyword anchor text

2. Use Google's Section Targeting facility.


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5. Number Of Adsense Units: Optimization

The Adsense rules stipulate that you are allowed to include 3 regular ad units and 1 link unit per page. The number you should use per page will completely depend on the structure and design of your website.

What you don't want is a webpage that appears like a collection of Adsense Ads. Such a site is valueless and will struggle to get any traffic unless you enter the world of spamming or decide to pay for traffic - both offer only diminishing returns. For a visitor to click on your ad means that they must want to go forward from your website to another website. If your page repulses them straight away they will hit the back button and return to the search engine that they came from to find another site that will answer their query more effectively.

Entice your visitors into your site and then cleverly place ads at points where they will be focusing as discussed in Ad Placements.

So how many is not too many? This website can easily absorb two ad units and an adlink as it does. It could also include another ad unit at the bottom of the articles which I may introduce over time.

As a general rule I'd start with more ad units than less, set up channels so you can monitor how each performs and then make changes accordingly. If you're building your website from scratch try and build it with enough flexibility to allow you to test different variations.

One Unit - A large rectangle (or at least the 250 x 250 square) inside the body of the page with the article text wrapped around it.

Two Units - Either

1. A more aggressive tactic is to include two large rectangles together either side by side or on top of each other. If you're getting a fair amount of traffic this will really improve your ctr and is worth tyring. Just keep an eye on your web stats to check it doesn't undermine your visitors experience which will be highlighted to you through a decreasing traffic rate.

2. The large rectangle inside the content and a skyscraper (preferrably the 160 x 600) in your left navigation. The right navigation converts much lower.

3. A large rectangle towards the top of your content and another at the bottom. This gives your traffic two ways out from inside the same page.

Three Units - If you can fit three in you can now mix and match, for example:

1. Two rectangles inside the content and one skyscraper in the navigation.

2. One rectangle inside the content and if you have a right and left navigation, one skyscraper in each of these (I know of websites this has worked well on)

3. One rectangle inside the content, one skyscraper in your navigation and one leaderboard at the header of your page.

4. Three rectangles inside the content - this can work very well if you have a lot going on inside the page and it is long enough to absorb the three ads allowing them to be placed far enough away from each other.

Including an Adlink Unit

Your one prescripted Adlink can virtually always be included as they can slot in to the smallest of places. Many publishers still neglect Adlinks as they have wrongly convinced themselves that the requirment to click on a keyword phrase before they can click on an ad is requiring too much from a visitor.

6. Adlinks: Optimization

The common prejudices against using an Adlink instead of or as well as the traditional Ad unit are faltering as Publishers are finding more and more ways to turn these little units into high converting Ads.

The basic assumption goes something like this: as the Adlink unit requires a visitor to click first on one of the four or five topics and then on one of the ads they will be clicked on less as it requires them to do two things. In a sense this is true but the best way to see Adlinks is not to compare them to the traditional ad unit because basically they are not the same.

Whereas the regular ad is best utilized as additional content for your website, the Adlink is best utilized as additional navigation. Most navigation links are solely the number of words which prescribe the meaning of that navigation and this is what Adlinks replicate.

They come in two main formats - horizontal and square (each of which has several variations). Therefore, they can be used effectively in a variety of places:

1. The favored hot spot for Adlinks is the top left of your navigation where on this site it says "Make Money With Adsense". If you include them there and match the link, border and background color to the colors you are already using you will generate a high ctr.

2. A 728 x 15 in the traditional leaderboard position can work very well (just underneath your banner and above your actual webpage).

3. A 468 x 15 above or just below your actual page title can also work well. On this page it would go either above or below "Adsense Adlinks - Best Practices". Bear in mind that the 468 sometimes isn't long enough to cater for the amount of words that it generates and will result in it being squashed together. You'll have to test it for your content.

4. You can also use one of the square units at the bottom of your articles.

7. Adsense Keywords: Optimization

Different keywords pay different amounts. Other things being equal a website based around debt consolidation will generate more revenue per Adsense click than a website based around football cards. This is why an industry built around selling high paying keyword lists to Adsense publishers has become so profitable.

But it’s more complicated than this as different keywords in different niche markets also pay different amounts. If your website is not targeting the “right” (as in profitable) keywords you will probably be earning less money per Adsense click than you should be.

For example – if you increase your average CPC (cost per click) from $0.20 to $0.30 you will increase your revenue by 33%. There are two ways of doing this on your already existing website and the best tool for doing the research is Keyword Country.

1. Better target your existing webpages:

Which words are you using in your Title Tag, Meta Tags, H1 - H3 Header Tags and inside the body of your content? Google's content matching technology generates ads related to the meaning of the words on your page. If the high paying keywords for that page topic aren't in those 4 hotspots I just listed the quality (relevancy) and CPC of your ads will be lower than if they were. Google wants to match their advertiser ads to the pages which are going to offer the greatest return otherwise their whole system collapses.

This means that you want to make sure the high paying keywords are included in your hot spots. If I use UnderstandingAdsense.com as an example I logged into Keyword Country with the intention of finding the highest paying keywords for the Adsense market. I typed in Adsense and was presented with a list. "Making Money With Adsense" has the highest average CPC of $0.73 so when I've finished building the site I will optimize the home page and several other pages for that keyword so as to generate the most relevant and high paying ads possible. I will do this by including that keyword phrase (and related ones like "make money with Adsense") into the four places listed above.

2. Add additional content to your website which targets related high paying keywords:

The most important word here is related. Don’t add content pages about Viagra to your website which is themed around motorcycles just because the average CPC for Viagra is very high. Instead do one of these two things:

1. Type your primary keyword, in this example, "motorcycle" into Keyword Country, wait for the results to appear and then click on CPC. This will arrange all the related keywords by their CPC value bringing the most profitable to the top. I did this and found that -

“Motorcycle Insurance In Michigan” has an average CPC of $10.25
“Motorcycle Insurance” has an average CPC of $4.28
“Motorcycle Loan” has an average CPC of $3.34

These are very high average CPCs for which you could develop new content. These content pages would generate higher cost per click Adsense ads from your visitors.

2. Your second option is to type in keywords which are related to your principal topic. Continuing with the motorcycle theme you could type in Harley-Davidson a popular manufacturer of motorcycles. The results show that “Harley Davidson Boots” has an average CPC of $0.84. You could build a page today pre-selling Harley Davidson Boots and generate a nice Adsense stream from that page. Another extension would be the keyword “chopper”, a popular type of motorcycle enhanced by the big shows of the last few years. On Keyword Country a search for chopper brings up related keywords like West Coast Choppers, a famous chopper builder which has an average CPC of $0.95 – again a page or several pages around this topic would be a nice addition to a motorcycle based website.

Whatever your topic, virtually every website can incorporate new high paying content. So before you try and build a website in a new niche check that the website(s) that you’ve already put the groundwork into (link building and seo) can’t be better optimized for higher paying keywords and / or have additional high adsense paying content added to it. There will be at least five new pages of content that you could add to your existing website today that would create higher paying average clicks than what you are already generating.

The large majority of Adsense Publishers are still not taking advantage of these tools and are still working in the dark so to speak - unsystematically adding content, optimizing their pages and building new niche websites with no fore-knowledge of the value of a particular topic nor its potential profitability. I guarantee that if you test Keyword County for just a day you won’t want to unsubscribe - it makes our job of making money with Adsense that much easier.

They also have a free “sneak peak” tool whereby you enter your target keywords and it will give you the most high paying keywords related to that phrase.


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BLOGGER MARKETING TIPS

With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them.Some companies choose to hire a blog consultant, but others like to try things internally. For those “DIY” companies and individuals interested in practical tips for marketing and optimizing a business blog, try out the following list of blog marketing and optimization tips:

1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
2. Obtain and install customizable blog software - Blogger, WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
3. Customize blog look and feel templates - aka design.
4. Research keywords and develop a glossary - Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
5. Optimize the blog:
   • Template optimization - RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
   • Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
   • Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)
6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
8. Setup a Google account for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
10. Format archived posts, related posts.
11. Enable statistics for tracking - Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
12. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
14. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
15. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs - Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
17. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
18. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
19. Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
20. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog - Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
21. Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
22. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.
24. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
25. Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.
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26. If your blog’s goal is to promote you as an authority, interview other prominent bloggers in your industry. Your own credibility will improve by association.
27. Build out your online networks through services such as MyBlogLog, Twitter and Facebook and leverage them to promote particularly useful content on your blog.
28. Once your blog has 1000 or more subscribers, show your Feedburner badge
29. Host images with Flickr making sure to include an anchor text link in the image description back to the post where the image is used.
30. Use your blog to gain press/media credentials at relevant industry conferences and use the event to create content, connections and increase your knowledge.

This post was originally published on June 15, 2006 and has continued to receive many inbound links. As time changes, so do some tactics, so we’ve added a few tactics (after original 25) that have emerged in their usefulness. What would you add to this list?