Enjoy this guest post by Ben ~

Social media has become an essential part of web promotion. Not only is it effective and helpful for increasing the popularity of your business or website, but it is absolutely necessary! Proper use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook will not only help your site gain exposure, but it will act as a catalyst for making your content more prominent and even viral.

The easiest and most important step to take when stepping into the “social” scene is adding buttons to your site to help visitors share your content. In other words, make your website “shareable” because the last thing you want to do is inhibit their ability to advertise your business for you. People love to communicate and we also love to share. Social media is the Internet’s analogy for word-of-mouth advertising. Neglecting to add buttons on your site for visitors to share your content is a lot like stripping them of their voice – let them talk!

TweetMeme is a fantastic tool for making your content very shareable. It adds a simple button at the top (or bottom) of all of your posts that people can use to tweet your content with literally 2-clicks. A common trend you will notice when observing popular sites in almost every niche is the overwhelming amount of tweets in comparison to “likes” on Facebook. Tweeting is easier and faster, and in an online world where we skim almost everything we read, we need to have quick sharing options for our visitors.

A common and effective layout for making your site easy to share is to include a button at the top of every post for Twitter and/or Facebook, a set of buttons at the bottom for a few popular social sites, and also the presence of similar sharing buttons consistently displayed on your sidebar. For the sidebar, the most important inclusions are Twitter, Facebook, and your RSS Feed. You might have other sites like LinkedIn that you like to use or a series of videos on YouTube – these would be good additions for your sharing buttons.

To further emphasize the importance of properly using social media, lets cover a scenario:

1. Someone visits your site and reads an article. They really like it, but they don’t see any sharing buttons and so it may not even cross their mind to tweet it or like it, so they move on with their day.
2. This same visitor comes to your site and reads the same article. However, this time there are social sharing buttons featured prominently on the page. This visitor tweets the post and it is quickly exposed to all of this user’s followers (dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people).

And it doesn’t stop there. The people who see that tweet might tweet it too, they might look through your site and tweet another post, or they might follow you on Twitter and become exposed to all of your new tweets. Simple processes like this can quickly multiply and expand upon your daily traffic, and all of this happens simply because you have made your website shareable.

Supplement your social media strategies with SEO. Check out our FREE SEO Course or download our FREE OnlyWire Account Creator to make social bookmarking effortless.

Are you a brick and mortar or mom and pop business that needs more traffic in your door? Do you have a website but need an easy way to get found online? The answer is Google Places.

Google has so many great tools, most of which are free, that you can use to help your customers and clients find you and your expertise online. Now days, if you don’t have some type of web presence, people will think you are not a reputable business and opt for someone else to give their business to. But with the many tools available to small entrepreneurial businesses there’s really no reason not to be found online.

Google Places allows you to upload your business information including photos, videos, menus, special events or services, reviews, or information about hours and parking costs. To get started you need a Google account, so if you don’t have one, it’s very easy to set up. Next you must have a physical location/address for your business and verify that your country is available to be listed. Google only allows certain countries to be listed in Places at this time. Also, you should only set up one listing even if you have multiple locations. In the description of your business explain the different services and locations your business offers.

Here is a short video about Google Places

And a couple others tools to get your business found online are -

• Establish a Facebook Fan Page
• Develop a profile for your company and the key staff on LinkedIn
• Build a blog and give a “voice” to your business
• Set up a YouTube Channel and show people through video why they need to do business with you

It’s just a smart business strategy to be listed on Google Places as well as social media. Check out how this dentist increased his traffic with Google Places – Google Places Brings a Smile to a Dental Practice

See how easy it is to get found online?

Please share this with your online friends by clicking the links below.

Understanding keywords and how they affect our website has been a mystery to many online marketers.  Now the secrets to keyword research has been revealed in a 90-minute audio recording from some of the top internet marketers in the country.

In this downloadable recording, the four-member panel made up of Lynn Terry, Dan Morris, Suzanne Meyers and Karon Thackston discuss:

• why keywords are so important
• which keyword research tools are the best (free or paid)
• where and how often to use keywords in content
• how keywords are the foundation of your search engine optimization
• and much more

Recorded live at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System in Atlanta, Georgia, this group of savvy business entrepreneurs share their secrets to being on the first page of Google time after time with many different websites, blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Don’t miss the opportunity to get your recording of proven tips, techniques and resources while its still available.

Keyword Research

Stop paying SEO professionals to optimize your site when you can learn from the pros in just a couple of hours!

Start driving more targeted traffic and get ranked higher in search results  – get your download now!

Keyword Research

There is so much to learn when you decide to build an online business.  Like, how do I build a website on a shoestring, where will I find clients, what should I charge, where is my target audience hanging out?  Today, I have been working all day on a Joint Venture (JV) project that I hope will raise a lot of money for some very sick kids and also help me build my list as well!  And the good news is, if you are needing to build joint venture partnerships, you can join me!

What is a joint venture? My definition is where you form a partnership with another person or company to help drive traffic and sales, build awareness, and fill your marketing funnel.  Most of the joint ventures I have been involved in require you to offer a free gift in exchange for email addresses of the recipients.  So I threw together a little free guide on getting your business online in less than 2 hours and for under $100.  I think people will be interested in receiving that for free, don’t you?

But anyway, back to how you can get involved in the joint venture with me.  If you’ve been online for any time at all as an information marketer or student of online marketing, you’ve probably heard of Dr. Mani or purchased some of his products. He’s one of the most successful and respected information marketers, coaches and sought-after instructors working today. But did you know that he is a practicing pediatric surgeon in Chennai, India?

And did you know that he has raised more than $137,200 from donors and portions of his profits to sponsor heart operations for more than 70 children with congenital heart defects?

And did you know that the Niche Affiliate Marketing Workshop (the fastest growing internet marketing workshop in the U.S. today) has adopted Dr. Mani’s foundation as the focus of a listbuilding and joint venture workshop during the week of NAMS4.

From Aug. 20 to Aug. 27, 2010, we plan to raise at least $10,000 that will go to the foundation to directly fund open heart surgery on at least 7 children?  You can help drive traffic to this monster giveaway to encourage folks to donate to the Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation with just a couple of emails.

Here’s what super-fundraiser Beth Kanter says about Dr. Mani:

“Dr. Mani is simply amazing in his passion and dedication to his cause. His knowledge and ideas about personal fund raising have also helped and inspired many other people – like me.”

We’re expecting more than a million emails to go out that week to promote this event. You can step in front of that stream of traffic by joining us today. Contribute a product to the event to drive traffic to your website and build your list.

Don’t have an expertise in internet marketing? No  problem? We’ll have software, reports and books from all walks of life, especially in self help, education, self improvement and building business online.

I was invited to be part of this great JV and now, I’m inviting you too. We’re shooting for 1000 contributors and 100,000 members during that week.

To get the “by Invite Only” private JV details, just go here.

http://nams4kids.com/go/219/jv

See ya around…partner!

PS and here is the link to pick up that free guide I mentioned above.   Get Your Business Online in Less than 2 Hours and for Under $100!

If you enjoyed, “Need To Build Joint Venture Partnerships? ” please consider sharing it with your online friends by clicking the social media links below.

With the number of websites and blogs being added to the internet each and every day, the importance of sharing links online has become even more crucial. If you want to have a chance at being ranked on the first few pages of Google for your keywords, you must start to build up your incoming and outgoing links so the search engines will find and index you.

Here are some free, reliable ways to share links and build your presence on the web. And the best part – you can get started with these methods right now!

Using the Retweet option for Twitter

Everyone is getting involved with Twitter, from celebrities to common housewives. If you would like your information and comments to be passed around to more people, encouraging others to “Retweet” your post is a great way to go. If you are sharing a link, and someone Retweets your post, your link is then passed on virally for even more to share and click on. You can ask your Twitter friends to “RT” or “ReTweet” your post by just adding “Pls RT” to the end of your post.  And of course, you want to always return the favor.  Anytime you see something of interest that your friends on Twitter have posted, ReTweet it for them.  They will most likely return the favor for you.

Sharing on Facebook

You can share on Facebook using several methods. Write a post in the “what’s on your mind” box, otherwise known as “The Publisher” on your wall, or write a post on your WordPress blog and submit it to Facebook using the Notes feature or even better, using Networked Blogs to import your post into Facebook.  Not only can you post your website and article links right on your Facebook profile, but you can also create Fan Pages for sharing even more relevant links that will all point back to the pages you would like to rank for in the search engines. Encourage your friends and fans to share your links with their online friends who can benefit or enjoy what they read, this can propel your links to even more pages and websites online.

StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious

These are social bookmarking sites. It’s just like marking your place in a book, but you’re doing it online. With these sites though, you simply share a link, others will then find it, like it, buzz it or rate it. In this way, your link is kept out where it can be found and not buried, in turn giving more people the option to read it and pass it along. There are many links shared on these types of sites every day. The more people end up linking to you, the more opportunity you have for your pages to be indexed quicker in the search engines.

Commenting on Blogs

Commenting on blogs can be both fun and beneficial. When you comment on someone else’s blog, you are given the opportunity to leave your website address or URL. This gives you another link that the search engines will find leading back to you. The more incoming links you have, the more Google will keep coming back to index you. Writing guest posts on other people’s blog works in much the same way except that you often will get more people clicking over to your link to see what you are all about after enjoying your blog topic.

There are also other means you can use for link sharing online today. Write articles with links to your website, blog or Squidoo lens and put them in article sites such as HubPages and Ezine Articles. Participate in forums and benefit from link exchanges in more than one way. You receive backlinks by putting your website address in your signature that is placed at the bottom of each post you create.  Also, look around the forum and see who has a blog that would work well with your information, products or services and ask if they would be interested is exchanging links so you each benefit.

Building your web presence through link-sharing and backlinks is an ongoing process, but if you follow these tips, it will make the task much easier.  And by the way, I hope you will leave a comment below and share this blog post with your online friends.  I’ve made it easy for you, just click the links below which will link to your social media profiles.

Go Fish!

I’m learning about backlinks and how absolutely critical they are to your site ranking high in the search engines.  I even hired a specialist to help me with link building.

But it’s really just like fishing.  You look for the best pond, lake or ocean (blog, article or fan page) and you toss out your line (comment on existing posts, or offer to guest blog) and then wait for the fish to bite!  By commenting or guest blogging, you are leaving behind your url or link back to your website, blog, or even your Twitter or Facebook Page.  It’s up to you where you want to drive traffic, but I suggest you drive them back to where they can see what products and services you have to offer them.  (afterall, that’s ultimately what we want, right?)

Of course, I could do the link building myself, (and I do quite a bit) but in my opinion it’s all about leveraging your time and they are the expert, so why not let them do it in less time, while I focus on the things I do best. 

So I’d like to give you an opportunity to create a backlink to your site right now!  Just go to the bottom of this post and make a comment.  Be sure to put in your name, email and complete url (include the http://)  in the boxes below.  Your email will not be visible to anyone, but a link back to your site will definitely be there.  Then search for other blogs and do the same thing.  If you are using WordPress a great plugin is CommentLuv.  This plugin travels around with you and if the blog you comment on has this plugin installed (which I do) it will automatically pick up the title of your last blog post and place it at the bottom of your comment.  Sweet!

So go ahead, give it a try!

And here are some other backlink posts you might find helpful.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 7 Ways to Gain Quality One Way Backlink for your blog (shoutmeloud.com)
• Backlinks Strategies for Getting High Google PageRank (shoutmeloud.com)
• Article Marketing: A Way To Create URL Backlinks (ronmedlin.com)
• What is Autoblogging? (brighthub.com)

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This is a quick little blog post, with a big punch!  I have been experimenting with different ways to increase the traffic to my blog recently.  Of course, I have the usual connections to my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts to drive traffic back to my blog and website.  Those were sending a nice amount of visitors to my site, but one day my friend Nick of Nick’s Traffic Tricks mentioned StumbleUpon as a great way to drive traffic back to your sites.  So I tried it.

I couldn’t believe it!  It was like magic! I had doubled the amount of visitors from the other referring sites with that one little click to StumbleUpon.  So I kept sending my blog posts and occasionally would Stumble one of my static website pages and I continued to get the same incredible results.  I love it!

To take my little experiment a bit further, I am part of a Social Media Tribe, where the members help promote each others events, websites and blogs through social media marketing.  I selected one of my tribe members and Stumbled her blog post.  I checked in on her the next day and that one act provided her with more than 70 new visitors to her blog that day.  Amazing!

Here is a link to some StumbleUpon stats and how it’s now ranking #2 globally just behind Facebook.  Give it try!  Do your own experiment and I’d love to hear back from you on how it worked for you and your sites.

Do you have other great secret weapons to drive traffic?  Share them with us on the comments section below.

If you enjoyed, “Using StumbleUpon to Increase Site Traffic” please share it with your friends by clicking the links below and Stumble this post for me!

Writing has always been a popular means of expression. The advent of internet use has seen the evolution of writing from traditional pen and paper diaries to online journals or blogs. Because it is people maintained and mostly written in first person, a blog’s content is varied and diverse. Subjects may range from the absurd to the factual, and commentaries, opinions and observations on different activities, industries and mainly everything under the sun can be shared through this medium. A blog’s power and energy comes from interaction among its publishers and readers through comments and feedbacks given.

The release of automated publishing software has skyrocketed the popularity of blogging and catapulted it to the frontline as a valuable source of information because it simplifies and accelerates the process of publishing entries online. One of the most widely used blog publishing applications is WordPress, an open source software that is free to use.

WordPress is user-friendly and can be easily installed without any need for mind-boggling configuration or other technical nitty-gritties. One key feature of WordPress is its template or theme system. It can be edited, customized and personalized by simply moving or switching widgets thus eliminating the need for editing html codes.

Another practical feature of WordPress is its integrated link management. To drive traffic to your site, it is important to have it optimized in order to improve its ranking in search engine results.  What exactly is a search-engine friendly site and how is it done? The smart use of keywords will improve your site’s visibility and make it more accessible to your targeted audience. Luckily, you need not go through the daunting task of overhauling your whole website because WordPress allows every single page on your blog to be indexed. Taking time to make minor tweaks can go a long way in streamlining your site and helping it get the attention that it deserves. Don’t overlook the simple stuff like titles, description and text or content. To make your site search-engine friendly, read on and consider the following tips:

Blog Title. Adjust your title format so that the actual title of your post or article is displayed before your blog’s name or title. To catch a reader’s attention, make it short, sweet and simple. Writing a good description for your page gives the search engine and its users an overview of what your site is about before they actually visit it. Here is a great, free, resource to analyze your titles for emotionally connecting with your audience. http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

Meta Descriptions. Take advantage of WordPress’ All In One SEO plug-in to type in keyword-rich titles plus matching description for your entries. Make your site description unique and relevant to the content of the page. Similar to blog titles, meta description tags are designed to provide a brief description of your site’s content. This will be used by search engines and directories for indexing.

Rewriting URL’s with permalinks. Updating and customizing the permalink structure on web URLs and making it more comprehensive enables your site to become more user-friendly and search-engine friendly. Tags can either be date and name based, numeric, or fully customized by the user.

Using breadcrumbs. Breadcrumb navigation helps give people a perspective on where they are on your site. It can be added using a variety of plug-ins such as WordPress Breadcrumbs, Yoast Breadcrumbs and so on.

Generating a sitemap. If your site has lots of pages, site maps are a quick and easy way to help users browse the contents of your site. Several plug-ins and functions can be incorporated to the template of your choice.

Use proper keywords when naming photos and images. Again, we cannot stress how important keywords are. To be search-engine smart, you have to consider everything. For example, by renaming a photo of a weeping willow tree as “weeping willow” rather than just 0001.jpg, it gets a better chance of being displayed on the search engine’s photo search results.

Avoid content duplication. Weed out duplicate content on multiple pages by using the Robots Meta plug-in.

Link to related posts. Link building is an important part of the SEO equation. Keep in mind that you should only link to sites that are relevant and complementary to your own. Spamming is a definite no-no.

To achieve presence online, you need to have an edge over the others. This comes with careful planning, excellent presentation and valuable content. SEO is just one way of gaining momentum.  To stay ahead of the game it helps if you know your niche, keep realistic goals, become adequately informed and exercise best practices. One of those best practices is to comment relevant blogs, which gives you a link back to your site.  So go ahead, let me know what you think of this post in the comment section below!

Oh and by the way, on Thursday June 3rd at 7 pm eastern, I’m hosting none-other than The WordPress Chick, Kim Doyal in my Social Media “T” Room.  Click here Social Media “T” Room for more details and to register.  The teleseminar is free, so join us!

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Getting people to your page is just the first part of having a successful and profitable site. Making them stay there, is another matter. Website statistics just isn’t about driving traffic to your site, but it’s about making people want to stay there and come back over and over again. Bounce rates, which is defined as the percentage of visitors to any given site who arrive at a page and quickly leave before looking at any other page. Therefore, the lower the bounce rate of a site, the better.

So how does one keep visitors from ‘bouncing’ away? Here are a few simple tricks to keep your audience riveted to your website.

Optimize your site

No one likes to be kept waiting, least of all people who can leave your site at the click of a button. A site that loads quickly and pulls up all the information anyone and everyone may need will make it easier for visitors to poke around your website.

Clear and Intuitive Navigation

There’s nothing worse than arriving in a new city and not know where north, south, east and west are. Think of your website as a new place for visitors to explore – make sure the roads are well planned, and road signs clear and concise. A visible navigation bar, labeled accordingly and no broken links are essential to keeping visitors to your site.

Have relevant content

According to a recent study by BBC News, an average Internet user spends less than a minute per website. How can you keep people longer than that? By giving them what they need, of course, through relevant content. If you run a website about fashion, then make sure from the homepage that your design and content reflects this.

Keep content fresh and updated

A soap opera writer once said “Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry and make ‘em wait.” The same could be applied to your content – keep people interested and coming back for more. Having something new each day (or even every few hours) will keep people on your pages.

Have all the tools available

Web 2.0 is all about interactivity and socializing. Many blogs and sites make it easy to share links and content to their own social networking profile and interact with other users. You can install some simple tools directly on your website. Skysa, for example, installs a non-intrusive navigation bar on your site that lets visitors quickly access sites like Facebook and Twitter right on your site, without directing them away. (see mine below)

By making these few simple changes, you’ll see less visitors bouncing and more people sticking around your website.

I found this great short video on how to get indexed faster on Goggle.  (Thanks to my friend Nick Stewart from Nick’s Traffic Tricks for the link)

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