Traffic tip 18 – Invite others to publish content.

Publish articles on your site and invite other sites to publish them on their sites, with a link to you.

Some websites make it very easy for other sites to reprint their articles. At the end of each article on their site, they publish a note giving people permission to reprint the article providing the source box at the end is published, too.

(Caution: Although this technique apparently works well for those who do it, I don't use this technique. My goal is to have almost all unique content on my sites. I wonder if the technique may not work quite so well some time in the future. I could be wrong, but I speculate that as search engines become more and more clogged with junk sites, search engines will get much tougher on duplicate content. Sites which don't publish duplicate content will benefit, I believe.)

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 17 – One way links.

Get one-way links and a few reciprocal links.

Reciprocal links aren't as important as they used to be. They should not be your major traffic-generating strategy. They ARE still very useful, especially when you're getting a new site established in the search engines.

Here's an article wrote describing in detail how to get reciprocal links.

For a comprehensive look at ways to get links, I recommend you read this article by Bill Hartzer:

Linking Campaigns Lead to Increased Online Visibility

Stephen Mahaney offers a wealth of information in this article:

12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links

(Both those articles are excellent examples of experts getting articles published on other people's sites.)

Also, here's one of the many warnings from Google:

"Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links are links to your site that develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links are links to your site placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines."

Google's webmaster guidelines say plainly:

"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank."

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 16 – Keywords in online profiles.

Include keywords in your online profiles.

Whenever you create an online profile anywhere online - on your blogs, on a forum or on sites such as LinkedIn - always use carefully chosen key phrases.

This increases the chance that people will find you, either via search engines or, for example at LinkedIn, via the site's search facility.

You can often find forums in your industry by going to Google and typing in...

keyword +forum

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 15 – Submit hints to blogs.

Submit brief hints to newsletters and blogs.

A brief, useful hint published in an archived newsletter can give you a link to your site for many years - perhaps even a decade or more.

You can also submit tips to blogs.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 14 – Submit articles to newsletters.

Submit articles to newsletters which are archived online.

Submitting articles to newsletters has been popular since the early days of marketing online. In the "Internet marketing" niche, publishers tend to be swamped with offers to publish articles. Other fields aren't so ridiculously competitive.

You're likely to have more success if you take the time to establish a relationship with a newsletter publisher. Also, if you're prepared to write an article exclusively for one newsletter, your offer is more likely to impress.

Subscribe to each newsletter and study it carefully. Study the online archives. The article you offer needs to be genuinely useful.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 13 – Write articles for other sites.

Write articles directly for other sites.

Getting high quality links to your site is hugely important. Ideally, you want links from "authority" sites - sites which have a lot of links to THEM.

As well as reading what search engine optimization experts say, study what they actually DO. One common tactic they use is to write expert articles and get them published on related websites. When they do this, the links they get to their site are beautifully on target - those links come from a page which is all about search engine optimization - which perfectly matches the theme of their site.

To a search engine, such links look much more important than a boring link which is just one of dozens on a page in a little mini-directory tacked on to a mini-site.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 12 – Article distribution.

Distribute USEFUL articles to article directories.

Write articles and submit them to article directories. Make sure they're USEFUL, interesting articles, not fluff. Other websites will pick up these articles and use them on their site.

If you've added a link to your site in the "About the author" box at the bottom of the article, you can get hundreds or thousands of links to your site. You also boost your reputation.

When writing the article, you need an eye-catching heading. You also need to give people a strong incentive to visit your site.

Here are some ways to do that:

· Give people a link where they can get a free report.
· Tell them where they can subscribe to your newsletter.
· Tell them to visit your site for Part 2 of the article.
· Tell them to visit your site for a more comprehensive version of the article.

Distributing articles to directories is tedious and time-consuming. You can either do it manually or you can speed up the process - and receive a very helpful instruction manual - if you use ArticleAnnouncer. It's expensive but good value.

Another popular way of distributing articles is to use the Article Marketer service to do all the hard work for you. iSnare is another good one.

Here are some popular article distribution sites.

http://ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.netterweb.com
http://www.articlefinders.com
http://www.articlecity.com

One annoying thing about this technique is that some unscrupulous website owners will publish your articles without linking back to your site. Oafs like that should be tarred and feathered, I reckon.

Over all, the advantages outweigh the minimal disadvantages.

Some people publish an article on their site and a few days later submit it to article directories. I'm cautious. I believe the search engines will eventually get much tougher on duplicate content, so I believe a safer approach is to distribute articles which are markedly different from the ones you publish on your site.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 11 – Submit to niche directories.

Submit to niche directories.

Search for smaller, specialist directories in your niche. For example, if your site is on a health topic, look for health-related directories.

How to find niche directories:

· Go to Search It! (It's a very handy free research tool.)
· Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories"
· Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2
· Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding
· Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It!
· Read the tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results
· Get your search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed hub sites and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee, some are free.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 10 – Submit to directories.

Submit to the main directories.

The more high quality links you have to your site, the more impressed the search engines will be.

Start with major directories such as...

Yahoo!
DMOZ.org
sbd.bcentral.com

...and move on to...

Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
GoGuides
Business.com
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear

Be sure to read the submission rules carefully at each site. This will slow you down but it increases your chances of getting your site listed. Listings can last for years, so it's worth while taking your time to get the details correct.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 9 – Organic SEO.

Organic SEO - a few key points.

Search engines are getting cleverer all the time. You can try to outsmart them but to me it makes more sense to work WITH them.

They're gradually getting better at sifting out low quality websites and ranking them poorly. So build high quality websites containing genuinely useful material that other people want to link to.

The basics of good search engine optimization are fairly simple. Here's a very quick summary:

· You need to make it easy for a search engine to figure out the topic of your page.

· Find appropriate keywords or key phrases and use them in the title, in the page heading, in the introduction, throughout the article, in the meta description, in alt tags, at the end of the article, in links on the page, in bold or italics, and perhaps in a list on the page.

· Use key phrases in your file names, for example: keyword1- keyword2.html.

· Use synonyms and word variations naturally throughout the page.

· When linking to your pages, use appropriate keywords in the anchor text (the words people click on). Do this for links throughout your site, and also on other people's sites which link to yours. Vary the anchor text.

· For internal links, it's better to use text than graphical links.

· Create a logical navigation system so that humans and search engines can easily find the content on your site.

· Get links from other sites to internal pages as well as to your main page.

This is just a brief overview of a big topic.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 8 – Improve page titles.

Try this page titles experiment.

Here's a good way increase your traffic.

Go to Google and type any phrase into the search box. Look at the titles of the websites in the top 10 rankings.

Which ones catch your eye and tempt you to click on the link? Some are dreadfully stodgy, boring. Some are merely a long list of keywords. Some are good. Some are junk.

Good titles are written for search engines AND humans.

Now look at the titles on your site. Start with your most important pages. Rewrite them to make them more eye-catching.

Now go to Google and do a search of your site like this...

site:example.com

Study the page titles. If you own a large site created over many years, you may be horribly embarrassed at just how BAD some of your page titles are.

Do you want to find some examples of good titles? Simply go to Google and do some more searches. Don't stick to your industry.

Type in all sorts of different phrases and study the titles that appear in the top 10.

You'll soon be brimming with ideas on ways you can improve your page titles.

Checking how enticing the information is in your meta description tag can help, too. Some search engines display this information in their search results.

If you have a well established site, you may have written many of your page titles and meta descriptions years ago when you knew less about marketing than you do now. If so, it's time for another look at them.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 7 – Serious keyword research.

Do REALLY SERIOUS keyword research.

If you want to get LOTS of traffic from search engines, you need to find out the exact phrases which people are typing into search engines.

There are free tools available for this, but they're not nearly as useful as the more comprehensive paid tools.

For example, if you're using the Overture keyword tool for your research, be warned, its results can't be trusted.

The Overture tool shows you the SAME number of searches for all these searches:

bikini girls
girls bikini
bikini girl
girl bikini
bikinis girl
girl bikinis

This is obviously nonsense.

The Overture tool is useful to give you a quick rough guide, but NOT for serious research.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 6 – Keywords in image files.

Use appropriate keywords in your image file names.

One of my websites gets hundreds of visits a month from people who are searching for images. I'm not sure how valuable those visitors are, but I didn't have to do anything very special to get them.

Google Images - http://images.google.com - makes it easy for people to search for graphics online.

To take advantage of this, when choosing the file name of an image on your site, use an appropriate key phrase, for example, "book-ends.jpg" if you're promoting book ends.

Here's a tip I just discovered...

When I searched in Google Images for "book ends" I discovered that the very first search result was for a page which did NOT contain a graphic of book ends!

Instead, the page contained a "book ends" LINK to a book ends graphic on a second page. It if suits the design of your site, you may want to experiment with this technique.

I'm not sure how much use traffic to images is, but if it's ADDITIONAL traffic you can get simply by choosing image file names carefully, it's worth having.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 5 – Easy to read domain name.

Make your domain name easy to read - especially if it's a .NET

Which of the following is easier to read and understand?

www.internetprograms.com or www.InternetPrograms.com

See how using a capital letter at the start of each word makes the second domain name easier to read - and easier to remember.

Whenever you mention your domain name anywhere, ALWAYS present it in its most readable form. A good place to start doing this is in your email signature file.

If you're unfortunate enough to have bought the ".net" version of a domain name because someone raced you to the ".com", help people to remember your site by writing it like this...

Example.NET

Being MEMORABLE helps you get more repeat visitors.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 4 – Buy the wrong domain name.

Buy the wrong domain name, too.

If you think people may confuse your domain name with a similar name, try to buy that name, too.

I noticed that sometimes when newsletters mentioned "InternetPrograms.com" they put the "s" in the wrong place and called it "InternetsProgram.com".

It even happened at an Internet marketing conference I was attending. The speaker kindly mentioned my site, but got the name wrong. Whoops!

So when that wrong domain name became available, I bought it.

Now, if you muddle up the name and type "InternetsProgram.com" you're automatically redirected to "InternetPrograms.com".

It occurred to me that people in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, who think "programs" is spelled "programmes", might also have trouble getting my domain name right.

So I bought "InternetProgrammes.com", too. It also redirects to the correct domain.

A good domain name registrar will make it very easy for you to redirect one domain name to another. 000Domains.com is one that does.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 3 – Memorable domain name.

Choose a memorable domain name.

If you're launching a new site, choose a name people will remember easily. Years ago, I visited a site called "forkinthehead.com". Its logo is a man with a fork in his head. Sounds dreadful, doesn't it?

However, all it took for me to remember that unusual site was ONE visit years ago.

You may not wish to go to such extreme lengths, but at least ask yourself: "Will people remember my domain name?"

At my four main sites, a large percentage of the visitors are people who have remembered the domain name and typed it directly into their browser. (I also own a site built in 1996 which has a totally impossible to remember URL, but that's another story.)

Try to choose a name which won't be confused with similar names. You don't want people typing your competitor's domain name when they’re trying to find your site.

NameBoy.com has a handy tool to help you choose domain names. Also, you can find a surprising number of good deleted (expired) domain names at Whois.net. Both those tools are free.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 2 – Keep adding content.

Keep ADDING fresh, relevant, useful content.

According to Google, about half the 2.5 billion searches done a day at Google are for unique, one-off phrases.

The more pages you build full of on-topic material, the better the chances your site will be found.

When it comes to keywords, think big. You want your site to be found via THOUSANDS of different phrases every month.

Then you can lure that traffic to your best money-generating pages or to your newsletter sign-up page.

Also, search engines prefer fresh sites which keep gradually adding new content. Don't let your site go stale.

Super affiliate James Martell says:

"My own rule of thumb is this: Add a minimum of 1 article per week, 2 preferably. Adding an article daily is euphoria and adding 1 every six hours, well, that's the best."

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic tip 1 – High quality, unique content.

You MUST have high quality, unique content if you want long-term, free search engine traffic.

This is the most important tip of all. Sadly, it's one which many website owners ignore.

Provide LOTS of information-rich, keyword-rich, useful content for the search engines and humans to find.

You know that search engines are being clogged with junk at an alarming rate. The other day, I came across a marketer who was boasting that he owned more than 20,000 blogs - and he's not the only one.

Consider the scary effect of this exponential increase in low quality blogs and websites. Old, large, well established sites will inevitably become more and more important and trusted by the search engines.

Owning a large, well established, high quality site is a very solid investment in your future.

These days, even Google's webmaster guidelines advise affiliates to publish "unique and relevant" content.

If you spend time thinking of ways to provide truly USEFUL content that people will talk about, you'll automatically end up with lots of free, one-way links to your site as people recommend it without even being asked to do so.

I've been building information-rich websites ever since I created my first site in 1996. This method has worked extremely well for me and continues to work very well.

If your website helps solve people's problems, they'll love you for it.

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com

Traffic Generation Tips

When it comes to traffic generating, many affiliates and other website owners tend to get stuck in a comfortable rut. We often use a small number of favorite techniques and rarely venture beyond them.

I'm hoping this blog will encourage you to look beyond the techniques you're using and try a few new ones. By using a wider variety of techniques, you'll attract new visitors from new places.

The wider you cast your traffic net, the more you future-proof your business. You probably won't use EVERY method listed here. Choose the ones which best suit your site, your skills, your interests and your temperament.

All the techniques I describe here involve work - but that's a GOOD thing. Many of your competitors will be too lazy to do the work involved, so when you do it, your traffic will leap ahead of theirs.

To do one or two of the things I describe, you may have to go to hire a programmer. However, the vast majority of thetechniques are free and relatively simple. Most of them require time, not money.

How to get traffic to your site is a HUGE topic. I have been written on just small aspects of it. Just an introduction to the topic. For many of the techniques here, I'm just reminding you that they exist.

Please don't just nod your head and think, "I know that." Take action. Try some of the techniques you're not using.

Other websites use these techniques successfully so why don't you?

To your success!

YK Tan
Making Money Online
www.yktan.com