Fortunate Contest

While traditional link exchanges still hold some value, it may be time to add a different tactic to your link-building arsenal. Why? Because it appears that swapping links doesn’t provide quite as much ‘oomph!’ for moving up in the search engine rankings that it used to, at least not for sites in highly competitive niches. Many sites that were on the first page of results and relied heavily on exchanging links have lost those coveted positions after recent search engine updates (especially the ‘Jagger’ update at Google).

Disclaimer: Only employees who are in the know at the search engines can say with certainty which factors determine rankings. The decrease in link exchange benefit is speculation based on testing and some consensus among ‘experts’ outside of the engines.

Build More One-Way Links

Assuming that it’s true about link exchanges becoming an obsolete way to get higher search engine rankings, it’s wise to find ways to build one-way inbound links. At the very least, no web site owner should rely completely on one form of link gathering. It’s never smart to put all of one’s eggs in the same basket, after all.

The rub here is that most site owners still pursue link swaps as their ‘bread-and-butter’ means of building links. That can play against you in your own link strategy if you don’t continue to offer exchanges. What to do?

What you need is a sort of hybrid approach. That is, find a way to appeal to the barter mindset of exchanging something of value for something else of value that most web site owners have ingrained in their modes of thinking. Along those lines, here’s a great way to continue building links without swapping them: offer original, unique content in exchange for a one-way link.

Trade Content for Links Instead

Here’s how it works…

Instead of offering to exchange links on your links page, write a short notice that you will write a few hundred words of original, exclusive content (300-500 is plenty) that the other site owner may use on his or her site. In exchange, they must post a link to your site on either their home page or another important page that is linked directly from the home page. Make it clear that your link must not appear on their links page, where it would just share space with many others. For the value to be equal, your link should get special handling in exchange for that great page of new content.

Now, expect not to get too many takers at this stage. The link exchange notion is pretty ingrained in most site owners. That being the case, there’s another part of this strategy you should definitely pursue.

Be proactive! Seek out related sites from which you’d love to have a link, and approach the site owner or webmaster with an offer to write a page of high quality content in exchange for a return link. We’ve been following this strategy for months with our network of sites and the results are impressive! You can expect a much higher rate of agreement from this approach than the tired old “I love your site! let’s exchange links!” routine, which is increasingly too time consuming to be worth the effort.

Some Important Points

First, follow through and write truly excellent content. Don’t just dash off a quick article that doesn’t convey useful and interesting information. Savvy web site owners will quickly refuse to post your link if you abuse the situation in this way.

Second, make the content you give away original and exclusive. This is your ‘hook’ - your best selling point. If you try to give a site owner the same content that appears somewhere else, you’ll lose a wonderful opportunity to get a great one-way link.

Perhaps the most important point of all is to use this strategy only with closely related sites that have high quality content. Be picky! Start by checking out the top ranked sites in your niche. Search Google or another major search engine to get a list of the top sites, then visit each one and, if you deem it worthy, find their contact information and send a short, polite inquiry to see if they are interested in an exchange of content for a link back to your site.

When other site owners approach you from the notice on your links page - again, be picky. You’ll be spending some of your valuable time to write them a page of high quality content. You will want a high quality link in return. If a site does not meet your high standards, take a pass. In all cases, if you agree to the content-for-link exchange, always request a link from their home page. It’s the best possible place for your link and, at worst, the other site owner will refuse and suggest a different page. It can’t hurt to ask!

Ultimately, the real long-term value in following this link-building strategy is the return on your investment of time. The relatively short amount of time you invest in writing the content you give away may produce dividends in traffic and higher search engine rankings that last for years. Viewed from that perspective, doesn’t this make good sense?

© John Schwartz http://www.web-article-writer.com (all rights reserved)

John Schwartz is a professional writer and web site publisher. If you need higher search engine rankings to increase web site traffic, you must have lots of original content and links. Find out how to get more of both - visit http://www.web-article-writer.com today.

I am sure that most people who have a website are looking into ways to help them to attract more people to read their site. There are many differing opinions on the best way to go about doing this but one thing that most people agree on is that it is essential to build up the number of backward links that point to your site. The question is how do we obtain these links?

It is always best to try to get other websites from the same industry as your own to add a link to your site on their site (on the homepage if possible). This is not as easy as it might seem as most of these people will be reluctant to do so. I have, in the past, spent hours phoning and e-mailing the webmasters from different sites which are in a similar field to my own site. Even when only one person agreed to my request after phoning up thirty people, I was happy. Hopefully this link will be permanent and over time could prove very valuable to me.

People who visit this persons site are now potential visitors to my own site as they may see my link and of course hopefully will click on it. In general the more links I am able to obtain the better, and in time I may well see an increase in my websites page rank. This in turn should move me up a few places in the search engines for my keywords, which of course should then result in more traffic.

This is the value of any backward link. If the page where my link has been added is a high traffic page or has a high page rank value then I am even more fortunate. As an example the link would be of far greater value to my site if it was placed on a page with a page rank five rather than a page with a page rank two.

How many backward links should I be aiming to obtain?

In my humble opinion you have to be careful not to build up the number of these backward links too quickly. It should be an ongoing project throughout the life of the website. If as an example you are able to obtain ten every week for five years, this would be superb. Where it can go wrong is if you obtain:

ten in week one

none in weeks two, three and four

three hundred in week five

none in weeks six, seven and eight

two hundred in week nine

This is very irregular and weeks five and nine suggests you have purchased a whole bundle of links. This could quite easily raise a red flag with the search engines.

There is no quick fix, hard work pays off and we all need to have patience. I always look to the long term and believe in time the work I put in today will be of great benefit to me tomorrow.

Other ways of obtaining links is by:

Writing articles

Purchasing a text link ad

Out of these two options I prefer the writing articles option. It can be quite boring to write these articles in some peoples opinion and in a way I agree. As I have already stated however, hard work pays off and this is a simple way of gaining one-way backward links. I try to ensure that each article that I write is informative and offers the reader some hopefully good advice. On average I probably write seven articles per week promoting different websites.

Stephen Hill promotes different websites including:

stutter therapy

business start up advice

beer brewing tips

The number one problem new website owners have is, “How do I drive targeted traffic to my website?”

A significant amount of time and energy is spent on this single task. A webmaster will commonly focus on:

• Ranking well in the search engines
• Pay Per Click (PPC) programs
• Pay Per View (Banner) programs
• Link Exchanges
• Directory Submissions
• etc.

All of these methods are viable means of getting traffic. In fact, if you’re lucky or competent enough to rank well for your keywords in the search engines, you’ll find that you get a very large portion of traffic to your website.

What do you do, however, if you rank poorly or, even worse, don’t even show up in the first 1000 results on any of the search engines? What do you do if you don’t have a budget set aside for marketing?

This is where people often turn to traffic exchanges. Quite simply, a traffic exchange is a program where you sign up and agree to surf sites in exchange for some credits. These credits are then used when other members of the exchange surf to your site.

Now, I’ll be quite honest with you, this traffic is not highly targeted traffic. In fact, if this were your only method of advertising your website, you’d probably fail. BUT it is a great method of getting traffic to your site in addition to the other methods listed above.

So, why do people use traffic exchanges? Here are a few of the benefits:

• Increase your Alexa rating! Did you know that some search engines factor your Alexa rating into their algorithms? More traffic means higher search engine placement!
• Increase your branding awareness. Any marketing expert worth his salt will tell you that branding is extremely important to stand out amongst the billions of websites out there.
• More traffic equals more sales. A percentage of people surfing will be enticed by your ads and click on them to find out more information.
• Another source of revenue. Many traffic exchanges will actually pay you money to surf. More importantly, as you refer other people to the network, you’ll earn a percentage of the money that they earn! It may be small amounts but if you work the system it could amount to a lot of money.

Now, before you head over to Google and search for Traffic Exchange, I’d recommend knowing a few facts:

1. Some traffic exchanges are simply out to get money from you and will refer very little traffic to you.
2. Some traffic exchanges have poor systems in place to stop cheaters from running programs to increase their credits faster.
3. Finally, some traffic exchanges will allow popups, activex controls, site rotators, etc. in their network. Any of these can stop your autosurfing from working, or even worse, allow your computer to be infected with a virus.

The best part about Traffic Exchanges is that you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The worst thing that could happen to you is you get a little bit of traffic which increases your Alexa rankings and you don’t get any money.

Of course, for the system to work, you’ve got to make sure that you do some surfing yourself. The makers of the exchange programs realize this and some of them even have an autosurf feature where you get a reduced number of credits while your browser happily loads page after page every 10 seconds or so.

Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy is a published author, speaker and owner of Make Money at Home Based Business Opportunities, one of the most popular home based business sites on the internet. His favorite traffic exchange is the InfoWizards Traffic Exchange.

This article will show you 10 easy ways to get more targeted traffic to your website. Use as many of these techniques as possible to improve your website traffic. And be sure to track all of your different traffic campaigns so you’ll know which ones are working the best. Then you can concentrate most of your efforts on the ones that make you the most money. So let’s get started.

1) ‘Pay Per Click Search Engines’ - This is one of the fastest ways to get targeted traffic. Just set up an account with some of the top PPC search engines and start bidding on keywords related to your product. Use the keyword suggestion tools that the search engines provide to make it easy to build your keyword list. Make a long list of targeted keywords so you can take advantage of the least expensive ones. Then write a killer ad with an attention grabbing headline and start driving traffic to your website.

2) ‘Search Engines’ - To get the free traffic from the search engines you will want to get ranked as high as possible. So here are a few tips that should be helpful: Have lots of links to other sites, use the best keywords for your targeted market on your website/sales page and choose your domain name wisely.

3) ‘Write Articles’ - Do you want to get a ton of free traffic to your website? Just start writing articles and submit them to related ezines. Always make sure your articles are filled with quality content. And you can include your bylines at the bottom of all articles. Then whenever someone reads your article they will be exposed to a link to your website.

4) ‘Solo Ads in Ezines’ - Solo ads should also be a good way to send traffic to your site. Find ezines that are related to your market and place ads with them. A solo ad is someone sending your ad to their list without any other ads. And the people reading your ad will feel it comes recommended from the ezine owner. To search for ezines in your related market just use your favorite search engine and enter: “ezines ________”. Fill in the blank with your related market. Plus you can do a search for the top rated websites in your related market and then contact them to see if they accept solo ads in their ezines.

5) ‘Classified Ads in Ezines’ - Now this will be very similar to solo ads but should be a lot cheaper because of the smaller ad space. And classified ads will be sent out with other ads and other content. But use the same strategies as described in solo ads to generate traffic. The secret here is to have a good ad with a great headline to make readers click on your link. The better your ad is then the more money you’ll make. Another thing to mention is if your ads are making you money then keep running them. But you will also want to run split test to try to improve your ads.

6) ‘Ads to AOL Customers’ - You could send ads to the 20 million people using AOL to collect even more traffic. Just use the same techniques as in ‘Classified Ads in Ezines’. Again for best results try to create irresistible ads.

7) ‘Banner Ads’ - You may want to invest in some banner ads for even more traffic. If you use a word banner ad, then it can be written similar to a classified ad. Some banner ads are cost per impression and others are cost per click. With the cost per click banner ad you only pay when someone visits your site, which may be better. 500 impressions doesn’t really mean anything if no one visits your website. But 500 clicks on your banner ad mean 500 people to your site.

‘Linking to Websites’ - Another way to get targeted traffic to your website is by linking to other sites. Only link to reputable sites that you would want to recommend to your good customers. Search for high traffic websites that are related to yours and then try to get them to link to your site. Collect information about these sites so you can send them an email later. In your email compliment them on their site and explain how linking to your site will benefit them. Tell them their customers will be interested in the information on your website. If they don’t agree to link to your site then try exchanging links with them. Also start an affiliate program it’s the ultimate linking system.

9) ‘Viral Marketing’ - You can also create lots of website traffic using viral marketing. Create or buy a product that is valuable and has permanent links back to your websites. Then sell or give this product away and then let your customers sell it or give it away. You will have a viral product that can spread all over the internet like a virus and all those links will keep sending prospects back to your websites.

10) ‘Joint Ventures’ - Joint ventures are a great way to get target traffic fast. When you do a JV with someone you can promote each other’s product to your lists. Both JVs will make sales and increase their customer lists almost overnight. Once you start developing JVs you can use the results from the first one to promote the next one. And the more JVs you have the more sales you’ll make.

Remember don’t forget to test everything you do to find out what works the best for your products.

Copyright 2006 Duane Marx

FREE - Stop Wasting Your Advertising Dollars and Start Making Money Today! You’ll see every advertisement I use to promote this amazing program and the test results. Hurry limited time offer. Visit =>http://www.direct-profits.com

When I first came to internet marketing I just thought I would fling up a quick site, join an affiliate program and watch the internet traffic flood to my web site. I think I may have got it slightly wrong……

After a few weeks of nothing happening I realized that no one even knew my site existed, let alone wanted to visit and buy anything. So I read a few e books and marketing sites and started to buy internet traffic by using pay per click programs (like Google Adwords). Guess what? I got tons of traffic. And still no sales. Perhaps my “friends” were right - “that thing will never work” they said.

What had happened was I had picked what I thought were great keywords based on their incredible popularity. In other words I was thinking that they would generate so much traffic that I would clean up on sales. The penny gradually began to drop as I really studied the e books and sites I was reading. They all talked of niche marketing and building internet traffic based on very narrow ranges of keywords.

Well eventually I realized they may be right (I never said I was quick did I?) and so started to buy internet traffic based on very tight niche keywords and my costs plummeted and my sales went crazy. Yippee!

I still was after that Holy Grail of inline marketers - free targeted internet traffic. If only I could get my sites and affiliate programs to the top spot on the search engines for nothing I would clean up. I started learning about search engine optimization and all kinds of “secret” methods of getting free traffic. But none worked for me. I guess if I had a couple of years free time I could learn that stuff - but hey - life’s too short.

So I stuck to my cheap pay per click traffic building methods. After all it was bringing in a nice income and I had resigned from my job to do this full time so it must be OK. However that nagging thought kept haunting me - “you could be making a LOT more out of this if you really tried”.

Then I stumbled across writing articles and submitting them to other sites. These articles have links in them to my sites and after a while they tend to spread around the net in a vuiral fashion. The reason people see them is that the sites they appear on are already at the top of the search engines! So I don’t have to spend a penny on optimization or pay per click!

In fact you are reading one of my articles now so it proves that this thing works! Just think how you came to be reading this. If you are reading it then so are many others. If I can write a few hundred words and get people to read my articles - so can you! And before you say you can’t write - that’s what I thought. It’s amazing though if you just sit down and type away then after a while it just becomes second nature, just type how you talk, nothing fancy.

So give it a go. It’s free, easy and it works!

Gaz Hutchinson Internet Marketer

To see exactly how you can make a six figure yearly income writing articles visit the link below

http://www.realmoneysite.com