Category Archives: Traffic

Helpful Tips & Tricks, Internet Business, Traffic

Five SEO Tricks to Help Increase Your Traffic

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Traffic picSEO, or Search Engine Optimization is considered by some as the holy grail for driving traffic if they can either master it or pay a master to optimize their website.

Some are confused because they think “huh? Search Engine Optimization… How can I optimize a Search Engine?!” SEO of course is really referring to the Optimization of your web page for the Search Engines to consider it most relevant to those keywords for which you are optimizing.

Keep in mind that SEO is but one strategy to drive traffic. Many people wrongly assume that all you have to do is optimize your website and then watch the visitors come rolling in by the millions.

Did you ever notice on those cereal commercials how they tell you that their cereal is part of a balanced breakfast. Notice the catch word “part“. The balanced breakfast in addition to the cereal may also include juice, toast, bacon, and eggs.

By eating cereal alone, you are only getting part of the nutrition. The same applies here. SEO is a part of a balanced traffic strategy. Other components can include article marketing, blog & forum commenting, paid traffic, affiliate traffic, & list building, for starters.

Okay, onward & upward. Here are my top picks for getting my page relevancy recognized by the search engines.

  • A good title tag – The title tag is one of the key elements for good SEO. Always get that important keyword into the title of your webpage.
  • images; Name, Alt & Title tags- Name your image something relevant to your keyword / web theme. Always get your keywords into your alt & title inside your img tag, but and this is a big but, I mean like J-Lo big… they must be relevant to your image & the image must be relevant to your keyword. Don’t name non-relevant images, or use alt / title tags with them. Non-relevant images could include a buy button, checkmarks, background gradients, etc.
  • Link Text – Always include keywords into your links. Creating a link to somewhere and making the active text something like Click here now is a wasted opportunity. Instead, make your links keyword rich such as “get your Sony Bravia LCD HDTV here”.
  • Bold & italics – Use bolding on some keyword rich phrases where you would like that extra attention from the search spider. Don’t over do it though or it could backfire. Italicized words can also add some juice.
  • Menus & Footer – The footer is another key area to get the attention of the Search Engines. Getting active keyword rich links into the menus & footer of a web page is an important factor to peaking up your page.

Consider these five as a primer. There are a lot of aspects to good SEO, but much of it isn’t exactly rocket science either. The key thing to remember is to never get spammy with your content. Writing strictly for the search engines and not keeping your visitors in mind is a sure way to not keeping (& converting) your visitors, and you’ll lose ground as well.

Stuffing your web page with hundreds of invisible keywords (using text with the same color as the background) might have worked back in the stone-age of the internet, but search engines are much smarter now.

It’s all about relevance and what will keep your visitor on your page for more than a just few seconds. When your visitor found you in the search results, they expect your content to be relevant to what they are searching for. Google has many methods for determining if that visitor had a relevant search experience with your site or not.

I’m going to be covering SEO in much greater detail in my first edition of the “Jack Keifer Letter” which will be debuting soon. Keep an eye out; the Jack Keifer Letter will get you access to the inner workings of my business where I will reveal information that is only available to paid subscribers.

This will be premium meat & potatoes stuff, with surprise bonuses shipped out to you from time to time, and I don’t mean cheesy PLR stuff, I’m talkin’ my own genuine KeiferSoft™ products FREE just for being a part of my inner-circle!

My next post will probably be a 24 hour special, so stay tuned. 🙂

Copywriting, Internet Business, Traffic

5 Ways To Milk Your Articles To The Max

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Milk Your articles for all they're worthWhen most marketers write articles, the typical scenerio is to submit them to their favorite article directories.  Many article marketers also invest in article submission software to help speed up to process and to get their articles out to hundreds & even thousands of article & ezine directories.

After that, they’re finished.  On to the next one… But why stop there?  Why not milk that article for all it’s worth?

You might be thinking, “well what the heck else can I do with it?  I’ve already submitted it to a zillion article sites, c’mon Jack!”

Well, don’t just stop at the article directories, here are 5 quick tips to super charge the pulling power of your articles.

1. Stick your article on your blog and convert it to a podcast using Feed2Podcast.com.  Now submit the podcast to itunes and other podcast directories.  Don’t have a blog?  Not to worry.  You can use ReadTheWords.com to create a podcast from your article instead.  ReadTheWords.com will even covert .pdf files and other documents.

2. Now format your article into a press release and submit it to PRWeb for premium exposure.  If you prefer the free route, try some of these links:

i-newswire.com
clickpress.com
free-press-release.com

3. Modify your article into a step by step tutorial format.  Now you can submit your tutorial to eHow.com and Tutorialized.com.  If this is a really good article, you could also use it as a bonus incentive to include when marketing your own product, or an affiliate product.

4. Now that you got a snappy tutorial created, why not convert it into a PowerPoint presentation?  Remember to add your link to the first & last slides so that people can click through to your site. You can now submit it to ScreenCast.net & SlideShare.com to name a couple.  Give this an extra kick by breaking it up into a couple parts & link part 2 back to your website.  This is sure to get them clicking through.

5. Finally, convert your tutorial into a .pdf file & upload it to sites like scribd.com, or yudu.  Sites like these get tons of exposure & the .pdf files tend to rank pretty decently in the search engines as well.  I recommend using OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice Writer has a button right in the toolbar to convert to .pdf.  OpenOffice is a free office suite and just as good, if not better than Microsoft Office.

As you can see, by using your imagination, you can stretch out a simple article into a whole host of things that can drive traffic and revenue to your online business.  You can even turn a well written article/tutorial into an info product, especially if you took your PowerPoint & used Camtasia studio to step through your PowerPoint while elaborating on each point in your slide.  Voila, instant info product!

All this from one article.  Just imagine if you made this a regular practice when writing articles.  You will discover that a little extra effort goes a long way.

Helpful Tips & Tricks, Internet Business, Traffic

Is Article Marketing Worth It?

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Article Writing to get traffic A lot of marketers on that quest for the traffic holy grail will search high & low for the best free traffic technique for their internet business. It seems that all the ebooks, videos, audios, that cover free traffic techniques generally all have one thing in common. You’ll always find that article submissions are the primary answer in virtually every “traffic secret” out there.

Article marketing has been rehashed in a million different ways in a million different products. Those marketers who don’t like to write probably find this irritating. So why is article marketing always covered? Because it works!

The trick to article marketing is how you approach it. Firstly, its important to understand what article submissions actually accomplish for your website. Articles should provide value to the reader. In return for peaking the reader’s interest, the reader will likely click your link in the resource box of the article and check out your website.

Articles provide one way links to your site. These links also add up to boosting your search engine rankings as well. These backlinks in many cases can provide more value in the long term than the immediate surge in traffic.

One important point that most people overlook is that article marketing has a cumulative effect. Many will submit one or two articles, get a few visitors, and soon decide that the few visitors they got aren’t really worth the time and effort. Suppose you went against your instincts and stuck it out longer?

Every time your articles are submitted, they end up in article directories and eZines, depending where you submit your articles. These articles are copied by webmasters and can be legally used on their sites to provide content so long as they leave the complete article intact including your resource box containing your back link.

Not only do people use & post your articles, but even the scraper sites also will tend to grab your articles for their junk Adsense websites. Even though these are junk sites, wasting space & irritating searchers, it’s still a backlink albeit, a lightweight one.

The point is that the more articles you submit, the more that you may be replicated around the net. Many worry about Google’s “duplicate content penalty”. I think that the dupe content thing is way over rated. Duplicate content is everywhere. Duplicate content may get less weight than the original, but an actual penalty on your website? I don’t think so.  The dupes simply don’t carry as much backlink value to your site.

If you’re really worried about duplicate content, you can always use software like Artemis Pro, or an article spinner which will automatically re-write your article multiple times. These techniques can certainly add weight to your back links, especially if you spin your resource box as well.

Article submitters can get your articles out to many sites in a fraction of the time. A good article submitter can be loaded with quality sites such as ezinearticles.com. EZines are more likely to be read by quality readers and are always the premium picks for traffic & revenue generating articles.

So, to ask the question again. Is article marketing really worth it? Absolutely! Whether writing them yourself or outsourcing, each new article adds up.  Start building your traffic equity today and make article submissions a part of your business system.

Internet Business, Product, Reviews, Traffic

Xingla’s First Review…

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Good LuckXingla Pro is almost 1 month old and I’ve been getting tons of great feedback from users and non users alike. Now Xingla has already received a great review from Mo’s online business blog at oibo.org. Thanks Mo! I really appreciate great and honest feedback like this. Mo also runs a blog carnival at oibo.org, so if anyone knows first hand how they really work, its Mo!

One thing that really impressed me is that Mo also has a blog Carnival submission service. Mo obviously understands the value that XinglaPro will provide for his service. He also went on to list other reputable services out there, which I consider mighty sporting of Mo to include these fine people as well.

You don’t have to have a service to use Xingla of course. Its for anyone with a blog that wants to build their search ranking and attract traffic to their blog / products.

Mo has even called me crazy in his review! Why?, you might ask… Check out oibo.org now and see what a real internet business blogger / blog carnival host has to say about it.

Internet Business, Product, Reviews, Traffic

The Artemis Booster

8 Comments

As you may or may not know, one very effective way to get traffic, and I mean targeted traffic to your blog is by article writing. When I first joined James Brausch’s intern program, I received a copy of Artemis which is an article submission software that contains an internal list of publishers in which you can submit your articles.

This isn’t your typical article submission software. With Artemis, you make some changes in each paragraph of your article at least three times. Now when submitting your article, Artemis will randomly shuffle the corresponding paragraph versions in your article for each submission to a publisher in the list. For example, one of 4 versions of paragraph 1 randomly shuffled, one of 4 versions of paragraph 2 randomly shuffled, and so on.

This in turn creates thousands of unique variations of your article instantly which allow you to avoid any duplicate content penalties by the search engines. The results is an 1875% increase in your article marketing efforts. As if this wasn’t already effective enough, you can turbo charge Artemis by using a large external list of publishers. But how do you get them?

Well, you could trudge through the search engines and spend hours putting a list together (not a great idea), you could outsource the job to someone else, or you can pick up a list of 1000 publishers from James Brausch’s web site who just happens to be running a 24 hour special right now.

This is an amazing deal and well worth the 30 bucks! I’m going to pick up a copy right after posting this blog entry. Another thing that James mentioned was that he would recommend products or services to new businesses that follow his methods. Well I’m going to boldly stick my neck out and make an offer to James. If James agrees, I will make my Xingla Pro Blog Carnival Submission software available exclusively to James Brausch intern members for 50% off the normal price! Blog Carnival submissions are one of his intern procedures and I feel that it would benefit them greatly. James, if you’re interested just let me know at admin[at]jackkeifer.com and we can work out the details for getting a special order link available to your interns, and a copy of Xingla Pro for you to check out.

Article Submission and Blog Carnival submissions are the two most powerful traffic and back-link building methods on the planet. If you’re an Artemis user, I would highly recommend taking advantage of the publisher list being offered at James’ Internet Business Blog now. If you’re not a user, quit screwing around and get a copy now so that you can build your business. Taking action now could be the turning point in your internet business.

Internet Business, Product, Traffic

Xingla Pro Update

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This weekend I tested my newest product Xingla Pro. Xingla is a blog carnival submitter which takes the tediousness completely out of the task of submitting to blog carnivals. My first test involved using the “auto submit” feature where I submitted one of my blog posts to 26 different carnivals related to business blogs. The auto submit process took around 2 minutes. I have a 5 second delay programmed between each submission. This allows for the process to complete between each submitted carnival. I then checked my email and immediately saw 26 receipts of carnival submissions. The test was flawless!

The manual submit feature lets you cycle through the list one at a time so that you can fine tune your submissions by selecting extra categories that accompany some carnivals. In auto-submit mode, the extra categories are not used.

I finished up the weekend with getting the “add new” and “open list” features in place. It’s pretty much ready to roll, so you will be seeing a 48 hour special very soon. My next step will be to make the video tutorial and help file.

I’m really excited about this new tool and I can tell already that Xingla Pro is going to be a new personal favorite of mine. 🙂

Helpful Tips & Tricks, Internet Business, Traffic

SEO Tips

Search engine optimization or SEO. Some call it the holy grail of succeeding online. Some view it as full of mystery and secret knowledge that only a few who are “in the know” can actually master. Still others like James Brausch will ask why someone could possibly think that they can optimize a search engine? Search Engine Optimization, optimize a search engine. Good one James. Perhaps WSO or web site optimization would be a more accurate term. Hmmm

Anyway, there are various ranking factors that influence how you will fare in the search engines. A few weeks ago James Brausch released his predictive analysis of the latest Google data. Here is his breakdown for the highest predictability results:

Nemeas (domain name & structure) Factors: 18.2%
RaSof (on page) Factors: 43.8%
Link Factors: 38.1%

What I’d like to cover are some of the on page factors that I have used that have given me significant results. First of all, you should know what keywords that you want to optimize your site for. I like using WordTracker for getting a feel for what terms the most people are searching for. Your stats are also a great resource for finding the keywords that people used to find your site via a search engine. Here are some on-page factors that you can use to crank your rankings:

Title – What you have in your page title is a biggie. You should use highly searched terms relevant to your site here. I’ve read that having your keyword(s) at the beginning or end of your title works best. I don’t have facts to back that up, but I’ve gotten my best results this way.

Anchor Text – This is the text in a hyperlink. For example – Internet Business Blog would be the key phrase that I would use in my anchor text to rank for “internet business blog”. Be sure to take advantage of anchor text. Many people waste perfectly good hyperlinks with totally irrelevant phrases such as “Click Here“. I’ve found many times that if I refer to another website with a good keyword, it boosts my own website for that term. Don’t forget the title text. You can enhance your link power with an extra phrase or word in your title text. This would go after your “href” URL. For example – <a href=”http://somesite.com” title=”great keyword”>

Images & Alt Text – When you add images to your website, be sure to name your image with a decent keyword. You’d be surprised how much extra traffic you could pick up from Google or Yahoo! image searches. Alt text is often ignored too. Use the alt text every time you use images.

Header & Footer – Bold text and <h1, h2> text in your header contribute to your on page factors as well. Even bolded text within the body of your content will make a difference. Be sure to have keyword rich links in your footer as well. The footer is a significant area to your on page ranking.

Obviously you will want to sprinkle your keywords throughout the body of your content as well. Don’t over do it and always write your content for your readers FIRST. If you don’t, your content will lose value by sounding unnatural and keyword stuffed. This will immediately drop your credibility down to the neighborhood of the MFA junk sites.

As shown in James Brausch’s stats above, domain name/structure and back links account for another 56.3% of the factors involved for a top Google rating. Deciding on your domain name and its structure comes before you build your website. On page factors come as you create your site, when you add new content, and when you’re ratcheting your site for better search engine results. Finally, getting back links is something that you always want to work on for the lifetime of your site.

Following these simple steps can boost your website from being off the radar to enjoying a high ranking in the search engines. By combining all of the three major ranking factors, you are bound to nail a top spot in the search engines.

Internet Business, Traffic

The Demise of Google

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Dr. Schmidt, CEO of Google announced that Google is no more as of Friday, February 22nd! The stunning announcement came shortly after noon today. There was a media frenzy when the news broke. Of course the first question was “what the heck happened?” Is this another Enron? It seems that the CEO, along with the entire board of directors have decided to give up all their worldly goods and are now moving into a commune in southern California, which is home to a little known cult who worship the mango root. Google is no more!

OK, as you have probably guessed by now, I made this whole story up. Why would I do that? To get you reading? No, actually to get you thinking. Suppose Google disappeared over night. How would this affect your business? Do you depend on Google for all your PPC advertising? Is a high ranking in Google the sole reason for your traffic? If so, you really need to rethink your business strategy. Putting all your eggs in one basket is pretty risky business.

By reading my previous posts, you’ve heard me say in the past how it makes much more sense to have multiple streams of income (products, affiliates, etc) as opposed to just one (J.O.B.). The same applies to your traffic. Traffic to your websites are the life blood of your online business. Just like brick & mortar businesses, if no one knows you’re there, it’s pretty tough to make an income. People with affiliate sites will often depend solely on PPC to monetize their sites. Some will focus on optimizing their websites for one specific search engine.

But suppose that you suddenly lose your ranking for your keyword because of an algorithm change, or your PPC costs triple because the Google mafia decided that they don’t like you anymore? Now what? Go back to working for the man for a living? Or do you have other traffic sources that will continue to keep your business running smoothly?

You will find that if you work into your system other avenues of traffic, then not only will your income increase, but so will your security. Maybe today a lot of people aren’t searching for your blue widgets, but a stumbler (StumbleUpon) happens to be promoting a blue widget convention in Toledo, sending extra traffic your way.

Never underestimate the power of diversity. Promoting yourself using “Web 2.0” methods such as StumbleUpon, Squidoo & the like is one way to gain exposure. Internet business blogging is one of the best. Contributing worthwhile posts to blog carnivals will get you traffic and back links. Building your list! The larger your list, the more valuable it becomes. Forums are another way to promote yourself. But don’t spam, contribute to the community, or you will do more harm than good to your long term business. I’m not a forum fan, but depending on your business, it can be a good thing to work into your own routine or procedure for your interns. Oh, did I mention article marketing? This is probably one of the most effective and will generate traffic and back links very quickly.

The trick to article marketing is how you do it. James Brausch has a product called Artemis. This is an excellent product that allows you to change your article in to a few different variations. Artemis will then randomly shuffle the corresponding versions of each paragraph creating literally thousands of different variations of the same article. This way you will beat any duplicate content issues with Google, plus you will be submitting to real article publishers. I say “real” because most article submission sites are just junk repositories that are only read by other article submitters and scraped by content generator bots for the junk MFA (made for adsense) sites. You can customize your own Ezine and article list in Artemis for thousands of submissions honed for each article subject matter.

Google may not be going anywhere soon, but let the first paragraph be a wake up call. If you are depending on one source to monetize your traffic, you need to be working other techniques into your system as well. Don’t be a victim of a black Monday someday. When others are sinking without a life preserver, you can stay high & dry because your ship has the safety backups to kick in and keep it sailing smoothly.

Internet Business, Traffic

What’s In A Domain Name?

nemeas ranking softwareWanting to create a product and start a website?  Maybe you already have a website, or several websites.  When you purchase your piece of real estate on the world wide web, have you given any thought to your domain name?  No, I mean serious thought.  It's a common misconception that all the "good" names are taken.  So what makes up a good name?  Is it something that contains a short name and ends with a .com?  Maybe a 256 character string containing all your favorite keywords ending in a dot something?  Ok, that's a little outrageous, but just what does constitute a good domain name?  

One trick I like is to look over my web stats and see how people are getting to my websites.  My stats will show what keywords people are using in the search engines to get to my sites.  If I'm going to create another similar site, I could take a popular phrase such as "cloak my url" and see if "cloakmyurl.com" is available.  It isn't available, by the way.  But you get the picture.  A variation of this opens up possibilities.  Cloak-my-url.com, cloakmy-url.com, myurlcloak.com, etc.  If you're a techno-dounce, you may not have noticed that many of your top search results have your keywords in the domain name and /or, webpage name and subfolders.   

It's smart to have your domain reflect a popular search phrase.  Sure, this is only a part of the big ranking factor picture, but it can be significant to 15 – 20% and shouldn't be overlooked.  There's a great utility called Nemeas, created by James Brausch that works based on statistical data to help you create optimal domain names and link combinations.  An optimized link combined with an optimized folder / file naming convention can give you the edge that just may get you over the top.

Nemeas isn't for the casual dabbler in internet business.  The price is $135. The "doers" will see the value and potential returns from this powerful software right away.  If you're serious, and in the process of stepping up your game, this is "the" tool for a healthy foundation! 

Now you can promote your new website and product(s) by putting together a blog and optimizing it for business.  Not sure how to do that?  You can find out more by clicking on the link below:

http://www.ribitus.com/blogging-course

Internet Business, Traffic

Alexa And Its Alternatives

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Alexa Alternatives PostI never really took Alexa very seriously because of how easily alexa ratings are skewed depending on the type of website you have.  It can be an indicator of what type of traffic you attract, but not necessarily an indicator that you attract a lot of traffic.

You may have a website that doesn't attract a user base that would typically have the Alexa toolbar installed. In theory, you could have a relatively decent traffic volume, but show an alexa rating around 3 million.  The lower your Alexa rating, the better your score (kinda like golf).  On one of my first eCommerce websites, I had a pretty decent Alexa rating which suggested to me that many of my shoppers had the alexa toolbar installed in their browsers.  I found that quite interesting.  With that said, my alexa rating on my AmazingCloaker site is a modest 466,617 as of the time of this writing.  AmazingCloaker.com is about 11 months old.  My handbag webstore was less than 3 months old when it's alexa rating was around 96,500.  Hmmm.  

Richard Lee wrote an interesting blog post which details his findings with several other alexa alternatives.  The alexa alternative that I personally am most familiar with is Compete. As Richard points out, they claim to use an actual scientific formula.  With a combination of ISP logs, Toolbars, ASPs and Opt-in panels, they claim much more accurate results as opposed to Alexa which only uses data from the Alexa tool bar.

Alexa by comparison would give me skewed traffic results on my eCommerce site vs. my AmazingCloaker site.  If both averaged 1000 visitors a day, for example, and 600 of the eCommerce visitors had the Alexa toolbar, but only 200 visitors to my URL Cloaking website had the toolbar, then the Alexa rating would be vastly different even though the hits per day were the same.

Surprisingly enough, however, as your Alexa rating reaches the upper percentages (say 45,000 & below) your accuracy is also increased.  Because of the shear numbers of visitors, the ratio of tool-bared visitors will equal out to more accurate results regarding superior traffic over say a site with a 100k+ Alexa rating.  I believe that this "ratio factor" in high volume is what ultimately equals it out.  Alexa & Compete are the two that I pay most attention to.  I would agree that overall they offer the best indicators of how you are doing in the traffic scene.  I also have the Google page rank indicator installed on my Firefox browser which I like to monitor as well.  

I think that checking out alternatives in anything is normally a good thing, but for now I think that I will just stick with Alexa & Compete.