I balance the two. SEO is more of a long term strategy for me, PPC a short term… among other marketing strategies like JVs (although I have seriously cut back on them).

Sometimes PPC is actually a good way to get traffic until the Search Engine traffic does finally barrel in…

AND you don't always have to wait 3 months. With the proper niche research and some luck, you can draw traffic in days… Once your site is crawled regularly, you can put a page up and be indexed within a day.

I don't think SEO is a waste of time unless you don't plan on being in this game for a long time. I plan on being here in 5-10 years. So I'll be patient.

SEO is a tough game no matter how you look at it. You can be at the top of the SERPs one month and drop out the next… I've seen people who have held number one positions for years and suddenly disappear all together.

It's a dangerous thing having 100% of your efforts in one area and depending on one form of advertising… diversification is a good thing.

SEO and PPC aren't even the only way to market online… some people do neither and make a ton of money.

Really… There is no predicting Search Engine's… they will always mess with your head. Sandbox or no sandbox. The algos always changing… Their index is updated frequently. Google's PR is always in flux…

After the last major update there was a lot of talk if there is even a randomization factor involved now… maybe even certain industries being treated differently… Outbound links becoming a factor also.

What I experienced could have easily been something I did… It's the closest thing to a Sandbox I've had. One day I have 50 keywords ranked high the next day they disappear. 2 months later I see visitors from those keywords back in my logs and sure enough they came back…

SEO has changed a lot since the beginning of last year. It is not as predictable as it once was. A webmaster would be a fool to rely on Google for 100% of their revenue. I've seen it happen… huge revenue generating websites dropping out of the SERPs completely… what a rush that has to be!

LET ME be honest. Like I said. The sandbox could have been something I did or some random shift in the index… who knows… I can't explain it so I call it a sandbox… but I'm always tweaking my sites… and most importantly:

I'm always trying to get new one way links pointing to my sites. Either by means of article submissions, directory submissions, social bookmarking, blog comments, article/content submission to sites like Digg.com and lots of other things… Links are still an important factor in your rankings.

Some new webmasters think if they follow the book they should find themselves at the top of the SERPs… when they don't, they automatically call it a "sandbox" if they can't figure it out…

Reality is… it might be that there are 10,000 websites that were there first with more inbound links and experience. You have to earn your spot…

Bottom line. Sandbox seems to occur, but it will only occur for crowded markets… you need to work much harder than in a niche market with no competition… If there is no competition and your site is relevant, it will certainly rank well… That's why keyword selection is so important. Choose the wrong keywords and you will get ranked nowhere, choose the right keywords and you'll find your site on top of the SERPs a few weeks later…

Until recently, if a new IM eBook came out, and I placed it on my website… you simply had to do a search for the title and there I had been… but I am not focusing on ebooks and courses anymore. I want to help you to get your first websites up and running - that's where I personally find more satisfaction in.

I've been on page one or two for e.g. the phrase "Automated Cash Formula" ever since I placed a review on my site about it (5 months ago…)… It was instant because my site is being crawled daily and in the beginning, there was hardly any competition for that phrase…

PPC? Sound familiar…

SEO? (Search Engine Optimization) not to discourage…

It's not my intention to discourage anyone from practicing SEO - I probably made it sound very difficult. It's not as long as you're staying away from the hyper competitive niches. Choose a niche in which your site could really help other people and where not all the SEOs (Search Engine Optimizers) hang out and you'll rank well quickly because other people will be linking to your great content.

SEO is certainly an incredible way to get free traffic - and lots of it. Any free traffic is good traffic…

I make money with the traffic. Absolutely… it's interesting to see a commission show up for something odd… then look at your logs and see someone had landed on a page you weren't promoting with anything.

… Someone just did a search on Google.

You just have to be smart and spread your risk by using other traffic generation strategies as well… just in case your SEO efforts are NOT paying off.

Tags: adsense, digg.com, ebook, free traffic, search engine optimization, seo, social bookmarking, traffic, websites

Everyone with a website wants to be listed on Google. After all, it is the most popular search engine in the world, used by millions of people every day. It's the doorway between you and thousands and thousands of visitors who will flock to your website once they spot you, and isn’t that the main purpose of putting up a website?

Although getting listed isn’t the only thing required for you to get visitors, you also want to achieve a good rating, a high ranking (preferably in the top 10 results for your chosen keyword) which will put you in the spotlight and which will give you the opportunity to get noticed. But perhaps your site is brand new on the block and maybe you think it’s too small to be picked up by Google. Relax - that isn’t even an issue, just sit back and look at all the options you have.

First of all, let us clear out a fundamental point: There are, as you probably know, two ways of doing things, namely the right way and the wrong way. Now, although the wrong way is clearly wrong, it is of some importance that you know it thoroughly so as to avoid it completely.

Following is, to put it mildly, the avoidable way of trying to get listed on Google:

Google provides its users with a way to put their URLs in queue for crawling at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Now the utter failure of this method probably has a little to do with the mechanics of the process. You see, once you have typed your website’s address into the space available there, it is simply put in a queue (behind oodles and oodles of other pages) for the GoogleBot (a software program designed to follow links on websites) to, well, crawl.

Anything can happen after this. For one, your site might not get crawled at all, or suppose it does get crawled (which in itself is about a million in one possibility) it might take weeks and it probably won't even be indexed by Google (!). So ultimately there’s no telling where that URL of yours will end up going. But I am guessing wherever it goes, it won’t go anywhere near the first few pages of search results… So in other words, this way is a complete waste of time! No one has really ever benefited from it and if you ask me, no one ever will.

And now the more likely way to get listed by Google and the other major search engines.

If you want to climb up to that coveted spot on the Google search engine then simply "piggyback" on the popularity of another site. Once you add your URL to some other (popular) site, it might get a chance to be spotted by the GoogleBot and followed upon.

That chance of getting the links followed will be your golden ticket into Google. And the better the site that your link is on (e.g. high Pagerank and/or lots of high quality content), the quicker it will be followed. Nowadays, to get indexed quickly and ranked well, it's all about having backlinks from other sites…

Backlinks from Web 2.0 Sites

So, here’s what you can do, you can either put up your URL in a queue together with something like a million different sites or you can use a little sense and put it up on a few popular sites which will provide you with the sort of traffic even a couple of a dozen others won’t. Pick a few popular sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com or Propeller.com (solid Web 2.0 sites) to plant your flag into, and soon you’ll sink your teeth right in to Google itself…

I know what you are thinking: You are probably wondering just how you will manage to get these larger sites to list you on their sites and in the course grudging me for putting you on the same chase yet again. But don’t worry - I promise it’s not as hard as it sounds. Just write some newsworthy article and submit it to these sites.

Or use a different type of Web 2.0 sites altogether: The social bookmarking sites. You can easily list your URL together with a description on sites like Del.icio.us or Blinklist, Furl, Del.irio.us and dozens more. Just create an account with these sites and you're ready to submit your URL. Most of these sites have a high Google Pagerank and are crawled on a daily basis. This will get you into the search engines quickly. And not just into Google but into all the other popular search engines, too.

Backlinks from popular Forums

A different way to get backlinks is to join a few discussion sites and forums and get involved in discussions about topics related to your website theme. When making a post, you can put up your hyperlink along with your signature line which is a completely legitimate way of getting traffic to your site. That is to say as long as you are contributing something useful to those discussions.

Warning: Don’t try and get prompt results by pulling smart tricks like typing in your hyperlink and adding a spammy GO HERE! caption. That won’t help you earn anything apart from a good whack from the moderators of the sites. Think of a good headline for your site and use that as the description for your signature line along with your URL.

Invest some time in this and really participate in the discussions. Once you're doing that, you will earn the liberty of sharing your URL with others. Try to use your main keywords for your link text as it will improve your search engine positions for these keywords (e.g. like this: Car Repair Guide - do not click it - it's just an example!)

If you have a certain feel for writing and you are proficient with words then you have an advantage over others like yourself. Believe it or not, you can put this talent in line to work on your behalf.

Backlinks from Article Submissions

Write a few well researched, well planned out articles about topics which might appeal to your target market (do some keyword research first to see which keyword phrases have the least competition in the search engines). As in the previous method, there are no shortcuts here and nothing, absolutely nothing, besides quality content will do you any good. Try and act smart, don't simply copy & paste text from elsewhere or simply try to get away with a badly done job and you will be at the receiving end of a royal brush-off from readers and editors.

Writing an article is really not as hard as it sounds. Since it’s about your main interest, a little research wouldn’t really cost you much time or labor. Record your results, go ahead and experiment with a few situations, come up with hypothetical situations to explain particular problems and provide your analysis or solutions for them. Once you have done a good job (and believe me when I say you will know when you have done a good job), proudly provide your own name and hyperlink of your site at the end of the article.

Then submit your article to the big 3 in article marketing:

EzineArticles.com

GoArticles.com

ArticleDashboard.com

By having a backlink from one of these sites, not only will you get indexed quickly, it will also help you to get ranked better. You can submit the article to more sites, but not always is more better. If you're doing too many submissions too quickly, your site could land in the "Google Sandbox". This means that you won't get listed for at least 6-8 months and then Google will re-evalulate your site and see if it's one of the "good" sites or rather a spam site.

Conclusion:

If you want your site to get listed in the search engines quickly, you need to get backlinks from popular websites. These links can be from Web 2.0 sites (incl. blogs), forums or article directories.

What about reciprocal linking? Well, the times for making use of that kind of 2-way linking strategies are almost over. The backlinks still count to some extent but reciprocal linking is seen as a "scheme" by Google which is used to manipulate the pagerank of the participating websites.

Therefore, if you want to get backlinks from directly related sites, it should be done as a 3-way linking. Meaning, site A links to site B. And site B in turn links to site C which is also owned by A. This way, the search engines can't see this direct relation between the participants. And better than doing this on a separate page would be if the link would come from within the content of an article.

The higher the number of sites you are added to, the better your chance of getting your website link known. But be careful: You need to spread out your submissions over time. Doing too much too quickly can get your site banned aka getting hundreds of backlinks over night are signs of a spam site (especially if these links are all using the same link text for the URL).

As your popularity increases, so will your chances of getting high search engine positions in Google. Good Luck!

Tags: adsense, digg.com, major search engines, search engines, social bookmarking, social bookmarking sites, traffic, web 2.0, websites

PART 1

Search engines are the gateway to the Internet - in most cases they are the first tools that potential customers use to find the products and services they need. Without at least one backlink, you will not get listed in any search engine! This is true even if you've submitted your website on their "Add URL" pages (is not necessary, though… the search engine spiders will find your link automatically if it can be found on at least one popular domain). And the more links you are getting and the more often other websites are using your keywords when they do mention your website, the better you will rank for your keywords.

This is why link popularity is so imperative. If customers do not find your website, you have no possibilities of making any sales…

You're probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. Google uses the term "Pagerank" for this - the more backlinks you have for your site, the higher the "Google Pagerank" (between 1-10 with 10 being the most valuable PR).

So how do you make your link "popular"?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don't get discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords even though it will take you longer than if you just take a step back and go for the less competetive phrases.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites will not give your site link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than "link farms" - pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have
reservations about your visitors seeing (e.g. spammy websites with no real content). The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. This is what is called linking to a "bad neighbourhood". Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it (lose your pagerank).

So let's get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and get top 10 rankings on all the major search engines:

1.) DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS

One of the first things you should always do is to get listings in as many of the free web directories as possible. Personally, I think that a listing in Yahoo is too expensive with almost $300 per year for a business related site (which is the case when you want to make a profit off your site and who doesn't want that?). There are a lot of other websites where you can get listed for a smaller fee or for free so I don't bother getting listed there. Dmoz.org, the most important free web directory you can get into, gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed. It can take months…

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of an appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company ships "Alpaca wool" from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to "Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the "Fine Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

When adding your link text into the form, make sure that you are using the keywords that you want to get your high search engine rankings for!

2.) RECIPROCAL LINKS

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site's visitors. Let's look at the Alpaca Wool site example.

Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website's traffic, you are increasing both of your site's business prospects - and both of your sites' link popularity. Look which sites WANT to exchange links. Obviously, sites with no link partner page are not interested in exchanging links.

Contact sites where you can find a links page and tell them that you've added their link to your site (you need to add their link first if you want them to consider linking back to you!) and if they want to reciprocate. Do not go over the top with this by sending out thousands of generic link requests. Only send requests to website owners of sites you have visited and considered great partners.

The best way to do this reciprocal linking is to go to Google and do a search for e.g. intitle:"add url" +inurl:"your keyword here". What this does is that it checks for the title of the page and looks if it has the "Add URL" phrase there and the second part checks if your keyword appears in their URL. To stay with the above example, you would look for "wool" or "knitting". Most sites which have "Add URL" in their title will gladly exchange links with you and probably have a reciprocal links manager script in place. This way, you'll get listed on their links page automatically as soon as a backlink on your site is found.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find (spread over days and weeks, not hours…), bearing in mind the criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. Too many backlinks in too little time will trigger a spam filter with most search engines. For example, it would not be normal for a site to start with 0 backlinks when it is spidered by the search engines and have 3500 backlinks 3 days later. Do not focus on reciprocal links alone but try to get more one way backlinks through the other methods mentioned in this article.

3.) SOCIAL BOOKMARKING AKA „TAGGING“

Social bookmarking websites are a popular way to store, classify, share and search links. In a similar way like you save your bookmarks in your web browser, you are able to save bookmarks on these special websites. You can "tag" your links meaning you can assign keywords to your posts and content in general.
Other than web page bookmarks, services specialized to a specific subject or format - feeds, books, videos, music, shopping items, map locations, wineries, etc. - can be found. Social bookmarking is also part of Social News Sites like Reddit.

In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are either accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.

They also categorize their resources by the use of informally assigned, user-defined keywords or tags (see folksonomy). Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords, and the relation of keywords to one another.

Its increasing popularity and competition have extended the services to offer more than just sharing bookmarks, such as rating, commenting, the ability to import and export, add notes, reviews, email links, automatic notification, feed subscription, web annotation, create groups and social networks.

These sites are also meant when people are talking about this Web 2.0 thing.

Web 2.0 means websites for a community of people, social networks, and these people rate and tag content rather than a search engine or some automated solution ( Sites like Flickr.com and YouTube.com belong into that category as well). This way, the relevance of content gets determined by real people as opposed to having some search engine apply algorithms and get results which are not always suitable.

That’s why Digg.com claims:

“Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff that's important to you!”

Popular social bookmarking sites are e.g.:

http://www.technorati.com/ (it’s also a blog directory)
http://www.digg.com/
http://de.licio.us/
http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.furl.net/

and dozens of others. More and more sites like these come up on a daily basis and only the future will show which ones will get as popular as the ones mentioned above.

END OF PART 1

Tags: adsense, digg.com, major search engines, search engines, seo, social bookmarking, social bookmarking sites, tagging, tags, technorati, traffic, web 2.0, websites