Getting website traffic seems to be the #1 concern of most people trying to make an income on the internet.
Go on, admit it! That includes you too, doesn’t it?
I thought so…
But…I’m not psychic - by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Blind Freddie could have figured that one out in about 5 seconds, with his eyes closed… 
Seriously though, almost every single person I know who’s trying to make money using the internet craves traffic. It’s their addiction, you could say.
Why?
Simple really, website traffic = $$$
Or, to put it in different terms, the more eyeballs you have cruising through your website, the more chance you’ve got to have them buy sometime from you, or click on an ad on your website, or even sign up for your email newsletter (which you then promote products and/or services to them through that medium…don’t you???).
From an Adsense perspective, the higher your number of website visitors, the more money you make from some of them clicking on your ads.
From an affiliate marketer’s perspective, the more website traffic you get, the more sales you ultimately get.
And if you’re one of the smart ones, you’ll be selling your own products and/or services, and doing even better from all those surfers.
“Real businesses” 
can and should use website traffic to collect sales leads and sell their products and services online. Even accountants and lawyers can make money online - you don’t need to be an eBay or Amazon.com to make money on the net.
So, now that we’ve established the fact that website traffic is a GOOD THING (!), why is it that so many website owners struggle so much to actually get that traffic?
I personally believe it’s because they don’t understand a few key fundamentals about what makes the Internet work, and, they then don’t know how to properly use that knowledge and put a plan of action into place to actively and deliberately get web site traffic to their site/s.
I’m lucky in 1 respect, and that is that I work as a Search Engine Marketer for a real bricks and mortar company. That means that every day I get to play with all the key elements that are important when it comes to getting website traffic, and put them into real-world action for my clients.
These companies and individuals pay thousands of dollars to have myself and my co-workers do “that SEO thing!” on their behalf, and they expect results!
Actually, we plan for results ourselves, because we offer a money back guarantee on our SEO services, so we can’t afford to not perform. Nothing like a bit of pressure to make you get the job done right!
Now, the main reason I am writing this blog post is that there’s 2 things happening at the same time right now, and you can benefit from this day to day experience I get at work, and turn that into your own website traffic!
Firstly, I am about a week away from the launch of my new Video training product:
Website Traffic Secrets: 26 Ways To Drive Cheap Or Free Traffic To Your Website
This CD will contain over 2 Hours of narrated live screen capture video, walking you through all the different aspects of driving traffic to your websites.
It will be all laid out for you in a simple, easy-to-understand, step-by-step action plan…
In Video…
With Audio narration…
And, lots of great free and cheap resources to help you get started.
Plus, it will have my IE Favorites list, pointing you to all the sites that I use on a regular basis that can help you in your quest to get that traffic.
This is a condensed version of my work experiences over the last 12 months + 12 years of working in IT, Sales and Training. In short, you could describe it as a website traffic braindump!
There’ll be more about this CD soon…
But for now, the other thing that’s happening is that I will be adding a new article to my blog every day until the CD is launched, discussing website traffic concepts and hints/tips to get you started.
You don’t have to buy the CD when it’s launched, because it’s only for those folks that are TRULY serious about getting as much website traffic as possible.
However, for those of you just putting your toe into the water and needing a plain english introduction to the whole topic of getting website traffic, then I guarantee you’ll really get value from my upcoming articles.
So dear reader, see you back here tomorrow for article #1 (”The 2 Most Common Ways To Get Website Traffic”), and have a fantastic day!
As with everything in life, there is an easy way, and there is a way that works effectively…
There are plenty of software tools out there that will submit your sites to the free directories…BUT, they come with a price, and I aint talking purchase price either.
It’s the same old story. If you try to cheat the system, the search engines will just ignore your efforts, which defeats the purpose of submitting to the directories in the first place.
Submitting the same entry (via software)Â to 50, 100, even 200 different directories is much the same as posting a copy of the exact same article to 1000 different article sites on the web. It will get indexed, and then promptly ignored, except for MAYBE 1-2 entries, by the search engines.
The search engines are wise to this spamming of the directories, and are ignoring entries that are the same.
Also, another thing about submitting a link to 200 directories is that those links will all show up on the next crawl of the spiders, and all of the major SE’s now monitor the growth rate of links to websites. If they see a massive level of growth in 1 day/week/month, and then no more after that, they automatically flag that site as suspicious, and it suffers for this. So, using a software tool to submit to a pile of directories in 1 shot is just a waste of time.
What’s the only way to avoid this problem? Submit a different entry to each directory, and the best way to do that is to do them manually… which is what everybody wants to avoid.
Think long term people - don’t spam the search engines, and your sites will perform better and last longer. If you can create sites that last for years in the SE’s, even if their rankings aren’t huge and their traffic isn’t massive, you get a much better bang for your buck than thinking short term.
That’s why just building scraper/spam sites for adsense earnings is a short-term tactic. At the end of the day, you will have to keep building new ones all the time to replace the ones that fall over after a month or 3.
26 year old Australian student Ori Allon - a PhD student at the University of New South Wales, has been hired by Search Engine giant Google, along with his search engine creation Orion.
Young Allon, an Israeli-born, Australian student, has been working on the next generation search engine (code named Orion) as part of his doctoral studies.
It obviously has something of interest to the Search Engine market, because the bidders on it included Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft!
All 3 courted him (and the University of NSW), before Google won the bidding process for the license to use the technology from the University (who owns the rights to any research done by its students and staff).
The Orion technology has the potential to “revolutionize existing search engines”, according to a press release put out by the University of NSW. Amongst other things, it will improve search relevence, offering terms related to what was initially searched for.
Allon has previously given an example of a search on “American Revolution”, that could return results for “american history”, “george washington”, “Boston Tea Party” and other related topics.
Allon is now working in Google’s Mountain View HQ in California, and could be a major figure in the company in the years to come, depending on how things shape up.
Naturally, SEO companies the world over will be keeping a close eye on this new development. “Every change at Google flows on down to the Search Engine Optimization market, and it should see another big shake-up of the industry”, according to Australian Search Engine Marketer Eran Malloch.
“A change to the SEO / SEM market driven by an Australian invention would be an exciting experience.” says Malloch. “I’ll eagerly await the outcome of Orion + Google - let’s see whether this gives the big G a renewed competitive advantage in their slowly dropping market share.”
by Guest Author Michael Russell
If you are a marketer or just trying to earn an online income, then you probably have heard the terms “SEO” and “Search Engine Optimization”. Everyone knows that getting a good page rank or just ranking high in the search engines is probably the most important aspect of driving traffic to your website. What people don’t know or don’t tend to realize is that these are important aspects, but should not be focused upon as much as creating good quality content for your website. If the content of your website is looked upon by your reader as “valued” then your website will thrive. Way too many website owners give little thought to their content. This happens much more frequently than one expects with people who claim to be web professionals. However, without good content on your site repercussions can be immediate. If you want better web site traffic results then make the creation of good content for your web site your first priority. Whether you write the content yourself, or hire professional writers to develop it for you, it needs to be quality writing.
If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might have more than one. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Always make your title “rich” in keywords. Make your articles pertain to your title. Be sure to add some keywords throughout your article as this will help the “spiders” that “crawl” your pages and index your information. Don’t just start repeating the keywords throughout your article. This is called “stacking” and this too can lead to your pages not being indexed or to a possible banning. How long will it take? Nobody knows the answer to that question, but, as long as you are writing content that appeals to people, the traffic will come.
As traffic begins to flow to your website, this will start to increase your link popularity. Link popularity is starting to become a major tool for the search engines. This “linking method” helps the engines decide if your content is good or not. Don’t just go to a website and “copy-and-paste”, that is infringement. Go and research your topics and put them into your own words. As long as you are doing your own work, and gaining popularity of people reading your articles and content, then you stand no chance of being in “non-compliance” with the search engines. These engines “crawl” and “index” your website pages, and if they determine that the content is “copied” or not “highly” valued, then you stand the chance of no ranking at all, and this could lead your website into being banned by the engines.
So to sum it all up, you must first focus on the amounts and quality of content you are providing on your site. The engines love “soaking” up new, fresh content. Once you get some pages built up, then start turning your focus to some quality links that pertain to your pages. Just do a basic search on your titles and write to the owners of the websites asking if you can provide them with a link, and in return, if you could receive one back. This will give your website the first boost you will need for the site’s search engine optimization.
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to SEO
I just read this interesting article by the rather famous Mr Cutts last week and have been passing it onto my clients for future reference. Rather than lose it to the vagaries of my failing memory I have decided to add it to my blog for you to read, learn and enjoy…
August 25, 2005 @ 12:29 am
I often get asked whether I’d recommend dashes or underscores for words in urls. For urls in Google, I would recommend using dashes. Why? To find out, let’s take a trip in the Google Time Machine. Set the dial for 1999, the year Matt first discovered Google. Matt was using, I dunno, maybe HotBot at that point? The curtain rises:
Matt: Hmm, this search for [FTP_BINARY] didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I got a couple scuzzy looking urls, and the other documents just have the words “FTP†and “BINARY†but the term “FTP_BINARY†doesn’t actually appear. (Note: Matt was a bit of a nerd, as you can tell.)
Some Random Person That I Don’t Remember: Have you tried Google?
Matt: What’s that?
SROTIDR: It’s a search engine written by nerds for nerds! They index numbers! Sometimes they even index punctuation, like “C++â€. Try your underscore search there.
Matt: Okay, here goes. Whoa! They actually return pages with the literal string “FTP_BINARYâ€! That’s wicked cool! (Did I mention Matt was a nerd? Big-time nerd.)
SROTIDR: Yeah. The wild thing is that they wrote a paper about how they crawl the web and rank pages.
Matt: Well, now that’s just silly. I wonder why they didn’t keep it a secret? I bet those papers will make great reading for my information retrieval class.I’ve stylized the conversation quite a bit, but I remember how impressed I was that Google indexed numbers and some punctuation (come to think of it, search engines have come a long way in five years). With underscores, Google’s programmer roots are showing. Lots of computer programming languages have stuff like _MAXINT, which may be different than MAXINT. So if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even “word1 word2″.
That’s why I would always choose dashes instead of underscores. To answer a common question, Google doesn’t algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url. Of course I can only speak for Google, not other search engines. And bear in mind that if your domain looks like www.buy-cheap-viagra-online-while-consolidating-your-debt-so-you-can-play
-texas-holdem-while-watching-porn.com, that may still attract attention for
other reasons. 
