How I Market My Websites and Blogs

For this post I will be sharing with you everything which I do including what is going through my head as I market my websites and what I am trying to achieve. Remember there is no one way or right way to market a website or blog, but I do quite well in the SERPs and really have not problems getting traffic and making money online. I am still somewhat new only being on for a couple years, but have a decent grasp of internet marketing. Now the problem with this post will be the amount of information since I spend months and months on each and every web presence. I am sorry if it is somewhat scattered or difficult to read I will try to cover all the important points, but as I forget or remember things they will be inserted. Anyway I expect this to be one of my longest posts and I really hope you enjoy it.

Marketing especially SEO begins in the creation of your website, blog, forum, or whatever other web presence you are starting. First figure out what niche you would like to be a part of and focus on around 10 keywords you would like to be on the front page of Google for. As you are bouncing ideas there are two things you must do to really get to know your keywords the first being making sure the keyword is being searched for. To see the search volume of any given keyword or keyterm use this tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Using this tool will give you an idea of whether or not the keyword is worth working on. Do not spend a ton of time for anything under 1,000 a month. Really you should be looking in the range of 5,000-50,000 monthly searches for a keyword worth working on. Now this is only the first aspect of keyword research and usually is the one filled with hope and happy feelings since you are only looking at possible traffic rather than actual competition.

Now we move onto looking at the actual competition and for this I will be showing you a couple tricks one being how to look at your top ten competitors backlinks and finding who is linking to them as well as which websites are placing the keyword in their anchor text when building links. Remember this is advanced aspects of SEO and will take quite a bit of work.

The first check I would like you to do is simply type the keyword or term into Google. The first ten websites that come up will give you a good idea of what you will need to do in order to take the first page. Personally I really look at the first site since they reached the top of the top. Since backlinks are the backbone of serps placement run the top ten URL's through Yahoo's Site Explorer here the link: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites

After running this check you will see how many pages your competitor has as well as the number of backlinks your competitor has acquired. This will give you the number of backlinks which you should be attempting to gain from websites and blogs within your niche. The second test I would like you to run is an operator for Google. It is a search you can do to find how many websites are placing certain words in their anchor text. Let say you want to be on the first page for make money online. When you type just make money online into Google the search engine will show you every website even relating to the keyword so it will show up around 200 million. Now if you want to see how many websites have actually placed make money online into the hyperlinks pointing towards their website place this in the google's search query:
inanchor:"make money online" which shows that there is 8 million websites placing that word in the hyperlinks pointing towards their website.

Let me cover what I mean placing the keyword into the hyperlink. This is what I mean: <a href="http://www.yourURL.com">Keywords Such As Make Money Online</a>

The keywords you place between the a tag or anchor tag is what you will rank well for in the SERPs.

So after your keywords figured out it is a good idea to place them throughout your content and in your meta title as well as in the headings throughout your website. You do not need to stuff but having around 5%-7% density is fine. The tool I use to find the density of any keyword or term throughout a web page is: http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

This will help you find the density of any and all of your keywords throughout your web page. This will show what word are repetitious even if you did not plan them to be and should give you enough insight to work on the words you would like to repeat.

Now lets move past the basic setting up and optimization into off site marketing which I feel is the most important aspect of website marketing. The reason I think it is the most important is the amount of crap that Google allows to be on top of their SERPs even without any good content. The only way to reach the top of Google is through mass creation of backlinks with the keywords you want to rank well for.

Personally I really like starting with press releases. These are about the same size as an article 450 words and explains what is new or happening in your business. The key to having success with a press release is being able to acquire media coverage and to do this the release must be exciting. Anyway here is a list of press release sites which I use: http://nakedpr.com/2007/07/29/big-list-of-free-press-release-distribution-sites/ This should get you started.

The next step of marketing your website and/or blog is hitting up the social networking sites. I highly recommend starting a new account for each website so you have your target audiences separated. The big three networking sites anyone should be involved in is myspace.com, facebook.com, and twitter.com. Start getting followers by placing a link to your profile on your web presence. One important thing is to not spam your followers and friends, but rather share what is new with your blog or website and make friends.

I also really like social bookmarking and would recommend my own list for this one. Here is a link to the sites you need to submit your site to: http://marketing-a-website.blogspot.com/2009/05/top-55-social-bookmarking-websites.html these are the best 55 social bookmarking sites. With social bookmarking sites usually you can only submit your website once, but with your blogs you can submit each new post.

It is also important to build backlinks which point towards your website and to do this I really like the free traffic system which has pushed my websites to the top of search engines and given my websites and blogs the PR they have. Here is a link:
The Free Traffic System

Directories are also important (I think) here is a list of 5k or so: http://marketing-a-website.blogspot.com/2009/06/25-high-pr-manuel-review-free.html

Anyway if you really want to market a website or blog remember it is a constantly changing process and if you want to succeed start following blogs which you have found helpful. Anyway please leave a comment if you would like me to talk about something in further depth. Also if your interested in making money feel free to visit my site How To Make Money Online.

The "Bad Places" or "Bad Neighborhoods"

One of the discussions around the web marketing forums is what types of websites to stay away from. These are called the “bad places” and “bad neighborhoods” and when performing SEO and e-marketing these places should be avoided. There are a few different types of bad places and there are also different levels of bad where some will not do much damage if you link to them yet others will actually hurt your website and make you drop within the SERPs. Notice how I say link too rather than get links from this is because no matter where the links are coming in they will not hurt. If you link towards a bad place then you will see a drop within the SERPs. Black hat seo is the reason that links towards a website do not hurt it, back when Google cared who linked to you black hat seors would place their competitors links on spammy places. This is no longer the case and Google does not care which links are pointing to you they will never hurt, but some will not help. What is looked at thoroughly is the links which you place on your web presence so if you have a website on blog be sure to look through the links that you place on your site being sure that the site will not only be helpful to your visitors, but also does not have more out links than in links.

Before we get much further discussing who to link to lets talk about what a bad place is. There is two different types of bad places the first being “bad” such as immoral which by the way is looked down upon by Google. If you run a porn site or drug site don’t expect to be getting visitors unless you SEO the site correctly. Google has pulled Porn sites from the rank no longer can you type in a very obscure keyword which has nothing to do with porn and have tons of porn sites come up. Don’t get me wrong if you correctly seo your site and build links from the appropriate sources you will do good. Now the second and much more seo unfriendly type of bad place is spammy places such as the Viagra, make money, and other niches which have a bad rap for being really spammy. I have found after running a make money site it is quite hard not only to get people to link to me, but to move up at all within the serps. I of course understand why others are somewhat scared of linking to me and why I must work so hard to keep my top page serps. So any place that is spammy such as porn, gambling, Viagra, make money, and many more stay away and never link to. Remember Google will judge your website by the links you point out to so if you would like Google to see you in a good light it would be a good idea to keep good links rather than crap.

Now that we have a good understanding of what the bad places are remember that any website which has many more out links than in will probably be looked down on by Google. There are some exceptions, but the majority will be looked down on. If there is no manual review of the link then the link is worthless and you should not link to them for any reason unless you yourself are running a link farm. Remember be careful out there if Google does not like you more than likely they will not change their mind so try your best to follow the best path.

Say No to Traffic Exchange

When new webmasters set out to take their claim on the online business world they use Google searching for ways to get free traffic. Usually their searches will lead them to some undesirable places which are known as “the bad places” of the web. I remember when I first started I was desperate to get even the smallest amount of traffic and if a website said they would get me traffic I would be quick to sign up. Something strange I noticed was the people using the traffic exchange would be very willing to sign up for my affiliate programs making it easy to make a little money. Something else I noticed was they would be quick to quite the programs as well probably giving it up for the next flashy thing to come their way. I guess to understand the quality of traffic you are getting you must understand what a traffic exchange is. A traffic exchange is a directory of sites and when you visit someone else’s website you earn a credit usually worth one visit from another webmaster.

The major problem with traffic exchanges is the traffic you are getting already has their own system or product they are selling and is usually not in the market for more. This means you are getting traffic to your site that has already started their own money making endeavor. So you spend eight hours looking at ad after ad and website after website while others do the same and you all look at each other’s website artificially inflating the stat counter. What is also funny is the majority of traffic exchanges are set on auto pilot so people don’t actually have to look at your website just click next page after 20 seconds. This means that you are getting hits from people that are not even looking at your website. There are also programmers which can create bots to visit your website giving the webmaster credit for visiting your website without them actually doing anything. So your actually taking the time to look at websites when a bot is looking at yours.

Search engines are also not big fans of traffic exchanges. They are not big fans of any website which uses artificial means to inflate traffic. They also do not like the websites because of the amount of spam which fills traffic exchanges so when submitting your website to one of these places do not expect much of a boost from Google and other major search engines and if you decide to link back to the traffic exchanges then you can expect to actually drop within the SERPs. Anyway it is much better to learn SEO and other forms of getting traffic organically rather than using traffic exchanges.

Get On Facebook and Start Making Friends

Facebook has well over 200 million people on it and lets you use your page however you please. This is important for us internet marketers and rather than having the majority kids adults tend to be on facebook frequently why is this important you may ask well for the majority of us anyone under 18 falls out of our target audience since they "usually" can not sign up for programs or they do not have a credit card. So you want to begin networking with people or have an interface for your customer or traffic base for this I would highly recommend Facebook.

Once you have your facebook page go to your profile and use that URL to point others to become your friend. If you look through my side bar on the right side of this blog you will see a link which says "Join Me On Facebook" click it add me as a friend and I will of course do the same. This is one of the easiest ways to get to know your traffic and in the world of affiliate marketing usually your referrals will need help no matter what program you are selling or product you are selling.

I have also found facebook fun as well and a great way to spend time. I can chat with others making actual friends. I also love the games on face book. Right now I play Mafia Wars and Evony every day they are both great ways to break up the monotony of internet marketing letting me break up the long days. This is a great resource for us it only takes minutes to set up so if you are an internet marketer and not on facebook today is the day.

Also if you are looking for affiliate programs or ways to make money my site How To Make Money Online is full of diffrent high paying free programs which you can market.

Social Media and Search

Being an internet marketer for quite a few years I have heard many people talk about the incorporation of social media into Googles algo. I have thought and thought about the subject, but find that with the majority of social medias using No Follow and usually redirecting the URL this will probably be unlikely. Even Digg.com the place where millions went to get there first backlink and get indexed into Google quickly is no longer webmaster friendly. My guess is that this is because of the importance which Google places on outgoing vs. incoming links. If your outgoing links are above your incoming links then expect to see an adverse affect on your SERPs placement and Page Rank. This incorporated with the amount of junk and spam which social sites are filled with leads me to believe that Google and other major search engines will not be looking to the social medias to find which sites are carrying the most important.

Now I would like to discuss what I have noticed which is a little different and have in common with The Free Traffic System. You can have a hundred thousand backlinks and still be at the bottom of the search engines. This happens because you are not creating and new links. Now they I wouldn't say believe this but have theorized it. I personally put the plan into action leaving a site which was at the top of the search engines for many different keywords for months watching it fall deep into the SERPs. I made sure to keep track of my competition and noticed that not one had more backlinks or better quality backlinks than me the only thing which separated us is they were getting new backlinks.

So when you stop building backlinks you will run into this problem. Now if you decide to let a website fall deep into the SERPs and in my case pretty much off the SERPs it is very easy to get it back. It took me two weeks to get back what a year of work got me. Something interesting is now after only a couple hundred backlinks I am doing better for super competitive keywords than I was doing before I stopped. The website which I am judging is How To Make Money Online if you want to look at it.

A Little About Rel="Nofollow"

As I browse through the webmaster forums I notice a common confusion among the webmasters and bloggers and that is the use of the no follow tag. Several questions arise surrounding the myths of this tag and the misconceptions that many have. I have read that people absolutely refuse to place a link on a no follow website or blog and I have heard that others think that it helps their search engine results. First let’s discuss what the no follow actually does and where it derives from. The alt=”nofollow” tag is a way which a website can link to another website without actually helping that website increase in page rank or search engine position. That is what people mean when they say a no follow blog (default) or when the no follow is removed that is what people call a do follow website or blog. Why would the major search engines use such a tag? I mean if a website does not want to give a vote then they would just not link to the website. Well a few years back blogging really took off and led to some serious spam. Since a blogger really doesn’t have the same control as a webmaster or perhaps not the same understanding of linking structure Google (the creator of blogger.com) and wordpress decided to combat this spam by making all comments on blogs no follow meaning when someone commented on a blog and left their link it would not count.

The main reason Google and other search engines use the no follow is your in links are NOT the only thing that matter. You can build or receive hundreds of thousands of in links which are high quality, but you can still not see first page results. The reason for this is Google will look at your outgoing links and judge the quality of your website on that rather than the link coming in. The reason they stopped placing the majority of importance of where links are coming from is webmasters who reached the top by placing their competitor’s websites on crappy areas of the web. So Google and other major search engines decided to start placing more and more importance on where outgoing links were pointed. Now if you are sending links/votes towards crappy spammy places on the web then you should expect to see a severe drop within the SERPs. If you for some reason would like to talk about or link to without giving a vote then placing the alt=”nofollow” would be the way to go. If you want to show your traffic who your competitors are without giving them a boost in the SERPs then placing the nofollow in the hyper link would be a good way to go. Remember that if you have a ton of outgoing links you should expect to do poorly if they are not no follow. Also it is good to send out good links to authoritative places on the web give your votes to the websites which deserve them and you would like Google to associate you with.

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