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by Webmaster Outpost Staff
Strategy: "More Visitors, More Money" – The Internet economy works on the fact that so many people are surfing the web. When we launched our first site and read about a two-cent affiliate, we thought what a waste of time. (But we joined anyway) Then when we saw that 10% of our 50,000 visitors clicked on the affiliate, we made $100 (USD) in one month, which was not too shabby a start.
The quickest way to get the money rolling in is to make your site visible wherever possible, even if it requires a little more investing of your own money. Since not every visitor will click on an affiliate link, you have to attract some excess in order to make some money.
BEFORE you start promoting your web site, make sure it is ready. Most of your promotional efforts will not involve money, and if you don't pay someone to do something you cannot keep asking them to change. If you exchange links with another site and you don't spell out how you would like to be linked, you'll get whatever they decide on.
There are four major steps you need to take to prepare your web site for promotional efforts. First, make sure every page has a very descriptive title in the heading. This is the title that displays on the title bar of the browser and is not seen on the page itself. Search engines, for example, will use this when they show your site in a result listing, so it is very important.
Second, every page should have a summary of its contents in the META description tag. This summary should not only describe the page; it should give compelling reasons why someone would want to visit the page. It is, in reality, a short advertisement.
Third, for each sub-topic covered on a page, you should list it along with synonyms and related topics in the META keywords tag. These keywords will not only help your page in search engines; they are a good way to help optimize your pages, which is the fourth step in preparing your pages.
Take the keywords that you assembled, and go back to your content (preferably in the word processor). Now for each keyword, count how many times you used in within the content for that page. Twice? Once? None? Different people will tell you different rules for how many times a keyword should be used in the content. We like to achieve a balance between optimization and readability.
If you force every keyword into the page ten times, for example, the page will not look well written. People just don't repeat words that often, and the people who run search engines also know this (and often penalize for overusing keywords). Our guideline is to try and fit each keyword into the page three times, including the most important keywords in headings.
There are good and bad things about search engines these days. For example, they have been free and a lot of people use them to find web sites. BUT, many are beginning to charge a fee to be listed, and they're database update schedules leave a lot to be desired. This is why preparation is such a critical step in promoting your site. If a search engine only refreshes its database every four months, you want to get listed with the best title, summary and keywords.
Submitting to search engines is a time-consuming and tedious job; and while many rely on auto-submission tools, we always recommend (strongly) that you take the time to manually submit your web site. Remember that you are reading this because you want to make money from your web site, so invest your time wisely and get results.
While it is often mentioned that 80% of surfers use search engines to find web sites, it is also true that many surfers do so only to find the first web site and then they follow links from one site to another. The more sites you can get linking to yours, the more chances of capturing those surfers when they ready to move on. Plus, many search engines are using the concept of link popularity when determining a result list.
The process of linking should be reciprocal, unless you're going to give each webmaster some cash (unlikely). BEFORE we start contacting webmasters, we often create a separate page for links to external sites. This way when we ask for someone to link to us, we offer a return link up front. Just because you have a link page, doesn't mean it has to be easy to locate from your web site.
Yes, you can (and should) contact competitive sites for links, but you shouldn't expect much traffic from them as you'll probably just be added to a links page (like we mentioned above). It is still beneficial, since their links page will add to your popularity when the search engines visit it.
It's a cheap and easy way to get people to pay attention to your web site, BUT it is also a way to get people annoyed at you, so always tread lightly and make sure you are contacting people who want to be contacted (often referred to as "opt-in" marketing). The best way to achieve this is by joining mailing lists or posting in newsgroups.
When we launch a web site, we usually have already drafted a few e-mail messages to promote the site, highlighting the content we worked so hard on and sharing why we feel it is unique and worth their while to visit. The key to writing these messages is to NOT make it sound like an advertisement. Keep it loose and informal (like "Hey, here's a new site you might want to check out…").
We often ask some friends to read the e-mails before we send them. Remember, the more time you invest in preparing, the more successful you will be in attracting thousands of visitors. Once you're ready, find lists that are related to your subject matter and start spreading the word. We often prepare a monthly mailing (altering the message a bit each time) since new people join lists all the time.
Did you know you could actually purchase visitors? Well almost. There are companies that act like search engines, but provide pay-per-click (PPC) services instead. Here's how they work… you pay a fixed amount (usually $25 USD) and bid on keywords (usually starting at $0.01 USD) per click. Then when people use their search engine, your listing will appear ranked based on how much you bid.
Sounds like a waste of money, BUT if you can attract a visitor into your site for $0.01 (USD) and they click on an affiliate link that rates $0.03 (USD) you just made a 300% profit, something that most companies never achieve. The key is to finding PPC services that are both effective and still have reasonable bids for your keywords.
For more information on META tags read David Carter's article, "How to Choose Your Meta Tag Keywords".
For more information on the importance of linking read Shelley Lowery's article "New Search Engine Ranking System".
Continue on to Traffic Monitoring: Steps for Closely Tracking of Your Progress