Free Traffic Tips

So, Search Engine Tuesdays, as you can see, is late coming out today. And it will still go up in a few hours. But before we get into that, I wanted to let you know why I’ve been posting some minor secrets that I use or know of that have led to the wild (and humbling popularity) I’ve had the blessing to enjoy.

It’s getting closer and closer to a time for me to progress into bigger things, wider areas of reach and profits.

And yes, I’ll continue to write about free traffic, though not as often (even if this space is aquired one day, that’s one of my conditions). If you’re not subscribed after later this summer/early fall, you’ll have to sign up for access.

With the beginning of this new journey, I came to a decision. Most of the premium tips that I have about site promotion can be duplicated by any small business site owner in any market, on a medium budget.

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Here’s a little tidbit that I believe I found through Problogger, but don’t quote me.

If you don’t know what “getting Slashdotted” means, it’s a Net term used by site owners that references the experience of getting a sudden rush of traffic that makes you think your server is going to break down, or that you may use up all your allocated bandwidth in one day.

The term comes from the very specific reference to a site called slashdot.org – if they choose topublish someone’s contribution about your site? Forget about it.

You’d see traffic from this for days.

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So rule number one for the blogger who has to work around a busy schedule? Never say “we’ll continue on” and give a day. Or you’ll make folks maaaad.

I can think of worse problems than having people want to pay attention to you.

And I apologize for not being around yesterday.

So to make up for it, throughout the weekend, as time allows me, I’ll be giving you more tips about article marketing – some I wrote, some I found, all leading up to the first quick guide on getting that deep and wide penetration in your market space.

And to keep you from missing anything, I’ve set up a tag where I’ll be putting some of my tips – and I invite you to contribute at Technorati if you’re blogging about a high profile article marketing technique, and can back up your tip with an example upon request.

We’ll use the phrase high profile article marketing to separate out our tips.

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This is the second part of an article series in which you’ll find many tools that you can use to monitor your site’s search engine position and see how your do-it-yourself search engine optimization efforts are coming along.

The following tools are for monitoring your search results in the three major search engines. It isn’t an all-inclusive list, but rather a highlight of some of the tools you can use. (I’ll point you to one of the master lists when we get into more general tools in part three.)

Using Your Google Site Information Page

I’ve covered this in an earlier article, but just in case you missed it, we’ll go over it again briefly here. (If you need more help following along, you can listen to one of my recent podcasts for a convenient audio walkthrough.)

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So really quickly, there was an update last night, as announced this morning in the
Yahoo! Search blog: “If you have any feedback for us about the new index please email: ystfeedback@yahoo.com.”

Can your blog also serce as an audition to a person who might be interested in hiring you or purchasing your products and services?

Why not? You’re sharing your knowledge on your area of expertise. A blog helps you brand yourself an expert, particularly as you become more referenced online. Buyers often prefer to buy from people they know, and those that are approachable.

So how can you do this with your blog? There’s many ways:

• Open the floor to commenting, or publish your email address on your blog
• Link to your sales pages (rather than making your posts into sales letters)
• Blog about solutions to common problems that your product/service solves
• Be a resource, not just a salesman

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“But I don’t want to give away all my knowledge for free.”

Me either. And I don’t. According to Blogger, at this site alone, I’ve made 897 posts here including this one. That’s 90% of the knowledge I have available on this site that is free. But without the component of the content I charge for, it often has limited usefulness.

I tell you that all the time – there are things you can do with free traffic and things you can’t. Then there are things you can do with the knowledge on this site, but it will only take you so far. If you want to know my special twists that make the most difference to your business? You have to get my books.

And even my books only convey a certain percentage of my knowledge. My books are for micro-business people who want to do-it-themselves, and get it as right as humanly possible the first time. I can also train you, or do it for you – some small to medium businesses prefer to outsource. It’s fascinating how many times I’ve found that somone bought all my books just as a way to interview me for a gig, rather than shooting off an email. (Not that I’m complaining.)

But let’s talk about you.

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We’ll look at this from a search engine perspective first. Then we’ll talk about other ways that blogging increases your visibility.

Let’s say that the static part of your site has 25 pages that are 1000 words and are optimized to capture one keyword. It’s doing okay in the search engines. Then you realize by looking at your server logs, web stats, or doing some keyword research that you’re getting rank first page for 10 better terms that get more traffic. What do you do?

Alter the pages that exist at your site, and risk losing your positions and the potential to keep climbing?

Or build new pages with relevant content for your visitors, now that you realize they want to hear more on another subject? Knowing that you’d need to manually duplicate this process each time you discover more keywords you want to rank for?

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