Every month of the year has a holiday. And every holiday is an excuse to get in touch with the people around you — why shouldn’t that include your customers and clients?

Whether it’s a funny video, a sale, a contest, or a quick email with warm holiday wishes, holidays are a fine reason as any to follow-up with the audience that has requested information from you.

It doesn’t have to be a big deal, but don’t opt for just the boring “Happy Whatever Day!” message every time either. Give something away, hold an event, give an award – whatever you do, make it a memorable experience as often as you can.

This helps your traffic and sales because sometimes it’s just a matter of reminding people who were on the cusp of buying that you’re there to serve them.

This post is part of our 68 Traffic Tips day. To find the complete list when we’re done, see the original post. Be sure to subscribe to get a weekly round-up of our daily traffic tips.

1. The first thing you want to do when attempting to drive traffic to a site is assess whether or not methods other than advertising will work on the site. For example, you can’t do article marketing successfully with an affiliate link.
2. The next thing you want to do if a site is viable, is determine which of the available methods will go with your site, prioritizing from the most compatible to the least.
3. Every business that has a web site, and many that don’t, can benefit from organic search or social media, usually both. The complicated part is how. When in doubt, rely on a plan with those two things at its center.
4. Make sure that at some point before proceeding, you have a goal for the project. You can’t evaluate whether you’ve been successful if you don’t know whether traffic has gone up, if sales are rising, if more people are subscribing etc. Choose a traffic goal that’s directly related to your business objectives.
5. Determine the desired path through your site to a sale – what is the money funnel, and is it sound? Do people come to the site, subscribe, buy? Should they see your ad and then call? If so, are they doing it? If not, why not?
6. Never rely on one traffic method – what happens if it fails or is suddenly obsolete?
7. Don’t try to do ALL the traffic methods you come across either, not unless you have a staff to execute on your behalf. Instead of attempting to do every traffic method you’ve heard of, add one at a time of up to five methods. Drop the ones that don’t work and replace them with new techniques.
8. In selecting the five core techniques you want to use, it helps if they play off each other. In other words, if part of your mission is to build links, then article marketing or forum posting might help you get there faster. Approaching them with a mind to maximize those particular strengths will be more effective than doing so as an after thought.
9. Test each traffic technique by isolating as much as you can. Try blocking a page from being indexed by search engines, and testing the method on only that page.
10. At the same time, don’t get so attached to testing and test results that you can’t proceed without 100% proof positive that the specific technique works the way you wanted it to – sometimes that gets in the way. For example, a tracking link in a resource box of an article will get much less traffic than a regular link.
11. Get help if you need it. No one expects you to be brilliant at your business And at marketing it. Even if you are, you only have two hands. Get a virtual assistant. Hire a marketing team or a search expert.
12. When you hire someone, or choose someone’s advice to follow, do your homework. Google their name, their site and their company, and pay attention to both compliments and complaints. Check if they’re respected by their peers – are they guest speakers or authors outside their own web site? Who are they affiliated with?

Update: You can now find links to the entire series of tips below.

I’m sure you’ve noticed some of the changes I’ve made to the site lately – design changes, topic changes… it’s all about course correction.

By that I mean that the things that this site has become known for aren’t necessarily the things that are helping you the most. At the same time, I don’t want to completely scrap all the other things you’ve grown to enjoy.

So I’m in the process of diverting some of my thought leadership discussions to other sites, but still finding a way to incorporate those headlines into the stream of information that comes from here. That way, each of the four major groups and the four major reasons for loving the site can all still converge in one location.

It’s the 68th day of the year. So to kick things off, today I’m going to do  68 traffic tips (or link to some of the tips I’ve given so far this year). After today, we’ll see how long I can keep up a daily traffic tip – or at least provide you with seven tips a week. No promises this time – you know about my schedule, health issues, and other extenuating circumstances – but I’ll do my best.

We’ll start shortly and the list will include:

• 8 Blog Traffic Tips
• 12 General Traffic Tips
• 21 Search Traffic Tips
• 8 RSS Traffic Tips
• 9 Social Media Traffic Tips
• 10 Article Marketing Traffic Tips

In the previous post in the Getting Traffic from Google News series, we discussed how to get traffic from Google via Google News by leveraging the various ways to appear in a publication that is already featured in Google News.

Now, let’s talk about the holy grail of Google News exposure – having your site BE a source of news for your topic in the Google News database.  If you’d like to be one of the 25,000 publishers that is sharing 1 billion clicks a month, this just might be for you.

Can Any Site Get Into Google News?

I saved the best scenario for last because, quite frankly, it’s also the hardest to do. It’s not as easy to get into as Google web search. As much as that may sound like a contradiction in terms, you have a MUCH better chance of getting your site into Google’s web search database than into Google’s news site database.

And that’s simply because most sites aren’t news sites, and neither are they news-worthy.

But.

If your site breaks news in your industry, has unique content that isn’t published anywhere else, or has a unique slant on the news, under certain circumstances, your site could be a Google News source.

Let’s look at the official path to becoming a Google News site, then we’ll come back and talk about some tips from one of my favorite sources of search related news.

How to Become a Google News Site, The Official Version

When you decide you want to become a Google News publisher, the first thing you’ll have to decide is whether you’re going to change your current site to meet their guidelines, or whether to start a brand-new site.

Most people are going to start new sites, as Google has some very specific technical requirements for becoming a Google News site, as you’ll see on their help page for Google News publisher hopefuls.

Should you submit once you meet the requirements? Technically you could. But I’d say not so fast. Why just be technically ready when you can demonstrate through your site that your site truly is influential and worth of being included in Google News?

A human being will actually have to take a look at your site and decide whether or not to consider you. Put your best foot forward.

How?

How to Get Into Google News Addendum with My Own Wild Theories and Specultion

I’ve been in several publications that appear in Google news as news sources, but have yet to create one myself, mostly due to time constraints and lack of adequate staffing for my own company, never mind a publication. So take my words with that in mind.

For what it’s worth though, this is my advice, based on what I’ve observed and the applied knowledge I have from helping clients get ranked in Google’s web database and get exposure in other Google web properties over the years.

First, you may want to take a look at the different niches within the site by browsing the categories and popular stories on the Google News home page. Study them and get a feel for what news sites are like.

Second, fill the content deficit. Is there a region you represent that isn’t listed? Is there a niche in your industry that only has a handful of sources? Or do you have better access to news or events than some other publication?

Third, take the advice of other sites that have tried, whether they have failed or succeeded. We’ll come back to that in a sec.

After the Submission Form – Valuable Clues From Also-Rans

For now, let’s just say that you’re sure your site is up to snuff, then you can proceed to the submissions form for Google News. Remember, they are going to be looking at your site, and it may not be simple technical proficiency that gets you listed.

Remember I mentioned that you can learn from others who have tried to get into Google News?

According to a Rejection Letter from Google News that appeared in Search Engine Roundtable, here are a few reasons that you’re not likely to get into Google News.

If your publication does not:

1. Publish news
2. Publish daily
3. Have a staff of writers and editors, rather than one individual,
4. Represent an organization rather than a person,
5. Display both general and contact information for the organization

- it looks like you can expect to be rejected.

What does that mean for you? Make sure you meet those items just in case,  so there won’t be a problem to begin with. Good luck getting into Google News. If you make it, I would totally make myself available for a staff writer position.

Which I’ll then tell the entire free world about.

Hint. Hint.

Additional Resources:

Getting Into Google News Revisited, from Search Engine Roundtable

How to Get Into Google News, from The Online Journalism Review

The Google News Blog. That  article e where they tell you that there are 25,000 publishers in Google News is still on the front pag. If that sounds like a lot, compare that to the billions of web pages they’ve indexed in their search engine.

In Part One of Getting Into Google News, we talked about the traffic benefits of getting listed in Google News, and how to do so using a press release. Next, we’ll delve into how this can be achieved by having content in a publication that’s already in Google News, and what the advantages and pitfalls are.

Before we do that, let’s address a common concern many people have with focusing traffic efforts on Google properties that aren’t part of the web search.

You may be thinking that anything that doesn’t focus your efforts on getting into Google’s web search is a waste of time, or that diverting some of your limited time into pursuing Google News listings is just not worth it. After all, Google has come out with new services that generated a lot of buzz when they were coming out, then abandoned or failed to develop them.

While it’s true that Google sometimes decides not to put certain services they offer at center stage, Google News is definitely Not on the back burner. Though it had an unusually long Beta period, they are constantly improving their news service, testing features like FastFlip to enhance the online experience of the news.

The traffic you will get from Google News is worth the effort, and there’s no reason for it to slow or otherwise inhibit your inclusion in web search. In fact, the extra links you may get could enhance your search ranking.

With that out of the way, let’s answer the question: How Can You Get Into Google News Through a Publication?

To be clear, this method of getting into Google News is through having your featured article, which would include a byline that has a link to your site, appear in a publication that already gets featured in Google News. It’s like having an article appear in Business Week, as opposed to being BusinessWeek yourself.

It follows then that the first thing you must do is discover where news items for your industry would appear in Google.  This is a breeze for a site that features Technology or has business to business customers. It’s harder for, say, a skin care company.

But it’s not impossible, not nearly.

Your first step is to go to Google and do a search for keywords that have led people to your site before, as well as any term you believe your site is about. In this case, skin care. Among those search results, you’ll find sites that have appeared in Google recently for those search terms.

They’ll fall into three categories:

1. Industry publications
2. Press organizations, and,
3. Local news sites

Now, all you have to do is get on the staff of one of these publications, or at least be featured by them once. This is much easier said than done, of course. Most of them require you to have a good reputation, proven expertise, and writing skills in publications you’ve been featured in already. And if you haven’t been keeping up with article marketing, it’s that much harder to demonstrate that you’re any good.

There’s a bit more to it than this to give you the best results, but that’s enough information to get you started. Next time we’ll talk about how to actually BE a  publication that Google News gets its news from in your industry.

Why Do You Need to Be in Google News?

Because that’s where the eyes are.

We know that reading the news is one of the top four things people do online, and that if you want to be found online as well as off, you need to be a part of that activity stream.

Since more people get their news from Google News than CNN, that definitely includes Google News, if there was ever any doubt.

It’s also faster to get into than Google’s web results. While it’s true that you can initiate content discovery by Google in seconds if you know what you’re doing, getting that content into the database still takes anywhere from a few hours to a few days. And to get ranked for the keyword you want? That could take months if it happens at all.

But showing up in Google News for a keyword you want to be ranked for can happen in as little as 15 minutes, especially if your site is set up to be one of the sites Google reprints headlines and excerpts from.

Not to mention that if your topic is in the news, as Google, Inc. often is, your site could be among those linked to above the web results. Click through to the web results for Google to see an example.

Google News can also get your headlines in other places that your prospects may be following that include or overlap Google News results, such as Moreover Headlines, and Google Alerts.

So, now that you know the benefits, let’s discuss how you, dear reader, can get in on one of the Top 17 Traffic Sources of 2010, Google News.

Getting Into Google News

There are three primary ways to get in:

1. As a publication that is featured in Google News for your industry
2. In a publication that already appears in Google News
3. In a press release

Above, they’re displayed in order of difficulty. We’re going to discuss them now in order of ease.  And the easiest way to get into Google News is by submitting a press release to a site whose releases appear in Google News. I’ve discussed how to get into Google news with articles since 2005, but before today, only told the full story of how to do this with press releases in my High Profile Article Marketing kit. The basics of the method are very simple.

First, find a site whose press releases appear in Google news. You can either go and search Google News for your topic and reverse engineer which sites will appear, or you can go to a site like WebWire or PRWeb and pay the $20, $80, $120 fee to get your press release mentioned in Google News.

With the first way, you may find sites that get listed for free, however, you also have to look out for the fact that some sites are favored on certain days of the week, or won’t show up at all if some major news breaks. Figuring out how likely it is for a free press release to get you into Google News is tricky enough, but then you also have to try and figure out if you’ll be ranked.

For that reason, I always go with the second way, and just submit my press release to several sites, including PRWeb and Webwire.

Next time, how to get into Google News through another publication.

It's Still Evergreen. It's Just SEXIER.

I just finished totally re-vamping the Evergreen Traffic System based on a mixture of feedback, market changes and the urge to make it better. I wanted to make a system that would show everyone how to get to 1000 visitors a day now that I’ve shown everyone how to get to 100 visitors a day.

We’re just about to launch the new product at midnight with a special exclusive test promotion before we open it up to a group of JV partners. And I just realized.

….

I didn’t stop to think that, hey, maybe I should tell you my most famous product was about to go up in price by oh, about 300%! One of the guys who is doing all the legwork for me mentioned when he told his list about it, in passing, and I was all OH that’s right.

I’m a jerk. And I’m sorry. So if you want Evergreen at the current price, go and pick it up now. You have until midnight and I know that’s tight, and short notice.

So because of that, I’m going to figure out a way to offer anyone on Marlon’s list a discount to the upgrade if they already have a copy, as well as anyone who has gotten it through the Traffic Reality site.

Thanks in advance for not burning me at the stake! Smooches and Ta!

Part One: What’s a “Follow Contest“?

No, it’s not a competition to see who is the best at imitating sheep. Sorry.

It’s a contest where a person is entered to win a sweepstakes or contest, in exchange for following a social presence account like those you’d find on Twitter or Jaiku. There are several advantages of this to the person entering, which makes the barrier to enter much lower than a more traditional angle, even lower than the JV Giveaway and Join contest.

1. Those entering the contest don’t have to expose their information,
2. They can easily join using a platform they’re already familiar with (since you target users on a particular platform it’s not like they have to do anything new), and,
3. They can just as easily opt-out.

If you have a physical product, here’s one implementation using Twitter: Sponsor a Contest | Follow To Win. It seems like it would work best for companies introducing new products that have mass consumer appeal.

The basic idea is this: the site, Follow to Win, has set up a Twitter account, and is building an audience. Their tactic is to enter people in giveaways in exchange for those folks following their account, and tweeting about the fact that they did so.

Part Two: Should You Sponsor a Commercial Follow Contest?

Hm. Maybe, maybe not.

Peter Cashmore, CEO of Mashable, asked how Tweeters felt about it through his Mashable Twitter account this weekend.  Yes, idea is  innovative, but is it appropriate for Twitter?

If you go by folks in the general Follow to Win Twitter search the reactions lean more towards people who think it’s okay, or at least not enough of a nuisance to be disruptive. Most of the people in the Mashable stream of replies to Pete’s query say it encourages, or flat out is, Twitter spam.

While it’s true that it may rub the Twitter purist the wrong way,  it’s also important to weigh the consumer side who may be all too happy for the chance to get something for nothing. After all, it’s clear that some people are at least interested in it; since the account’s first tweet on January 27th, they have 418 followers at last count.

You also want to gauge your own audience — not everyone uses Twitter the same way, and the people that have similar uses for it tend to cluster.

We’ll going to come back to how to adapt this model to your business, shortly.

For now, let’s look beyond the controversy for a moment, and look at how this would work if it was successful. All things being equal, if the general Twitter public liked the idea of Follow to Win and signed up, and you paid to sponsor this contest, here’s how you’d benefit:

• Awareness level of your product increasing as the existing Follow to Win audience came back to find out what the new contest is,
• Spread of your product and brand beyond the Follow to Win crowd as each new person who entered tweeted to their own audience about it
• Potentially a third wave of interest as the winner was announced, especially if they really loved the prize when they got it.

Now let’s take those benefits, get rid of the negatives, and make it work for your business.

Part Three: A Follow Contest Recipe For Your Business

Ingredients:

• An existing audience at a site where people can follow you or the ability to generate one, using, say, a message to your newsletter list. Twitter, and Facebook come immediately to mind.
• A way for them to share their action with like-minded people.A status update on Facebook may be less obtrusive. If you held it on Twitter, you could present the option of using any other site where links can publicly be spread and categorized, to be unobtrusive to people not interested. This would also bring you much more targeted traffic. (Imagine 128 people adding your link to Delicious in one day.)
• A prize to giveaway that is highly desirable to this group

Preparation:

Essentially, you’d do the same thing Follow to Win is doing: build the audience, then offer them chances to win periodic prizes in exchange for their attention. You’re just going to

• tweak it to fit your business,
• be the only “sponsor”, and,
• remove all the irritants that could get in the way

So find out what your people want, create a prize or offer one from your current product line. Announce it, publicize it, use it to grow your followers or enhance the experience of existing followers on social media sites.

A contest might be just the thing to spark conversation, or raise awareness of new products. I’ll give you a few more pointers in the next post.

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I need your help in thanking someone. All it’s going to cost you is a link, and maybe an email. If you want, you can even make money from it.

You might have checked your email yesterday and seen a message from me about Evergreen Traffic, and read about my story. Some people I know had never heard about that part of my background, and if you’re one of those folks, it probably explains a lot. If for no other reason than to satisfy your curiousity about me, go by and skim the page on Marlon Sander’s site.

And yes, that’s what I want you to link to, talk about, etc, but let me tell you why first.

What I really want to talk about first is how this whole thing happened – how I ended up suddenly having one of the people I admired first and most online decide that I needed to revive my product line, and how he dragged me, kicking and screaming, into creating another product that explains the core of the traffic system I use on my own sites.

You might know Marlon Sanders from The Amazing Formula, a product that’s been on the market as long as I’ve been in online marketing. It’s one of those things that, if you lost it, you’d buy it again.

For me, having him suddenly come into my life as a customer is kind of like being on American Idol and having Stevie Wonder ask you to sing at his birthday party. Yeah, I have a rep of my own that I’ve earned through my talent — but he’s the Real Deal, you know? If I was to stay in this business that’s the kind of success I’d be shooting for.

Think of the person you look up to like that in your profession, coming up to you and saying, “hey, we’ve got to get your product line back up and cranking- you’re talented!”

Can you imagine?

I was really… resigned to retirement status.

I still have some lose ends to tie up and was hoping to get some of my friends together to help me with a fundraiser to get that going and maybe some residual income. But it’s been hard to coordinate, and with me not knowing until I wake up in the morning whether or not I can conduct life semi-normally, it’s been tough to commit to interview times.

Cindy, Violet, and Morgan are a HUGE help, but it’s gonna take five people to take over what I was dong at my peak. That’s not to brag, it’s just the long and the short of the issue. So I’d just about given up hope of ever doing the part of my life that I love the most, which is sharing the details of the information about traffic, search and marketing that you find on this site.

I would think to myself: At least I have my consulting clients – for the most part, if I can talk and coordinate research with other folks, I’ll always have that. But there’s something about being able to reach masses of people with good information.

Anyway, not even a week ago, I get a Facebook message and a friend request from Marlon. I thought, this has to be THE Marlon Sanders, because most of the folks who would spoof him aren’t old-school enough to remember him.

And it was.

And he was writing to tell me that he thought I was talented, and why was all my stuff down?

So I told him.

And long story short (or at least less long), he convinced me that I needed to keep on sharing what I know, starting with a new product. And that’s how Evergreen Traffic came about, through the kindness of Marlon Sander’s heart.

I hemmed and hawed and made excuses but he cut through my BS and got me working. I know some people who would have modified what I told them and sold it as their own. But the successful people are Never like that.

Isn’t that funny?

Marlon has resurrected my dream. I’m still going to have to retire for health reasons, but because of him I’m going out with a bang instead of quietly fading away. But until that day, I can create my best work and not have to worry about certain nutty details. I won’t bore you with them, but suffice it to say that without flexibility on those points, it made it hard for me to be able to make products as I’d like.

He has also helped me to remember what I needed to keep in mind the most.

You.

In all these issues I’ve been having, I can’t say I forgot about you… I always think about you. What I forgot was how much you guys … love me, to put it in Marlon’s words.

In return for Marlon’s generosity to me, i want him to make a mint off this. Yes, i get a cut, so you’ll be supporting me too.

Here’s what I’d like you to do, if you would.

1- Go to Marlon’s special site for affiliates, where currently instructions for promoting Evergreen Traffic appear on the front page. If you want to make money, create an affiliate link. If not, you can use the same information to link directly there.

2- Make a blog post about it. If you link here or send a trackback, of course I’ll link back.

3- If there’s anyone within the sound of your blog/voice/del.icio.us that you think would be helped by learning about the Evergreen Traffic System, send them a note, whether it’s your list, a friend, or someone you know who just started their internet business.

4- If you think that more than 50 of the people you know could pick it up, contact Marlon directly. He can make you a special partner or create a special page for you.

That’s it. Just four steps and you’ll be helping me show my appreciation for Marlon and all he’s been willing to do to help me.

If you do, make sure you send me the link in Facebook or make a comment here because I want to send you something special for helping out. In any case I appreciate you perusing my rambly thought for the day.

Okay, I just appreciate you, period.