Create a Niche Website, Drive Traffic, and Make Money

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is basically performing small tasks on and to your website so that the search engine spiders can crawl (look over) your site so they can include it in their directory, this is also known as getting indexed.

All activity on the web starts with a keyword! People get on the internet to search for something and they generally go the search engines to find this information. When a topic is searched in the search engines the most relevant sites will show up first! These sites have optimized their web pages to show up first in the SERPS. Web pages with the TOP rankings get all the traffic for absolutely NO cost!

Most prospects/searchers only look at the TOP 3 results of any search engine listing! So you can't be dangling at the bottom of the results page expecting to get traffic!

This is where SEO starts, plain and simple; if your site is not optimized for the keywords you are targeting, you've lost the battle before you've even started.

Your Title and META tags are the first thing the search engine spiders see when visiting your site! Be sure that your home page TITLE tag is related to your website keywords.

Here is a list of pages that you must include on your website. The spiders (search engine bots) will go to crawl your site and will be looking for these pages, you can simply put them in the footer or wherever you like.

1. Contact page - It's crucial that your prospects/visitors have a way of contacting you.

2. Disclaimer - If your sell products or information in particular on your site, it is a good idea to use a disclaimer to keep your visitors, in the "know".

3. Privacy Policy - Spam used to be a big issue and mostly everyone hates it! Let your visitors know that you will keep the information you gather from them safe, i.e. their email address.

4. Sitemap - This makes it easy for the spiders to scan your site, making each page on your site available for anyone to see. It gives your webpage more structure.

5. Five pages of Content - Google and other search engines look at how much quality content you have on your website that is relevant to the keywords you are targeting. Be sure to have at least 5 articles/web pages with quality content on them.

You want to build your links in a way that looks natural to the search engines. I would say about 10 - 20 links per day will do.
Now about your anchor text, for those who don't know what anchor text is, here is the definition right from Wikipedia:

"The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the Anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines."

You want to alternate your keywords for anchor text (if that made sense) so the keyword usage for anchor text would look something like this:

Keyword #1: Use 70% of the time for anchor text
Keyword #2: Use 20% of the time
Keyword #3: Use 10% of the time
Keyword #4: Use 5% of the time
Keyword #5: Use 5% of the time

Now you don't have to go by those numbers exactly but close to it will make sure that the search engine bots done recognize your site for spamming for one keyword, with the sole intention of ranking for a certain keyword.

Article marketing is one of the most under-rated methods of traffic generation for webmasters. Most Internet marketers are familiar with the tactic of using articles to funnel traffic from article directories to their site. While this in itself is OK, the problem lies in the fact that most of them have no clue how to really supercharge their efforts without spending a lot of time, and money. Most marketers write a lame(ish) article, publish it on article directories such as ezinearticles.com and then hope for a flood of traffic.

A great article starts with the following not-so-secret ingredient: the keyword. If your keyword research is bad, then the resulting article will simply fail to hit your target market. You can look at this as if you were trying to shoot an arrow at a specific target. If you don't aim first, your arrow will likely shoot way past the desired target, and be lost among the many other misfired arrows.

Article keyword targeting works very much the same. With all the articles that are published on directories, it becomes harder every day to pick the good ones from the bad, simply because there is just so much stuff out there. Unless you research your niche well there is hardly a point in submitting articles. It would be like shooting arrows in the dark!

You might be already familiar with the term "the money is in the list." If you want explosive article marketing tactics you need to understand that the money is also in the research. Quite literally. I can't stress this enough. Unless you research your niche from the ground up, you will always be light-years behind your competition. Marketers that do extraordinarily well take the time to do this right.

When you write your article description make sure to incorporate your main keyword. You also want to use supporting keywords (LSI) to help search engines to properly index your article. It will greatly help with your rankings.

The MOST important part of your article is the title. You need to spend more time on the title than you do on the rest of your article. Why? Because readers will only have a few seconds at the most to decide whether, or not they want to stick around to read it.

If you fail to grab their attention the moment they lay eyes on your work, you've lost them for good. Once the reader clicks out, they are unlikely to come back for a second read.

Social media platforms, like Twitter, have changed the way people communicate and interact. This micro-blogging platform that has had a never-before-seen growth, at an over 1,000 percent increase in its user base year-on-year, is the equivalent of a virtual social club where people can meet, get to know each other, socialize, make new friends and maintain existing friendships.

Twitter, though, is unlike any other social media platform you know or have been using for the simple reason that it is extremely restrictive. You are constrained to 140 characters of text and you cannot upload media content or post long articles. However, this is what makes Twitter an effective, real time communication system.

One thing that Twitter is not is an online mall where people come to buy or sell things. While this may make you stand up, take notice and scream at the top of your lungs that you don't need Twitter if you can't promote your offers, you would be sorely mistaken. You see, that is where the true power of Twitter is, in the fact that it isn't a marketplace.

Twitter should not be considered a cheap form of advertising because treating it like a traditional advertising medium will get you nowhere.
On the other hand, this micro-blogging platform ranks among the most effective and powerful marketing tools that you can use. This is due to the fact that Twitter is the perfect place to build relationships with your target market and this is critical to your online marketing success because consumers have changed a lot over the past decade.

The Internet has opened up so many routes of communication that people can go online and find out information and opinions on different companies' products and services almost instantly. In fact, in a study conducted by Harris Interactive, it was found that 45 percent of the respondents considered reviews from friends or people they follow on social media websites to influence their purchase decision.

Consumers are no longer limited to buying from only a select few large corporations and, in fact, prefer to do business with people they know and trust. Twitter gives you the opportunity to build that relationship with your potential customers which will help you generate leads as well as more customers.