Blogs are also a great place to learn the trade of SEO. I love reading about SEO. SEO and internet marketing blogs keep me up to date with the latest SEO tips and news.

If you’re interested in the forums and blogs I like to visit, read my article at Ezine Articles. Thanks!

How can webmasters take advantage of these developments? How should our search marketing and optimization efforts change? Google gets about 60-70 percent of the search engine traffic, so it’s always a good idea to rank high on Google searches.

I think video will huge in the new search environment. It’s time to start using screencast software like Camtasia and Cam Studio. You may want to dust off your webcam. If you really want to make an impact, you can start shooting quality videos with a good video camera.

Also, not only will video starting ranking higher in the SERPs, traffic from web videos has been shown to convert well. If you’re selling affiliate products or have your own product, you can increase your conversion rate by using video. Even opt-ins and pay per lead offers will convert better with video.

Another search engine optimization (SEO) and traffic tactic that will become more effective is the press release. With news items moving up the SERPs, you’ll want to submit press releases that relate to your website and your industry.

Where should you submit your press release? PRWeb.com is one of the best online press release sites. They used to be free, but now they charge $80 for a press release without anchor text and $200 with anchor text. Also, there are free press release sites like PR-inside.com.

Another area to look into is images and pictures. In some niches and industries, the consumers are looking for images. For example, as I did my keyword research for my wedding site, I found that many keyword phrases included the word “pictures.” People are typing in phrases like “wedding flower pictures” and “wedding dress pictures.”

Also, the first results these image related searches are pictures. You will get a lot of traffic if you land one of your images on the front page of these searches. So, if you’re in a image-oriented niche, add more pictures to your website and see if that drives more traffic. And don’t forget to add keyword-rich alt tags to your images. This will help your images rank.

It’s always good though to think of other ways to make money with your website. You know the old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Who knows, adsense could start charging a huge fee to join or your affiliate products could become unpopular. Here’s an easy way to monetize your website that many people don’t think about: create a paid web directory.

When people think of web directories, they might think about a stand alone site like dmoz.org. However, what stopping you from putting a directory subpage on your site?

One of the most famous web directories is actually on a subdomain. Can you think of it? You’ve probably visited it more than once.

The directory is dir.yahoo.com (Yahoo’s web directory).

Yahoo’s web directory charges $299 per year to have websites listed. In fact, many webmasters will get their first inbound link from this directory because it’s popular and high quality. A Yahoo web directory link is one of the best paid links to have. It helps you get better search engine rankings.

Anyways, back to your website. Obviously, your website is not as popular as Yahoo, but if you have a quality site with good content and some consistent traffic, you might be able to charge $10 or more a month.

Maintain Your Directory

To make it easier for you to maintain your web directory, use directory scripts (directory management software). Directory scripts keep your directory organized with categories. Also, it helps your potential customers by having a form where they can submit their websites. The form makes it easy for your customers to submit their sites. They don’t have to open their email account to contact you. Once a customer has submitted their site, you can have the scripts email you the customer’s information.

What about customer payments? That’s also automated by the directory scripts. The scripts make it easy for your customers to give you money. Simply add a paypal button on the submission form.

I would use paypal because it’s a well-known online payment service. Also, paypal allows non-paypal customers the ability to pay with a credit card and paypal is easy to integrate with most directory scripts. Just don’t forget other payment methods like check and money order for people who don’t like to pay with credit card.

Here’s a forum thread about free web directory scripts (talk.iwebtool.com/thread9648.html). This thread can help you get started on your search for a great directory script for your site.

Promote Your Directory

Don’t forget to promote your directory. Blog about it. Write a press release about it. Go on forums and post about it. Get multiple links pointing to it. Buy adwords clicks. Basically, you can use the same promotional methods you use for your website.

Also, put your directory in a place where internet users can find it. If you do this, you will attract more customers. Don’t hide it in a page that no one will visit. Put a link to your directory from your home page, preferably above the fold. More people will join your directory because they’ll get more exposure since it’s one click away from your front page.

Pricing Your Directory

There’s two main ways to price your directory. You can charge a one-time lifetime fee. If you have a small, low-to-medium traffic site, this may help you get your first couple of sales. Webmasters love paying one time for lifetime links. As you may remember, Yahoo’s directory charges $299 a year. And one of the well-known text link brokers (text-link-ads.com) also charges monthly fees. By charging a one-time fee, you’ll be giving your potential customers an attractive bargain.

The other option in pricing is charging monthly. If you have a high quality, popular site, this pricing option can turn your website into a passive income generator. For example, just having 20 sites in your directory for $20 a month is a recurring $400 a month. Many website owners would love to have $400 a month from their website. And the $400 doesn’t include the adsense and affiliate revenues. How’s that for motivation to make your website better?

As your get more traffic and higher page rank, you can always raise the price. However, a good business practice is not to raise the price for those sites that were submitted under the lower price. For example, let’s say you have a one-time fee of $40. Ten sites pay the $40 to join your directory. After six months, you increase your traffic and page rank. Thus, you’re able to raise the fee to $100. I would not charge the first ten sites the $60 to meet the current price. This business practice will make your customers happy. In fact, I would put a written guarantee on your directory that you will not charge old customers extra if you do raise the price.

Raising The Quality Of Your Directory

Only accept quality sites in your directory. This makes your directory more useful, both for your website visitors and your customers. If someone submits a site that doesn’t have a lot of pages or has low quality content, don’t be afraid to reject it. You don’t want to make your directory look like any site can join. A couple bad sites is all it takes to bring down the credibility of your directory. Only accept quality sites. You’ll miss some sales in the short-term but you’ll reap the long-term benefits of building a high quality directory. By only accepting good sites, you’ll attract more good sites to join which will further raise the quality of your directory.

Finally, every approved site should be relevant to your industry or niche. If you have a blog about dogs, don’t accept sites about celebrity gossip. If your visitors come to your site looking for tech deals, don’t approve wedding sites!

Conclusion

If you’re looking to further monetize your site, give web directories a try. You may be surprised with their profit potential.

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This post was inspired by this blog post: How To Squeeze More Income Out Of Your Blog

With reciprocal links, you can offer a link and get a link back. What will you offer webmasters to acquire a one way link? Acquiring a one way link requires more creativity and effort.

Here’s two link building strategies that make it easier for you to get those important one way links.

Three way link exchange

This link building strategy takes much effort, but the payoff is great. Basically, start another site that’s related to the site where you want a one way link. This new site must be a quality site for the three way link exchange to work.

What should the new site be about? You can start a news site in your niche or industry. You can create a blog. You can start a site that’s a little more general in subject matter than the first site - or conversely, more specific in topic. For example, if your first site is about link building, your new site could be about SEO (a broader topic) or paid links (a narrower topic).

Once you’ve established your new site, simply email other webmasters offering them a link from your new site in exchange for a link to your first site. If your new site is a high quality site, you could obtain very strong backlinks to your first site from other high quality sites.

Links from related sites that are not direct competitors

Surprisingly, this is one of the least used link building strategies even though it is effective. There are sites in your industry or niche that do not compete directly with you. Write something useful for those sites. Then, contact the webmasters of those sites and point them to your content. If you’re content is high quality, you’ll probably get a couple one way links.

If the site doesn’t give you a one way link, you can offer to write an article for their site in exchange for a one way link.

Here’s two examples of this link building strategy.

Let’s say you have a entrepreneur blog. You can write about flipping houses as a way to make money. Then, you can notify mortgage or real estate sites about your article.

In the second example, imagine you have a basketball blog. You can write an article that ranks the top ten basketball teams of all time. Then, you can ask general sports sites to link to it.

One question you may be asking: “Where can I find these sites?” Search on Google with your industry’s search terms. Scan the first couple of search results pages. You should find some sites there that don’t directly compete with you.

Neglecting deep links

Deep links are links that point to your site but not your home page. In other words, these links point to your internal webpages.

What are the advantages of deep linking? First, you’ll have more search volume because more of your pages will rank. Second, you’ll increase the link authority and popularity of your whole site. Third, search bots will spider your site more efficiently. Fourth, whenever you create a new page, it will be indexed more quickly.

Focusing too much on reciprocal links

Search engines are giving more weight to one-way links because they look more natural. Instead of concentrating on link exchanges, use your time and energy to acquire one-way links.

Getting links from generic sites instead of relevant sites

Generic sites include article directories, site directories, and word cloud sites. There are a select few directories that have gained the search engines’ trust like ezinearticles.com and dmoz.com. However, most article directories and site directories are not worth your time and effort.

Word cloud sites are especially risky. Search engines can easily devalue those links because word cloud sites are manipulative, spammy, and easy to detect. You might rank well with word cloud sites in the short-term, but search engines’ algorithms are getting better. Don’t count on word cloud sites as a long-term link building strategy.

Get links from relevant sites. What’s a relevant site? It’s a site that relates to your site. If you have a site about a hit TV show, you should be getting links from entertainment sites instead of sports sites. Getting links from relevant sites helps the search engines figure out what your site is all about. This leads to higher ranking on keywords related to your niche.

Going after links from non-authority sites instead of authority sites

Too many webmasters are going after links from sites with low traffic, low page rank, and low quality. Remember one link from a popular, high-quality site is better than 100 links from mediocre sites.

Using irrelevant anchor text

I see this all the time. Using relevant anchor text is one of the most important SEO strategies yet many people forget to do it.

In the course of link building, you’ll have a chance to give the anchor text. You might pay for a link, do a link exchange, or write the resource box to an article submitted to a directory. In these instances, always use relevant keywords for your anchor text.

For example, I own the site, heroesinfo.com. If I do a link exchange, my link partner might ask me for the anchor text, site description, and site url.

The following anchor text would not be optimal, because the search term “heroes info” has a low search volume.

Heroes Info
Heroes Info has the latest Heroes news, spoilers, pictures, and video.
http://heroesinfo.com

Instead, I would give him the following information, because “NBC heroes” and “heroes news” have higher search volume than “heroes info.”

NBC Heroes News
Heroes Info has the latest Heroes news, spoilers, pictures, and video.
http://heroesinfo.com

Here’s another example. I write an article for ezinearticles.com. What should I put in my resource box?

I could try this…

Visit my heroes news site at http://heroesinfo.com.

… or I can be resourceful and write this instead.

Visit my NBC Heroes news site (heroesinfo.com).

Building site wide links instead of content-based links

Site wide links like blogrolls on the sidebar or footer are losing their link authority. Search engines are putting more weight on content-based links, because they look more natural.

Refusing to linkbait regularly

A lot of people may disagree with me on this. I believe linkbaiting gives you the best ROI (return of investment) for your link building efforts. One successful linkbait can give you hundreds of links, many of them being high quality.

Here’s a couple linkbaiting tips to help you get started:

* Be creative. Do something different.

* Fill in a gap. Find an undeveloped area in your niche and write about it.

* Do some in-depth research. Publish something longer than your normal 250-400 word blog post.

* Make a list. The longer, the better - everyone loves getting 101 tips.

* Write something people can debate about. For example, if you have a basketball site, rank the top ten players and then ask your readers to agree or disagree.

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I sensed that my problem was not having a writing plan. So, I wondered, what would it look like to plan out my content creation. Here’s the quick tip I thought of.

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But for a business that will grow and succeed for the long term, you need to find a way to produce a lot of content.

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One of the most important things to design is the adsense areas. Where will you put the adsense blocks?

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What can you do avoid being a boring internet marketer?

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