Internet Marketing Indonesia Journal

Copyright 2006 Richard Grady

I will be honest; the title of this article is slightly misleading. You see, in my opinion, the best traffic that money can buy actually doesn’t cost anything - it’s free!

I am talking of course about the magical traffic that we have all heard of but that only a select few have experienced…..free search engine traffic.

We all know that it is possible to get tons of free traffic from the big search engines - Google, MSN, Yahoo and so on but getting to the top of these engines has always been incredibly tough. Actually, I am being slightly dishonest again. Going back a few years, it was in fact very easy to get a high search engine ranking, you just put a page together, threw in a few meta keywords and a decent page title and scattered your keywords across the text content a bit and that was it. Wait a week or so and bingo, you’ve got yourself a front page ranking on Google! Ok, it wasn’t quite that simple but it wasn’t much harder than that.

Nowadays getting to the top of the engines is much harder and even if you do make it to the top, you can be dropped just as quickly if the search engine decides to change the way in which they rank websites.

However, whilst getting your site indexed and ranked in a decent position does take a bit of effort, it isn’t impossible, especially if you know what the search engines are looking for. I am no expert on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but I have studied the subject on a casual basis since I first started online in 1998. I am really a lazy SEO’er and part of the reason for this is that I have spent the time in past optimizing sites, only to have Google (or whoever) suddenly decide that they don’t like my site quite as much as they did last week and dropping me way down their rankings. All that lovely free traffic gone overnight I got fed up with this a couple of years ago and vowed never to chase search engine traffic again!

That said, there is nothing quite like top quality, targeted, free traffic and the buzz of getting several hundred (or even thousand) visitors every single day without spending out a single penny can’t be beaten. Just think how much it would cost you to buy 500 visitors each day using Google Adwords or similar (and this form of advertising isn’t anywhere near as effective as it used to be but that’s a story for another day!).

Anyway, back to the point of this article…. It is possible to get very good search engine rankings very quickly IF you follow some basic rules when you build your websites. To illustrate this (and remember, I am no expert), I noticed this week that my new site, SimplyWholesale.co.uk already has several number one (and front page) rankings on Google, MSN and several other smaller search engines! I am even beating eBay on some keywords and phrases Now, bear in mind that this site was launched just two weeks ago. I haven’t done any ‘major’ search engine optimization on it - just the absolute basics. There are hardly any inbound links to the site (seriously, like a dozen absolute maximum) AND none of the search engines have crawled anywhere near the entire site. At the time of writing, Google has indexed just 17 pages out of almost 1500!! Despite this, Google and the other engines are sending me some fairly healthy traffic everyday. Just think how much traffic I could be getting in a few weeks time once the site has been fully indexed?!

So, why am I telling you this? Simple. Because getting good search engine rankings doesn’t have to be an impossible task. If you know the basics and apply them to your site, there is no reason why you shouldn’t start to see some free traffic coming your way. Now of course, you can’t expect to do a bit of work on your site and suddenly rank no.1 on Google for a really competitive search term such as ‘earn money online’ BUT you don’t need to. At the end of the day all you need to do is make sure that your site ranks well for a handful of relevant keywords/phrases and as long as they are words that people are actually searching for, you will see the benefits.

If you don’t know how to optimize your website, just visit my forum in the signature link below for lots of hints and tips…

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Many webmasters who have been following the discussions about Google’s dislike of paid links have been confused about what constitutes bad links and good links, in the eyes of the search engine companies. In this article, I will seek to answer many of the questions people have on this topic.

There are two kinds of links that you can pay to have made for you: rented or paid links, and permanent links.

Introduction To Paid Links, Or More Accurately Rented Links

With Rented links, you can generally make your purchase decision based on the PageRank of a page.

The downside with rented links is that Google has stated that they do not like links that are sold on the basis of PageRank, and they are trying to create systems to identify links rented for PageRank, for the purpose of discounting those links. While they may eventually be able to target and negate links developed by systems like Text-Link-Ads or TextLinkBrokers, they will never be able to completely identify and discount all links that are sold for the purposes of PageRank .

In the end, I suppose Google is not going to penalize the Source or Target websites for those links, but they will nullify the value of the individual links in the Google algorithms. Cutts suggested and implemented the “rel=nofollow” a while back as a tool webmasters could use for the purpose of identifying links for which the webmaster did not want to pass PageRank. The only thing that Google’s algorithm will actually do to links identified as rented or paid links is that it will treat those links as “rel=nofollow’s”. If Google succeeds in their quest, the webmaster buying the links will be throwing away his or her money, if they are buying placement on a webpage solely for the purpose of influencing PageRank.

The Story Of Permanent Links

The second kind of link is the permanent link. Permanent links come in many formats, and in most cases should generally be viewed as non-rental links. With rental links, you pay a fee for placement once a month, quarter or year.

Of course, the Yahoo directory is not viewed as a paid link by the Google engineers, because although you “pay” to get the link, Yahoo does not guarantee placement of your link in their directory. Instead, Yahoo says that we are paying them to “review our link.” This is why Google is not discounting links from the Yahoo directory. Those Yahoo links are nice to have, but they still do require a yearly review for commercial websites, which must be paid for on a yearly basis.

Permanent in all cases is in the eye of the beholder. Permanent as a rule in the Internet world means that you will not have to pay another fee later to keep that link on the page, where it will reside. In the context of links on the Internet, permanent actually means that the link will live at that location, until the webmaster who owns the website changes his or her website’s direction OR goes out of business.

In my experience, perhaps 10% of the website’s where we get links placed will go under within one year. Towards the end of the second year, webmasters will look at their Profit/Loss and make a determination whether their income level will justify shooting for a third year of operation. Another 20% will close their website at the end of the second year run. So, 30% will drop out of business, within their first two years. Of the remaining 70%, many of those websites will survive to the fifth year and beyond. I don’t know how long one will be able to count on a permanent link just yet, but links that I built for myself in 1999 continue to produce traffic for my websites today, and those links have sent me continuous traffic for years.

Permanent, One-Way Links

Many permanent one-way links can be acquired on pages that currently have PageRank on them. In those cases, it may simply be a matter of your link being added to a list of links already on someone’s web page.

However, any link created through a content development method, such as pay-per-post or article marketing, will be posted on a new page on the Internet. All new pages on the Internet begin life at PageRank Zero. It is like the birth of a baby. The baby begins small, but grows into a child, then a teen, and finally an adult. All article pages begin their lives at PageRank Zero, and most of those new pages will increase in PageRank as they age. Some web pages will never mature beyond PR1, but others can grow into pages that are as high as PR6 (at least that is the highest I have seen an article page to date).

If you trust Matt Cutts of Google, he has indicated that all new pages begin life at PageRank Zero and in the Supplemental Results. He also said that Supplementals are not the end of the road. Cutts stated that the only thing required to bring a web page out of the Supplemental Results is to have that web page gain PageRank. (For those curious why a page went from the Primary Results to Supplemental Results, the answer is that either Google began counting links differently OR the links that gave a web page PageRank no longer exist.)

Three Reasons Why Article Marketing Helps Link Building

My conclusion from this information, and I might be biased, is that the use of article marketing for link building is a positive in the Google algorithms.

* I conclude this because links developed through article marketing begin on pages that have a PR Zero. So, we are obviously not getting links placed on websites for the sole purpose of acquiring PageRank, not directly anyway. We are placing links for the sake of having links, but with good luck, many of those links will gain PageRank over the long haul.

* By the very nature of article marketing, we can ensure that the links we develop for our websites reside on web pages that are tightly focused and targeted to the content of our websites.

* Most websites that post articles do so through a process of moderation, meaning that all article placements have been human reviewed. That human review process at the other end of the transaction puts most article websites on par with Yahoo’s human-reviewed directory.

When we can get our keywords embedded into the link pointing to our websites, then that is always a much better deal. But, that outcome will be affected by the webmaster at the other end of the process. Each webmaster has his or her own rules for article placement, and some of those folks simply do not permit embedded keywords in our links, either in the body of the article or in the about the author information. A plain text link is better than no link at all, although we always strive to get embedded keywords in our links.

Final Thoughts

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The importance of writing articles is increasingly growing as many internet marketers are witnessing the multiple benefits of this marketing tool.

Many of the new internet marketers remember only one of the benefits which is getting back links to their websites. They completely forget that through the articles that they distribute they are building their reputation not only with the readers but also with the article distribution sites. This reputation is what is going to help them build a relationship with their audience that could eventually turn into visitors to their site who could turn into paying customers.

When writing articles you should remember the following:

1- Your prospects are getting to know you through your articles. If you are writing for the sake of getting back links the readers will realize your intention easily and they will never click on your link. It is just like a sales call, if your prospect feels that you are pushing for the sale, he/she will never buy. But if they feel that you are sincerely trying to help, then your chances are much better for closing the deal.

2- What you write and distribute today will always haunt you tomorrow. Learning the hard way on the internet might be extremely costly as anybody who is doing any search on you will get among the results your old work. The question would be; would they realize that this work was when you were new?

3- Encourage your readers to click on your resource box by making sure to give them useful information that would really help them. Meaning; if you still want to distribute a large quantity of articles within a short a period of time, do not make that an excuse to reduce the quality of your articles. Each article should be written in the same spirit as if you are writing one article a month.

Writing articles poses two major obstacles to the marketers who are interested in this online marketing tool:

1- The ability to actually write articles.
2- The ability to distribute articles in an effective and efficient manner.

Writing Articles

For those who find difficulties in writing articles themselves I would recommend training themselves to that because in the long run it will serve them immensely in controlling the frequency of writing articles and the subjects they want to write about. The recommended strategy is as follows:

1- For the first couple of months hire a copy writer or the services of copy writing companies that would write articles specifically for you on the subject that you wish. Remember this is not buying a copy of an article that is sent to many others. This has to be written exclusively for you.

2- During the second month and while you are still getting the services of the exclusively written articles, get one article per week and re-write it in your own words. Meaning, get the core subject and write about it in your own way.

3- Now you can drop the exclusive services and start getting ghost written articles. Be careful, you will need to re-write those as they are given to many others. When I say re-write, I mean really re-write. Don’t change few words here and there or change paragraphs and then submit, because your article will be rejected. You need to make a completely new article out of the same core subject. You can get those articles in one of the following ways:

a. You can buy such articles
b. You can search for articles related to a certain subject and choose a combination of ideas presented in those different articles. This is a free option.
c. You can visit article directories and search for articles that suit you. This is also a free option.

Remember you will need to re-write the whole article, do not use someone else’s article and put your name on it. This is:

1- Not Ethical
2- Will be rejected by article directories.
3- If repeated you might get black listed in some directories.

Article Distribution

As every single person in internet marketing would tell you, there are two ways to submit articles; manually and automatically. Automatically is done either through a software package or an article distribution service.

My first straight forward recommendation is never to attempt to use the manual option unless there are few extremely important sites that you need to be 100% sure that your article is submitted to them.

The automatic approach is a must to submit your article to as many directories as possible. Therefore, do not limit yourself either to an article distribution service or an article submitter software, rather use both options.

Do not purchase the first software that comes your way. There are several around and their prices and features vary a lot. Ask about the best options in forums, you will be getting very useful answers. This is how I bought my software package.

Purchasing a software could be a difficult issue to internet marketers from countries that are not among the listed countries in Paypal and Clickbank. Do not be discourages when you find that. What you should do is find the contact link on the site of the seller and ask them if they have other payment options.

Submitting articles is great fun and a wonderful motivation factor. The more you find your name around the internet the more you want to write articles.

A good rule of thumb is: Never sacrifice quality of content for keyword placement. This will affect your page ranking. Most importantly, your site won’t appeal to visitors. For a FREE EBOOK detailing the fastest way to the top of the search engine, visit:
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I’ve noticed that most SEO articles focus on what to do after you launch your site. Those that do deal with preparing your site for launch usually discuss on-site SEO like keyword research and meta tags. What tends to be neglected is the advantage that you can gain by getting your site indexed before you launch. With a little planning and a few hours of work it’s easy to be indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN before your site goes live.

The key to getting your site indexed in the big three is getting links pointing to it from sites that are already indexed. When the search bots crawl those sites they will inevitably find the link to your site and your site will be added to their index. Follow these five steps a month before you launch and you’ll be a step ahead of the game.

1. Register your domain name. You’d be surprised how many people wait until the last minute to do this. The sooner you register your domain, the sooner you can get some quality links pointing to it and get it indexed.

2. Put up a home page. Make a “coming soon” page with your logo, information about your site, and expected launch date. You can also add a form for people to sign up for email updates about your site. This starts building your email marketing list before you even launch.

3. Start a blog and sign up for Feedburner. Put up a blog at www.yoursite.com/blog. It doesn’t matter if you use WordPress, Blogger, or whatever blog platform you prefer, just make sure you host it on your site. Make a few posts about your site, what people can expect when it launches, and why your site will be unique. After your first post, sign up for a Feedburner account at http://www.feedburner.com/. Under ‘Publicize’ in your account make sure to sign up for ‘Ping Shot’. This will notify blogging directories of your posts which hopefully will result in a few links to your site.

4. Write a few articles and submit to directories. Regardless of what your site is about, there is certainly a topic relating to your site that you could write an article about. For example, if your site is going to sell fitness equipment, you could write an article about how to build a home-gym. Or if you are going to rate and review new cars, you could write an article about how to shop for a new car. After you’ve written and proofread your articles, submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles (http://www.ezinearticles.com/) and iSnare (http://www.isnare.com/). Be sure to include a description of your new site and a link back to it in the resource box. Again, this should result in a few links to your site.

5. Get a link from an indexed site. Steps 3 and 4 should result in some links from indexed sites which should then ensure your site to be indexed. But it can’t hurt to get a few more on your own to be certain. When I launched my last site, I linked to it from my personal blog, which I knew was indexed. If you don’t have that option, you can ask someone with a blog or site related to yours to mention it. If you can’t find anyone willing to do it for free, you could offer them some free advertising on your site when you launch in exchange for the link.

Getting yourself indexed before you launch gives you a head start on your SEO and will allow your site to have a more immediate impact. Why wait until you launch? Get started a month early and you’ll reap the benefits when launch day rolls around.

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When you make searches, you are looking for something, which is something that we all do everyday. Well how about every time you make a Search, you get paid for it??
What a great way to earn money, but like me you are probably thinking, where is the catch?

Before we go any further, I am NOT talking about Google’s and their Adsense program. Which is very good, but it requires other people to make the “clicks”, and then it has to be on the advertisements that Google has placed on your web site. What Google does NOT do, it to pay you to make a Search! The Search Engine I am talking about DOES!!

How it works, is like this. This new Search Engine pays you, EVERY TIME you make a Search using your very own Search Engine Portal. So imagine, instead of using Google, MSN or Yahoo, or whoever you are currently using to make Searches, you use this new Search Engine. No real hardship, providing you get good results in your Search, it does not really matter.

It gets even better, it is not restricted to just you. They will ALSO pay you every time someone else searches on your personal Search Portal. So the more people that you can get to use YOUR search portal the better.

As editor of a large Article Directory, that currently has over 20,000 Articles, we receive hundreds of new ideas that arrive daily….but in this past week I have received two new articles, that have both made me sit up and take notice. This is the first of those, the other I will leave for a second article.

Every day many millions of searches are performed, admittedly over 80% of those searches are currently made by internet users that go through either Google, MSN or Yahoo, but none of them will pay you when you search, this new Search Engine does! Don’t forget that it was only a few years ago when Google started, and the big guys said that they would not last…..but now look at how big they are.

This is how the new Search Engine works:

You have your own Search Portal, in the same way that you would Search though any of the big three. Although instead of using say Google, you Search via your own personal Search Portal. The results that they supply, are both quick, and also very good, and supplied in the same way that they would be with any other Search Engine, but here is the difference!

1/. They will give you $50 just for joining, no catch, your account is credit as soon as you join up with them.

2/. You then get the personal link to your very own Search Portal when you join, which you then use whenever you want to make a Search of the internet.

3/. They CREDIT your account every time you make a Search, using your own Search Portal.

Now the potential!

The Search Portal link is specific to YOU, so the idea is for you to get your friends, and maybe even business colleagues to also use YOUR Search Portal, after all it will cost them nothing, and they will get good results. The more people you can get to use your Search Portal the better….BECAUSE every time that it is used to make a Search by anyone using YOUR Search Engine Portal link, the Search company pays YOU!!

It progresses even further, it is completely Free to you, and you get the $50 sign up bonus mentioned above, but if your friends also sign up, they get the $50 bonus too, as do their friends, and their friend’s friends!

So there must be a catch?
I have NOT found one, and I have looked at it VERY closely. In fact I think it is a great idea, I have actually tried it, and as promised my account credit increased as they said it would. I believe that it is a very novel idea and one that could really take off. It is totally free to use, it does not cost the users anything, and so as far as I can see it really is a win win situation.

The Search Engine I am talking about, is also a Pay Per Click Search Engine, so they DO want you to use the money you earn to buy Pay Per Click listings, but then if you have your own website, and you are accumulating money for Free just by making Searches, then it also means that you are getting your “clicks” for Free too. They also have paid Membership, which I understand allows you to take the money you earn in the form of Cash Commissions, paid twice monthly via PayPal.

From my point of view, it looks like a new way of getting free traffic to my website.

So finally if you do have a web site, or maybe plan to have one in the future, would like to promote it for Free, then this is something that you should really take a look at.
After all they could be the internet’s next big player, and you are getting in on the ground floor!

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