One of the most important aspects of your online marketing plan is link building. Link building is a way of putting links to your site that are located on other websites online. The links are simply used for people to click on to bring them to your home page, also called your landing page. You should try to use link building as much as possible to create more visitors to your website. When you get more interest in your site you'll have higher sales meaning more profits.

Many search engines also use links as a search ranking criteria. Typically the more links to your site you'll get a better or higher rank in search engine results. The higher your placement in search results the better. There can be hundreds or more search results and most searchers never look beyond the first page or two before making a choice. The most common search engine sites that use links in their search placement guidelines include Google, Alta Vista and Excite and there are certainly others.

Links can be successfully placed in a variety of methods to create success. The most important place to make sure that you have your link is a site that already has high traffic with your target market. This means you'll need to do a little market research. Start by doing searches on the most popular search engines (Google and Yahoo!). Use the keywords that are most often used in your type of business. Then visit the highest-ranking sites to see what they are all about.

You can also look to see where other similar businesses are posting their links. This can help you find the best sites for you, too. When you do a good job with link building you can expect to see a direct increase in your site traffic as well as an increase in sales. When you are working with link building create a list of the best places for you to add links.

Finding potential sites to post your link is only the first step. Once you have identified these potential sites you will need to talk to the site owner to ask if you can add your link to their site. This will be easy if your website provides valuable and interesting information. You can send an email to the site owner to ask about adding your link and to provide them with your link so they can review it. Don't expect all sites to take you up on it but many will. In fact many will want to get linked on your site as well. Exchanging links can be a good thing to do if you check the other site first and make sure it suits you.

Link building is so important to getting business to your site but it can take a lot of time. Link building is a specialty type of online marketing that may sometimes be done by professional SEO companies. These companies are experienced at all types of online marketing including link building and often have experience in your specific type of business. They know what works and what doesn't and have access to the latest tools for Internet marketing.

No matter how you do it you will need to set up links if you want to dramatically increase the traffic to your website. Remember that you'll need to keep up on your links after you first place them. If the sites that you link from change significantly you may need to rethink placement. You will also need to continually update links by looking for new sites where you should add a link. These tips will help get your ranking up as well as get you more visitors on your site.

In general there are two free sources of traffic online. These sources are broadly defined as Social traffic and Search Engine traffic. 99% of all newcomers online set up a blog or website and proceed to try and obtain social traffic. They do this simply because everyone else does it.

Social traffic consists of using social networks like Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, Entrecard, Forums and hundreds of other services that allow you to sign up and promote your site on them. These services are the backbone of what is known as Web 2.0 and has evolved into a newer version centered around Facebook, MySpace and the current craze - Twitter.

The general idea is to get out there and make friends online using these networks, draw them in to your site, wow them with your content and wait for the links to come pouring in from your adoring fans. As the links increase your traffic increases as more and more people find your site and in turn tell more people through the use of more links and one day you will become famous just like Darren Rowse of Problogger or failing personal fame you may still develop a hugely popular site like Engadget or the Huffington Post.

There is a certain appeal to all this - becoming popular has many advantages aside from the most obvious monetary considerations. Many people blog because they have something to say and just want an outlet for their views. Others dream of being a writer and use the net to publish their stories. Get your work out there and get discovered. Musicians and filmmakers use the net in the same way. Whatever your reason for starting a blog or website there will come a day when you say to yourself, “what is the point if no one is reading or watching or listening to my creative output?”

It is at that point that you will begin your quest to find traffic and invariably you will turn to the social networks. You will discover quite quickly that you can get social traffic fairly easily using Stumbleupon or even easier using Entrecard. Twitter might be the easiest of all. You will join forums and work at becoming an “authority” in your niche. You will make friends. They will send links. All will be wonderful… for a while.

Six months to a year down the road two things will happen - it always happens and it happens whether you have achieved a large readership or not. You wake up one day and realize that you are working like a dog and there is little to no benefit from all that work. Driving social traffic is a constant grind. If you stop posting, twittering, digging, stumbling, dropping entrecards, leaving comments on other blogs or any of the other daily chores needed to keep your name out there the traffic dries up. Moreover your health deteriorates and your friends and family are neglected as you spend hours and hours sitting in front of your computer single mindedly developing your brand. Even if you have managed to develope a few thousand RSS subscribers - something most beginners think of as a successful blogger - you will still ask yourself “is all this work worth it?”

Why? Because at some point everyone wants to be compensated for all that work. You may say now that you are just doing it because you like to “write” or you just need an outlet to release your opinions and I believe you. The problem is that you will not be satisfied just writing or opinionating if no one is reading your output. You will get sucked into the social traffic cycle and find out that it is work. And when you work that hard you will eventually want a monetary reward for it - in one form or another. Having 10,000 readers coming and reading just wont cut it if a book deal doesn’t materialize. Or you can’t make money from advertisers. Or JV (joint venture) offers don’t show up. No matter what your reason for blogging at some point you are going to want a reward for it and the more work you put into it the more return on time invested will be expected.

And that is the problem - you wont get a return from social traffic. They don’t spend money - they don’t click ads and the advertisers are no longer supplying inventory to social sites as that fact has become known. Today.com claims 10 million page views a month. That is fairly significant traffic. So why don’t we see the big advertisers on this site? Where are the finance/credit/bank advertisements? The auto company ads? The big brand names? What we see are ads for dating sites. And Adsense.

The advertisers are not coming to this domain in spite of the traffic. Today.com has had to find a means to monetize this site using affiliate marketing platforms which they are currently rolling out. Adsense does not perform well as the sub-domains are not targeted for premium CPC (cost per click) and are smart priced. They get pennies per click from adsense and the CTR is dismal at best. Today.com is a successful domain based on traffic but like many others online they have found out that all traffic is not equal. The majority of this domains traffic comes from social networks and social traffic does not convert well - meaning they can’t make much profit from it.

If you are reading this then chances are you have a site yourself and you spend a fair amount of time reading blogs and surfing the net. You are social traffic. When was the last time you bought something on a friends site? Or clicked on an Ad? You don’t do it often if at all and neither do all the other social bloggers and social network users. You are here to read. You are online looking for information and not looking to buy something.

Search engine traffic is quite different. Most people use the search engines - Google by far - when they need to find something. You don’t go to Today.com when you want tickets to a Broadway musical or are looking for a hotel in New York. You use Google. You have a purpose in mind and that usually entails buying something or at the least you need specific information about a specific thing. Search traffic is targeted and whether you are trying to make money online or just want readers, search traffic is the traffic you want because it consists of people looking specifically for what you are offering.

If you have a humor blog for no other reason than just to entertain then why not target people looking for humor blogs? The easiest way to do that is to rank number 1 in Google for the term “humor blog”. On average 2400 people a month will find your site. If you rank for more related keywords like “humorous photos”, “Humor writer”, “humor”, “funny pics”, “funny stories” etc then you will eventually have thousands of daily visitors to your site. And this is the best part - you can post when you want or not at all and the same traffic will show up every day. Moreover you will never have to spend 1 minute commenting on other blogs or stumbling or dropping entrecards or doing any of the other chores involved in social marketing. And the icing on the cake - your search traffic will click your ads. They will read your humorous post and because they found you while searching for humor they are likely going to click on those ads that point them to other humorous sites. They don’t care if they make you money or not - they are not bloggers. They are civilians looking for something and will click anything that leads them to their goal.

The process for obtaining search traffic is actually very simple but it does take work and most of all patience. It can also be done in conjunction with social traffic. The problem is 99% of bloggers only chase social traffic and completely shut the door on search traffic right from the get go. This doesn’t have to be and I will show you how to optimize for the search engines using some basic SEO techniques that will pay off hugely by the time you wane on social traffic. You can use social networks for immediate traffic while building your site for long term search traffic. If you don’t achieve search traffic then you will eventually burn out and all the social traffic in the world will not change that fact.

SEO Basics that must be used in order to drive search traffic to your blog are as follows;

You must use your keyword in your URL.

You must use your keyword in your Blog Title.

You must use your keywords in your Post Titles.

You must use your keywords and related terms in your post content.

You will get the best search results by only posting one post per page unless all your posts are related to the same keywords.

If using Adsense then always stick to one post per page.

If using photos then your keywords should be used in the alt tags.

You must use html for the bulk of your pages content. (plain old text)

These simple little steps are all you need to do to optimize your site for the search engines. You will get indexed for your keywords and ranked well. How high you get ranked depends on the competition. If there is little competition you could achieve top ranking doing little else. (Many of you experience some Google traffic for long tail keywords. This is because you used a term in your content that has little competition and Google found your site when someone searched for that term - unfortunately these terms don’t often provide much traffic) If there is a lot of competition then you will need backlinks pointing to your site using your keyword in the anchored text of the link pointing to you. That is all that is required to dominate any keyword online. Simple yes. In practice the hard part will be obtaining all the anchored backlinks needed to dominate a competitive keyword but following my on-site advice will make this task much easier - especially if you use social networks.

Now let me demonstrate what I am talking about.

I mentioned “humor” a few paragraphs ago as a lead in for my example site. But first a pre-amble to fill you in.

It seems I ruffled a few feathers in a post on my main site a few weeks ago. I mentioned that the bloggers on Today.com were beginners and the reason was to point out that most of the bloggers on here are following a failed strategy. They are almost without exception chasing social traffic and will eventually quit blogging for all the reasons I mentioned above. They will work their butts off making a few dollars a day and burn out. Most will not even do the social chasing and will quit long before they make a few dollars a day. This isn’t any different here or with beginners who start a self hosted blog or use free domains like Blogger that can be fully monetized. The fact is most of the people blogging today will not be blogging in six months. They give it a go, fail to attract readers, fail to attract money or both and quit. I have seen this cycle for years and anyone that has lasted as long as a year knows this is true. We see it time and again. Very few people actually do the work - the majority of my readers have been reading my blogs for a year or two and still haven’t built a site. It is what it is.

I highlighted one blogger in particular in my post - not to bash her - but because she is one of the few on Today that has the work ethic to succeed. She has a “humorous Photo ” blog and drives the most traffic to her site of all the Today bloggers. She does it using social traffic and works her tail off to do it. She is the type of person who could succeed online with a little SEO knowledge. It is unfortunate that her reaction was quite negative.

Note: The screenshot of Melissa’s post on the forum has been removed as it was inappropriate of me to show it - the forum is private and hence the comments made are as well. - Griz

Tact is not my strong suit and those who know me have seen this kind of reaction before. The thing is you also know I am going to show Melissa how she can improve her traffic stats whether she wants to listen or not. Her site is the perfect example of what not to do in regards to search traffic and by illustrating the mistakes it will become clear to both her and others how some simple tweaks could make a huge difference in her long term success. If it’s any consolation to Melissa she should know I only “pick on” bloggers who have the talent to succeed - there is no point in highlighting those that don’t.

This post is long enough so I will demonstrate on-site SEO next post and illustrate exactly why you should follow my advice regarding keywords using both Melissa’s site and mine. The results will not leave you in doubt about how effective it is at building links and traffic

In my last post How to Get Traffic to Your Website or Blog I listed several basic SEO techniques that all bloggers should follow - regardless of whether you are trying to make money online or just blogging for fun. In either case you will want visitors. Many beginners chase social traffic only to find out later that they don’t make money from this form of traffic and all too often they find that this traffic doesn’t convert into loyal readers either. They come, browse and then leave without so much as a comment. I have called this type of traffic useless. Some have taken offense at this description and usually tell me that it isn’t useless as it helps them build links. This is true - social traffic can produce backlinks for your site. Unfortunately most often the backlinks are useless as well.

If you follow my directions then you can use social traffic to provide you with useful backlinks which will in turn help you to rank well in the search engines for terms that people search for. Search engine visitors are targeted which mean they have an interest in your topic before finding your site. Unlike social browsers the search visitors will click ads, buy products and even become loyal readers who will leave comments. There is a certain irony to all this - I have found that the best way to grow a readership and a social network isn’t with social networks - it’s best done with the search engines.

Here is the list of SEO basics I published on the last post.

SEO Basics that must be used in order to drive search traffic to your blog are as follows;

You must use your keyword in your URL.

You must use your keyword in your Blog Title.

You must use your keywords in your Post Titles.

You must use your keywords and related terms in your post content.

You will get the best search results by only posting one post per page unless all your posts are related to the same keywords.

If using Adsense then always stick to one post per page.

If using photos then your keywords should be used in the alt tags.

You must use html for the bulk of your pages content

Rather than getting into a long winded explanation of why you should follow my Advice I will just show you an example of a site that uses Keywords for all of the above and a site that doesn’t. The benefit of using Keywords will be crystal clear when I’m finished.

I said that social traffic can indeed produce backlinks but that these links are all too often useless. By useless I mean that they don’t use anchored text in the link for any useful terms that people search for in the search engines.

Melissa from “Why be Normal” has a social blog here on Today.com. She spends a lot of time driving traffic using social networks and I suspect Google Images. She does quite well but could do a lot better with a lot less work.

Her Keyword “Why Be Normal” has no search benefit. In simple terms nobody searches for the term. It also doesn’t reflect her blog’s topic or niche. Her site is most accurately described as a humorous photo blog. I did a search for “humorous photo” on Google before my last post. Why be Normal was not listed on the first page of the serp’s (search engine results page) for that term. I added an anchored link to Melissa’s blog in that post. And waited.

I did a search today on Google for “humorous photo” and guess what?

(Click images to enlarge - use magnifier to enlarge further)

All it took was two anchored links using the term “humorous photo” to get Melissa’s blog ranked on page 1. (The term doesn’t have a lot of competition.)

Here is what Melissa’s backlinks look like. Notice that her links all contain “why be normal” in the anchors. This is because most people link to your site using either your URL or your Blog Title. In some cases they will use your Post title.

Now imagine if she had used a term like “Humor Blog” or “Funny Pics” or “Humorous Photos” in her URL, Blog Title and Post Titles. Every one of her links would contain those keywords and she would be easily ranking well or even number 1 in Google for terms that get searched for and drawing in daily traffic without having to do any work what so ever. No new posts, no chasing social network traffic. Search traffic shows up consistently day after day and if they like what they see they will leave comments and click on relevant ads and buy relevant products.

Now let’s look at this Adsense blog. I use keywords in all my titles and URL. I don’t post often and only in order to target more keywords.

Not bad - 9 posts, 1100 comments (which contain a ton of keyword rich content that the Google bot devours) and no time spent chasing social traffic.

You will notice I have very few useless backlinks.

Now I am not generating nearly the same traffic as Melissa is at the moment. But from Today.com’s perspective I am generating better traffic. Traffic that they can make money from using Adsense. When my traffic clicks an ad Today.com receives top CPC for the click as my visitors are targeted to the ads placed on my site.

In Melissa’s case and basically most of the Today.com sites the Google Adsense ads are smart priced and Today.com only receives a few pennies a click. The reason for the poorly targeted ads on Today.com is because the bloggers don’t use keywords in their post titles (this is the main trigger for what ads Google produces on your page) and they have several unrelated posts (and titles) on a single page. The Google bot is forced to determine what your page is about in order to serve relevant ads. If you do not target a keyword in your post title and have several post titles on a page the end result is a mishmash of ads usually not relevant to anything in particular and almost never relevant to what your social traffic is looking for. (It’s worth noting that Social Traffic rarely clicks ads anyway nor do they buy advertising or buy from advertisers. A problem Today.com is having trying to monetize all the social traffic blogs here on Today.com) This means that any clicks you do receive will not convert well for the advertiser and Google will give them a discount by simply paying Today.com a few pennies instead of the bid price.

Why be Normal should be showing ads for various humor related topics as that is what the traffic is looking for. Instead the site is showing ads as follows;

If her post titles all contained related “humor” or “Funny Pics” keywords she would see an instant change in the ads displayed and Today.com would see a much better return as far as CPC (cost per click) is concerned. Changing her blog title to “Humour Photos - Why Be Normal” would have the most impact on both her search rankings and Adsense relevancy. Moreover the blog description should simply read, “Humorous Photos and Funny Pictures to make you laugh”. If her friends would change their anchored links pointing at Melissa’s blog to related keywords like “funny pics”, “humor Photos”, “Humorous Pictures” etc she would see a sharp increase in search traffic as her blog ascends the serp’s for those terms.

These simple tips will work for any site and aside from making you more money with Adsense they will increase your readership and comment levels as you will be drawing in targeted visitors. Melissa averages 3k - 7k visitors a day with un-targeted traffic and has to post often and work the social networks to keep the traffic coming. Is it worth all the work? Today.com isn’t making much from the traffic, Melissa has few comments and her RSS feed subscribers show no readers. (using Blog Perfume Feed Analysis which may be broken? )

This Adsense blog had a whopping two posts for the month of March. How did my traffic stack up?

13,300 unique visitors or 6,650 unique visitors per post. Not a lot of work put in any way you look at it. I even made $40 for the effort but that isn’t why I’m here. I am simply trying to dominate another set of keywords related to the make money online niche. In time I will add more and more targeted keywords to this site and eventually drive 1000’s of visitors here daily without doing much of anything. It’s the ultimate system for passive income and I have reproduced this method countless times before.

My main blog produced the following search traffic over the final two weeks of March with only two posts;

and in case you don’t believe that targeted search traffic makes money this shot shows how well each keyword converted into revenue;

No amount of social traffic will give you those kind of earnings for the work involved.

Be smart - blog socially if that is your thing but at least optimize your sites for the search engines. Using proper keywords in your URL’s and Titles will create useful anchored links even from social bloggers who don’t know what an anchored link is. They just send links using your URL so make sure your URL has your keyword in it and you will rank for it in the serp’s. Eventually you won’t have to chase social traffic. Google will send you all the traffic you need.

Cheers,