Thursday, June 5, 2008

What Is Bum Marketing?

One of the hottest marketing trends going on right now is something called "Bum Marketing."

Some guy named Travis Sago created the phrase Bum Marketing when he noticed that most of his best click-thru conversions came from extremely specialized keyword phrases and searches which have relatively low competition.

According to Sago, it was his wife Jeannie's idea to name his program the "Bum Marketing Method" because she thinks it is so easy to do that they could literally take a bum off the street...take him to the public library...and have him earning cash within a week.

Anyway, the concept behind the program is to write articles targeted towards less popular keyword phrases and have those articles get picked up by the top search engines. Because the articles would be targeted toward less popular, less competitive keyword phrases, they would have a realistic chance of ending up at or near the top of the search results, due to the low competition.

Well folks, I hate to burst your bubble, but there is absolutely nothing new or revolutionary about Bum Marketing.

Bum Marketing is Article Marketing with a different name - nothing more.

So does the method really work?

In a word...yes.

If you write articles targeted towards less popular, less competitive keyword phrases and allow them to be freely published, your articles become viral, meaning your articles can actually spread like a virus and have the potential to be viewed by millions (yes millions)of Internet users.

And because search engines love articles you can expect to get linked to by many high-profile websites, thereby increasing your PR (Page Rank) and traffic as well.

There's also another important by-product of article marketing:Credibility.

Other than testimonials from well known expert marketers, writing articles is the quickest way to establish credibility online.

If you write good, quality content, not only will your articles get published regularly, but they will also brand you as an expert in your field, which will instantly enhance your reputation and bottom line tremendously.

Don't know how to write? No problem. Hire an affordable ghostwriter over at elance.com. Just be careful to check out whoever you hire carefully, because all writers are not created equal.

There is a caveat to article marketing, however. In order for it to be effective, you have to write lots of quality articles. Quality is the key, because no one wants to read garbage.

Anyway, the more articles you write...the more traffic you'll generate...the more traffic you generate...the more money you'll make.

In closing, I can tell you from personal experience that article marketing is extremely effective, if you treat it seriously. But it is not something to be undertaken, unless you are 100 percent committed to it!

Dale King is the owner of Guruknowledge.org - The Ultimate Marketing Resource!

If you're tired of all the money-making hype, lies and scams...read this! http://guruknowledge.org/pages/The-Super-Affiliate-Handbook

Productive Article Marketing - Revealed - 4 Huge Ways to Make Money with Article Marketing

Article marketing is one of the most powerful tools in generating traffic for your website and building your online reputation without the need to shell out your precious dimes. You just need to write and syndicate your articles to earn quality inbound links and improve your search engine ranking.

Here are the 4 huge ways to make money with article marketing:

1. Learn how to stir attention online. The first step that you need to take is to ensure that your articles will generate interest and attention online otherwise, they will be left unread. Kick-start your articles by using compelling and attention-grabbing titles to effectively move online users to open and read your content. Keep your titles short and direct to the point. Also, don't forget to communicate the readers' benefits on your headlines to give online users more reasons to invest their time in reading your content.

2. Pack your articles with useful information. Before you write your articles, collect all the information that you think will be useful in making your readers fully understand your ideas. Never leave any information out and present them in a logical manner so you can easily get your message across.

3. Distribute your articles. In submitting your articles online, it is important that you choose the best publishing sites that can give your articles the exposure they need. As you know, there are only few article submission sites that are indexed by Google and are highly visited. Some of them are the following: ezinearticles, goarticles, articleally, and buzzle dot com.

4. Syndicate your articles through your RSS feed. One of the great ways to connect to your potential clients through your articles is by incorporating them on your RSS. By doing so, you can still provide your target market with information they need even if they don't have the time to search the internet for your content.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Breakthrough Article Marketing - Revealed - 4 Popular Ways to Jump Start Your Article Marketing

For most people, writing has never been their strongest skill. Even while in school a lot of us seem to exert tremendous amount of effort when writing essays and still fail to deliver content that makes sense and reads well. However, this should not be your basis when writing articles for the web. Because truth be told, article writing is a a lot easier than writing lengthy essay.

As such, you can still use article marketing in popularizing your website even if you are not a professional writer. Here are the 4 popular ways to jump start your article marketing:

1. Start writing 2-3 articles per day. Don't rush into multiplying the number of your articles. Stick with 2-3 articles until you get the hang of it. If you are having hard time putting your ideas into words, I suggest that you imagine someone asking you questions about the topic that you intend to write. Then, think of how you would exactly reply if you are talking to this person face to face. This is how you should exactly write your articles so they would sound conversational and easy to read.

2. Have your articles proofread by professional writers or editors. These people can help you identify the weak points of your articles that might hinder you from reaping success in this field. Take each of their feedback constructively and apply them on your writing until you are able to produce well-written articles.

3. Once you are able to write quality content, learn how to create a compelling resource box. There are various tutorials and ebooks online that can tremendously help you learn the ropes of writing resource box that delivers great results.

4. Lastly, create an account on major article submission sites and understand their terms of service. Make sure you follow all their rules so your articles will not be rejected.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

How To Write Keyword-Rich Content For Maximum Impact

Millions of companies are using keyword-rich articles in order to gain free exposure all over the Internet. Whether you're an online marketer a product or a writer looking for freelance work, chances are you can benefit greatly from keyword articles.

You may ask yourselves: But what good are keywords? What you want, when you are marketing a product is for people to be able to easily find you. The methods you are using while searching for something specific, are the same methods all the Internet users out there utilize, that is keyword search.

You shouldnt be reluctant in writing keyword-rich articles, even though youve never done this before. It is nothing different than writing regular pieces of content. All you need to do is simply follow these easy guidelines for keyword writing and get ready to have readers pour in!

- Learn the buzzwords.

Every industry has its own jargon and language. If youre a master in your field, its quite easy to identify the keywords and you don't need to read up on it. If youre writing about a relatively new subject for you, do some additional research. Read several different articles to get an idea of the language used and the most popular sub-categories of the field.

- Write the article without focusing on the keywords.

When writing an article, its best not to focus on the keywords so much; dont let yourself carried away by time-wasting word-selection, which might prevent you from writing in a natural manner. If you know what youre writing about, then keywords will smoothly fall where you want them to, without effort, and you will get your keywords without even knowing.

- Determine the popularity of your keywords.

Uses the Overture Keyword Selector Tool to find out how many times your visitors have used keywords that directed them to your site.

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Type in the word and hit return.

- Select keywords that are specific rather than general.

If I was to write an article on negotiating fees with a freelance copywriter, then I would use popular keywords, related to my topic, such as "Freelance copywriting rates" as this is probably something a potential visitor would actually type.

- Scan your existing text for keywords

After completing your draft and selecting your keywords, put them together. Try to find the first keyword. You might as well have slipped it there, if you knew how to write your article.

- Find and Change

Instead of using the word writing in your article about copywriting, copywriting should be a better choice. Change all these keyword-phrases and re-order some of your sentences.

- Proofread your article

Read the text again, now that you have changed it, take time to correct it; check for spelling mistakes, etc. Try not to repeat the same word, and try to make your vocabulary as varied as possible.

- Include the keywords in your headline

You will usually come up with the best headline for your article at the end of the writing process, and not before, so wait until you finish and then you will get the best hard-hitting headline.

Are you feeling more comfortable now about keyword article writing? You can start making money by writing keyword-rich content for the world.

-Craig S. Andrews

Visit Craig's blog for "Real Internet Business Strategies" and great wealth building strategies and instruction. Earn more, work less, and find true freedom in life. See you there! http://www.craigsandrews.com

Article Marketing The Two Ways to Do It

Article marketing is such an effective method of generating web traffic, and yet there are two ways to do it effectively, and without knowing which of the two you are doing and how to do them most effectively, it is easy to have wasted efforts.

With either of these two methods of article marketing, each is best utilized with a full-force effort, and if you combine the two haphazardly, I do not believe you gain the full effect.

So what are the two different methods of article marketing. One is article marketing for direct traffic by submitting multiple articles to a small database of article directories that get the bulk of the article directory traffic online.

The second is article marketing for backlinks which improves your search engine ranking so you get indirect traffic via the search engines. To do this, you write a few articles with your links inside and submit them to at least 100 of the article directories.

You may be thinking, well arent those two methods just about the same?

Well, in fact, they are very different. When you use one or the other you get very specific results, and when you mix the two, sometimes you get less powerful results because each method works best when used in force.

In the first case, you are writing multiple articles but it is senseless to submit them to more than the top 3 or 4 web sites out there, because they dont get enough traffic to help you with direct traffic.

With the second method, you really need to submit to multiple web sites to get your url out there, but you only need to submit about 1 article per month you just have to submit it to a lot of directories.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 600 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

Fast Article Marketing - Discover 5 Creative Secrets to Excel At Article Marketing

One of the easiest ways to get targeted traffic for your website is through article marketing. It may not be the fastest way to see an influx of online visitors to your site, but it is definitely uncomplicated and relatively cost-effective. In addition, it is also proven to work not only in terms of improving your page ranking but also increasing your page views in the long run.

Here are the 5 creative secrets to excel with article marketing:

1. Strive to produce quality articles. When your articles are remotely interesting and content-rich, these will be easily picked up by other webmasters and publishers to use the information in their blogs or website. If you consistently write quality articles, your content will be widely distributed and you will earn numerous back links for your website and increased traffic.

2. Optimize your content. To make sure that your articles will be highly visible to search engines, use long tail keywords and incorporate Latent Semantic Indexing. This is relatively a new process in finding relevant keywords for you content which has gained the nods of major search engines.

3. Make use of interesting, attention-grabbing titles. If you want to improve your clickthrough rates, you must understand the importance of giving your articles great headlines. These act as your frontliners in getting the attention of your prospective readers.

4. Your articles must be content-rich. Articles that offer much valuable information are the ones that get the most attention online. So, if you would like to fare well in article marketing, you must learn how to pack your articles with valuable contents that are useful to your potential readers.

5. Master the art of creating a killer resource box. It is through this that you will be able to convert readers to your online visitor.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Dealing Creatively With Change

Change is all around us, and its here to stay. Today, change is occurring at a rate unprecedented in human history, and many the changes are revolutionary, not just temporary adjustments in normal cycles. We are in the Information Age.

Management guru and best selling author Tom Peters has said that he believes were in the midst of once-every 200 year economic, social, and political shift.

Such rapid change is quickly rendering many of our tried and true solutions ineffective or less effective. At the same time, in nearly every market, competition in increasing. Put these two developments together and its easy to see why innovation and creativity are such important skills for succeeding in the 21st century.

To succeed in the Information Age its important to regularly re-assess everything about your work and profession. Dont just randomly scrap all of your existing habits and practices just for the sake of change, rather do it intelligently and objectively. You should consistently review your work through new eyes, as an outsider or a stranger to your business or profession might do.

Here are three questions you should always ask yourself that will help you deal with change:

Why are we doing things this way?

Whats not perfect yet?

How could it be improved?

Set aside a regular time to mentally dissect your lifes work. You should keep a small notebook with you at all time so you can write down new ideas that continually come into your mine. It is often the case that if you dont right an idea down immediately youll loose it. Ten new ideas a day add up to 300 per month or 3,650 each year!

Dont get discouraged if many ideas seem impractical or ineffective. What youre after is a large quantity of ideas which you can later refine, combine and further develop into a handful of quality solutions.

Continuous education is one of the best ways to foster idea generation. You should be reading every day in your field or profession. Read trade journals, business magazines, and business and self-development books. You should be listening to audio programs and regularly attend educational seminars.

By continually educating yourself everyday it allows you to step outside your traditional thought patterns, similar to hanging a challenge or opportunity from a mental hook, walking around it and viewing it from many different angles.

Think of your brain as an incredible untapped diamond mine. You are probably mining only a fraction of its vast potential. New paths of thinking can help you discover and extract the vast riches of your mind.

As many entrepreneurs will tell you, all it takes is one great idea to revolutionize your life. Today, more than ever, we have the opportunity to lead or create change, instead of being carried along or overwhelmed by it. These tools can help you embrace change, cause it to happen and enrich your life in the process.

Copyright2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many businesses around the world, on the subjects of leadership, achievement, goals, strategic business planning, and marketing. Joe is the author of three books, Starting Your Own Business, Finding Your Purpose In Life, and The Guerrilla Marketing Workbook.

Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.com

Read more articles and newsletters at: http://www.jlmandassociates.com

5 Reasons You MUST Stay in Contact with Your Customers

As an internet marketer, you know you have to make sales to stay in business and make a profit. Without sales, you don't have a business. But staying in contact with your customers after the sale is just as important (if not more so) as making the sale in the first place.

Too many internet marketers focus solely on building a list of paying clients, without using existing clients to generate more sales. This means that they continue to spend advertising dollars without even seeing an increased return on their investments.

Rather than just focusing on getting new clients, you should focus on staying in contact with existing customers. Here are 5 reasons why:

  1. Customers that buy from you once are much more likely to buy from you again. You've already sold them a product that solves one of their problems. Most people have a whole host of related problems that need solutions. You've already established yourself as an expert by solving one problem - why not use the trust you have built to sell additional products?
  2. Repeat customers are much more likely to refer other clients. If you've stayed in contact with your customers, you've built a relationship that will make them look to you as an authority in your field. And when their friends and business associates need help, they'll know who to recommend. This is a great way to build your client list without additional advertising.
  3. Your existing clients can help you build testimonials for your sales pages. Stay in contact with your customers after the sale. Ask them what they liked about your product. Offer them a free report or other product if they will let you put their comments on your website. They'll be happy to see their names in print, and you'll get to build stronger sales copy to attract more clients.
  4. Staying in contact with existing customers lets you know how to improve your products. Ask your buyers what they would like to see changed. Use these comments to revise and improve your product, and offer them the new version for free as a "thank you" for their input.
  5. Finally, staying in contact with your customers reduces the number of refunds you will give. People are more interested in keeping a product if they know a seller is interested in finding out how well it worked. Most clients ask for refunds because they don't understand how to use a product. You may be able to avoid this by simply providing a tutorial. Or, you may be able to answer a few questions via email. The few minutes you spend helping your clients learn how to use the product can save you thousands of dollars in refunds.
So don't just be content with making a sale. Stay in contact with your clients, and invite them to contact you at any time. You'll generate repeat business, gain more referrals, and pay out fewer refunds. Plus, you'll build a client base that can provide you with substantial income for years to come.

Original article : http://anthonyvicenza.com/wordpress/list-building/5-reasons-customers-contact.html

Anthony Vicenza is a professional affiliate marketer. He now provides mentoring/hosting and free advice to wanna-be internet entrepreneurs at http://www.AnthonyVicenza.com

Web 2.0 Strategies - Stop Fighting The Power!

It's time to release the future of marketing from the headlock that you've put in. I'm talking about curmudgeons out there. While many have greeted Web 2.0 with open arms some refuse to embrace it and instead prefer to fight tooth and nail. If the past methods of marketing worked online no one would be eager to find new methods. This is the web--faster, fresher, better is expected.

Those expectations however, mean very little to those who want to control every aspect of the internet. Both the greedy geeks and SEO service sites are still trying to cling desperately to the old internet that they claim to have built. But that web is just that--old. Users, browsers, small business owners and even corporate moguls have decided that they want a say, they want to be part of the web building process.

There has never been a better time for Emarketers to take up SEO strategies. Because while it is still work, it's a lot easier than it was five years ago. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of Web 2.0 strategies it's about the coming together of collective minds to contribute to the expansion of the web.

Web marketers are beginning to understand that they no longer have monopoly over content creation. And why would they want to. I, for one, welcome anyone who wants to add the expansion of my site by providing me with content that my users can use and further contribute too.

Web 2.0 strategies allow you to get in front of a lot of people a lot faster. With users passing around content and videos, sending links to like minded people, and posting in virtually every corner that will allow them, net marketers should be cheering instead of shaking their heads while they fumble around with the old methods.

Many Web 2.0 critics debate that it circulates crap and that competition for marketers is ridiculously fierce as everyone tries to get on the front page of virtually every news-feed out there. But I beg to differ. Google and other major search engines still have some say as to what gets ranked what. Also, as more and more content gets produced users become pickier as to what they consider "quality" and what "crap" is. As for the competition, this is marketing there has always been competition and there always will be.

If you've been sitting around trying to figure out what Web 2.0 is and whether or not to do it, stop thinking and start link sharing, social bookmaking, voting, and creating sticky content.

People can debate all they want the fact is the web has altered. The rules for the marketing game have changed. You are either in or out.

Jeff Casmer is an internet marketing consultant and work at home business owner. For more information on website linking strategies please visit his "Top Ranked" Website Linking Strategies Directory gives you all the information you need to Earn Money at Home in the 21st century.

The Most Important Tip To Increase Website Traffic - Know How the Internet Works

Today there are countless tutorials, e-books, reports, subscriptions and paid memberships that claim to teach you how to acquire the most coveted commodity online, website traffic. Many promise to increase website traffic even instantly, but a huge number of them fail because information they provide are simply rehashed, recycled, and likely acquired from someone else who in turn got it from somebody else.

What might be the most important tip to increasing website traffic is actually the one thing that people are likely to overlook. That is simply, understanding how the internet works and knowing how web site visitors are finding the sites they browse through.

There are generally three sources of website traffic, and this tip to increase website traffic has something to do with one of these three, which are site referrals. Site referral traffic refers to visitors that find your site through links on other websites, hence the word referral since the visitors were referred to your site from another site.

So just how does the internet work?

The internet is a virtual library that people visit for knowledge. The web is fueled by information; driven by people providing it and people seeking it, they are the website owners and web surfers respectively. All the information that is available in this vast virtual library are found on web pages, bound together with a common domain name as a website and assigned with specific addresses so they can be located, visited, read. The very foundation of the internet are links, these portals to other web pages and websites are what allow us to go from one site to the next.

So how do you increase website traffic, now that you know what the internet is? The answer is build links!

The more links you have on other sites the better, since you are simply creating more opportunities for other people to find your site through another site. Links on similarly themed sites or web pages with related content to the link destination often deliver more traffic than web pages with your link on that do not necessarily have same content. Why? Because your link might not have been relevant to the viewers of that page.

Create links on websites and web pages that enjoy good traffic. Again, the simplest way of identifying which sites are ideal to have a link on, is that which is most overlooked. Ask yourself one thing, how are you finding what you need online? You probably start it off with a search on a search engine, and that is exactly what you need to do. Identify a keyword phrase that you are optimizing your web page for, then do a search on a search engine, these will turn out the ideal sites to have a link on.

There are many different types of links, but the most effective links are the simple text links, using anchor text or readable text that can be clicked. It would even be best to use as anchor text, the same keyword phrase you are optimizing your web page or site for, which also happens to be the same phrase that you used on a search engine to find the top ranked sites for that phrase.

These three simple guides to link building will help get you more traffic, especially from another traffic source.

The other sources of traffic are search engine traffic referring to visitors sent your website by search engines and direct traffic, who are visitors that visit your site directly by simply entering you website domain name in their browser, this is often a result of off-line site promotion and advertising.

Roy Sencio is a 16 year Marketing & Communications Consultant, Internet Marketer and CEO of SEO Service Stop, affordable SEO outsourcing based in the Philippines. Increase Website Traffic today, visit SEO Service Stop for a free website traffic check.

Learn how to increase website traffic, sign up for a Free Website Traffic Course.

The Ultimate Free Google Ranking Tool

The first months my website was online, I was constantly checking the search engines to see if my site was listed under the keywords that I was targeting. And always with the same negative results.

The truth is that the keywords that you are targeting are often not showing your site the first months at all on the first 200 search listings. OK,if you try to get your site listed for hoooohjgaagga or something like that, it could get you a first place in no time. But who wants to target that keyword?

In fact, I get a lot more traffic from keywords that I haven't thought of using as a keyword in the first place. One tool that I have found online can easily show you the keywords that your site is ranking well for.

You can find it at: http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php Here you simply enter your domain name and hit the "Analyze Keyword" button.

If you want to,you can change the different settings on this page before you hit the button. But I usually leave this at default.

Then on the next page you can see a detailed report on keywords that are found on your site. You can see their numbers and density. It shows the number of 2 Word Phrases and 3 Word Phrases.

Step 2 Create Position Report

Now to the cool part of this tool. When you hit this button, the tool will search Google for the keywords and keyword phrases that it have gathered from your site. After a few seconds it shows your position for each of them. So now you don't have to wonder if your site is listed in Google.

But as I said, the first months you shouldn't be worried if you don't find your site under any keyword at all. Google use a lot of time to index new websites. I have found that MSN are a lot faster to show my pages under the keyword that I want.

I hope you'll find this tool as useful as I have.

Torgeir Sunnarvik is the owner and webmaster of: http://www.everypleasures.com/. His site offers free ebooks, ebooks with reprint rights and review of business ebooks. Visit my ebook and Internet marketing forum at: http://everypleasures.com/phpBB2/index.php

Article Marketing - It's More Than Just Writing Articles

I think a lot of times when people get online and they start learning about article marketing and they read the beginner information, they get the impression that article marketing is just about writing articles and submitting, with link, to the article directories.

And in some sense that is correct at its basest level, that is article marketing. That is the definition of article marketing.

But I think that getting good at article marketing is a different beast all together. I think you have to learn what works and what does not work. What makes you money and what does not make you money.

You have to learn that there is a difference between submitting articles to get immediate traffic and submitting articles to get long term search engine traffic.

You have to learn that the way you write your bio can increase or decrease your click throughs your traffic by 500-1000%. Thats right the way you write your bio can produce gobs of traffic, or it can turn the traffic faucet off.

You have to learn that you can influence how many times people click through to your squeeze page by how you structure your article.

You have to learn that you can improve the conversion rate on your squeeze page by making changes to your articles.

You have to learn that you can increase the responsiveness of your entire email campaign by the way you write your article.

Article marketing is far more than just writing articles and submitting them to a list of directories.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1200 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

Online Article Marketing Strategies and Techniques Discussed

As you know there are many Online Article Marketing Strategies and Techniques. You see Online Article Marketing is a very effective way to achieve targeted traffic; customers coming to your web site who are more opt to buy your products or services.

Online Article Marketing is writing informational articles with a byline on the bottom that has a link to your web site. By submitting your articles to an online article submission web site that syndicates the articles they will end up all over the Internet and drive traffic to you.

I have made "The Case For Online Article Marketing" in the past and I will do it again, because it does make sense for online article authors to engage in writing articles to increase targeted traffic. When people ask me questions like;

  • Does Online Article Marketing work?
  • Is it worth writing hundreds of articles in order to attract targeted traffic to your online business?
  • Should you spend the time to write articles and put them online at an online article directory web site?
  • If you put a byline underneath the article will customers click on it that are interested in what you sell and come to your web site?
  • Will these customers once they come to your web site by your products or services?
  • Does online article marketing really work?
Well, I feel I am qualified now to present the case for Online Article Marketing and recommend why you should participate in online article marketing if you have a web site which sells your products or services.

Even if you are not selling anything I still recommend online article marketing to drive traffic to your nonprofit cause, political web site or to help present your case for a change for humanity, society or government.

I certainly hope this article is of interest and that is has propelled thought. The goal is simple; to help you in your quest to be the best in 2007. I thank you for reading my many articles on diverse subjects, which interest you.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington

How To Increase Your Link Popularity

Almost every site needs to increase their link popularity.

How should you go about doing this without incurring the wrath of the search engines?

It's generally accepted that the more inbound links you have to your site, the better. But that's not the whole story. Some links are more equal than others. Generally, the more difficult it is to acquire the link, the higher importance the search engines will place on it. So a link from, say, the home page of CNN will likely be worth a lot more than a link from your granny's site that just displays pictures of her grandchildren.

Links from certain "bad neighborhoods" may even count against you. Sites that are deemed to be "link farms", created for the sole purpose of generating links are usually worth avoiding. Similarly, sites where you can add your link and it instantly appears (often called Free For All link sites) are usually bad news. They may have had their use a few years ago but they're no longer worth your time.

Link swapping, also known as reciprocal linking, is also being given less importance by the search engines. They figure that it's relatively easy to swap links, so they put two and two together and figure that these reciprocal links are also not worth too much.

Some directories are "good" to get links from. Places like the Open Directory and Yahoo's directory, where a human looks at your site and checks it over, are good places to get links from. Other directories, where you place a link back to them or pay a small fee of a few dollars, vary in quality. Install the Google toolbar to check the page rank of your proposed directory before submitting.

Find out more about how to increase your link popularity by getting this free link building report