Showing posts with label search engine optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search engine optimization. Show all posts

7 Easy SEO Strategies You May Not Be Using (Part One)


SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of getting high rankings on Google and other search engines. Some strategies are very complicated and labor intensive, but some are relatively easy to implement.

Why bother with SEO? Quite simply if you have a business or nonprofit website, it will do you no good at all if no one visits your site.

But that is not enough. These visitors need to be people who are likely to do business with you. You want people who want and need what you have to offer.

In other words, you need more than just web traffic, you need targeted web traffic.

Fortunately, these people self-identify themselves by the searches they make on Google, Bing and other search engines. If your site appears on the first page of the results they receive, you will get a high number of visitors who want and need what you sell.

This is the first of seven SEO strategies you can use to get higher rankings.

The first strategy is called "Slave Sites." It is based on the principle that the domain name your site has can be one of the most important ways to get high search engine rankings.

For example: If someone is searching for a Samsung PN50C450 50-Inch 720p Plasma HDTV television, the search engines will most likely rank a site named SamsungPN50C45050Inch720pPlasmaHDTV.com, higher than a site named, joeselectronics.com.

The reason is that the domain name itself contains the keyword or search term the person typed into the search engine as a query.


Here's another example: Let’s say your company already has a website but you want to target a keyword for a particular product. For example, your company rents equipment and the name of your company is "Acme Equipment Rental." The URL for your website, of course, is, www.acmeequipmentrental.com.

Your most popular products are forklifts and you want to get higher search engine rankings when people search for "forklifts." But your URL (domain name) is not optimized for forklifts, it is only optimized for "equipment rentials."

Here’s a solution: Buy a domain name like www.forkliftrentalscleveland.com (assuming your business is in Cleveland). Now when someone searches for “forklift rentals in Cleveland, Ohio,” they are much more likely to find your new website.

You could also create slave sites called www.electicgeneratorscleveland.com to target electric generators, or www.scaffoldingrentalcleveland.com to target scaffolding.

Using slave sites, you can target every keyword you need.

But how do you get people from this new site over to your main site?

Make your new site a one-page mini site with some content about renting forklifts, but cut the information off mid paragraph with a link that says “See More.” The link of course will take visitors to the appropriate section of your main site so people can continue reading.

You can create these one-page slave sites for every type of keyword you wish to target, just be sure to link them to the sections of your main site that deals with the topic of these keywords.

You can also create slave sites for specific products, including the model numbers, as I did in the example above about the HD TV. Believe me, when someone searches for a product by its model number, they already have their credit card out and are ready to buy.

These are people who have already done their homework and are in the final stages of their buying cycle.

Using slave sites enables you to funnel traffic from a large variety of specific keywords, product categories and even individual products to your main site, no matter what domain name your site now has.

The next strategy will also be an easy to implement way to get better search engine rankings to get more, targeted, traffic to your website.

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COPYRIGHT © 2010, Charles Brown

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Workshop: 57 Web Traffic Strategies



A number of people have asked me to repeat my workshop on "57 Strategies to Attract More Visitors to Your Website" and so I have scheduled a small workshop for April 22. The workshop will be at the BB&T Bank on 1201 Church Street, Colleyville, TX 76034, from 1pm to 4pm.

The workshop will be informative and hands on, teaching you how to get a lot more of visitors to your site, and how to target the right kind of visitors. You will learn 57 unique and effective strategies to boost the traffic you get to your site.

Includes Traffic Strategies Workbook

Plus, at the end of this workshop, you will leave with a completed traffic workbook to help you build a dominant online presence with your site. This workbook will be your game plan, filled with actionable steps you can take to position your site at the top of your niche or field.

The material begins with basic keyword research strategies, introducing you to many innovative ways to find keywords that you can easily dominate.

Here's what else you will learn:
  • Learn how to use tools like Search Engine Optimization, pay-per-click advertising, Twitter and email marketing to drive buyers to your site.
  • Get front-page placement on Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, and over 100 other search engines - for searchers in your targeted zip codes.
  • People who look for your business online are proven to be much more likely to buy than any other type of prospect.
  • Studies show that 63% of your potential customers go online to gather information before physically visiting a brick and mortar business.
  • Geo-targeting technology: For most businesses, it serves no purpose to appear outside specific geographic areas. Geo-targeting software allows your site to be found by local customers in zip codes of your choosing.


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57 Ways to Get More Visitors to Your Website - Workshop

Let's face it. If your website is not getting visitors - the right kind of visitors - what good is it really doing your business?

On March 4, 2010 I will be conducting an informative, hands-on workshop on how to get a lot more of visitors to your site, and how to target the right kind of visitors.

You will learn 57 unique and effective strategies to boost the traffic you get to your site.

Includes Traffic Strategies Workbook

Plus, at the end of this workshop, you will leave with a completed traffic workbook to help you build a dominant online presence with your site. This workbook will be your game plan, filled with actionable steps you can take to position your site at the top of your niche or field.

The material begins with basic keyword research strategies, introducing you to many innovative ways to find keywords that you can easily dominate.

Here's what else you will learn:
  • Learn how to use tools like Search Engine Optimization, pay-per-click advertising, Twitter and email marketing to drive buyers to your site.
  • Get front-page placement on Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, and over 100 other search engines - for searchers in your targeted zip codes.
  • People who look for your business online are proven to be much more likely to buy than any other type of prospect.
  • Studies show that 63% of your potential customers go online to gather information before physically visiting a brick and mortar business.
  • Geo-targeting technology: For most businesses, it serves no purpose to appear outside specific geographic areas. Geo-targeting software allows your site to be found by local customers in zip codes of your choosing.


Lunch is included with your workshop fee: We will meet at Miguelito’s Mexican Restaurant 209 West Bedford Euless Rd. Hurst, TX 76053-4008. Be sure to arrive at 11:45 am in order for us to get meal orders and get started promptly at noon.

The cost is $100, including your meal and tip and your workbook, payable in cash or check.

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Is Your Website Invisible?

What good is having a website if people who want to do business with you cannot find your company online?

Studies show that 63% of potential customers go online to gather information before physically visiting a brick and mortar business. These are people who once looked for businesses in the Yellow Pages or newspapers. Now they look for businesses on the web.

The key to getting traffic is to have links that point to your website. LocalAdLink is a new service I've recently discovered that gives you an entire network of web links, making your site more findable to both search engines and people who want to do business now.

Here's how it works:



Online searchers are proven to be highly-motivated customers who are ready to buy now. If you would like more information, please contact me at either 817-501-6892 or by email here:
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Why Content Marketing is Taking Over Advertising Dollars


I am officially a dedicated fan of Joe Pulizzi, co-author of the ingenious book, Get Content - Get Clients.

Earlier this month he wrote a thoughtful blog post called, "The Decline of Advertising and the Rise of Content Spending" about how more companies anticipate reducing their advertising expenditures in favor of creating content.

It stands to reason that content will be at the heart of what smart companies will be doing. Buyers are less tolerant of being sold to and are more self assured in their abilities to seek out information about what they want to buy.

Easily 80% of us now go online to gather information before making a large purchase. Moreover, many of us actively set up roadblocks for traditional marketing tactics such as TiVo to skip over commercials on TV or caller ID to screen our telephone calls. Add to that our brains' inherant ability to filter out messages that seem unimportant to us (How many billboards did you drive by today? And how many of them did you notice?).

It is no wonder then why companies are backing away from traditional advertising. It simply no longer gets the results it once did. It now costs more and more dollars to attract fewer and fewer customers with advertising.

But content - meaning information that solves problems, answers questions, helps us to accomplish what we want to accomplish or get to where we want to go - does get our attention. And content will, if done right, get better results than advertising.

While advertising may be in decline, Joe points out two areas that are expected to grow: Use of Social Media as a marketing strategy and Search Engine Optimization to help visitors find your information.

Regarding the first option, I can't possibly put it better than Joe: "Social media doesn't work without relevant, valuable and consistent content."

Social media without quality content is like making a telephone call and having nothing to say once you get the other person on the line.

SEO of course is also driven by content. This is what Google and the other search engines pick up to determine if your site fits the needs of a searcher's query.

What many companies have not yet figured out, according to Joe, is how much content actually costs and how to measure the results of content marketing.

There seems to be a very unrealistic expectation that creating content can be had on the cheap. I can personally attest to this based on when I wrote web content. My prospective clients ALWAYS displayed sticker shock when I quoted my fees, even though I was far from expensive. There seemed to be the assumption that content creation was a matter of waving a magic wand or something.

Then too was the issue of actually measuring how much content added to the bottom line. Here, Joe provides some really good ways to establish sound metrics.

The real lesson here is that content marketing is a strategy replacing an older strategy. It requires a whole new re-thinking of the business model.

Content marketing will be successful IF it is useful information and focuses not on the company, but on the buyer. Do you REALLY know what your buyers want and need? Do you know what problems they must solve? Do you know what pain they are experiencing that you can remove?

Without this information, your content is destined to fail. I am always struck by how much of most marketing messages are simply bragging about the lowest levels of expectiations. Home builders brag that they build "quality" homes. Shouldn't quality be a given? Shouldn't that be the least that a builder delivers? Isn't that like saying "We meet your minimum expectations."

Or my personal favorite is a local (Dallas - Fort Worth) law firm that brags that they are the litigation firm to choose when "The results really matter." Uh, ... if I have to go to court, doesn't that assume the results really matter?

It is precisely this kind of fluff that is the cause of the decline in the effectiveness of advertising. This is why 80% of us go online before making a significant purchase. We all go through an "information-gathering" stage at some point in our buying process.

And marketers who understand this will be the ones who succeed with content marketing. Those who don't will see no better results than they are getting from their advertising.

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An Expert on How to Become An Expert


I've had several people ask me about the services I offer and thought it was about time for me to post a self-serving plug for myself. Hopefully, however, you will still find it oriented toward you, the reader of this blog, and how I might be able to help your business grow.

Sometime back, I was introduced to speak for a business group as "An expert on how to become an expert." I liked that intro quite a bit and have since adopted it as my "elevator pitch" or tag line.

I specialize in helping professionals and professional services organizations market themselves with social media. As a former lawyer myself, I know how difficult it is to market or "brand" oneself.

To this end, I offer several services:

  • One-on-one coaching sessions by telephone and email on how to market yourself better by becoming an expert in your field.
  • One-on-one coaching for professionals who are seeking to make a career change and want to use social media marketing to gain an edge in the job market and become known as an expert.
  • Training sessions for professional services firms or association groups.
  • Professional "ghost" blogging services for lawyers and law firms. (This means that if you do not have the time to write your own blog, you can hire me to do it for you).
  • Speaking engagements and workshops for groups whose members would benefit from becoming recognized authorities in their fields.
  • Reviews of your current marketing efforts. This means I will analyze your advertising, websites and other marketing materials and give you review with suggested ideas to improve what you are already doing.
  • Consultation on improving your Google and other search engine rankings and how to get more traffic to your website.
  • Consultation on how your firm can become a "thought leader" in your industry.
  • Consultation on how to use non-spam, permission-based email marketing to build your practice.

I hope you find this list helpful. I you would like to discuss how I might help you further, please feel free to call me at 817-501-6892 or by email at chbrown/at/webmarketing-coach/dot/com.

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NOT USING NON-SPAM EMAIL MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS YET? Learn why email marketing is the easiest, most effective and most affordable way to get new clients. Download my free ebook and receive tips, ideas and case studies to help you get more new customers at http://www.trafficwave.net/lcp/chbrown/emailmarketing/6604.
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Blog Power: Why Content is Still King


For some time now I have been asking the question, "why would anyone choose to have a static website over a blog?"

The short answer, I suspect, is that the cost of a static site is money, whereas the cost of a blog is time.

A static site is rarely changed and very little new information is ever added. In fact most business owners I know have so little hands on connection to their own sites, that they have to call their web designer anytime they want to change or update anything.

Contrast that with a blog. Blogs are made to be easily updated. In fact, both owners and readers of a blog expect to see fresh, new content on a regular basis.

And as a blog owner, you have an easy place to post new information and ideas. A blog cries out for new content like a blank white board.

And because a good blog is regularly updated, it attracts not only visitors but also search engines as well. It has been proven over and over again that Google consistently ranks a blog with fresh content over a static site even when they both contain similar information.

This came to mind earlier today when I read an article called, How Can 10 Simple Articles Change Your Life? by Chris Pearson. Although he doesn't talk about blogs specifically, Pearson makes an excellent case for why content is so valuable for any site.

The point he makes is this: A friend who was doing well selling baseball cards on eBay, came to him about setting up a website so he could increase his business. In answering this problem, Chris makes a very strong case for writing articles.

He talks about how content adds "equity" value to a site. If his friend simply writes 10 short articles on collecting baseball cards or buying and selling baseball cards on eBay, he will have something none of his competitors have.

If, over the course of a year, he increases that number to 100 articles, he would not only probably have a high Google ranking, it would be a very tough job for any competitor to take his ranking away.

This is where my advice to his friend would be to choose a blog. To the average business owner, 100 articles in a year sounds like a huge task, but fortunately a blog does not always require that you personally write all of your own content.

Last week, for example, I was busy with some other projects and merely posted some YouTube videos that I liked and added my own short commentaries to them. Nevertheless I still added content that kept this blog on Google's radar. At the same time, I feel I added value to my readers because these were very good and informative videos.

While I still argue that you should post mostly your own articles on a blog, few of us have so much control over our work schedules that we can blog every day. But we can always add new, useful content that meets the needs of our readers.

In fact, if you read a lot of blogs, you may notice that there are a lot of excellent blog posts that are not entirely original content. In some cases these bloggers have drawn from other sources and added their own commentary. In other cases they have cited other articles and added their own spin (in fact this article would be an example of that - I had no idea what I was going to write about until I read Chris' article). You can even, occasionally, use articles that are posted on article banks like ezinearticles.com, but don't over do this, as it may diminish your standing as an expert in your own field.

There is one other compelling reason for adding new content. If you are using Twitter, Facebook or other social media platforms, new content gives you something to point links to. People will follow you on social media sites if you are a giver of good, quality content.

Fresh, informative content is the heart and sole of creating a personal brand online. It is what inspires people to read your blog and get you noticed by search engines. And what is more, having a sufficient amount of quality content makes it almost impossible for your competition to take your place.

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NOT USING NON-SPAM EMAIL MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS YET? Learn why email marketing is the easiest, most effective and most affordable way to get new clients. Download my free ebook and receive tips, ideas and case studies to help you get more new customers at http://www.trafficwave.net/lcp/chbrown/emailmarketing/6604.
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Are You Treating (And Growing) Your Social Network as a Business Asset?


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The more I look at the results my business and others are getting from social networking, the more convinced I become that SN is a far better way to get traffic than search engine optimization, or SEO.

I think this is because SEO is, at its heart, an attempt to manipulate Google’s algorithms. But since Google does not publish or reveal their algorithms, it is impossible to know for sure what the rules of the game are.

I’ve seen companies work for months to get their site listed at the top of Google’s search results, only to fall to page 14 the very next day – for no apparent reason.

It’s like going into a casino, thumping your life savings onto the table without even knowing what the game is.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t engage in SEO by emphasizing quality keywords, but you should remember that the real focus is on posting quality content. Too often I read (and I confess I have written content this way myself) stuff on websites that were clearly written for Google’s spiders rather than human readers.

(For examples of someone who got to the top of Google’s search results the RIGHT way, see Blogging to Dominate Keywords and Google and Blogging to Dominate Keywords and Google - Part 2).

If you write for human readers, write quality content and of course emphasize your targeted keywords without repeating these keywords to the point of distraction, search engine results will most often take care of themselves.

With apologize to John Lennon, search engine rankings are what happen when you are busy doing something else.

Which brings me back to social networking. I am coming to see social networks as business assets. Juliette Powell, author of the book 33 Million People in the Room, refers to your network as your “social capital.”

A search engine ranking, and all the hard work that went into achieving it, can be lost in a single day. But a large social network is an asset that can produce dividends in ways you never foresaw when you began building it. This is why business valuation experts take such things as “good will” and customer lists into account when putting a number to the worth of a business.

With every new follower I gain on Twitter, every new friend I gain on Facebook, and every new connection I make on LinkedIn, my social capital grows. But it also grows whenever I meet someone at a coffee shop and discuss ways we can contribute to each others’ business. Online and offline social networks are not exclusive, they should actually cross pollinate each other.

The old rules of offline networking still hold true. People will do business with other people they like, trust and feel confident in. The mission of my online networking is simple: give them good, helpful, informative content that solves their problems, and they will come.

Which is why people who send me tweets that are merely sales pitches for whatever they are promoting right now, are missing the whole point. They may possess a large list of contacts (for now), but they are doing nothing to build good will.

I believe that as I build my social network, I will someday benefit from it in ways I cannot envision right now. I may be offered a speaking engagement for a topic I have not yet developed, I may sell an instructional CD that I haven’t even recorded yet, or I may make meet someone who writes about me in his or her blog. (I may even be offered a job as V.P of Marketing for a Fortune 500 Corporation, but I’m not holding my breath).

All these possibilities are things I cannot foresee now, but my emphasis is squarely on building a network of people who like me, respect, me and regard me as good at what I do, i.e. building good will. That’s an asset that cannot be lost as easily, or quickly, as a search engine ranking.

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NOT USING NON-SPAM EMAIL MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS YET? Learn why email marketing is the easiest, most effective and most affordable way to get new clients. Download my free ebook and receive tips, ideas and case studies to help you get more new customers at http://www.trafficwave.net/lcp/chbrown/emailmarketing/6604.
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SEO vs Social Media Marketing: Which Is The Better Traffic Tool?



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Leaving pay-per-click advertising out of the equation for now, is Search Engine Optimization(SEO) still the only game in town for businesses and non-profits seeking targeted traffic to their websites?

In other words, is it still necessary for a business to work so hard and so long to get to the top of Google’s search engine results in order to get a decent flow of targeted traffic to its site?

The problems with SEO are daunting. First there is the difficult task of finding relevant keywords that get respectable numbers of search engine queries each month, yet at the same time are not so competitive that you are fighting hoards of other businesses trying to dominate those same search results.

Next there is the matter of optimizing your site. If your site is already in existence, this may entail rewriting all of your content to sprinkle the right number of keywords throughout. And even that may not matter because your site is probably at a big disadvantage if it does not have your favored keyword within its URL or title. (Example: your URL might be http://yourkeyword.com and your site’s title might be “YOUR KEYWORD BLOG”). Given that, it probably wouldn’t be feasible to go back and start your site all over again.

Then there is the problem that even if you have your site internally optimized around a given set of keywords, it still must have numerous links from other sites pointing to it. Unless your targeted keywords have very, very little competition, you must have a lot of external links to establish its relevancy.

And if all that were not enough, just making it to the top of the Google mountain is no assurance that you will stay on top. Search engine optimization is a game of king of the hill. One day you may be on page one, and the next you may find yourself on page twelve - for no apparent reason.

But I believe social media gives you a new set of tools to get traffic.

First, as I wrote about in an article about Kansas attorney Grant Griffiths, Blogging to Dominate Keywords and Google, blogging (a social media tool in its own right) can sometimes be the best way to dominate search engine results. But it takes a lot of time and work to get there.

But if your blog is a platform upon which to create content, report on useful information, and link to other good content, you can use a variety of other social media tools to give it much more exposure than it might otherwise receive.

If you tweet about each and every new piece you put on your blog, you will attract visitors to that new article. See Hard Evidence That Twitter Brings Me Traffic (Part 1) and (Part 2).

Or if you create YouTube videos, post tagged photos on Flikr.com, bookmark your posts on Digg.com or Stumbleupon.com, you not only attract one-time visitors, you also expose your blog to people who may become fans or evangelists, who then spread the word for you.

It is the creation of true evangelists that gives social networking its true power. At its heart, social media marketing is really all about letting the market do your marketing for you.

Let’s take the social bookmarking sites I mentioned earlier. Social bookmarking is nothing more than a democratization of the web. Users “vote” for the best articles and content based on whether they found the information useful.

This is something no search engine can do with their algorithms and spiders.

Bookmarking sites give greater authority to those web pages that have been voted on by many people, who base their votes on the how they perceive the page’s quality rather than its keyword density.

Digg.com and Stumbleupon.com are useless if you just bookmark your own content and no one else follows suit. But if hundreds of people like what you have posted and “Digg” or “Stumble” these pages, your content gains authority and thereby increases its visibility on the web.

The same is true with Twitter. Twitter is the “NFL” of social media, which means “Not For Long” if you simply send out spam-like tweets telling how great your product is. If you do this, your followers will block you fast and you will find yourself with no audience at all. But if you build conversations, create a community and provide quality content that solves readers’ problems, you will reap the benefits much faster than any SEO campaign could ever produce.

One thing that astonishes me about Twitter, for example, is how fast I am adding new followers. Although my numbers are still very modest when compared to others, I find that the number of new followers grows every single day.

This means I am adding to my “social capital,” and like all other forms of capital, this is a valuable business asset. It also means that going forward, my efforts will be focused on increasing this social capital, and thereby extending my reach among other social networkers.

Search Engine Optimization rewards sites that have a certain number of repetitive keywords, social media rewards sites that provide quality content.

So which is the better course of action: Search Engine Optimization or Social Media Marketing?

Personally, I think social networking puts the control into my hands. I no longer have to write with both human readers and Google algorithms in mind. My job is simply to create quality content and build a social community that appreciates my content. If I do that, the traffic will take care of itself.

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NOT USING NON-SPAM EMAIL MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS YET? Learn why email marketing is the easiest, most effective and most affordable way to get new clients. Download my free ebook and receive tips, ideas and case studies to help you get more new customers at http://www.trafficwave.net/lcp/chbrown/emailmarketing/6604.
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COPYRIGHT © 2009, Charles Brown
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Thought Leadership With Twitter - Even Your Old Content Can Remain King


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Content is king on the internet. The more quality content you produce and put up on the web, the more notice you will garner. Google will bless you with higher search engine juice, visitors will find your website in droves, other people on the web will Tweat or blog about your content, and before long you will find yourself basking in the light of being a “micro celebrity” within your field.

Or … at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

In the real world, fame and fortune seldom come easily. Content may be king, but it’s still a game of king of the hill. Your latest article may put you on top of that hill today, but tomorrow, someone else’s content may push you off. In journalism, this is referred to as a “news cycle.” The next news item is constantly pushing the last one off of page one.

So what is an internet marketer to do? The answer is to continue to produce quality content. Write great blog articles, write great articles for article submission sites like ezinearticles.com, create great videos for YouTube, and record great podcasts.

But don’t let the king of the hill game make your great content grow stale.

Focus most of your efforts on creating “evergreen content” that is always timely. Solve problems that will always need to be solved. Discuss goals people always want to achieve.

If your content is of long term or continuing relevance, it need not grow stale on the web. At least not with a tool like Twitter available.

I’ve noticed that there are two categories of people using Twitter. The first group are the cheesy salespeople who have little care about engaging others. They just want to sell their wares and view Twitter as just another venue to get the word out about how awesome they are and how awesome their product is.

The second group are the problem solvers. These are the people who are in business to solve certain problems and they use Twitter to point their followers to solutions.

You can tell who these problem solvers are by what they Tweat about. They are just as likely to tell you about a great article written by someone else as they are their own content. They are the people you constantly learn from, the people who give you lots of those “aha” moments.

But these people also Tweat about their own content as well. When their content solves problems, they can legitimately send their followers to that stuff as well.

Let me give you an example: An old friend of mine from high school (ok I'm old, but she is extremely young) is now a relationship coach named Kathy Dawson, who helps couples nurture and grow their marriages, solve communication problems, and manage the pressures that come with raising children - while still trying to have a fulfilling relationship together.

In other words, Kathy solves problems that have always, and will always, need to be solved by couples in committed relationships. Her articles will always be timely because relationships will always need work.

Because Kathy has accumulated a wealth of great content, she has a lot to Tweat about. She can not only Tweat about her latest articles or her upcoming speaking engagements, she can also Tweat about articles she wrote two or three years ago because those articles are still timely.

And each time she Tweats, she can add one more link to her old article, gain more visitors to her website, help one more person solve a problem, and move up one more notch on the Google ladder.

This is because Google gives much more credence (and higher search rankings) to links that point to varieties of content within a website rather than when links all point to the home page. Links that point to articles within the site tell Google that the site is rich in content and is a valuable piece of internet real estate.

If some of Kathy's Twitter followers like her article, they may Tweat about it or mention it in their blogs, creating a viral marketing effect, compounding the number of links pointing to her site.

In so doing, she can conquer the hill once and for all. Her content will not grow stale, and will not get shoved off every time newer content is posted by someone else.

Twitter enables all of us who produce content to keep that content working. Rather than allowing an old blog article to get lost deep in your blog’s achieves, Twitter gives you a chance to take it out, dust it off and show it to new people who may benefit from it.

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NOT USING NON-SPAM EMAIL MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS YET? Learn why email marketing is the easiest, most effective and most affordable way to get new clients. Download my free ebook and receive tips, ideas and case studies to help you get more new customers at http://www.trafficwave.net/lcp/chbrown/emailmarketing/6604.
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A Viral Marketing Game Plan: Article Marketing + Twitter

If you like this article, follow me on Twitter.

Writing and posting articles online is a proven way to get targeted traffic to any website. Moreover, these articles also help your site to get higher rankings on search engines like Google or Yahoo.

This video by Lisa Sparks shows you how one article, submitted to one article submission site, can get picked up by hundreds of other websites across the net. And all of those new sites point links back to your site. Other than chocolate, what could be better than that?



Now that you've seen how powerful article marketing can be on its own, let's tweak the process a little by adding the power of Twitter to an article marketing campaign.

Jeff Herring, an expert on article marketing, recently wrote a fascinating article called, Article Marketing + Twitter = Endless Waves of Traffic, Visitors & Viewers. This concept opens a vast new layer of potential.

In some ways there is a bit of overlap between what Herring says here and what I wrote about yesterday regarding blogging. One of the 10 Reasons To Use a Blog To Drive Your Personal Branding Campaign had to do with how you can write a Tweat about your various blog posts to drive more traffic them and get more search engine exposure.

"Your blog gives you something to talk about on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networking tools. Many people misuse social networking sites as mere platforms to be carnival barkers shouting about their wares.

The better social networkers use them to point to valuable content that solves problems and addresses the needs of their market. If the theme of your blog is offering solutions to certain problems, you can mention each new article, and even refer back to your old articles, every time you Tweat on Twitter or post on LinkedIn or Facebook."


Now (and I am asking myself why I didn't think of this too) Jeff Herring shows that your Twittering can turn a spotlight on your online articles as well. All of your efforts online can create links to your website, your social networking endeavors can help to create a personal brand for yourself and your business.

As Lisa pointed out so well, article marketing is a viral engine to drive traffic. Adding Twitter to the process adds more fuel to this engine.

Tweating about your articles and blog posts keep them active and keep them from growing stale. The more content you put on the web, be it in the form of blog posts, articles, YouTube videos, etc., the more material you have to Tweat about again and again and again.

And each Tweat you write is like putting your articles on steroids.

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NOT USING NON-SPAM EMAIL MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS YET? Learn why email marketing is the easiest, most effective and most affordable way to get new clients. Download my free ebook and receive tips, ideas and case studies to help you get more new customers at http://www.trafficwave.net/lcp/chbrown/emailmarketing/6604.
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COPYRIGHT © 2009, Charles Brown
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