An incoming links number is the number of incoming links to a website from other websites. The more incoming links from relevant websites, a website gets the better.

The higher the incoming links number is and the more relevant those incoming links are, the higher the website will rank with the search engines.

It won’t do you much good if you get incoming links from websites that are not related to what your website is about. In fact it can do more harm than good. That’s why it is important that your incoming links number is related to your website.

The best place to check what your incoming links number is for your website is through Yahoo. Because Google will only show a partial list of your incoming links you won’t be able to get the whole picture. Go to Yahoo and type in the search box link:yourdomain.com replacing yourdomain with the actual name of your domain.

The higher the relevant incoming links number of incoming links to your website, the higher your website will rank on the search engines for your keywords and the more likely your website will be found.

It is very important to accumulate a high incoming links number because the more incoming links that you have the more the search engines will like you and index you well on their index.

The easiest and quickest ways of increasing your incoming links number is by posting on relevant blogs, forums, submitting to directories, (in relevant categories) submitting articles to article sites, and submitting press releases on a regular basis just to name a few.

Getting relevant high quality incoming links is a vital part of SEO. Read the four posts linked below to get a better idea of how to increase your incoming links number using directories, articles, and press releases. To get a list of blogs related to yours go to http://technorati.com and run a search.

Link Building

How to Get Indexed Really Fast

How to Write a press Release

Article Writing
incoming links, incoming links number, seo]]> http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/how-to-check-incoming-links-number/feed/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/the-importance-of-tracking-your-traffic/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/the-importance-of-tracking-your-traffic/#comments Tue, 29 May 2007 14:30:27 +0000 Brian Queenan crazy egginternet marketinginternet marketing solutionmonetizesearch pagestatcounterstrategic internet marketing http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/2007/05/29/the-importance-of-tracking-your-traffic/ It’s really important to track the traffic to your website so that you know what pages your visitors are landing on the most often so that you can monetize the most popular pages to better provide your visitors with the information they are most interested in.

You may be very surprised at what web pages are the most popular. By tracking this website I have found that one of the most popular places is the search page. If I hadn’t been tracking this website I would have never known that nor would I have thought that the search page was one of the most popular here.

There are several ways that you can track your website but I will give you the two that I use for The Truth About Internet Marketing (this website).

The first is StatCounter. In my opinion StatCounter is the best tracking system on the Internet because of all the things on your website that you can track with it. This is an excellent tracker. There are so many things that you can track with StatCounter that it would be impossible to list everything here. I’m only going to tell you about the two tracking features that will help you evaluate where your traffic is coming from and what pages are being viewed the most often.

There are two features in StatCounter called ‘Recent Visitor Activity’ and ‘Returning Visitors’. These two features are just as they sound. The ‘Recent Visitor Activity’ feature gives you where the visitor came from such as a search engine or wherever the person came from and will also display what web page on your website the searcher was sent to. The ‘Returning Visitor’ feature tells you whether or not the visitor is a returning visitor which is really nice because it will tell you if there is a real interest in the topic of your website or not. If you are not yet using StatCounter you really should get it because you are missing out on important information about your website. You can get StatCounter here for free.

The second is ‘Crazy Egg’ which is another great tracking system. Crazy Egg is a little different than StatCounter in that it tracks your visitors after they have arrived on your website. In other words Crazy Egg picks up where StatCounter leaves off. When people come to your site you want to know exactly what pages they are looking at the most so that you know what your visitors are interested in the most so that you can provide them with this info on a regular basis and also make sure that these popular web pages are monetized to its full potential. Most important is to provide these visitors with the information that they came for on a regular basis so that they will come back often. ‘Crazy Egg’ will provide you with this crucial information. You can get Crazy Egg here for free.

If you are not tracking the visitors to your website you are missing out on a lot. The information that it will provide you will help you determine what your visitors want the most from your website and will provide your visitors with a better experience and will keep them coming back for more and at the same time will put more money in your pocket.
crazy egg, internet marketing, internet marketing solution, monetize, search page, statcounter, strategic internet marketing]]> http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/the-importance-of-tracking-your-traffic/feed/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/use-yahoo-answers-and-get-more-traffic/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/use-yahoo-answers-and-get-more-traffic/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:11:37 +0000 Brian Queenan google adwordsTraffic Building http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/2007/04/20/traffic-generator-for-your-website/ If your website is new or you are looking for more ways to get your website noticed there is a great resource that you can use to get some great back links to your website and at the same time get yourself known as an authority on whatever niche that your new website relates to.

The name of this resource is Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo answers is a place where people go to get answers to whatever questions they may have on any given subject.

This is a great place for you the marketer to show off your knowledge as well as getting some really good back links.

Simply go to Yahoo! Answers and run a search on your niche topic and start giving answers to the questions that are asked. You can add the URL to your website in the provided resource box. Be sure to send people to web pages on your website that is helpful to the question that you are answering.

The nice thing about using this resource is it gives you the chance to show people how much you know about your niche. Give good helpful answers and try to leave a lasting impression because if people truly like what you have to say they will tell others about you and send them to your website. There is no better traffic than traffic that is sent by word of mouth. So make your answers count.

You will need to register in order to use Yahoo! Anwers It only takes a minute or two to do so. This is a great way to get your name out there as well as getting great back links from Yahoo’
google adwords, Traffic Building]]> http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/use-yahoo-answers-and-get-more-traffic/feed/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/always-evaluate-your-traffic/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/always-evaluate-your-traffic/#comments Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:58:08 +0000 Brian Queenan Affiliate Marketingarticlesgoogle adwordsincoming linksincoming links numberinternet marketinginternet marketing.internet marketing planList BuildingseoTraffic Building http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/2007/03/23/always-evaluate-your-traffic/ You have a website and it now is starting to get some traffic. It has been a long grueling haul but finally some visitors are beginning to find you. Your number one priority is to make sure that they keep coming back by providing them with great information. Your number two priority should be how they are finding you.

It is very important that you know where your traffic is coming from so that you can keep growing that traffic. The more that you know about the origin of your traffic, the more traffic you will get.

The whole idea of evaluating the traffic to your website is to find whatever consistencies there are and build on those that you find. There is an absolute goldmine in doing this as it will allow you to build on what you already have many times over.

For example; let’s say that you suddenly have a big increase in traffic from the search engines. The first thing that you will want to check is to see what keywords are being used to find you. If you find that the majority of your new found traffic is coming from one or two keywords, or keyword phrases, you will want to make appropriate decisions as to how not only to keep that traffic coming but what changes are needed so that you can potentially increase the traffic that you are already getting.

Here are a couple of things that you might do to increase your traffic with the keywords that you find. The first thing that you would want to do is to make those keywords more prominent on your website by using them more often throughout your site. Add it to your title tag, description tag, and keywords tag, and more often in the body, if it’s not already in those places. Just don’t overdue it. Never use your keywords anymore than 3% of the time throughout your website. Anything more than that, will hurt your rankings with the search engines. If your website is a blog or forum writing something that relates directly to the keyword or keyword phrase will help boost your prominence in the search engines as well. You should be able to write quite a few different posts that will relate to the keywords that you find.

You may find that a big chunk of your traffic is coming from a particular blog or forum that you comment or post to. If that were the case, you certainly would want to go there more often and comment or post. However people are finding you, there is always a way to make it better so that you can get even more people to your website.

I have written about the traffic evaluation tool Statcounter before on this blog. If you already have it, start using it. If you don’t, get it. Statcounter works on all websites, including blogs. This is the best traffic evaluation tool that I know of. If you can think of it, statcounter can do it. If you don’t have statcounter, you can get it here. http://statcounter.com Don’t worry; I’m not trying to sell you anything. There is a free version as well as a pay version of statcounter. I recommend you go with the free version because you probably don’t need the pay version at this point in time. Down the road you may need it, but for now, chances are you don’t need it.

You will be amazed at what you will find when doing a quick ten minute traffic evaluation of your website. Since all websites are different and there is no clear cut answer to driving traffic to any, one, website, makes traffic evaluation essential.
Affiliate Marketing, articles, google adwords, incoming links, incoming links number, internet marketing, internet marketing.internet marketing plan, List Building, seo, Traffic Building]]> http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/always-evaluate-your-traffic/feed/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/how-to-get-better-results-from-social-networks/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/how-to-get-better-results-from-social-networks/#comments Sun, 18 Mar 2007 15:43:25 +0000 Brian Queenan black hatgoogle adwordskeyword phrasemeta refresh tagscamsstrategic internet marketingswindleTraffic Building http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/2007/03/18/how-to-get-better-results-from-social-networks/ I don’t know about everyone else but I’m tired of social networking websites like digg and all of the other big social networking guys out there.

The problem with the larger social websites is that most of them are very limited in the categories that you can submit your stories to. Social networking websites like digg cater more to the younger crowd and is no longer a good place for most Internet Marketers to have their stories submitted to.

As with everything that we do when we market on the Internet our readers need to be targeted. Social websites like digg don’t allow for this. As a matter of fact, digg is probably the last place you want to submit your stories to unless you have a gaming website or if your website has something to do with entertainment. As I said before digg caters to the younger crowd. Most of the people who use digg ages range from 16 to 22. That’s not a good group to market to because they have little or no purchasing power.

Social networking websites like digg, reddit, etc. are huge websites and getting your story on page one is pretty much impossible. If your story is submitted to any of these mammoth social websites, your story will be seen by very few people. These big social networking websites are not what they once were.

The point is that you want to be using social networking websites that will be of benefit to your marketing strategy, not hinder it. You want to use social networking websites that cater to the niche market that you are involved in. Go and try to submit to a directory website and submit to a category that has nothing to do with what your website is about and see if the directory accepts your submission. I will guarantee you that almost all of them will reject you. The same applies with social networking websites. I rather not be on a social networking site if my story is not in the proper place.

Your best bet is to go find a niche social website that deals with the topic of your online business. More and more of them are now popping up and all of them are doing well because most marketers are becoming more and more frustrated with the big guys and want to get better results from their social network marketing efforts.

There are a couple of really nice social networking websites that I found that have been setup with the Internet Marketer in mind. They may be smaller than the big guys but I’ll guarantee you that you will get more traffic with them than you do with the bigger social networking websites because it will be easier to find you on the smaller niche social websites. Plus you will be getting a lot more targeted traffic from these guys because they deal with your particular niche.

http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/
View site ‘
Here are the two social networking websites that I just mentioned. They both cater to Internet Marketers.

http://plugin.com

http://marktd.com
black hat, google adwords, keyword phrase, meta refresh tag, scams, strategic internet marketing, swindle, Traffic Building]]> http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/how-to-get-better-results-from-social-networks/feed/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/the-3-quickest-ways-to-drive-free-traffic-to-your-website/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/the-3-quickest-ways-to-drive-free-traffic-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:19:38 +0000 Brian Queenan google adwordssearch engines indexTraffic Building http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/2007/01/30/the-3-quickest-ways-to-drive-free-traffic-to-your-website/ Getting noticed when first starting out with an online business can be a bear. There are some things that you can do to move things along a bit. Here are a few things that you can do to get things moving forward.

1.) Writing to article sites is a great way to get some good quality back links to your website and will help you to be seen as an authority on whatever it is that your article is about. It may take a week or two for your article to be accepted, but it will give you some additional traffic to your website once the article goes live. The best part of writing articles is that other websites may pick them up and post them on their website giving you additional traffic and back links. I still get clicks from articles that I wrote months ago and they are still getting picked up by other websites giving me additional links. If your article is well written with good information you can do quite well with this method. To learn more about article writing read this post.

2.) Commenting to posts on other like minded blogs is another great way to drive some quick traffic to your website. Most blogs welcome comments as long as they are related to the topic that the reader is commenting to. Because blog sites allow you to place a URL back to your website you will have yet another great way to back link to your website. The more blog sites that you comment on the more back links and traffic you will get. Make your comments count for something otherwise people won’t click back to your website. Do this on a continuous basis and people will begin to notice you and it should drive some good traffic back to your website. Be sure to comment on blog sites that are relevant to your own website.

3.) Join some forums that relate to the subject matter on your website. This is another great way to get some good back links to your website which will get you some additional traffic back to your website. Forums also allow you to place a link in your signature file which will be automatically placed on all of your posts once it is setup. Unlike most blogs, most forums require you to register before you can post to them.

The three ideas mentioned here all have one thing in common. They all require that you write in an informative and concise way. If you come off as not knowing what you are talking about, you might as well not bother doing this at all. Give good, helpful, information and not only will you get results rather quickly, the search engines will take notice as well.
google adwords, search engines index, Traffic Building]]> http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/the-3-quickest-ways-to-drive-free-traffic-to-your-website/feed/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/link-building/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/link-building/#comments Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:40:59 +0000 Brian Queenan google awords programinternet marketingseo http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/2007/01/16/link-building/ If you expect to get any traffic to your website you will need to get some incoming links. I read a really garbage SEO technique that tells you to run a search for your keywords to see who is ranked at the top of the search engines and then email the webmaster and ask him or her for a link. Now, let’s step into the real world shall we? There is no way a top ranked site is going to give a virtually unknown website an incoming link unless there is something really valuable in it for him or her. Begging for links is a waste of time unless you have something in return that you can offer.

There are top ranked sites out there that will give you an incoming link for a price. I don’t recommend this because it is very expensive and definitely not for anyone who is just starting out. I would stay away from using the pay for link back services because you could go broke very quickly. Besides, these are temporary links. Once you stop paying, your incoming link source will be gone anyway. What you want are permanent links.

There is a better way. There are actually a couple of really good ways to get incoming links. Before I tell you what they are you need to understand that you want quality incoming links. By quality, I mean that you want incoming links that are directly related to your website theme. If your website is real estate related, you want incoming links that relate to real estate.

As I said before, there are a couple of good ways to get quality incoming links to your website. The first is submitting articles to article sites. It’s a little more work writing articles but it is well worth the effort you put into it because these are really targeted high quality incoming links from websites that are highly ranked. The fact that article sites by nature, are very content rich, which is what the search engines are looking for, you will have really high quality incoming links from the article sites that you submit to. You don’t need to submit to a bunch of article sites because each article that you submit and is accepted will give you a new incoming link. You really don’t need to submit to more than a few. Just make sure that you submit your article under the correct category otherwise the incoming link will be useless because the search engines do look for link relevance. In the real estate example that I used above, you’d want to submit your articles under the real estate category. Before attempting to submit to any article sites read this post first. You will also get a list of the 3 best article sites that have worked the best for me.
http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/category/articles

The second thing that you should do is start submitting your website to as many directories as you possibly can. Like the article sites the directories are listed by category as well. You would submit your website to the category that relates to what your website is about. The only thing that you will be submitting on directory sites is the link to your website. There are thousands of free directories on the Internet that you can submit to. Most of these directories have a paid version, and a free version. I’d use the free version because you want to submit to as many directories as possible and if you paid for each and every one of them, it would cost a fortune. How long it will take for your website to be accepted for inclusion depends on the directory that you are submitting to. Some will include your site immediately, to up to a month, while others can take several months to include you in their directory. Keep in mind that almost all directories will check your site to see if it is worthy of inclusion into their directory. Unless you have a really bad site or it is porn related or illegal, most directories will include you. Some directories are more picky about who they accept and you may be declined by a few. For the most part, you should be accepted.

So start building your incoming links because it is one of the most important parts of your SEO. Here’s a link to a list of directory sites. Keep in mind that some of these directories may not have a category that relates to your website. If that’s the case, move on to the ones that do. http://www.strongestlinks.com Some of these don’t have a free submission option. Skip over the ones that require payment. There are others that are conditional meaning that they require something in return such as linking back to them or becoming an editor. I’d skip those as well. Linking back to them really doesn’t do any good and you will have a link mess on your website. I would only submit to the directories that offer one way links. The above link sorts the directories with the free directories listed first.

One last comment; this is a lot of work and will require some time and a lot of dedication on your part. It is well worth doing this because this is the single best way to get your website noticed by humans and the search engines. You really should submit to both the article sites and directories.
google awords program, internet marketing, seo]]> http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/link-building/feed/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/social-bookmarking/ http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/social-bookmarking/#comments Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:26:34 +0000 Brian Queenan black hatgoogle adwordskeyword phrasemeta refresh tagscamsstrategic internet marketingswindleTraffic Building http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/2007/01/11/social-bookmarking/ Social bookmarking should be a part of your traffic building strategy. Because it is easy to do and it doesn’t require much time or work on your part, there is no reason for not doing it. Social bookmarking websites were created for people who want to have the ability to bookmark their favorite links on the web instead of just being able to save them to their favorites on their local machine. This gives people the ability to access their favorite links away from home and also share them with friends and colleagues. That’s about all there is to social bookmarking. You can find a much better explanation than I can give to you here by clicking this link. http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf

Setting up a social bookmarking account is quick and easy. It doesn’t take more than five minutes to get an account. Then you are good to go. You’ll be able to start bookmarking your website pages right away. You have the choice of making your links private or public. Since you will be using social bookmarking to drive traffic to your website, of course you will want to make your bookmarked links public.

Bookmarking websites work a lot like search engines do. People run searches in the same way that people do when searching for information. They add a keyword, or keyword phrase, and get a list of results. When you bookmark a link, you have the option of adding a short description about the content that the link leads to. There’s also a place where you add your keywords as well. It is really important that you add relevant keywords so that the searcher can find you. Keywords that are very competitive on search engines are not nearly as competitive on social bookmarking websites. Keywords that have hundreds of thousands of results on the search engines may have only a few hundred results on social bookmarking websites.

Many social bookmarking websites are huge which gives you the opportunity to get some additional traffic to your website and will give you additional back links to your website which will help you better your rankings with the search engines.

Do not add public links that lead to web pages that have ads only, or a sales pitch only, on them. Send people to web pages that have real information on them. You will make a lot of people angry if they are sent to a website that only has google adsense ads and banners on it. Searchers may complain to the admin of the social bookmarking site which could lead to you getting banned from the site.

So start adding the links to your web pages on social bookmarking sites. It’s easy to do and will get you additional traffic to your website for free. Here are two of the largest social bookmarking sites to get you started.

http://del.icio.us (No, it’s not misspelled :))

http://stumbleupon.com

You can find additional social bookmarking sites here.
http:// www.listible.com/list/social-bookmarking-sites

Happy Bookmarking.
black hat, google adwords, keyword phrase, meta refresh tag, scams, strategic internet marketing, swindle, Traffic Building]]> http://the-truth-about-internet-marketing.com/social-bookmarking/feed/