I have used Twitter in the past. Nonetheless this time, in order to employ Twitter as a source of traffic for this site, I would like to focus more on a technique that is more turned towards the social context of this site.

Yesterday, I have made some tweets on this Twitter account and I have also replied to others. More people are also being followed. I think that increasing the amount of tweets I make could help. On the other side, if I do not include a link in those additional tweets, I am thinking that perhaps I should follow more people everyday.

I have heard that with Twitter, it is about building a relationship. Nonetheless, about the concept that a person should not promote to the list from the start I have a question. If the marketer decides to wait 2 weeks before promoting to his/her followers, what about the new followers who have followed the day of the promotion? For them, on day one there was promotion.

Is it that a marketer should not market every time rather than never at the beginning? So, there it is a post around the topic, improve website traffic with twitter. If you have suggestions, or a comments, please send me a  message.

While my focus for some time has been SEO or Search Engine Optimization, I might now attempt to use Facebook as a free way to improve website traffic. I have used Facebook before but I would not qualify this past experience with this network as extensive. Consequently, after checking for videos about ways to get visitors from this social nework, I have in mind today more ideas, I believe to go this route.

One of the method I had learned about before checking for videos today was that of commenting on Facebook. I have forgotten some of the details of this method. However today, the video I watched mentioned techniques such as  joining Facebook groups and having a presence there. Morover, this video from Alexis Kenne’s youtube channel also talked about the fact that the creation of a group and a fan page can also be medium for traffic to tap into.

This was not everything because he also talked about the creation of events to launch a product, a squeeze page or a webinar as other methods. Finally,another point the video presenter included was the usage of the classified in facebook.

There was more to this video. However, as of right now, I have some techniques in mind to try to use this social network for traffic. I may update this site with my progress in trying to get visitors from this huge site.  If you have any suggestion, or questions, please let me know by contacting me on the contact page.

Quality of the Traffic

One point I would like to note is that if a company has to deliver some traffic to a website, the traffic has to be real. It is possible to increase the number of hits a site can received. Nonetheless, more hits does not necessarily mean more real visitors, let alone targeted visitors. This brings me to a second point.

Getting a higher number of visitors can be pleasurable for a website owner. However, if those new visitors do not take the action you want them to (sign up for a free offer, purchase a product for example), I don’t know if there is truly much value in this new traffic. This is a remark that makes sense when you previously had a higher conversion rate before this new traffic was delivered to you. Let say that out of 100 visitors, 10 visitors subscribed to your newsletter. In contrast, if the new traffic leads to 5 subscriptions, it could mean that the traffic is less targeted. What is something that could result from less targeted traffic?

While getting a lot of new non targeted traffic to a website could lead to less conversion, another drawback of this will be a higher bounce rate. All this to say that if you hire a company, the traffic sent should be of good quality or of  what you consider to be right.

What If Result Aren’t Good Enough

Let say that you have gotten the services of a company to increase the level of traffic your site receives. It could also simply be that you just want them to take care of the lead generation of your site. Let say that the traffic has been delivered and it is not working the way it should. Can the company send you visitors once more? Will they give you a refund? These questions are elements that would be beneficial to know about before hiring the company.

As far as backlinks services  are concerned, I can undertand that a refund for already done links might not be the best thing. In fact a website may not get a higher ranking because new links have been created. Yes it can be learned online that backlinks are very important for SEO. However, my experience has been that more backlinks, regardless of their source are not always going to have a positive effect right off the bat. Even in the long term, I do not necessarily see the creation of more backlinks has something that can be simply equated to high search engine result page ranking.

In conclusion, I think that knowing what you are looking for in a company that is going to drive traffic for you can be advantageous. Testimonials also could help for the selection of a company if they are legitimate. However, for backlinking services unless what is being sold is a higher ranking, I do not see links regardless of their source has the only recipe for higher rank in Google and in the long term.

Search Engine Optimization

In order to improve website traffic with SEO, it important to be able to reach a top ranking in Google search results for a profitable keyword. Achieving this ranking could require more action when the keyword is competitive. Nonetheless, the actions that can be taken for the optimization of the page the webmaster wants to rank can be done on the site as well as off the site. These are on-page and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO leads to create a page that is going to have elements believed to be liked by Google. SOme of these elements are:

• keyword in the title meta tag
• keyword in the description meta tag
• keyword in the keyword meta tag
• keyword in the url
• keyword in the domain name
• keyword in h1 tag
• keyword in the title of the post on the page
• keyword in image alt tag
• link to another page within the site
• link to an authority site related to the subject discussed on the page
• keyword in the navigation bar
• use of a breadcrumb

Off-page SEO is another facet of the optimization and consist in building backlinks to the page the website owner want to have ranked. These link can come from many places. However, it is said that a person should be wary of bad neighborhoods for the links.

Some of the backlinks can come from:

• blog comments
• articles submitted to article directories
• articles submitted to web 2.0 blogs
• videos submitted to video directories
• social bookmarks
• files submitted to document sharing sites
• forum signatures
• press releases
• RSS feed submission
• software submission

Paid Search Advertising

With paid search advertising I believe that it is important to know what to do in order to have effective campaigns. In fact,compared to an SEO campaign, paid search advertising in the form of PPC or pay per click has a cost attached to each click. The cost can be higher the more competitive the keyword. While a person could engage company to do his/her SEO for a fee, it is normally not like paying for each click made towards his/her site.

One of the courses I have had information about concerning Pay Per Click is that of Gauher Chaudry, Pay Per Click Formula. I don’t know if it is possible to purchase it at this time. However, I think that in an attemps to limit the money spent testing PPC, getting such a course could help. Note that the course itself was expensive as far as I can remember.

I hope hat this post has been valuable. If you have questions, please contact me.

When I used this type of video syndication, I had made several videos. I don’t recall the exact number, but I would advise that you create at least 10 videos. Something I would change perhaps now is the lenght of the videos when they are based on an article to make them short. Nonetheless, many of the videos I have done at the time where based on the screen capture of powerpoint slides. During the presentation I would talk about things I new about the subject in accordance with the slides or I could alternatively read an article. Try to do video of 5 minutes maximum.

Video Creation

Sound Recording

In order to create the videos, if you know about the subject, you could select topics within the subject and make slides around these topics. In case it is a topic that you have never written about or do not feel knowledgable about, you could look for articles already written on it. These articles could be PLR articles that discuss subjects that are searched for in Google.

Once you know about the topics that you want to discuss, if you are going to talk about something you know, you can create a small number of slides about it. Moreover, add a watermark or include in the text of the slides the address of your website. This address to your website should be visible in all the slides in the lower portion of the screen.

In order to record the presentation through screen capture, I use Camstudio. Before getting to the screen capture, what I have done in the past was to record the audio of the video first.  I find this to be beneficial if you are using an article that you did not write or that you do not know by heart. Plus, it could lead to less pressure when recording the screen. Furthermore, You could even submit the audio as podcast.

To record my voice separately, there is a program called Sound Recorder installed on my Microsoft Windows laptop. I don’t know if MAC computers have a similar program. If you have this program or something that could be used to record your voice, launch it. Have on the screen the article that you are going to read. Try not to appear as if you are actually reading.  At the beginning of the video you could say:

Hello, my name is John from yoursite.com and in this video I would like to talk about Title of Video (for instance).

At the end of the video ask the viewer to visit your site, you could have something for free there that he/she could subscribe for. If you do not have a free offer on your site, you can still ask the viewer to visit your site for more information or simply ask him/her to visit for what you are selling or promoting. When you are ready start reading while being recorded.

After the audio is recorded. Depending on the quality of the sound you may or may not have to clean the audio. If you need to clean it, I have been using lately Audacity. The function Noise Removal is one I have used to clean the sound. Additionally, if the volume seems to be low, there is the Amplify function also that could be used. For more information about using audacity, you could look for videos on Youtube.

Video Recording

Now, let say that you are done with the sound and you need to create the video. In order to execute this task, start your Camstudio program. On a section of your screen start the program you have used to create the slides and open the presentation. Be sure to remove any notification of mistakes in the text (red underlines for example). Decrease the window’s size of your slides program to a level where it would look big enough for a video without using half of your screen. If you have a screen that is smaller than that of a regular laptop screen you may have to go beyond half the size of the screen.

Now, from Camstudio click on Region at the top in the menu bar, and then click on Fixed Region. After clicking on Select, you will have to select the size of the screen that will be recorded.  Select the size that fits the slides within the slide program window.

After doing that, put your Camstudio window out of the space that will be recorded. open the audio that you have created. When you are ready start the recording with Camstudio, start the audio and move through the slides with the audio.

Video Edition

When you are done with this screen capture. Start Windows Live Movie Maker or similar program for video creation. Within this software, add the video file you have made. Add the audio file that you created for the video. Bellow the home headline in the menu bar, click on Audio Mix. move the cursor to the point where the audio file is the only sound that is going to be heard and not that of the video file.

Now, you can cut sections of the video or edit it to the point where you are satisfied. Please note that the sound should overlap the slides correctly. If you cut too much of the video, the sound might not follow correctly. On the other hand, if you cut too much of the sound, the slides might not be seen at the right time.

When you are satisfied with the video. Click on View in the menu bar and click on Aspect Ratio. There select Widescreen.

Now move on to publish the video by clicking on the first button in the menu bar in the left corner. Then, click on Publish movie. Select the quality that you want for your video. Note that the higher the quality the longer it could take for the video to be made.

Video Syndication

Now, let say that the video is done. The video can now be syndicated. A program I have used for some videos was Magic Submitter. This is an affiliate link. If you decide to take 30 days trial at $4.95, the next monthly fee that you will have to pay is (as of right now) $67. Within this program there is more than video syndication, you can do web 2.0 accounts creation and content submission, social bookmarking accounts creation and submission and more. It is pretty much a competitor of the program called Senuke X. Both of these links are affiliate links, I may earn money if you decided to get one of these products or both.

In case you do not use Magic Submitter and do it manually, you could look for a list of 10 or more video sites similar to youtube to syndicate the video. If it is possible select sites where your link in the description box is clickable. In fact, when submitting the videos, within the description you write, put the link to your site first and then bellow write some text and again paste your link.

If you use Magic Submitter, create a profile then create video accounts. When you are done with the accounts creation, add your video as video item and then submit. For more information on video submission with this software, please check out the help section of Magic Submitter.

It is pretty much it, except that you should create more videos and submit them. I hope that this tutorial has been helpful. If you have any question, please contact me.

Do you need to optimize your site?

If a site is not performing as well as one would wish, and the major source of traffic is the search engine, are you sure that you have very targeted keywords? In the case a keyword is very broad; this could lead to a lower conversion rate. Let say a person is selling shoes on his/her site.  But the keyword that is driving traffic is: shoes information. It is true that such keyword seems to work with the overall theme of the site; however it might not be the most targeted. Does it seem possible that some of the people looking for these shoes information are not thinking about buying? I would not be surprised if the data showed that, effectively, not everyone searching for “shoes information” is not planning to purchase. Thinking about the diversity of shoes types and the multitude of brands, the keyword “shoes information” appears to be very broad.

The same reasoning goes for pay per click advertising if a person is targeting a keyword similar to the mentioned earlier. In fact, looking for words or groups of words to which stronger purchase intent can be attached might be better. Instead of “shoes information”, “timberland shoes” appears to be more precise. Could a person still be a non buyer when typing such keyword? I don’t know. However, “timberland shoes” compared to “shoes information” seems to be a more focused search query. For people who type in “timberland shoes” in Google, a website owner may know that it would be a bad move to present Adidas shoes, coupled with some Nike shoes to those searchers.

In fact, targeting more specific keywords could help the site owner focus on what may actually be interesting for the visitors who land on his site after making a particular search.

One could note that with more targeted keyword there might be less traffic. This being, the tradeoff seems to be of a higher value. If a website gets most of its traffic from broad keywords compared to specific ones, there could be a higher bounce rate because of the challenge to present the right information on the website’s landing page for those people.

After ranking and getting traffic for keywords that seem to be typed by buyers, the use of split testing on the pages of the site could help optimize the landing pages.

Optimizing a site is a subject that can be talked about longer. I invite you to look at other post I have made on this site.

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is one of the methods that came to my mind after thinking about free ways to direct visitors to a site. With blog commenting, having a list of websites you would comment on could help. When I was using this method, I used an extension for Google Chrome (the browser I am using) to subscribe to certain blogs RSS feeds. That way, I would somewhat know when new post had been published. Being among the first people to comment could help with how visible your comment is. This will normally work with sites where blog comments are listed from the oldest to the latest one.

One thing that could also be done if you remark that the top 5 spots have been taken by other people comments is to respond to their comment. Additionally, look if the box to comment with facebook is placed higher than the normal comment box. If the facebook box is higher and there are not 5 comments there, you could comment in that place. One element that I dislike with facebook comment is that if someone clicks on your profile, they will be sent to your facebook profile and not your site as far as I know. Nonetheless, an advice will be to place your link in a visible spot on your facebook profile.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is also a method that could be used to drive traffic. It is not necessary to be in front of a camera to create a video. Software like Camstudio (free) or Camtesia can record your screen. You could have a PowerPoint presentation and talk through the slides. I think that you should not make your presentation too long, as you want people to go visit your site. Include a call to action at the end of the video where you ask the viewer to visit the site you are promoting. At the beginning of the video, you could also mention your site. Throughout the video you could include a link to your site in the lower portion of the video. This could be done through watermarking the video. I used to do it with the free version of movie maker that can be installed on PC’s or laptop. This being, I do not recall the version that I used.

More could be said about driving traffic for free to a website. I invite you to check at other posts I have published on this blog.

Due to the fact that Facebook is a very popular site, it makes sense that it is place that marketers may want to exploit. On Facebook, fan pages and groups can be set up in an attempt to make one’s site more visible. Nonetheless, if there are neither fans nor group members, these avenues for traffic may not be that useful to move facebook users to another website.

As far as Facebook is concerned, I have gotten some information regarding the effectiveness of its advertising network that permits advertisers to present ads to facebook users. In this network, there is the possibility to target facebook users. My understanding has been that it was better to direct the facebook users to a fan page rather than the advertiser’s site at first.

Concerning Paid advertising networks, I think that starting out without information as to what should be done to succeed can lead to loss of money.

The second social network I would like to briefly talk about is Twitter. Twitter too receives a lot of visitors. However, Facebook has in my opinion more traffic than Twitter. I find twitter to be more suitable for people who want to communicate with the world. It seems to be more open than Facebook where friends might be those with whom personal information may be shared. The examples of world events being tweeted a lot are an example of how Facebook and Twitter differ.

My use of twitter as a source of traffic has been done through two major things. One was to add followers and the second thing was to tweet certain keywords in an attempt to be ranked in Google. Nonetheless, the section that featured Twitter updates in Google was not listed anymore sometimes ago. This being, because Twitter still exist I think that it is still possible to use this platform to try to generate website visitors.

I have remarked that by adding a lot of followers each day, and tweeting each day, I could receive some hits. I would like to note though that the number of hits that I have received seemed to have a low conversion to sale, if it converted to sales. Nonetheless, I find it easier to write tweets than to write article for Ezine Articles.

Concerning the adding of followers, I beleive that there are ways to do this account without having to sit in front of a computer. However, I don’t know exactly what the user agreement with Twitter permits.

Twitter and Facebook are not the only social networks. I hope that you have found this post interesting.

With Google Adwords, a lot of money can be spent fast. There is a clear need to know what to do when a person wants to use Adwords for a campaignor campaigns. With Google Adwords, the advertiser could pay each time his ad is clicked on. The cost per click can be quite high when there is competition. To try to illustrate that having a certain amount of knowledge about PPC or Pay per Click, let’s take anexample.

Let’s say that a person decides to send traffic from Google Adwords to a webpage that sales sockets. Let’s hypothecally say that each click for the keyword he/she has chosen is $1. This will mean that each time that his/her ad is cliked there will be a cost of $1. The pair of sockets are each priced at $10.

Atthis level what seemsto ecome important for use to know how can this person gaina profit from the PPC campaign, we might want to know what is his/her conversion rate. The conversionrate is used as an indication of the proportion of peoplewho purchase a pair of sockets out of all those who visit the site.

Continuing our example, let’s say that the person has a conversion rate to sale of  2%. This means that for each 100 people who visit the web page, 2 purchase a pair of sockets. Each pair of socket being priced at $10, for each 100 people sent to the site or the page, the advertiser gets $20. Nonetheless, based on the cost per click given earlier, it would cost the advertiser $100 to send these 100 people to his/her site. Asa result, the advertiser would be loosing money with the conversion rate of 2% and a cost per click at $1.

The solution here could be for the advertiser to increase his/he rconversion rate by optimizing his site so that vsisitors are more inclined to purchase what he/she is selling. Moreover, the advertiser could also try to use keywords that cost less in terms of cost per click while they are also keywords that get a good amount of people typing them in Google. Additionally, the advertiser may look for keywords that can be associated with an intent to purchase. For instance, between a person typing in Google the word “socket” and another one typing in “socket store”, the second person person could be seen as someone who might be looking to purchase sockets. Targeting this type of keywords could lead to better results compared to very broad keywords.

This hypothetical example can help see that with PPC, having knowledge of what the conversion rate of a page is and getting the right keywords can be valuable. Unless someone knows how to use PPC, I find this type type of traffic to be one where money can be spent without getting results.

Sofwares to Rank Better in Google

There are more than a type of sofware that could be used by webmasters. While they could be made to help create squeeze pages, there are also other softwares that are designed to help build backlinks. Some of those are Senuke X, Magic Submitter, and Traffic Geyser.

Starting with Senuke X, I could say that it seems to be an interesting program for backlinking. There are several types of websites links that can be build with it. Additionally, there is a designer view that can help have a more visual representation of certain styles of backlinking.

Nonetheless, despite the advantages of Senuke in creating tons of backlinks in a relatively short period of time, I have not been very pleased with it during the trial I used. During my trial of Senuke X, there seemed to be a problem with windows that became inactive many times. It made it difficult to type a captcha code compared to the same actions performed outside Senuke X.

I have also used Traffic Geyser. My goal when I used this program was mainly to distribute videos and have them rank high. However, I have not been very satisfied  of this software either. Comparing the cost of Traffic Geyser, and its features to those of Magic Submitter, it appears to me that Traffic Geyser is very expensive as it does not have has many functionalities.

Magic Submitter is a product that I have found to be better in view of its monthly cost and the functions it has. However, similarly to Senuke X, the potential to spam is there and if you want to do a lot of backlinking, you may have to get the service of a capcha solving company. Magic Submitter has also, a lot of websites where submission of the content can be done. This being, it is not possible to submit podcast like in Traffic Geyser.

Something I dislike with Magic Submitter video tutorials is the use of music. I really do not believe that music has to be integrated in a video for people to learn something.

I invite you to read more post on this blog.