The Doctor

Many people wonder what the benefits of hiring forum posters are and what it could do to help out a site / forum. Many say that a forum posting service is unnecessary.

Many also say that these services are run by young a teenager who doesn?t really know what they are doing. Others say the quality of the services are horrible and not worth it. I disagree with these comments made and they are made only on the bad experiences people have hade.
What about the good experiences and trusted services out there who provide valuable services? Forum posting services could bring more traffic, posts, views, unique visits etc. These services could also bring better ranking with Google and other page ranking sites. A paid posting service would provide a new forum owner with the appearance of an active forum right from the start and paid forum posters would engage new members in interesting conversation making them want to keep returning to the forum.
The problem is that many in the posting industry simply view it as an easy method to make money, half of the battle is finding a company or individual with your interests at heart, rather than their pocket.
When looking for forum posting services look out for prices that are too low. Below $0.10 a post usually does not guarantee the quality of their post. Services that cost more usually are more effective than the others and well worth the money.
I say that the benefits from these services are great for upcoming forum owners.
$0.10 - $0.12 could take your new and upcoming forum a long way if you find a trustable service to use. One such service I recommend would be http://www.contentfiend.com/.

Search engines are the first factor to drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for searchers to reach your website, you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site.

Selecting search engine keywords help you to achieve your goal.
Find the exactly right words or phrases can have a huge impact to your website traffic. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of searchers actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits from the searchers that do arrive - decreases dramatically.
Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.
You probably think you already know closely the right words for your search phrases. Unluckily, if you haven’t tracked certain specific steps, you are probably mistaken. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.
Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself; ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.
The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from bottomless inside the channel of your business.
Only after you have collected as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.
The aim of evaluation is to fine your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality searchers to your website. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, pay attention to three basics elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.
1- Popularity:
Popularity is the easiest in the search engine keyword selection process to estimate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more probable the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.
You can now purchase software or paid a monthly fee to third party that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Web based Software such as keyword discovery suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only misleading notion with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.
2 ? Specificity:
Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater he likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.
Consumer Motivation:
The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this Requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer Rather than the seller to figure out what motivation Prompts a person looking for a service or product to type In a particular word or phrase. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.
Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.
Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.
In conclusion:
This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.
Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work - and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

It is interesting to think that out of the numerous ways in which business owners can advertise their products and services, many of them neglect to place their company?s URL in the very advertising they are already paying for.


Sometimes simply placing their Web site URL in their paid advertising is not that obvious. Here are 10 not-always-so-obvious ways to promote your Web site.
1. Include your URL on business cards, stationery, brochures and other literature.
As silly as it may seem, this no-brainer is often overlooked. You?d be amazed how many business owners either forget to place their URL on their business cards or don?t think doing so is all that important. Be sure when printing your company?s promotional and marketing materials, to leave off the http:// part and include only the www.domain.com portion.
2. Don?t neglect e-mail and e-mail newsletters as a way to bring visitors to your Web site.
Utilize the signature file option (company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address) in your e-mail program. Many business owners sign their e-mails with just their first name, nothing more. Moreover, many business owners still send and receive business-related e-mails using a free e-mail account or their ISP?s email, like Hotmail, Yahoo, or Ameritech, rather than using their corporate e-mail account ? another free Web site promotion tool.
While it’s a big commitment in time, publishing a weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletter is one of the very best ways to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. Don?t forget to place your URL in each newsletter you send out.
3. Take a moment to use your traditional means of advertising to add your URL.
Be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, magazines and more. View your Web site as an information adjunct to the ad ? to capture the readers’ attention with the ad, and then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of magazines or trade periodicals. Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc.
4. Become an online expert in your field.
Use your expertise to become an expert in your field and promote your Web site for free. Sign up for Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/) or Google Answers (http://answers.google.com/answers/) and answer questions asked by online visitors. You will have the opportunity to write your company?s URL in your profile. This is a great way to gain additional Internet exposure as well.
5. Issue press releases.
When your business has a newsworthy event, send press releases to print and online periodicals. Use these opportunities to mention your company?s URL near the bottom of each news release. There are many online PR Web sites, including PRWeb.com, PRWire.com and others you may use to promote something exciting happening within your company.
6. Promote your site in mailing lists and news groups.
The Internet offers hundreds of targeted e-mail based discussion lists, chat rooms and news groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Spend at least one hour each week searching for groups where a conversation is taking place. Do not use aggressive marketing and overly plug your company, even if you see some people doing so. Instead, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the signature at the end of your e-mail or post message do the marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your Web site, and do business with you.
7. Ask visitors to bookmark your site.
It seems so simple, but make sure you ask visitors to bookmark your Web site. Use a text link or graphic on the homepage of your Web site.
8. Place URL in any yellow book advertising you already do.
I once knew of a company who was spending $90,000 in yellow page advertising, across numerous books in the area, and included front yellow book cover ads as well as full-page, full-color ads throughout the yellow pages. Not once did they mention their Web site, which has been on the Net for many years. The company surprisingly saw no value to it.
Whether placing full-page ads in your local yellow pages, or only paying for a bold listing in the white and business yellow pages of your local directory, consider leaving open one line for your company?s Web site address. Because you are already paying for the directory advertising, this is one particular place you definitely do not want to overlook.
9. Write articles for use in newsletters and other Web sites.
You can dramatically increase your Internet visibility when you write expert articles about your field and distribute them as free content for other article directories, e-mail newsletters and other related Web sites. At the bottom of each article written, request a link back to your Web site and a one-line description of what you offer. This is an effective viral marketing approach.
10. Devise other viral marketing techniques.
Viral marketing uses the communication networks of your site visitors and current customers to spread the word about your Web site exponentially. Some examples include word-of-mouth, public relations, referrals, blogs, creating “buzz,” and other forms of network marketing.

What I needed was a way of building internet traffic to my websites and everyone I talked to told me that blogging is the answer.

They told me that it is so easy that it is without doubt the simplest and best way to build internet traffic and to get in touch with a wide audience.
As I’ve come to discover, blogging, along with article writing, is easy, powerful and doesn’t cost anything. That being the case, I can’t believe that there could be anyone, with a website or not, that doesn’t have at least one blog yet. Any entrepreneur is missing a big trick if they haven’t got one.
The only two places anyone needs to go are Articlesender.com and Blogger.com - it couldn’t be simpler!
When I got started with blogging, I instantly found it was an easy way of adding extra interactivity to my websites and to record snippets of information that didn’t merit a full web-page. Thoughts on things that may be developed later are captured and when people comment on them, I know which ones need further work. When people feel the need to comment I also gain from the additional input to the idea and a step further in building internet traffic.
Because I am interested in lots of different subjects my websites range from careers and jobs to CV and Resume writing

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site.

You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.
Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.
Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.
You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.
Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.
The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.
Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.
The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.
Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.
You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.
Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.
The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.
Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.
Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.
This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.
Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work - and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

A while back I discovered that the traffic I was used to getting to my main site absolutely free from Google had dried up - completely! I mean, there was not a sniff of Google traffic on my site.

A bunch of top ten rankings simply disappeared overnight.
In the past, I would have started an immediate game of “catch the algorithm.” I would have gone to sources I know who spend all their time trying to reverse engineer Google’s rankings to figure out what’ll get top rankings.
But the way Google’s algorithm has jumped around this past year, I’ve gotten tired of constantly tweaking pages to regain my rankings. So this time I decided to do something different. I left my pages as they were and worked on building traffic through other means - syndicating my articles to other sites in return for a one-way incoming links, buying pay-per-click traffic, submitting to more directories.
Rather than spending my time trying to protect what I already had, I worked on building new sources of traffic.
A few weeks later, I noticed a sudden spike in traffic. Sure enough, my lost top ten rankings in Google had reappeared as mysteriously as they had left. It goes to show the foolishness of playing “chase the algorithm” with Google. If I had reworked those pages, who knows if they would have come back to where they started.
I’ve become increasingly convinced that the best strategy for search engine optimization is:
- Write lots of pages that are clearly focused on the keywords you want to target
- Write them for the people who will read them moreso than writing them for the search engines
- Include your keywords in the title, and scatter them througout the page in headings, text, and links
- Make sure that a good number of the links that come into the page use your keywords in the link text
- Then leave those pages be
Some pages will get high rankings, others will not. But when the search engine algorithms change to something less favorable to your exact keyword density and distribution, you’ll have other pages for other keywords, and those pages will have different densities and different distributions that will rise in the rankings to take the others’ place.
If you write well and clearly for your readers, you’ll do better than if you write solely to please the search engine spiders.
There’s another benefit, too, of not playing “chase the algorithm.” Every hour you spend studying the latest theories and tweaking your pages is an hour you could have spent building additional sources of traffic. Every dollar you spend on professional SEO firms are a dollar you could have spent on other traffic-building strategies.
The most dangerous number in marketing is the number “one.” If free search engine traffic - or any other traffic source - is your one and only source of traffic, you’ll always be vulnerable. If something happens to that traffic source, your business is crippled.
Smart business owners always focus on developing multiple streams of traffic. It’s the only way to protect yourself from unexpected changes in the market.
If you’re one of the many business owners who have built their business on the uncertain whims of Google, wise up. Google is not in business to provide you with all the free traffic you need.
Build pages that Google will find relevant for your keywords. Then leave them be and focus on building other sources of traffic. If you do, your business will be far less vulnerable and far more profitable.

Everyone knows that there is big money to be made ranking well in the search engines, and (almost) everyone has their little secret or trick to help you do it.

In other words, people are usually technique oriented, focusing on what you are suppose to do and how you are suppose to do it. There is, no doubt, great value to knowing what works, but there is also a problem and that is that what works today doesn’t seem to work tomorrow. The search engines, it turns out, are rather dynamic and they are constantly changing the way in which they determine which sites rank well for any given search term. This leads us to a question, is there a long term strategy for ranking well in the search engines? The answer is a resounding yes! You simply have to learn how to think like the search engines.
If you can learn to think like the search engines, then you can start to build and market the type of sites that they want to rank well. And guess what, with billions of dollars of cash, and some of the brightest minds that roam this planet, the search engines are getting rather good at ranking highly those sites which they want to rank well. What that means is that if you can create and market the type of sites that the search engines like then you can build long-term, stable rankings in the search engine.
All you have to do is find out what do the search engines want? And what do they want? They want sites which are relevant and popular. All you have to do is create a highly relevant and popular website and you are on your way to high rankings that last. And while that may not sound so easy, it’s not so hard either, if you go about it right. Indeed, it’s basically a simple two-step process.
Step number one - creating a relevant website
As we mentioned above, the search engines crave relevant results. Indeed, their entire business depends on it (people don’t like using search engines that return irrelevant results). What that means for you is that you need to create high quality content for any and every keyword that you want to rank well for. The key is to always stay ahead of the game (and your competitors). Stay up-to-date, come up with creative insights, make a video presentation, whatever it takes to make sure that your site has the best, most relevant content out there for the terms and phrases that you want to rank well for. And don’t forget about presentation, make it easy-to-understand and enjoyable.
Now, there are many ways that you can accomplish this. Look around at all of the different types of content online and pick one (or a few) which you are most capable of reproducing. And then just keep doing it day in and day out, each time working to make it better than the day before.
Step number two - creating a popular website
It is important to understand that the search engines are actually somewhat democratic. They like sites that other people like (it’s how they determine whether or not a site is significant). That is why that put so much emphasis on links. However, as is well known, they are not totally democratic. They don’t value everyone’s “vote” the same. The most significant vote comes from sites which are topically related and popular. Less significant votes come from sites which are either popular or relevant (but not both). The worst votes are from sites which are neither relevant nor popular. This means that in order to rank well you need to find a way (or numerous ways) to get large numbers of sites which are at least either relevant or popular to link to your site. What’s the best way to do that? Find the people with the power to influence those sites? Where can you find them? Blogs, forums, del.icio.us, dig.com, press release sites, people with large email lists, etc. There are thousands (if not millions) of people who actually want your to link to good sites. After all, they also need to provide their visitors with quality content. As such, the moment that you have created a quality site you have created something that people want (bloggers love linking to good sites). What’s more, you can also rework your content and offer it to other sites in exchange for a link.
So, at the end of the day, high rankings which last revolve around one word, content. Create lots of it, make sure that it is relevant and of the highest quality, and you and Google can live together happily ever after.

Trying to get your website noticed is next to impossible if you are unwilling to promote it by writing an article about it.

I know I was reluctant to put my thoughts on paper and share it with the world. I procrastinated continually. I knew this was what I needed to do to gain some recognition, but having the public see my words on the Internet simply terrified me. Every affiliate program I became involved in told me to ?write articles and submit them? and this would help gain traffic to my website. My Internet Coach told me that before Google will even rank my page, I needed to write and submit articles. The ?Google? word got me a little more motivated. Google is everything and without them, you are basically nothing on the Internet today.
Well, I finally got up the nerve and wrote my first article. I titled it, ?Make Money On The Internet? Who Me??, and, believe it or not, it did increase my web traffic. Not by a huge amount, by any means, but then, it was my first article. And, actually, not enough to help my Google page ranking. So, here I am again, writing another article! And, guess what? I?m actually starting to like it!
Writing an article seems to make a lot people go into a panic. I asked one of my best affiliates in some Internet marketing programs we?re involved in to write an article to promote our programs. She asked me if it was like writing an Ad. I then sent her a copy of an article I had written. Here is a copy of the email of her response after she read my article:
Oh boy. I now know what an article is all right. How can I put this simply.
#1 I SUCK at this kind of stuff.
#2 I do not have the gift of words (really)
#3 I don’t even talk that much!
#4 I don’t understand enough about the companies to even tell others about it.
I could FEEL the panic in her words! But, I?m still encouraging her to at least try it. Just start writing down your feelings about your business, your product, your life, and your goals. Eventually, you will have an article. Or, save yourself a lot of stress and just hire a ghostwriter to pen an article for you?there is always someone out there willing to do this for you. You don?t have to have the ?gift of words? yourself when there are plenty of people in the world who do. Ask a talkative friend to write something for you; ask a relative that never shuts up if they would help you write an article; how about that loud mouthed co-worker? Get the point?
If you have a website, a product, an affiliate program, or anything else you want to promote on the Internet, the best way to get yourself known is to write an article and tell people about it. Even if you need someone else to do it for you. Writing your own article is the best promotion you could ever give yourself and you don?t have to pay for the advertising or click on links all night long to add enough points to get your ?Ad? out there.
Think about it. If you spent serious dollars on advertising for your site, did it help your ranking on Google, or get you the hits you were hoping? If not, try writing a few articles, submit them to various article sites, and check your Google ranking after their weekly spider crawl. I?ll bet you will see a BIG difference!
To Your Success Online,
Teri Trantanella
http://www.toyoursuccessonline.com