Link Bait is the New Reciprocal Link

Link bait and reciprocal linking programs have quite a bit in common. Without disparaging anyone who engages in link baiting strategies I do believe that many forms of link baiting are just a dressed up version of reciprocal links without the reciprocation. Note here that I said, many forms. I don't mean all link baiting, but I would guess a bigger slice of the link baiting pie holds no more value than the old fashioned reciprocal link schemes.

A brief history of reciprocal linking

We've all heard it said that reciprocal links are dead. Well, they're not. But some forms of reciprocal linking most certainly are. Remember when Google showed up and started evaluating incoming links as part of the ranking algorithm? This started everybody down the path of seeking to acquire as many links as possible. For awhile, the most efficient way to do this was to simply barter a link exchange. "Hey, if you link to me, I'll link to you!"

This solution started the trend of websites adding dozens of "reciprocal link" pages to their sites linking out to other sites in which they were able to work a link "partnership" with. And for awhile, this type of reciprocation worked. At least until the search engines learned to identify these non-valuable pages. Of course this led to three and four-way reciprocal linking tactics and the creation of link "directories." Again, these worked for a while and perhaps still do to a smidgen of a degree.

The basic problem here was one of motivation. It was all about getting a lot of links, many which were largely irrelevant. It was links based on volume and volume alone. Eventually link reciprocates began to target their links a bit more selectively, to be more within the real of relatedness, but still the concept here was on links, not user value.

Along comes link baiting

When you hear people talk about link baiting today, it's almost as if we are in the early stages of the reciprocal links schemes all over again. It's all about link volume rather than link relevance. This isn't always the case but for many, if not most, it is.

Rand has a good series of posts all about how to link bait the linkerati. Essentially, Rand explains how to attract links from the masses of people who are most likely to link to you, not necessarily the ones who are most interested in your product or service. I appreciate Rand's posts and I believe he, more than most, tries to get relevant links through his link bait, but getting links from linkers, rather than a targeted audience or related websites, is going right back to seeking out links for quantity rather than quality.

As did reciprocal linking, this will work. At least for a while. But sooner or later the search engines will get even smarter about analyzing links. Just as links from reciprocal pages were deemed irrelevant, I believe that links from the "linkerati" will largely be deemed irrelevant as well. Search engines, in their quest to provide the best search results for each query, understand that popular doesn't necessarily mean relevant. Especially popularity from a group of people who are always interested in what's popular.

The way sites earn quality links today isn't the same as the way links were earned several years ago, so too the link baiting of tomorrow isn't going to be the link baiting of today. True success in link baiting will be from those that learn how to bait their target audience. Some of that will include the linkerati, but most of it won't. The true skill of link baiting won't be getting to the top of digg, but getting to the top of the minds of your target audience so they can't help but want to link to your site.

Stoney deGeyter leads a spectacular team of seasoned marketing experts at Pole Position Marketing, a Search Engine Marketing Company. Stoney started PPM in 1998 by finding the brightest minds in the industry and nurturing within them an intense desire to become leaders in their respective fields. With this team of professionals, he has built a wildly successful website marketing company that succeeds through both personal and professional integrity.

You can read Stoneys blog posts at the E-Marketing Performance blog and more of his work on several well-known SEO and marketing news sources including Search Engine Guide and Web Pro News. Stoney has authored two website marketing books: E-Marketing Performance: Effective strategies for building, optimizing, and marketing your website online and Keyword Research and Selection: The definitive guide to gathering, sorting and organizing your keywords into a high-performance SEO campaign.

Article Marketing - What Is The Magic Number Of Articles To Be Successful?

This is a question that I get asked many times by people. How many articles do I need to write to be successful with article marketing. Now let us look at some key considerations that are important to be successful with this method of marketing.

When you are first starting out it is going to be difficult to write one article a week. For most people writing does not come easily. So it is very important that you focus on doing one article a week. Once you become good at this you can increase this number to two a week.

Over time you will become very good at writing at you will be able to write five articles a day. Then you can gradually increase this and you will be writing ten articles a day.

So back to the original question. How many articles should you have written to start seeing measurable results. You need at least two hundred and fifty articles to start seeing good results and determine if you are progressing with your article marketing. If you were thinking of only writing a few articles sorry to disappoint you.

So what is the magic number of how many articles that I need to write? You need to write as many as possible. You see the more articles you have in distribution with the article directories the higher the number of readers of your articles. This equals more subscribers and more paid customers. Knowing this information once you become good at writing you may want to write at least ten articles a day.

Hopefully this information will motivate you to write more articles so that you can increase your business.

Are you really interested in driving massive traffic to your website?

Here's the answer:

Secrets Of Article Marketing - Download your free ebook now.

Mark Abrahams is a full time internet marketer who has helped others to earn a living online.

New Free Online Tool for Keyword Research

I came across a new website the other day and was quite pleasantly surprised.

Basically this is another really great way to get targeted keywords for your website. And the best part is it is free to use. You can check it out by going to http://www.nichebot.com

You simply enter in your keyword (I noticed you cant use more than 2 words) and it will give you a list similar to what you would see in Wordtracker. You can choose to have your keywords shown through a Wordtracker database, Overture database, thesauras, lateral or with a keyword analysis.

It is pretty extensive and I highly recommend that you check it out. It gives you five statistics for the keyword you type in.

1.) Phrase - Exact keyword phrase people are using to search the search engines.

2.) Count - Number of times search phrase was used in the past 60-days.

3.) Pages - Number of pages listed in Google with any or all of the keyword phrase.

4.) Competition - Number of pages listed in Google with the exact keyword phrase.

5.) Ratio - Number of sites for every 1 search; the closer to zero, the less competition.

Wanna know your Google ranking without having to buy expensive software? Nichebot also has a way that you can check you ranking.

At the bottom of their homepage you will see a link that says Google Ranking click on the link and you will be able to enter your keywords and website url to check your ranking.

I think this website is going to get big really quick. Hopefully it will continue to stay free to use.

Go check it out and see for yourself: www.nichebot.com

Leah West
http://www.westmarketing-design.com

Get a search engine friendly website...
Sign up for my free monthly ezine and get lots of great info on how your small business can make BIG money on the internet. http://www.westmarketing-design.com/ezinesubscribe.htm

Strategic Internet Marketing - How I Started From Scratch With A Simple Business Plan!

What is strategic Internet marketing? It's a way to grow your online business with a long term plan. You need to have a clear vision from the beginning. Where do you want to be after five years? Do you want to take care of your business or do you want it to take care about you?

I think the second option is that you want. Instead of working in your business, you need to take care of the general vision. I learned from Brad Fallon that it is one the only three things a business owner should do.

Let's take my own example. The first part of my strategic Internet marketing plan was to start with free resources and tools because I was on a budget. I couldn't pay for advertising, and even paying $8 a month for web hosting was difficult for me two years ago. I decided to start my online business career with affiliate marketing.

That was the first part of my plan. I carefully selected affiliate products proven to convert visitors into sales and I quickly started to make money.

I started with article marketing and forums because these are two low cost ways to generate targeted traffic to your website.

I then decided to start with safelists and traffic exchanges sites. After two months, I realized that the return in terms of subscribers and sales wasn't worth my time. I continued to submit articles because I was making sales and capturing leads into my autoresponder.

From this time, my goal was to develop my very own products. That's why I was building my list of loyal subscribers. I knew that when I am ready to launch my own product, I would be able to get sales right away with a list.

I forgot to say that I started with a blogger blog because it was free. I started with a free domain at tripod.com and bravenet.com. I also had a free autoresponder web based software with sendfree.com and get response.

When I started to earn $300 per month consistently, I immediatly got all the paid tools to go further in my business. I got a web hosting, I registered my domain and immediatly switched to wordpress blogs.

I was setting up the foundations for my online business.

Another element of my success is the fact that I got a coach because every successful mind has a mentor.

Franck Silvestre specializes in providing a successful Internet marketing plan right from the start. To learn more about you can master Internet marketing, please visit his blog today to start right away http://mynetmarketingland.com/blog/

Top 3 Internet Marketing Promotion Tips

So you want to construct a very profitable internet marketing promotion?

Many do, but few have the understanding, and patience to maximize profit potential using effective internet marketing strategies.

When I use the term online internet marketing I am referring to promoting a product or service, whether it is yours or others, and getting as many qualified visitors to visit your website as humanly possible.

When many business owners start e business marketing as an additional avenue of marketing they feel all they need to do is put up a website, and qualified buyers will flock to the webpage, and money will fall from the sky. Not necessarily so.

In an internet marketing promotion this is the farthest thing from the truth. First off, you have to get your site ranking high in the search engines for specific keywords.

Unless your internet business wants to buy traffic via pay per click, or offer an affiliate internet marketing program, the website traffic will be minimal unless you rank for high searched upon keyword terms.

Minimal web traffic equals minimal sales. You have to put forth a continuous effort driving traffic to your site, day after day.

Here are 3 internet marketing promotion tips that will assist you in getting the most out of your online marketing promotion.

1. Continuous, internet promotion using as many online marketing strategies as possible.

It takes continuous work as an online marketer to drive traffic to your site. You must hit as many traffic avenues as possible.

Some web traffic creation strategies include article marketing, submitting press releases, launching an affiliate program, SEO your site, and invest in pay per click advertising.

A winning internet marketing tip is to have a diversified internet business strategy for driving qualified visitors to your website.

Promote! Promote! Promote! You have a choice. You can do the work yourself, or delegate your internet marketing promotion tasks to others. The most successful online marketers leverage their time by having others do traffic generation tasks for them. Do what is best for your specific internet business.

2. Always be building relationships.

When I mean relationships I mean with possible joint venture partners, or affiliates, as well as visitors to your website.

To have a really effective internet marketing web site promotion you will want to build a list of people highly interested in your product. Without a list you may never get another chance to market to a web visitor again. Once they are gone, they generally are gone! Therefore, I highly recommend giving visitors something valuable in exchange for signing up for additional information. You can then begin building a relationship with your prospects, and begin turning them into paying customers in the very near future.

Another top internet marketing tip is to focus on building a relationship with your list. People will buy from those who know you, like you, and trust you.

It is important for your internet marketing promotions to build relationships with other marketers who have lists of people. That way you can form joint ventures with people to promote your internet marketing product, or service.

3. Always be testing.

It is always important for your internet marketing promotion to always be testing. Know your conversion rates, and continually strive to beat the control. Your sales copy needs to improve each month. Never be satisfied. If you are, you are throwing money away.

Have a mindset that your copy is the worst it will ever be, today. Keep testing, and tracking to increase sales conversion rates.

For your website promotion internet marketing business get familiar with the overall conversion rate, value per visitor, and lifetime value of your customer.

Having a firm grasp on these numbers. Attempting to improve them will quickly put your internet promotion in overdrive.

Continuing education should always be a key to your internet marketing promotion strategy. Attempt to keep up with the latest online marketing tips, tricks, and techniques, and inject the ideas into your overall plan.

For even more internet marketing promotion tips, and reviews visit internet marketing business reviews.

Use Your Older Articles to Generate Extra Cash

In my discussions with other writers, most of them will write an article and then forget about it. They move on to the next one. By managing your article business in this way, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. You should take a lesson from the larger successful sites. Many large and small submission sites make money by placing ads on our articles. Xomba and Helium do it quite successfully. They are making money with articles that authors have written long ago. Unless you are a billionaire and write just for fun, why not copy successful article income techniques from the big boys?

Place twenty or thirty of your most successful articles into your website and place ads on each page. Use commercial ads from the large advertisers like those from Content Link, Kontera, Adsense, and others along with links touting your own products or your favorite affiliate items. I have inserted as many as twelve ads in one article. Make sure you include the other sources of advertising that you are currently using on your site.

Ill admit, the extra income that this technique generates will not be enough to allow you to retire. However, it could bring in an extra few hundred dollars each month, and every little bit helps. For those of you who scoff at an extra few hundred dollars each month, please feel free to send me your checks. Ill gladly accept them!

Be sure to rotate new articles in each month. In addition, you can advertise this page as a source of concentrated information in future articles. Place a number of related articles together o your website (or blog) and add a link to this page in the resource box of your articles. This provides you with a new source of article information to write about and it is sure to bring you additional traffic and revenue.

If you have attained expert status with any of the submission sites, be sure to display the expert icon prominently on your site. It will give you added credibility and increase your sales.

By taking articles that you have published previously and giving them new life on your website, you can use them to generate a recurring income. Month in and month out, each one should pay you a small dividend. Keep track of the page views each article generates and cycle out any that lag behind. Replace those laggards with fresh articles regularly to maximize your income.

For additional information on making money writing articles, visit us at http://www.MillionDollarArticle.com

Jo Mark is an Internet marketing expert specializing in the generation of income through the writing and placement of articles.