One great way to build your one-way link count is with link directories. People make sites who's purpose is to give out links to other sites. They are generally called 'link directories'. One of the great things about these types of sites is that they provide easy one-way links, and if you find high Page Rank directories, then they will be passing that authority on to your site.

Submitting sites to Link Directories can be very, very time consuming. But once you get the knack, you can buzz through a list of directories. You'd be surprised at how hard it can be to find out how to submit your site on any given link directory. I'll try to ease you some pain and frustration in this post.

First of all, you're probably looking for one of three text links.

'submit site/URL'
'suggest site/URL'
'add a site/URL'

There are other variants that you'll come across every now and then. So the trick is finding where the button lies on the page. Many times, there will be a button and the very bottom of the page, along with some other links. For example:

Other times, it will be grouped in a navigation bar at the top. For example:

and

And then other times, it will be at some random point in the page.

Sometimes you won't find an option to submit until you go looking through the directory. Because of this, I've made it a habit to go to the most relevant category within the directory before trying to submit. This also saves time in finding a category manually when submitting. If you go to a category and hit then submit your site, most of the time it will automatically fill in the category for you, so you don't have to look through a long and unclear drop-down menu.

It's also helpful to keep a text editor up while you're going through the sites. I use notepad (when I'm on a windows) and textedit (when I'm on a mac). There are a few things you should keep in your text editor, separated by paragraph breaks.

-Your email address
-Your full URL
-A 1 to 3 sentence description of your site
-Your full name (you can make up a false identity to use if you want)
-The title of your site
-A few keywords and keyword phrases seperated by commas

If you do this, it makes going through a list of directories much easier, because you can just copy and paste the answers to questions into the appropriate boxes.  You won't need all the above categories for all sites, and some sites will require more info. You can adjust what you put into the text editor to your needs.

Finally, two words of advice. First, do yourself a favor and don't pay for listings in directories. It won't do you any good (unless it gives you a lot of traffic, which is highly unlikely). There are plenty of high-PR directories out there that take free submissions. Here's a site with a list of some authoritative directories  you can start working through (only do the free ones).

Strongest Links

And Second, don't do reciprocal linking. It's not worth your time. Google doesn't count those anymore, and chances are you won't get any direct traffic. It's a waste of time. Anyhow, who wants to junk up their site with a list of links to spammy link directories?

If you liked to know more about upcoming contests, please subcribe to my RSS feed here.

I highly encourage all of you to check it out, prizes include links, banner ads on both this and that site, entrecard credits, and much more. For the first competition I am offering 500 credits if 20 sites join. If over 50 sites join then the prize will be 1000 entrecard credits. And if it's more then that, well then we'll see the prize will probably be higher.

All you have to do is comment and drop your link. And most likely your site will be added. So go to it now, just drop your link in a comment and make sure that after joining you vote for your site, because otherwise you won't win anything, so check it out now.

Stumble it!

Social Sites

These are Social Sites that I use to advertise my site, and to learn about new sites coming out, and how to best generate traffic. They all have great communities and are a great way to advertise your site and learn from one another.

Blog Catalog

Cre8buzz

Facebook

myspace

mybloglog

Blogs I read

These are the sites I read on a semi regular basis. They have good content and all I can say is, forget John Chow, problogger, and shoemoney, their to full of themselves to post anything worth while anymore. To learn anything you have to read make money blogs that are still relatively young. I especially recommend the Stompernet Videos to those who haven’t seen them yet, they are excellent in learning how to improve traffic.

Stompernet Going Natural Videos

Carlocab

Danemorgan

Chain Dropper

Bloggernoob

Dosh Dosh

Bradblogging

datmoney

RSS

I use feedburner for RSS. RSS is a necessary component of any site, and feedburner is easy and gets the job done well. Just create it post it, and let the subscribers flow in, there is not need for any others.

Feedburner

Visitor Trackers

I use Statcouner and Google Analytics to track visitors. I use statcounter because it’s instant so I can check at any point during the day, but in the end I only trust analytics because it’s google, and google is the best. Analytics doesn’t lie.

Statcounter

Google Analytics

Competitions

These are sites that offer weekly or monthly competitions for your site, it’s a great way to advertise your site especially if your up against a very popular opponent. Usually they’ll make a post on it and even if you get slaughtered everybody who votes for the big site will see the link to your site.

Bloggers Choice Awards

Iblogcup

blogcompetition.uni.cc/

Make Money with your Blog

These are all money makers for your site. I haven’t used any of them so I can’t especially recommend any of them, but there a great way to earn a couple hundred bucks. But a word of warning, they can destroy your page rank, so be careful using them because Google may sandbox your site.

Project Wonderful

Bidvertiser

Review Me

Pay Per Post

Pay Per Play

Post Advertisers

These are some of the main sites I use to advertise my site. My personal favorites are stumbleupon and entrecard, but these others work well. Make sure if you are using squidoo to read my two articles, 1 and 2 to learn better how to use them. Digg is also an excellent source even if you don’t get the digg effect because you can still get a good amount of traffic without getting hundreds of digs. Blogengage, sphinn, and post on fire are all smaller verisions of digg that are growing and are great if you want to jump in now. Blog Burst is only for sites 3 months or older, but if you are defiantly sign up, you can get your articles published and get some great links. Social Marker is a great new site to save time. If you like an article you don’t need to go to the different sites to digg and stumble them, using socialmarker you can do them all in one, off of that same page. Entrecard is also an excellent source of traffic, check here my eight tips to becoming an Entrecard Powerhouse, it has been very successful for me and if you work on it everyday the traffic will only grow.

Postonfire

Digg

Blogengage

Sphinn

Blogburst

Squidoo

Youtube

SocialMarker

Stumbleupon

Entrecard

Checking your sites value

Your alexa ranking is a great way to compare your sites to your competitors, though not perfect, it can give you a good guess of how you rank. I really like Popuris because I can use it to check a site’s page rank, techonrati rank, complete rank, technorati rank, and google backlinks, all on only one page. And Technorati is another essential site for your blog. It tracks your back links and give you another ranking based on links, though it doesn’t  track all of them it can also give you a good ranking on how you stand.

Alexa

Popuri.us/

Technorati

Upgrading your Browser

Firefox is the best browser, just because. Download the google and alexa ranking not only to be able to check sites instantly but because it gives you a higher alexa ranking if you have it installed. SnagIt is an excellent free program so that you can take pictures of anything on the browser, then save it as a picture on your desktop. That way you can use it in your posts.

Firefox

Google and Alexa toolbar

SnagIt

Pingers

Pingers are essential to let the search engines know of your new posts. Do it after each new post.

Pinggoat

Pingomatic

BlogFlux Pinger

Building SEO

These are two great sites that show your Search Engine Optimization rankings, and most importantly how to improve them. They actually give you steps to improve your sites and can be very useful in building up your site in google.

Domain tools

Websitegrader

Extras

These are extra sites that I use. Go Daddy is great for buying your site, they have awesome prices and you can buy your custom domain for only 10.00 and under. Gmail and adsense are essential to sites. Ec.createlf is a great new site used with entrecard, you can advertise much easier using it then going to each page. And Rhapsody, okay so it has nothing to do with website building, but with their free plays it’s much more relaxing to work on your site to the soothing sounds of Mozart. If you have a make money online site, submit your site to the 45n5 top 100 make money online blogs. It can show you how you compare with the other sites in that niche. 

GoDaddy

Gmail/Adsense

Rhapsody

Ec.createlf

45n5 top100

If you liked this article please digg and stumble it.

An In Depth-Study of Traffic Generation

In this article, as the title implies, I discuss different ways to generate traffic to your site. I'm going to start off with the assumption that you know nothing about internet marketing, traffic building, SEO, and social marketing. Even if you already know some (or even a lot) about these things, I'm sure this article will still be a valuable read. My goal is to provide you with a launching point; there is tons of stuff you can build on in this article. It should provide you with ample material and information to begin and boost traffic to your site, whether it's a first-week site, or a four-year-old competitive blog. Also, when talking about social sites, I try to outline general principles so that you can take them and apply them to a wide range of sites. So, on to the content.

The internet is a truly amazing technology. It allows us to share information with others, and, more importantly, to make money from the comfort of home. But before you can make any money, you're going to need people to come to your site; traffic.

If you're new to building traffic, it may seem like a really big, really confusing world. It's hard to know where to start, and even if you have been trying to build traffic for a long time, you are probably always looking for more ways to increase the numbers.

First off, generating masses of traffic really isn't a magical thing that only a few people know how to do. There isn't a god of internet who sits in a server on the France/Switzerland border dealing out huge amounts to certain lucky (and random) sites, and taking away traffic from other sites. Getting traffic is much more scientific. Here's my formula for traffic Generation:

Unique, Quality content + Lots of Hard Work = Lots of Quality Traffic

Now of course, you have to know what to work on. But that's why I'm writing this article.

One thing that I can't stress enough is the need for quality content. This is probably the most key point to traffic generation. If something is interesting, unique, and informative, people will want to read it. That's why the internet was invented, to share information. If you realize that people are looking for information, and you give them what they're looking for, then all you have to do is get the word out about your content, and people will come.

Now of course, if you're selling a product, the same basic principles hold true. If you have a unique and quality product, all you have to do is tell people about that and they'll be happy to buy.

So if someone comes to your site, he is probably looking for information on some topic or another. If you can offer him that information, you are all set.

There are two sources of traffic on the internet. These are the search engines, and the social sites. There are many other minor sources, but none make much of an impact on anything. They just give you a random visit here and there.

These two methods of traffic generation are becoming more and more integrated. Search engines rank sites according to content and links. Social sites give out TONS of links. It's a pretty simple conclusion that social sites are a major benefit to SEO. Now, on to some specific strategies for building traffic via SEO, and more importantly, Social Sites.

If you don't really know anything about social sites, it can be very hard to know where to even begin, let alone WHAT to begin. The world of social sites is growing, actually, it's more than growing, it's exploding at an exponential rate. I don't know the exact statistics, but at the very least, multiple new sites pop up every day.

(1) Invest in the future. Here is my long term investment strategy: become an authority on small, relatively new sites. Why? Because the internet and the number of people who use social sites is expanding so quickly, in a year or two, small sites have the potential to be as big as stumbleupon, digg, del.icio.us, and reddit are now. Of course, it would be stupid not to exploit the power of these 800 pound gorillas now, but I also like to invest in the future traffic of my site.

(2) Build a large network of friends. The best strategy in social sites is to build a large network of friends. Even if this means an "I'll add you, you add me" approach, it's worth it. Once you build a network of friends, you have your authority spread out through a site; you essentially have roots that help you to grow the tree of traffic to your site. Generally, the more friends you have, the more internal links you have planted somewhere in the site, giving you more authority in the eyes of the site. So just get down and sludge through a site, getting anyone you can to be your friend. This is a major point, especially in big sites (more below).

(3) How do you get your stuff shared or bookmarked? You give people good content. It seems obvious, but sometimes the obvious is the most hard to see: people are looking for good content when they go on these sites, so if you give them what they're looking for, then they'll give you their support. Don't even bother to bookmark or share average or trash material, because it will get you nowhere, and it will be a waste of time. Here are 5 things that people tend to bookmark or share:

     -Funny or disgusting. Let's face it, your average internet surfer is probably looking for a way to pass the time. People like to laugh, and they like to be grossed out (I don't know why, but think about it, it's true). He's trying to entertain himself. If you give him entertainment, he'll support you.
     -Truly useful information. People actually look for information. If you can offer useful, fresh information to someone, he will appreciate that and support you.
     -Bashing people, brand-names, and companies. People can get very emotional about companies or websites or people they dislike. Out of pure resentment or identification, people will support something that bashes someone or something they don't like. Get people to identify with your article.
     -Controversial topics. This is similar to the one above. People can get very emotional, and will many times support something just because they feel strongly about it.
     -Breaking news. News stories that are the first to tell about a major event that people care about also go up very fast in bookmarking and sharing sites.

(4) If you have good content, how can you get people to find it? The nice thing about the social sharing sites is that they are viral. If one person likes it, they'll tell his two friends, who will then tell their two friends… etc. etc. It builds on itself. But you have to get the first group of people. This can be challenging, but there are a couple of ways to work it out. First of all, utilize the friends that you have on that given website (this is where having a large network of friends comes in handy). Send a shout out, or leave a comment somewhere so that your content gets exposed directly on that website. Next, you'll want to utilize any social networking sites your a part of (i.e. facebook, myspace, bebo, etc). Send a message to your friends and tell them briefly about the site. It will give you more traffic exposure. Another thing you should do is make it very easy to bookmark or share your page; put up buttons directly on your page if possible.

SEO is basically about two things: links and content. If you can get a lot of both, then you're all set. Again, it will be a huge help if you have original

(1) How do you get good quality inbound links? Well, there are multiple ways. The best linking strategy is this: find some sort of portal where you can put up content, and link back to your site after writing an article. Make sure to use a good keyword when linking back to your site. Don't just say, "For more info, click here." Use a keyword phrase, for example, if your site was on red racing cars… "A good site for information on red racing cars." Here are some examples of sites you could use to post content wit backlinks.
     -A Squidoo lens
     -A blogger devoted to this purpose
     -A hub on Hubpages.com
     -An article on ezinearticles.com
     -An article on goarticles.com
     -An article on Gather.com
     -A Myspace blog
Don't just post links to your homepage; if you have a blog, link to specific posts as well as your main bog URL, if you own a multi-page website, link to relevant subpages off the homepage. Now posting content with backlinks on those sites alone could get you through a whole SEO career, so don't take this part lightly. Granted, there are many other little things you can do, but much of the rest is up to other people linking to you, which may or may not happen. Putting up content on these sites also serves a double purpose, you can get a lot of direct incoming traffic form these links. If people like your article or portal, then they'll click through your links, and it won't be just search engine spiders coming through. Here are two other small things you can do to boost your rankings.

(2) Look at blogs related to the topic your site is on. This way, you can stay up to date on your topic, you can see what other people think, and best of all, you can comment on their blogs with a link to your site. It's a bad idea to just put up a comment with a link to your site; that's spam. But if you take the time to just skim a post and write a comment addressing the post with a link at the end, people appreciate that, and sometimes they'll even check out your blog (always a bonus).

(3) If you want to rank for a certain term, make sure you mention that keyword at least a few pages on the page you're trying to rank in the search engines. Also, try to use that keyword, or a variant, when linking back to the page.