Ebiz Snap

Use HubPages.com

HubPages is a lot like Squidoo in many ways. They have modules that make it easy to add content to create a miniature website in a very short amount of time. The difference between HubPages and Squidoo is that HubPages is a lot pickier about what goes on your hub. You may only have two outgoing links to your site, including any RSS feed links.

Still, HubPages has a very dedicated community behind it that can drive a lot of targeted people to your website. They are also very well-liked by the search engines so the potential is great. One of the greatest things is that people love to comment on hubs and regularly seek out new ones, so you may get a lot of questions and commentary on your hub. This will help expand your reach as an expert.

Tags: Web 2.0

Find Smaller Niche Directories

Manual submission to the largest directories and automatic submission to other directories is great, but don’t forget the smaller directories. These are strictly focused on a specific niche, and many people who are interested in websites like yours visit them.

To find these directories you are going to have to dig a little bit. To do this, type in “your niche directory” in a search engine. (example: ‘gardening directory’)

Browse the directory and make sure it’s high quality and already has other links there. This means there is a higher chance that it gets traffic from people who are interested in your niche.

Don’t forget that these directories are also an excellent way to get back links to your website. In fact, you might find that the greatest benefit from the smaller directories is the backlink you get from a relevant site within your niche.

Tags: Directory Submission

Automatic Submission

Automatic submission as a great way to make sure that your site shows up in as many different directories as possible. While you want to manually submit to the most popular directories, it’s important not to forget the”little guys”.

There many different options for a automatic submission, and some are free and others are paid. If you can afford it, you may want to go with the paid versions to ensure that your submissions will go through. Plus, they handle all of the messy steps so that you can focus on other tasks in your business.

Tags: Directory Submission

Choose Your Directories

There many different places to submit your website and many different ways to submit. For example, you can submit manually to the main directories or automatically using special software.

The best thing to do right now is to choose your directories. If you have a limited amount of time you’ll want to focus on the ones that will give you the most benefit first.

You should also know that some of these are paid directories and other ones are free. Unfortunately, it’s often the ones you have to pay for that will give you the most benefit. You should take a look at your budget, and how much time you have and make your decision on directories based on that.

After you’ve chosen the directories you’ll need to sign up for them. Look at their terms of service, as always. If you’re having trouble finding good directories this is a good list:

 Yahoo directory.
 Best of the Web.
 Dmoz
 JoeAnt
 GoGuides.org.
 UncoverTheNet

Tags: Directory Submission

- Get Your Submission Ready.

It’s important to get everything you need ready for submission before you actually start the process. This helps keep you organized so that there are no roadblocks in the way when you do submit. As you go through the submission process you’ll notice that there are many different categories available. Different directories classify niches in different ways, so it’s helpful to browse the sites to plan in advance.

Another important step to getting your submission ready is researching your keywords. Just like it was helpful for article marketing, it’s also helpful for directory submission. Since you don’t have much room for descriptive text, you’re going to want to focus on your main keyword or a few main keywords.

Finally, you need to craft an appealing description for your site. Remember that many people go to these directories to find relevant websites. Your description needs to be as enticing as possible. This will help you get more traffic because more people will click on your site’s link and visit.

Tags: Directory Submission

Directory Submission

Submitting your website to directories is another option to generate traffic. Many of these link directories have their own visitors who love to find websites they are interested in by just browsing through the directory. Many of them are even highly ranked in the search engines and have a high page rank, which means they are more likely to give you a boost in the search engine rankings.

Once again, you’re going to get backlinks as well as targeted visitors from the directories you submit to.

Keep in mind that these are different than article directories. Link directories are generally collections of links from all around the Internet. Some of them are focused specifically on one single niche, while others are collections of websites from many different niches.

Tags: Directory Submission

Offer To Buy An Ad

In addition to the free links you’ll be getting from posting on the forum, the owner of the forum will probably have some ad space available. A lot of webmasters stay away from buying these ads because they think it will be too expensive. That’s sometimes not the case at all.

When you contact the forum owner you should ask what is available as well as the cost. If you do find that the costs are too high you can always negotiate. Even if it’s not clear whether the owner has any ad space, you can always offer to buy some because it might be something they haven’t considered before.

If it’s a very large forum that doesn’t seem to be privately owned, there is still a way for you to get your ads on their site. This is actually a method that may be even cheaper than dealing with the forum owner directly. You can actually go into your Adwords account and target certain websites.

That means you can find a forum you really like (that already has Adsense on their site) and bid on ads that will appear there. This is a way to target people you know are going to be ideal prospects for your site – sometimes for dirt cheap prices.

Tags: Forum Marketing

Create an Effective Profile

You should always create a profile to go along with your forum username. As you post more and become more known people are going to be interested in reading your profile. You’ll want to have some meaningful content written there that describes what your website is about, as well as a link to your website. You might be surprised at how many people will end up visiting your site through your profile.

People are naturally curious about others who share great information. That’s why you’ll get visitors to your profile and why it’s a good idea to have it ready.

Once again, you can’t forget the fact that you can include your website in your profile. These profiles often get indexed by the search engines so you’ll be getting yet another back link to your website.

Tags: Forum Marketing

Choose the Right Anchor Text

Since you’re going to have your link in your signature file as you make posts in the forum, you’re going to want to make sure it contains the right anchor text. As you learned earlier, having anchor text that reflects your targeted keywords is a great way to boost your site’s rankings for that keyword in the search engines.

For example, if I wanted to rank for the keyword “cat food” in Google I would make sure that my forum signature file had “cat food” as the anchor.

Keep in mind that you’re not just getting one backlink for all the posts you’ll make. You’re actually going to get a backlink each time you post. This can have a massive effect on your search engine rankings, which is another reason to become active and involved in a highly ranked forum.

You should also know that if there are too many backlinks coming in with the same anchor text it raises a red flag for Google. Their algorithms can figure out when people are trying to game the search engines so they guard against this.

That’s why you might want to join a few good forums, so that you can have a different anchor text for each signature file you have.

Tags: Forum Marketing

Become known before displaying your link

The worst thing you can do is join a forum and immediately start throwing your link around. That’s actually the best way to get banned faster than you can imagine. It is a much better tactic to start posting and adding valuable input to questions and generally getting to know the other members first.

After you’ve “paid your dues”, you can start to put your website in your signature file and show that you’ve got a great website to offer. Remember, you want to entice people to visit your site, so make sure your text in your signature file is interesting enough for people to click on.

By waiting before you show your link you’ll build trust. This is what will get people to visit you and to listen to what you have to say as an expert in your niche.

Tags: Forum Marketing