The first thing to keep in mind is that you need to be able to provide some value. It’s a give-and-take situation – you’re giving useful information and in turn you’re “taking” traffic and backlinks.

If you approach it from a purely selfish point of view, it’s not going to work as well, and chances are your Yahoo Answers account will get suspended sooner or later (probably sooner!)

That means that you’re not going to include a link to your website in every single answer you post. You might include a link to other sites in some answers, or no link at all in others. You want your account to grow naturally. In other words, if someone from Yahoo was to review your answers, you don’t want every single one of them pointing back to your own website.

The most effective way to use Yahoo Answers is to spend some time on it every day. Search for questions in your market and find some that you can answer. Ideally, find the newest ones so you can be the first, or close to the first person to respond. The higher you are in the list of responses, the more traffic you’re going to get.

And ultimately, you want to have as many of your answers as possible chosen as the “best answer” because it will be shown right underneath the question from that point on.

When you answer a question today, if it’s chosen as the best one, it could generate traffic to your site for years to come.

When you answer a question, there’s a spot where you can enter a link to a website that provides more information about it. That is where you can include a link to your own site in some of the answers – not in the answer itself.

One good way to approach this is when you find a relevant question that you don’t already cover on your site, write a new blog post or article explaining the answer in some detail. Then provide a shorter summary on Yahoo Answers with a link to your new article.

This kills two birds with one stone – coming up with ideas for new content on your site and answering questions on Yahoo.

This post is from Jeff Klein. Read more at his web design and internet marketing blog.

Website Traffic Tips: Yahoo Answers

There are quite a few PPC sites, but the most widely used are Google Adwords and Yahoo/Bing adCenter. Facebook advertising is also growing quite fast so it’s another option to consider.

As a general rule, Adwords will be the most expensive place to run your ads, because they are the largest. That means there are more people competing for the ad space, driving up the costs. Yahoo/Bing is less expensive in most cases, but it will depend on the market you’re in to some degree.

Adwords also has some fairly strict policies, so you’ll need to be sure that you’re offering some real value to the people who click on your ads, and that your website meets all of Google terms of service.

One of the most important things about pay per click marketing is to be sure you’re targeting effective keywords in your ads. Generally, the more specific your keywords are, the better. And ultimately you want to find “buying” keywords – the ones that are used by people who are actively looking to buy something.

If you target your ads at general keywords for your market, it can generate a lot more traffic, but a lot of those people are just looking for information – they’re not necessarily going to convert into paying customers. While getting a lot of traffic sounds good in theory, it isn’t good if it just costs you a lot of money with no significant returns.

Another important factor for success with PPC marketing is good tracking. If you’re getting visitors from several sources, say articles that you’ve submitted, the search engines and Adwords, you need to know which of those visitors are generating revenue for you.

If the paid ads don’t generate enough to cover the cost, you’re losing money on them – even if the site is profitable overall. By tracking the different traffic sources through to the final conversions, you’ll know exactly where the money is being made.

There are a lot of horror stories about people losing a lot of money on PPC advertising. It doesn’t have to be that way, but you definitely need to make sure you understand how it works, what your risks are, and how to target the right people before you start spending any money.

This post is from Jeff Klein. Read more at his web design and internet marketing blog.

Website Traffic Tips: Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing

Don’t forget the traditional methods of advertising your website. Businesses for years have used traditional methods to get the word out to the consumer public. These are methods like flyers, business cards, bumper stickers, and window decals. All should have the URL to your website prominently displayed.

Use social networking sites to get the word out to a select group. The social network craze of late is popular because it is not only free but it allows you to find those with interest in what you have to offer and within your own geographical area. They are great for focusing on your target market.

Give away a free software tool. You may have a talent for creating customized software or you may be able to contract a freelance programmer to help you with this. However, there are many creative ideas you can come up with for offering a free software download that could help a patron to your website do his job easier. People like free items and this is a powerful promotion tool.

Offer a free ebook for download. This is also a popular promotion item because it is informative and free. Write an ebook to give helpful information to your site patrons and they will naturally want to see what else you have to offer.

Keep everyone current on your blog. Keeping your blog current builds credibility for your site. You should also respond to reader posts if you allow them because it shows you are actively engaged in your business.

Create a free newsletter. This is a great way to keep everyone informed about the latest offerings and promotions on your website. Give visitors the opportunity to subscribe to it and then send it periodically to their email address. Free newsletters are also good for getting repeat traffic to your site.

Perform effective SEO on your website. By doing this, you will make your website prominent in the search engines. The goal is to appear in the first one or two pages of search results when using your target keywords in a query. Keep in mind that effective SEO takes time and anyone promising quick results may be using unethical methods.

Pay for SEO results. The major search engines get numerous requests each day to index websites. On top of this, there are those who run automatic submission software to quickly make batches of requests. The search engines try to discourage this simply because they cannot handle the volume. If you want to get indexed fast, check out some of the paid submission directories. While it might be expensive, it could later pay off.

Create your website content in a helpful multi-part series. This motivates your visitors to come back for subsequent visits. Also, make sure the content is current.

Make your website pleasant and easy-to-use. Make sure it loads fast and has intuitive navigation. This is not only good from your visitors’ perspective but it creates less work for a search engine indexing crawler thus increasing the chances of ranking faster in search engines.

This post is from Jeff Klein. Read more at his web design and internet marketing blog.

10 Tips for Effective Website Promotion

Supporting the release of the iPhone 4, AT&T Mobility claimed the top spot spending just over $8 million on search ads. Remember, that’s just for one month.

Here are the top 10 spenders in June 2010:

• AT&T Mobility – $8.08 million
• Apollo Group (University of Phoenix) – $6.67 million
• Expedia – $5.95 million
• Amazon – $5.85 million
• eBay – $4.25 million
• BP – $3.59 million
• Hotels.com – $3.30 million
• JC Penney – $2.46 million — we’ll admit, this one surprises us
• Living Social – $2.29 million
• ADT Security – $2.19 million

How much did you spend each month on Google AdWords?

This post is from Jeff Klein. Read more at his web design and internet marketing blog.

Big Brands Spending Millions Per Month on Google AdWords

The $97 info product is by Ryan Deiss and is available at GmailMindTricks.com (not an affiliate link) if you’re interested.

If you’d like to know how to make your ads appear in Gmail without spending $97, check out this YouTube video posted by Austin Lau, an Agency Media Planner at Google.

I watched the GmailMindTricks intro video but have not purchased the product. Ryan is a reputable internet marketer. Presumably the $97 product includes more than what is on the above YouTube video.

In either case, I thought the info contained in the YouTube video was worth sharing.

Have you had your ads appear in Gmail before? What has been your experience compare to “regular” AdWords?

This post is from Jeff Klein. Read more at his web design and internet marketing blog.

How to Target Gmail with Google AdWords

Early feedback about Microsoft’s new “decision engine” has been positive. Users report accurate search results and helpful features but is it enough to make them change their search habits?

Some of Bing’s useful features include the following:

Website Summaries

Mouse over the right edge of the search results and a brief summary of the page is displayed. This allows you to learn more about the page without leaving your search results.

Live Video Previews

Do a video search and the results will be displayed as thumbnails. Mouseover the thumbnails, and the videos play directly on the search results page. There’s no need to click through to view the video. This is an innovative yet controversial feature that may see legal challenge.

Company Contact Info

Bing returns company contact information when searching for a company name. Search for Amazon.com and Bing returns the company’s customer service phone number (800-201-7575) along with links to the website. This can be a huge convenience if the company you’re trying to contact doesn’t make this information readily accessible.

Clean Design

Borrowing from Google’s minimalistic design, Bing’s search engine results pages (SERPs) have plain and simple backgrounds. This helps keep load times to a minimum. Similar to Google, sponsored ads are displayed both at the top, and along the right side of the page.

Multiple Search Options

You can choose to search websites, images, videos, news, maps and more, right from the homepage. “Related searches” is a helpful feature for delving deeper into a topic by displaying related search queries. Bing also keeps track of your past searches, displaying them as handy links on the left side of the page. Similar to “Google Suggest,” Bing’s autosuggestion feature gives you suggestions for searching in real time. As you type in the search box, related search terms are displayed to help you narrow or refine your query.

Is It Enough?

Most people seem surprised Bing works as well as it does. This may be due to the challenges internet search presents as well as Microsoft’s past search engine efforts. Some studies even show Bing provides “better” search results than Google.

“Good” or “Better” may not be enough for Bing however. People are creatures of habit, especially online. To change consumer behavior, in this case their search habits, a new product must be significantly better than an existing offering. Google has become so integral to many people’s online lives that it will take a lot for them to change to a new search provider. It’s not enough for Bing to be as good or marginally better than Google.

Because of this, it’s highly unlikely Bing will replace Google as #1 in search anytime soon. A more realistic goal might be to surpass Yahoo and take over the #2 spot in search market share. Some research shows Bing has already passed Yahoo but it remains to be seen if Bing can maintain that position over time and build on its momentum.

Have you used Bing? What do you think of it? Will you make Bing your new default search provider?

This post is from Jeff Klein. Read more at his web design and internet marketing blog.

Microsoft Bing – Is Good, Good Enough?

Here are some blogging basics to maximize your search engine traffic.

Use of Keywords

Keywords are the foundation of your internet marketing efforts. When selecting target keywords for high search engine rankings it is important to be specific, focused and realistic. More than anything however, you have to know what keywords your target market is using to search for your product, service, or blog. There are many tools available to help identify these keywords. Here are links to some of the top keyword research tools:

• Google Keyword Tool
• WordTracker
• Wordze
• Keyword Discovery
• SpyFu

Once you generate a list of keywords, you can target each one by creating a blog post. Use your most important keyword(s) in the title tag. You should also include your target keyword(s) in your post’s META description and wherever else you can in the content of the post. Be careful not to overdo it however. Keyword stuffing can hurt your rankings and the readability of your blog. Do not sacrifice the user experience in an attempt to appease the search engines.

Link Popularity

While it is not simply a matter of numbers, generally speaking, you need to get as many links to your blog as possible. To do this, start submitting your blog’s RSS feed to blog and feed directories. Here’s a resource that lists RSS / blog directories you can submit to: http://www.toprankblog.com/rss-blog-directories/

You can also do a Google search to find such directories.

Another method of gaining links is to visit other blogs or forums in your niche, and post comments. In most cases, when your comment is published, it will include a backlink to your site. This way you gain exposure as well as links to your blog. Make sure your comments are respectful and provide value.

Update Frequently

This is one of the most important blogging basics. If your blog readers find your content valuable, they will want more of it. If you post to your blog consistently and frequently (at least once a week if not more) people will return or follow your feed on a regular basis. I need to do a better job on this one and post more frequently.

Keep a Tight Focus

Many people have a personal blog where they post anything and everything related to their life. While this may be OK for a personal blog, it’s not recommended for a professional blog.

If you are serious about your blog and hope to make some money from it, stick to a single topic. If you want to cover a different topic, start another blog. The cost to create a new blog is minimal and with everything you’ve learned from your first blog, creating your new one will be that much easier.

Make Use of Plugins

Plugins are components designed to extend the functionality of your blog. Written by the development community, plugins offer custom functions and features allowing site owners to tailor their site to their specific needs.

There are many helpful plugins that make blogging a lot easier and more fun. Plugins like “Most Popular Posts”, “Related Posts”, “Recent Comments” etc. can help keep readers interested and coming back for more.

Encourage User Interaction

Foster conversation on your blog. Encourage comments and dialogue. Posts with a lot of comments indicate to users that you are providing valuable content. This encourages people to subscribe or return to your blog. One way to encourage comments is to ask a question at the end of your post.

When someone leaves a comment, be sure to reply. Another way to encourage commenting is to not require registration or moderation of comments. Just be sure you have a good spam filter in place.

What are some blogging tips you use to make your blog a success?

This post is from Jeff Klein. Read more at his web design and internet marketing blog.

Blogging Basics for Maximum Traffic