It's no secret that Google gets most of the traffic on the internet, followed closely by Yahoo and MSN in third place. So if we’re going to beat the next guy at getting some free search engine traffic, what exactly is required and where would you start? Well,
first of all, you have to realise that you aren’t likely to rank at the top of most keywords overnight. In fact, it can take months of hard work to rank for high traffic keywords, so the key here is to start with keywords you can target that don’t have a lot of competition. This makes your job 50% easier before you even load a page from the internet.
Next let's look at the specific engines. Google takes the longest time to rank for out of the top 3, so I like to closely at MSN Search because my experience tells me that even though they don't get anywhere near the same amount of traffic, I can rank higher and faster here. So my first port of call is to do keyword research, specifically with MSN in mind. I use a few tools here, but by far the easiest way to do this is to use the free keyword research tool at digitalpoint.com. You can check keyword patterns and traffic patterns for your desired keywords here to see how many searches are performed in the major engines and to find spin-off keywords you may not have considered previously.You can also check both Overture and Wordtrackers results against each other here to get a feel for what the traffic patterns are going to be for a top rank with your selected keyword.
A rule of thumb I use for MSN is that the traffic for any keyword I search in the digital points tool is divided by approximately 3–4 to give me an idea of the traffic on MSN. So if my desired keyword had 1000 searches per day according to both Wordtracker and Overture, then I can confidently say a number 1 rank on MSN should provide about 300 searches. This doesn't mean you will get 300 hits. In fact, you may only get about half the searchers hitting your site through MSN or any other search engine for that matter, even if you rank # 1.
So now I can confidently say a top rank for that keyword will provide approximately 150 hits or visitors per day. So now we have chosen a keyword that looks good, what next?
Check out the competition on MSN.It is pointless to select words for which you will almost certainly never rank.The competition pays big money to be at the top, so unless you have the same budget, stay away from that game. Those so-called gurus of the internet will squash you. My recommendation is to rank for terms that have less traffic because it's easier to get to #1, especially on MSN.
So what am I looking for when it comes to my competition? Well, we all know that relevant, theme-related inbound, 1 way links from authority sites are the easiest way to rank # 1 or top 10.
In fact, it doesn't take too many high quality inbound links to rank for thousands upon thousands of terms. So here is where the fun begins. After you have uploaded your site and optimised the page with all the relevant html tags etc, gathering links to your page is the single most important task you can undertake to rank. I am not an authority on link gathering, but here are a few suggestions.
Write high quality articles about your chosen subject or pay someone to write articles, then submit them to the free article directories. Here your articles will be picked up by other webmasters and placed on their sites with your link on them. This can create many many 1 way links very quickly for your page.
Approach other webmasters in your chosen topic and request a link exchange (I personally don't do this as it is boring and outdated and honestly is very time-consuming).
Use social bookmarking sites like Del.ici.us to get your content out there and also to get links from your tags. The search engines love social bookmark sites. I use about 25 of them and they always provide high quality 1-way links, often with very high PR.
Write a blog about your site and link to it, then feed that blog using RSS or other syndication methods. This can also provide one-way links and better search engine results.
Buy links Yes, buy them. A few high-quality, related links with good Google Page Rank will help massively.
These are just a few of the strategies I employ on a daily basis to increase traffic and outperform the competition in search engines, particularly MSN.
So there you have it, a few small ideas to get you moving, so go forth and "make money".
So the only thing left to do after you have achieved a top rank for a number of keyword terms is to make money from them. Here are my top two ideas for making money that I use every day.
1) Google Adsense: Sign up for free and place the ad code on your page to earn a percentage of every click your visitors make on those ad blocks.
There are dozens of other places you can earn on a "pay per click" basis, but Google stands out head and shoulders above the rest in my opinion.
2) Affiliate marketing: If your site or page is about losing weight, then sign up free as an affiliate with any one of hundreds of sites that sell these types of products. Then place a link on your page that has your personal code embedded into it and if a visitor clicks on your link and decides to buy, then you will receive a share of that sale. Sometimes as much as 70% of the sale is lost.
So there you have it. Now go out there and make some money online, because if you don't, I will do it for you.
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