I think social-networks are the best places to advertise business. One in particular. These networks are usually FREE, especially well managed social-networks (like this managed forum for example. Hold on...I'm not talking about Myspace or Myface networks, I'm talking about simple to implement, clean, fresh and well-managed social-networks. Networks like MSpace and MFace are way out-of-control and not a good place.
SEOs are also a great place to get noticed. That's IF or when someone 'accidentally' find your link on search-engines. Not easy, but possible. Actually, there are no difference whether you submit to engines or a forum. Like this 5 star forum.
Here's an example, if you type my .com, keyword, 'levimanners' in google and click search-button you will find me listed with 5 star Affiliate Forum.
Anyway, if you want your title in here to remain at the top of the thread simply reply to them and BAM! you're at the top, again!
If you know SEO, This quote does not apply "SEOs are also a great place to get noticed. That's IF or when someone 'accidentally' find your link on search-engines."
SEO is no accident " Here's an example, if you type my .com, keyword, 'levimanners' in google and click search-button you will find me listed with 5 star Affiliate Forum. "
This is an accident, Who searches for "levimanners"?
Let me show you the difference of SEO. For "water damage restoration" I have 2 top 10's in google, You can name most cities and water damage restoration and my clients come up first page of google.
Last month, there were over 40k unique visitors from specific keywords. and when someone finds you by keywords, that is high conversion traffic. It is targeted.
Articles are part of seo,Press releases are part of SEO, so you are still returning to SEO.
You can gain traffic from many sources, but for consistant, quality traffic that will produce results. There really is only 2 options.
Most internet marketers that do really well will testify that there are only 2 methods to gain wealth on the net. and that is Adwords and SEO.
Everything else is equal to treading water. You may hit a quik flood of traffic, like the first pixel page, but that dies off soon, social bookmarking soon dies off.
If you want success, learn seo, or break out the credit card for Pay per click.
__________________ An internet marketers greatest challenge is to stay in a groove without creating a rut!
In other words, social networking sites can possibly help an online marketer increase its site's traffic. Am I right? I personally think this is dependent on the kind of social networking site. Squidoo for instance is very effective in driving traffic to our merchant site and in inviting more affiliates to our affiliate program. I created several MySpace profiles but ended up having more spam friend invitations than significant people getting into my circle of friends.
__________________ AffiliateCrew is your solution for full service affiliate program management.
Having more links means more exposure. More exposure increases your chances of drawing traffic IMO
I just noticed this thread again and it seems that I have seen a lot of reactions to this - citing that this is not entirely true
I am not talking about GURANTEED TRAFFIC as some might be thinking. I said " More exposure increases your chances of drawing traffic " - this is a hypothetical assumption on INCREASING the CHANCES of DRAWING TRAFFIC. Some have been saying that it's better to have top rankings at SE's - which is actually good at an SEO point of view. But on a marketing perpective, the more linkbacks you have the better, an you increase your chances at drawing traffic to your site. So long as you stay away linking to bad neighborhoods / sites.
No, everything has it's place and social networking does have its place. If you use them right you can make good money with them. i do use social bookmarking, but mostly to new articles or press releases on a blog.
But in that case you still need more links from more of a varity of different IP addresses, one a page is deep links in 50 social networking sites, you can expect a few visitors from the social sites, but unless you are a genius, you can't get top placements in them consistantly.
It is a part of the game, but still limited to the amount of traffic the main methods produce.
I understand the concept of mass equals traffic, but from my experiences with them, they are a small tool in the total scheme of the internet.
Social bookmarking works best for info sites with a steady following, because people are creatures of habbit, they tend to visit the same sites frequently, and they will bookmark articles or news releases, or the funny pic or video. This propels them to the top and they get massive exposure from them, but until you build that following, it is hard to drive BIG traffic from them.
Let me give you an example of what could work. This forum for example. If just 10 visitors of any thread would bookmark the thread in digg within 1 hour, it would get high ranking under the individual tags, and if that is a popular tag you get what is called "social conformity" take place. People tend to keep bookmarking because they see others have.
Here is another example of how it works. You are driving on the freeway and it is pretty heavy traffic but the speed is about 65 miles an hour.
You are in the line of cars in your lane, and all of a sudden you see blinkers of several cars ahead changing lanes to the left lane, What do you do??
It usualy causes a chain reaction and you and the cars behind you will likely turn your signal on and move to the left lane also, But why? most never see why the car or 2 in his lead even turns on the bliker on in the first place, you just "FOLLOW" assuming you need to do it because the person in front of you did, and they just might know something that you are not aware of.
People will click a digg button just because 10 or 12 others have done the same, it is then socialy acceptable to the general subject.(or at least that social group).
It can be a powerful tool, but has to be used the right way.
__________________ An internet marketers greatest challenge is to stay in a groove without creating a rut!
Yes I would definitely agree with JSCorKern. I've mastered SEO taking several courses (basic and advanced seo) with Search Engine Workshop and really learned in depth SEO with affiliate guru James Martell. I bought Jame's book, took his bootcamp and backlinks workshop course and I am seeing very good results. Of course its hard work and lots of practice but it is well worth it.
Links are given value by hundreds of different reasons, but i will list the basics and a brief reason to why they are used.
If you follow these basics, you will be safe and have a better idea of what is needed.
1. Links are tracked by server IP address. This is to keep someone from buying 200 urls and hosting them on a reseller server and linking to the main site. This is considered a linking scheme. So, if you get 200 links from 200 different URL's on the same server, the links are discounted drasticaly.
2. Anchor text: anchor text is probably one of the 3 most important factors concerning links. It is the clickable text of the link pointing to your site. Let me go a little further with this one. Do a search for "CLICK HERE" in Google and Adobe will show up first. yet, click here is not on the page.
Now, how many times have you seen this on a site: "you can download this PDF for free but you will need the adobe reader to download it. If you do not have the adobe reader, Click Here to download the free adobe reader. And the CLICK HERE link points to the adobe site.
The anchor text is like a "VOTE" for the adobe site for the phrase CLICK HERE. Understand?
3. Related links: This is also misunderstood. A related link is not what you think. If i have a site about sharks, and you have a site about fish, would this be a high quality related link?
The answer is no. For the top quality link, you must have your keywords in the title and /or in the content of the page. So, if you have a fish site and i link to you from a shark site, it will not have as much value as a link from a site that has the word "FISH" in the title and/or the content. This is why articles and press releases are so powerfull, you control the title and content. Now, do not take this the wrong way, a link from a shark site is better than a link from a frog site due to LSI, but a single link from a page with the title and content with your keywords will out value the the semi related site 10 to 1. so you would have to get 10 more shark to fish links to equal 1 article link if both pages are the same PR and same position and same anchor text.
4. Position of link on page: This is also a major factor and a lot of thought was put into this. A top left link has more value than a bottom left or even a center(usualy content) link. the reason is because of clickthrough rates. A link that is on the top left is the most valuable because the human who reads english reads in a reverse s pattern, and the link position on a page follows the reverse s pattern, value drops the lower on the reverse s you get.
If you go to textlinkbrokers, they have links broken down in zones, and this is why they have these zones set up.
5. PR of the page the link is on. not PR of the site it is on. The PR of the page has a great effect on the value of a proper link.
With understanding these few things about links, you can easily beat sites with 10k low quality links with only 500 quality links. Or you can bust your tail getting trash or lower quality links and have someone beat you with just a nominal amount of links.
Hope this helps.
Jim
__________________ An internet marketers greatest challenge is to stay in a groove without creating a rut!
About related links, if for example I'm with portrait paintings and I link to wood carvings then the same thing will happen right?
Wow! Really, now I'm enlightened. Great read. I've bookmarked this and will share this to my friends. Is that ok with you?
Regarding PR of the page versus PR of the site. Why do they differ? I noticed that most sites have PR of their home page higher than PR of their subpages. Why does that happen? Is it possible to have the same PR from home page to all sub-pages? If yes, how do you do that?
Thank you very much for explaining everything one by one. Thank you thank you thank you...
__________________ AffiliateCrew is your solution for full service affiliate program management.
Free Advertising & Social Networking
. Hold on...I'm not talking about Myspace or Myface networks, I'm talking about simple to implement, clean, fresh and well-managed social-networks. Networks like MSpace and MFace are way out-of-control and not a good place. 
Linear Mode
