Blogs act as a link between a business and its customers. They are especially helpful with increasing traffic to a business’s web site. Here are some ways you can increase traffic to your site via a blog.

• Write relevant content that matches the readers’ interest. It is essential to always keep in mind what information your target audience is looking for. The relevancy of blog posts with reader’s interest is important as it will attract them to read it. They might even refer it to others. Search engines favor blogs that have user relevant content.

• Make titles appealing. Having catchy titles to posts help in attracting both readers as well as search engines. Always write articles that can pull people to read the post, and include important keywords if possible.

• Use the right keywords. Undertake keyword research to find the most appropriate keywords and effectively place them in the posts. Highlight the keywords to attract the readers’ attention.

• Post regularly and often. It helps in retaining the interest of the visitors if you post often. Readers like to be welcomed with a new entry! To keep readers as well as search engines updated about new posts, make use of RSS Feeds.

• Allow for easy commenting. Comments are the best way to get feedback and thus may provide some vital information on areas that a business needs to improve upon. Make sure that readers are able to comment on the posts easily.

Article marketing is when businesses promote their products and services to their target customers by submitting informative articles to online directories. These online directories usually have a very large user base and also a strong reputation in the online world, so articles published on them bring in a lot of traffic to a site.

How does it work?

Every article published on these online directories contains a resource box which contains the name and contact details of the business, along with a link to its website. Therefore, when someone reads the article, they will see the business information and link, and will hopefully click the link and be directed to the web site. The goal is to bring in customers to increase online sales. In this way, article marketing can achieve the objectives of an online business.

To make article marketing efforts effective, you have to write relevant and user centric articles. In other words, in order to entice the users read your article, it should cater to their area of interest and must present valuable information. If an article is able to do this, the chances of a user visiting the company’s site become much higher.

You also want to create an effective resource box. The resource box is the opportunity for a business to advertise itself effectively. Therefore, the information in it must be made interesting enough to make the readers visit the website. The resource box must be updated regularly to make it further appealing to the readers.

Lastly, it is highly important to write articles using the appropriate keywords. It is wise to undertake keyword research to find the relevant keywords and use them in the right amount.

Previously, Google would alert its users against sites that were infected with malware by showing a warning message saying, “This site may harm your computer”. This proved to be of great advantage to users, who were saved from clicking on infected sites.

After a user see the notification, he/she can click on it and will be redirected to an article in Google’s Help Center. This article provides an explanation of the threat. The article will explain the reason behind the Google’s decision to display such a warning against a site.

Hackers can cause a lot of problems. They can make changes to a site, such as addition of new pages or links. They can alter the content of some pages to lure visitors in disclosing personal information and then using it for personal profit. Hackers can also compromise a site to achieve high ranking in search engines. After getting a top ranking, they are able to spread their malicious intent and harm more and more users.

Google’s new site hacking notifications are a great way to ensure security. For some, this heightened security measure can damage the reputation of a site. However, Google states that the warning message will be removed once the problem is sorted out.

It is wise to set a realistic time frame for an SEO plan. You may have a lofty outcome in mind, which is fine, but you need to make sure you have a realistic time frame to work with. You need to allow time for any modifications in the strategies if results are not up to the mark without causing any further delay.

It’s also important to set specific and measurable goals. Set goals in quantifiable terms. For example, you want to reach 100 visitors, per day, in 6 months. This is a clear, specific, and measurable goal that will quantify your success. Make sure you are checking your progress regularly to ensure you are on track to reach your goal. If it has been 3 months down the line and you barely have any visitors, you may need to make changes to your plan if you want to reach 100 per day.

There are many issues to factor in when creating your SEO goals. A new web site may take longer time to attract visitors. How much time, effort and money are you willing to put into your SEO efforts? Are you doing it yourself or hiring a team? The keywords you are going after may be more or less competitive than others, which has an impact on your SEO plan. All of those factors should influence your SEO goals and timeframe.

Social media presence – Having your website on social media networks will help improve rankings on Google. If a website has strong presence over social media, it will command high ranking. Thus online marketers need to give high importance to Social Media Optimization.

Twitter is a must – As a means of connecting to the public, Twitter has gained high reputation. It has been observed that Twitter is capable of driving huge traffic. Therefore, marketers must include Twitter while devising SEO strategy.

Coded Facebook pages – With Facebook’s importance growing this year, coded Facebook pages will give your business an edge with an interactive touch, generating leads as well as increasing conversation rate.

Trustbait instead of linkbait – Links coming from independent online sources rather than those links that are contextually linked to a site are better for Search Engines. This refers to Trustbait and is a vital part of online marketing.

SEO to grow more comprehensive – In 2011, the term SEO will need to expand and be more all inclusive.

The demand for SEO will only continue to grow and make the task of online marketers more challenging as well as rewarding.

This way of searching will affect how a website does SEO business and how users are targeted.

• End user searches will be found quicker.
• Searches will be refined on the fly.
• Chances are, the second page of searches will no longer be viewed any more.
• Long tail search keywords will be less valuable. It will be more about understanding the users behavior while they search.

How will this affect the user and the business man? The end user, the person conducting these searches, will adapt to this new way of searching and being to form searches in different ways. This will, of course, be a silent evolution, but it will become common place. The following is an illustration of the difference that is going to take place. It is like the difference between live support and email support. For email support (Google’s old way of doing things) you send a support ticket on a question you have and you receive a response. Now, Google’s new way of searching is the equivalent of talking to a customer service representative, who can give you choices of how you can be helped before you reach the end of your question.

For the business man with the website, this is good news and bad news! Chances are, if your website has high rankings on a certain keyword then your web site will be displayed more often while people are searching that particular keyword. Therefore, potentially increasing traffic to your web site.
This is bad news for the traditional way of searching. End users now behave differently, and don’t perform searches the way they used to as mentioned earlier. This will then cause traditional long tail ad words to be view differently and put all companies on a level playing field. For example, if I was look up a flight to New York City, I would begin my search with “New York City”. Before I even type “flights” ads would instantly pop up for NYC hotels, travel deals, NY official site, NY vacation packages, etc. Why would I need to type anything further than “New York City”? This shows how competition for the shorter terms rather than the long tail terms is going to become more intense.

Google continues to amaze us with each optimization and update. Moving into the future, one thing is certain, we will all need to adapt and also figure out HOW we adapt to this rapid change that will cause us to search and market in a whole new way in 2011.

Open Source Software
It uses open source software, which means that it can be used free of cost. It is built on PHP and MySQL, which again reiterates it being open source and also means that it can be fully customized to fit your needs.

User Friendly
You don’t have to be experienced with any kind of coding to use WordPress. With its easy to use dashboard you can add articles and post entries within seconds.

Themes Support
There are prebulit templates abound in the internet today, which means thousands of custom made WordPress sites. These provide a shell for you to choose from Plugins which extend functionality.

Plugins
WordPress plugins allow you to do just about anything that you want and have the ability to be installed in a matter of moments.

Standards Compliant
WordPress is one software that follows all the web standards and keeps your blog or website compliant to all the rules that have to be followed.

SEO Friendly
Search Engines definitely have to be kept in mind when building a website. WordPress uses different functions which allow it to be search engine friendly. For example, sending pings to other sites, making categories, tagging your posts, use of h1/h2 tags etc.

• Where your visitors are coming from – very important if you’re targeting a specific audience.
• How your visitors found your website – this is very important for determining which of your efforts are paying off. It shows if visitors found your site directly, through a referral from another website (ex: Twitter, Facebook), or from search engines.
• Web browsers used by your visitors – knowing which web browsers your visitors use allows you to know which browsers you should be focusing on.
• Operating systems used by your visitors – the technology used in developing your site/blog may only work in a certain operating system, therefore it’s important to take note of the different operating systems your visitors are using.
• What keywords were used by visitors in the search engines to get to your website – this is very crucial for SEO. Knowing which keywords people are searching for to get to your site determines if you are on the right track.

Simply stated, the wonder wheel creates a wheel of keywords that Google feels are related to your original keyword. Why is this so wondrous you ask? Because Google is telling you the other keywords that it feels should be found on your site. By including these other related keywords in your SEO and web design you increase your chances of Google recognizing your page as relevant to the original word.

Google then gives you the ability to search even deeper by creating paths of keywords. If you click on a word it will then open a new wheel of words related to the one you clicked on. This begins to open your eyes to potential routes searchers may take to get to the keyword you are targeting.

1: Article Submission
2: Forum Posting
3: Blog Commenting/Blog Submission
4: Social Networking Sites(Facebook, Twitter etc. posting links on groups, pages etc.)
5: Social Bookmarking (stumble upon, Reddit, delicious, digg etc.)
6: Backlinking Service/Buy Backlinks
7: Submit RSS Feed To RSS Feeds Directories
8: Free or Paid Web Directories
9: Exchange Links / Reciprocal Links
10: Press Releases
12: Classified Ad Sites
13: links from EDU & GOV sites