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Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of any successful business. In this article, I’m going to show you how to get laser targeted traffic in just a few simple steps.

1. Article Marketing – One of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website is through the use of article marketing. This is one of the oldest techniques for generating traffic, but it’s still one of the best.

Once you have written your article, you can then submit it to some of the top article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, Buzzle, the American Chronicle, ArticlesBase, and SearchWarp. For a list of the top article directories online, go to…

MasonWorld.com

You can also publish your website to Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, HubPages, Zimbio, and Gather.com.

For a complete list of Web 2.0 sites, go to…
Web 2.0 Directory : eConsultant

Article marketing is even more powerful when you submit exclusive articles to bloggers and owners of newsletters. This technique has sent me thousands of visitors with a single article. The key is to find the right distribution outlets.

Just imagine if you spend just one hour each day writing and distributing one article. In three months you would have 100 articles all sending you traffic on a daily basis.

So get out there and start syndicating your articles, submitting guests posts, and writing for online newsletters.

2. Viral Ebooks – Why not bundle your articles together and create a viral ebook? Giving away free ebooks is one of the best ways to generate traffic online. It’s also one of the best ways to build your mailing list.

You can submit your PDF ebooks to:

Scribd
eSnips
DocStoc
Calameo
Issuu
Yudu
FreeIQ , and
ButterflyReports

 Quick Tip: You can also convert your ebooks to exe files and submit them to all the different software directories online. You can convert your ebooks using a free piece of software called WebsiteZip Packer .

3. Blogging – Blogging is one of the best things you can do for your business. Blogging is a great way to get to know your readers. Plus, blogging can play a major role in getting valuable search engine traffic from Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

4. Submit your articles to Blog Carnivals. A blog carnival is a collection of blog posts on a particular subject. They are then posted together on on blog – called a host. The host (who is also a blogger), publishes the carnival on their blog, with links to each blog post that has been submitted.

This creates an excellent opportunity to get your blog posts shared on other blogs.

There are a number of benefits to participating in blog carnivals. Not only will you generate extra traffic, but it also provides you with quality backlinks and an excellent opportunity to connect with other bloggers.

To submit your article to a blog carnival, go to Blog Carnival – Blog Communities Publishing Magazines . For extra exposure, submit to multiple blog carnivals. Just make sure they’re all relevant to your topic.

This is one of the easiest ways to create one-way backlinks coming into your site, which is one of the biggest factors when it comes to ranking high in Google.

5. Submit your blog posts to social bookmarking sites.

Social Bookmarking is one of the easiest ways to get extra traffic and links coming into your blog. Social bookmarking allows Internet users to save and organize bookmarks to a public website, tag them with keywords, share them with others, and browse what others have bookmarked.

Digg, Delicious, Mixx, and Digg are just a few of the social bookmarking sites you can use to maximize your exposure.

You can do a semi-automated submission to over 50 social bookmarking sites at AutoPoster.com

You can also encourage your blog readers to bookmark your posts as well with a Wordpress plugin called ShareThis.

6. Ustream.tv – Ustream allows you to create your very own tv station on the Web. However, it’s better than TV because it’s a live, interactive experience. While you’re broadcasting the video, you’re also getting feedback from the live chatroom.

Ustream gives your business a human face and a real personality. This is extremely valuable, because people like to buy and interact with people, not impersonal companies.

Live video allows you to reach entirely new audiences and develop a much greater level of engagement. A deeper level of engagement almost equates to a higher conversion rate when done correctly.

It’s also an excellent way to get feedback from your audience.

7. Forum Marketing – Forums are another way to drive targeted visitors to your website. The key to getting quality traffic from forums is to find a forum that is highly targeted to your website, become involved in the community, and create a benefit-laden signature.

You can put a link back to your website in your signature. It’s critical that you use your signature to offer something of extreme value along with a good call-to-action. Otherwise, why would anybody click?

The biggest benefit of marketing in forums is that they are centered around a very tight group of people who are all interested in the same subject. This is essentially a community of raving fans for a particular topic, making them extremely targeted prospects.

Forums are also an excellent way to connect with other bloggers, meet other marketers, and gain insights into your market.

8. Interviews are another great way to generate traffic.
When you interview a fellow blogger, they will almost always publish a link to the interview on their blog. At the same time, you are also sending traffic to their website by posting the interview on your own blog.

This can be a very effective technique for generating traffic and meeting new bloggers. Unfortunately, most people are just afraid to ask.

9. Build a List – If you’re not building a list, you’re missing out on a major source of ongoing traffic. Your list is the most valuable asset in your business.

Best of all, it can be leveraged at anytime to drive a funnel of visitors to your website.

10. Video Marketing – Video sites have quickly become some of the most highly trafficked sites on the Internet, making them one of the best places to generate lots of extra traffic.

And don’t worry, your video doesn’t have to be a Spielberg classic. In fact, it can just be a PowerPoint presentation with audio. Even simple videos can drive thousands of visitors to your site.

Once you’ve created your video, you can then submit it to the top video submission sites with a tool called TubeMogul .

And finally, My Favorite…

Search Engine Optimization is one of the best ways to generate extremely targeted traffic online. By following just a few basic principles, you can get lots of traffic from the search engines every month.

By Kim Roach

 Never do today what you can put off for tomorrow. Better yet, never put off ’til tomorrow what you can avoid altogether!

I don’t know who coined these phrases, but they must have been a depressive. The symptoms that we face, such as fatigue and hopelessness, make it so easy to say to ourselves, “I’ll just put this off until tomorrow when I feel better”. Before we know it, that deadline is creeping up on us and we’re starting to panic. What’s the best way to deal with panic? Hide your head in the sand and hope it goes away! Not really, but procrastination an easy habit to fall into and as the panic mounts, so does the depression. The more depressed we get, the more we avoid reality.

Why We Procrastinate

Why do we fall into the procrastination trap time after time? Because procrastination becomes a way–no matter how maladaptive– of coping with the emotions and physical symptoms that accompany depression. It may bring some temporary relief, but we eventually wake up the following day and find that no brownies have dropped in overnight and done our work for us.

Which style of procrastination fits you?

    * Organizing thoughts and actions and keeping on track with plans is difficult. (People with ADD/ADHD may fall into this category.)
    * Tasks seem overwhelming so it’s futile to even try.
    * Hostile feelings towards someone cause you to want to punish them by putting things off.
    * Routine and schedule causes you to feel rebellious.
    * You fear disapproval.

These procrastination styles can overlap in one of four themes:

Self-Doubt – These people feel there are rigid standards about how thing ought to be done and they fear they will fail. They second-guess themselves and delay taking action.

Discomfort Dodging – This person avoids activities that will cause them distress, discomfort or anxiety. Rather ironically, the act of dodging the activity doesn’t make it go away so tensions mount because of this avoidance.

Guilt-Driven – The person feels guilt over tasks undone, but rather than correct the original lack of action continues to procrastinate in order to not face up to the guilt feelings.

Habitual – The person has procrastinated so many times, it becomes an ingrained response. The person no longer thinks about why they do it, they feel it’s just a part of themselves. It becomes an automatic response to say, “This is too hard”, “I’m too tired”, or to laugh it off as a character flaw.

Once you recognize your style of procrastination, you can take steps to stop it.

Time Management Tips to Beat Procrastination

One of the most important things you an do for yourself is to get organized. Make lists, take a class in organization, or purchase an organizer. Do whatever works for you. One word of advice: follow the KISS principle (Keep it Simple, Stupid). If your organization system is too complicated, it will become just another task to avoid. Here’s my own system. You are welcome to use it if it works for you.

    * Make a list of what needs to get done. This can be listed in no particular order and will give you a handle on just what you need to accomplish.
    * Prioritize these. My way of doing this is by deadlines. I arrange them in order of when they are due. You may also choose to rank them by how important it is to get them done. For example, paying your bills on time may be more important to you than cleaning out your closets. Do that first.
    * Get yourself a calendar with room to write notes in. I personally use a bound notebook and write in dates as I go. I make pages with dates for long-term planning and also keep a separate list that I transfer my short-term goals to.
    * Take what’s at the top of your priority list and determine how long it will take to accomplish it. If it’s a quick task, put that down to be done the current day. If it will take a longer time, divide it into smaller tasks to be spread out over several days. Write this in your calendar with specific dates for accomplishing each. Include your deadline for completion of this task on your calendar as well.
    * Keep filling your calendar until you have a time set aside to do each item while still meeting your deadlines. Be careful to not overbook yourself and allow plenty of time for delays. This will allow you to feel confident that you can accomplish all you need to in the time you have. Now you can relax and work on one item at a time without feeling you have to do it all at once.

Bite Off Only What You Can Chew

Ever notice how broken up large shopping malls are? Lots of twists and turns, levels, and side corridors? There’s a very good reason for this. If malls were laid out straight we could see just how far we are really walking. If we actually knew how far apart stores are, we would probably leave the mall, get in our cars and drive from store to store. By having our view broken up into small chunks, we feel as if it’s a smaller distance. This same psychological trick can be used to help us overcome procrastination. Break large projects up into smaller tasks. For example, doing your taxes can be broken up into: pick up necessary forms, get records organized, fill in forms, double check forms for accuracy and mail. It won’t seem nearly so burdensome if you take a small bit at a time.

Just Do It!

Next time you catch yourself saying, “I can do this later”, think Nike. Just do it! Push on through the feelings and do it now. The feeling you get when you finish will be so much better than any relief you get from putting it off.

Schedule Reward Time

As you go work through your tasks, you may find your mind drifting off to all the activities you’d rather be doing. You will find it much easier to concentrate on your work if you know that you have scheduled time for these activities. Tell yourself, I will work hard today accomplishing my goals because tomorrow is Saturday and I have scheduled time to go fishing. Knowing that you have finished your tasks will also make it easier to relax and enjoy your leisure time.

Anxiety Busters

Does the thought of performing a certain task fill you will anxiety? First, try this:

    * Inhale deeply while counting five heart beats (you may check this easily by feeling your pulse).
    * Exhale as you count five heart beats.

You should notice after each breath that your heart rate is actually slowing and you are feeling less tense. Now, do something, not matter how small. Just make a start. The very act of accomplishing something will ease your anxiety.

Change Your Expectations

Perfectionism and feelings that things should be a certain way, can be stumbling blocks to beating procrastination. Next time you catch yourself using language like “should” or “must”, evaluate if these are only restrictions you are imposing on yourself or they backed up by the reality of the situation.

Perfectionistic thinking: “I must get an A on this paper or I’ll be a total failure. There’s just so much work to do. I’ll wait until tomorrow when I am feeling better and can do a better job.”

Reality: Not doing your work now will lead to a sloppy, rushed job just before your deadline and will leave you feeling too anxious and depressed to do a proper job.

Coping Strategy: Look at why you are procrastinating. Does the thought of failing make you feel anxious? Take deep breaths, replace your negative thoughts of failure with thoughts of your previous academic successes, and select a smaller task (such as preparing a bibliography) to begin chipping away at.

Mental Tricks to Give You Momentum

If you have several small items to do which are directly related to the project at hand, do these first. Even though you have some larger tasks left, psychologically it feels as if you have less to do when the list isn’t so long. It gives you a feeling that you have accomplished something. Just remember, it must be a task that is relevant to accomplishing your goal. Raking the leaves may be a quick and easy task, but if what you really need to accomplish is a big term paper, you won’t be helping yourself.

When you have accomplished a task, mark it out on your list with a pen. It gives you visual confirmation that you are getting somewhere. Again, this gives you a psychological boost. Sometimes I feel as if I’m getting nothing done, but when I look over what’s marked out I see I’ve actually done quite a bit. I’m just constantly adding new tasks.

The Best Laid Plans…

Remember, if something can go wrong, it will. Allow yourself more than adequate time to finish each task. If you do not need all the time you’ve allowed, you will be able to progress ahead of schedule. This will be a psychological boost to you. At the very least, you won’t be left rushed to finish.

Don’t panic if you get behind schedule. If you’ve allowed yourself extra time each day, you will simply shift everything forward until you catch up. The key is to leave yourself room to be flexible.

What if you really don’t have time to finish everything? Get creative. Request extensions on deadlines, get help from friends and relatives, delegate tasks to others, drop non-essential items from your schedule (the world won’t end if you can’t redecorate before your mother-in-law visits), or hire outside help. I haven’t found a situation yet that couldn’t be solved somehow once I let my expectations change about how it should be.

Web 2.0 and Web marketing is a match made in heaven. There are many ways to create traffic to your website using the power of Web 2.0. Below I am going to examine what I consider to be the top five.

Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black Book:

Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it’s Web 2.0.

Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), del.icio.us (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The list is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering.

So how can you harness some of this traffic?

1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites.

For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine, MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes content sharing and content rating system websites specialize in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example.

When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of creating a lot of traffic for your website since each reader will need to click on the link to go to your site to read the full article. And you’re building a permanent link pointing to your website that can be followed for months and years to come. (And don’t forget, a link from a quality site to your website helps in your search engine rankings too.)

Or you can create an original video and submit it to YouTube. Here it will get rated and possibly seen by many people. If the video contains your website or a plug for your business, then all the better. YouTube is not the only video sharing website however. There are many, and one video can be submitted to them all. This same concept applies to your original images, photographs, digital art and audio files.

2) Web 2.0-ize other people’s sites that contain a link back to your website

I’ll assume you already know how your bookmarks (or Favorites) work in your browser. There are websites that exist that act in the same way, but the bookmarks you set are public. Del.icio.us was one of the first and a very popular example of this. People’s public bookmarks are browsed by others and lead to clicks to the sites you’ve bookmarked. So be sure to bookmark your business website and inner pages that are important. Also, these bookmarks can appear in search results in engines like Google and Yahoo. And some even think that search engines use book-marking sites in their algorithms, although this has not been conclusively proven. Simpy and BlinkList are two more examples of these kinds of Web 2.0 book-marking sites.

Let’s say you write an original, quality article and post it to your business website. Then let’s say you submit the article to a handful of content rating websites like some of the ones explained above. To further market this article, you can then use social book-marking sites to bookmark the page on the content rating websites that list your new article and that contain a link back to your article. This can be very powerful.

Or let’s say you notice that an authority in your industry has a link on its website that points back to your website. Go ahead and bookmark the page on the authority site, thus marketing it, which in turn markets your site as well. One particular Web 2.0 website that is very popular and can generate tons of traffic is StumbleUpon. This site allows people to give any page you deem worthy a “thumbs-up”. And if you get enough “thumbs-up”, people browsing StumbleUpon will see it and click over to that page. So I always make it a point to “Stumble” my business websites’ homepages and sites that contain links to my business websites as well.

If you become an active member in a handful of Web 2.0 websites and utilize these first two suggestions alone, you will be amazed at the kind of traffic you can generate.

3) Engage in the conversations and activities

When I suggest above to become an active member I mean that you need to visit a few of your favorite Web 2.0 sites on a regular basis and actually contribute to the site with your opinions, votes, comments and submissions. For instance, if you like Digg or Newsvine, visit them often and submit quality articles, content and sites to them. And they don’t all have to be your sites. In fact, the more impartial you are, the more people will trust you when you submit one of your articles. And you ought to vote for other people’s Digg submissions as well. You may enjoy Facebook, Linkedin or MySpace. First, create a profile on the site, then go out and make connections within the community. The more you do this, the more you can harness the power of the people you meet to help market your website or yourself.

Visit and comment on blogs in your industry. This is another tried and true way to engage in the online conversation. Blogs are Web 2.0 and have been around for a while now. Unfortunately, leaving blog comments has been abused by so many people that you absolutely must only leave blog comments that contribute to the overall blog post.

Only add your website’s link if you’re asked to. These links won’t help your search engine rankings but can drive traffic to your site.

4) Encourage visitors to bookmark and tag your content

If you have a blog, add a feature that shows up at the end of every post that allows users to bookmark or submit your post to other Web 2.0 websites. ‘Share This’ is just such a blog add-on (or plug-in) that can do this for you. If you have a Wordpress blog you’ll be able to find a plug-in that allows you to integrate this type of feature (including Share This) into your blog very easily and without the need for any technical knowledge. If you write a memorable or compelling post, people can use this to make bookmarks to the post, Stumble it, Digg it and so forth. All of this can lead to more traffic.

5) Add a Web 2.0 feature to your website

First of all, your business website needs a blog. If you don’t have one, then stop reading this and go to it. A blog provides you and your employees an easy way to post new information that is relevant to your business and helpful to your customers. And it allows your customers to easily communicate with you by leaving comments.

But beyond a blog, what other Web 2.0 features can you add to your website? If you’re selling products, consider adding in a feature that allows customers to rate each product. It can be something as simple as one to five stars or more elaborate where they leave reviews. Amazon does this and it one of the major driving forces in their sales. When potential customers see that your products are rated by existing customers, they’ll be more likely to trust you and buy.

You could add a wiki to your website. A wiki is software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. By encouraging your website visitors to create content for you, you’re allowing your site to grow and become more informative, thus creating more chances to be found in search engines. These features can be found as third-party software packages and integrated into your existing website surprisingly easily.

The power of Web 2.0 is substantial. It’s time you begin to harness its potential and by following these five suggestions, you’ll be well on your way.

By Jason O’Connor

Recently SEOMoz did a survey among the top SEO experts. The results were surprising to say the least. None of the SEO experts could come to a 100 percent agreement on any one subject! So, if they can’t come to an agreement on SEO and link building, how is the rest of the world supposed to?

Rand surveyed the Top 37 SEO experts in the World. Basically the Survey is a series of questions asked of each expert. This group of experts could not come up with an agreement rating more than 1 on many of the questions!

So now that we know the experts can’t agree, I might as well tell you the mistakes I’ve made plus the ones I see done by many Webmasters when link building.

Failing to Procure Reciprocal Links.
I’ve seen so called SEO Guru’s say that reciprocal linking is dead and they will hurt your site. This just isn’t so. The important thing to remember is to make sure the links you trade are from quality sites. It doesn’t matter if they’re PR0, just make sure they’re not from a spam/ adult/ pharmacy/ hate type site. Reciprocal links can be on a resource page if you run a website or a Blogroll for you bloggers. Just remember to trade!

Failing to Acquire Low PR Links.
For some reason, many Webmasters do not want PR0 sites linking to them. This is link building suicide! One day, those PR0 sites could be the next PR5 or better. Frankly, I don’t care who links to my sites. I can’t control it and if they’re passing any amount of authority, and even PR0 sites pass some, I’ll take it. It also looks natural when you have many more low authority sites pointing to your site than all high PR sites.

Failing to Link Out.
Once again, we’re talking about making your site look natural to the Search Engines, especially Google. Authority sites link out to other authority sites. Google expects to see this. I can’t tell you how many times Ive had a site stuck in the SERPS only to get a little boost when I linked to a higher authority site. So link out to authority sites!

Failure to Check Your Reciprocal Link Partners’ Websites.
Once you exchange links with someone, you need to follow up on a routine basis and make sure the link back to your site is still there. Some sites go down, accounts are closed, domains expire and are purchased by someone else, Webmasters change website topics and some Webmasters simply take your link down after you exchange links. I’ve seen people put the “nofollow” attribute on the links after they’ve made a trade. I’ve seen it all happen, that’s why I monitor my link partners and you should also.

Failing to Use Anchor Text in Your Link.
If someone gives you the opportunity to use Anchor text in the link back to your site, use it! In my opinion, anchor text in a backlink is the second biggest off page ranking factor for SEO. Only the relevancy and authority of the page where the backlink originates is more important in my experience.

Failing to Cover Up Your Paid Link Footprints.
Look, from here to the end of time, people will sell links. And from here to the end of time, Google will be trying to find paid links. And from here to the end of time, you’ll see blogs, websites and blog networks (think Backlink Solutions) get de-indexed for selling links. If you’re going to buy or sell links as part of your link building plan, you’d better be hiding your footprint or Big Daddy G is going to find you one dark, cold and stormy night. There are several ways of hiding your footprint, I covered one way in my link laundering article a few weeks ago.

Failing to Build Links.
I see people on the forums all the time asking how they should go about link building or how to get started link building. Many say they don’t know how and so they don’t even try. People! I hate link building as much as the next person, but it’s not Rocket Science. You may be able to rank high in a low competitive keyword niche with on-page SEO, but for a competitive niche where’s there’s money to be made, you’re going to need some relevant backlinks!

TIP: One of the most effective link building strategies you can perform is to find out who’s linking to your competition and get links from them. You simply go to Google and type in link:yourcompetitorssite.com. You’ll then get a list of sites that are linking to your competitor’s site. Browse that site to see if there is a place to put a link to your own site at. If not, simply Contact the person running the site and ask kindly for a link. Many times they will not respond, but some will. Now, out of those sites, do the same thing. See who’s linking to them and get links from those sites!

This is probably the easiest way to get relevant backlinks but it’s a technique very few Bloggers and Webmasters use! Sure it’s tedious and time consuming, but in the long run, those top rankings will be worth all the time you practiced link building!

By Don Lawson