Every now and then I get asked how most of my traffic comes from search engines and not Twitter and Facebook. The answer to that question is Search Engine Optimization. I spend much time on Twitter and Facebook to get new feedback from readers and to connect with other bloggers and marketing gurus out there. But the real work of attracting readers is already done with SEO all through my blog.

I have given many SEO tips on this blog in the past but never really focused on the mistakes many people find them self doing. If you need a refresh on how to optimize your blog, take a look at my first and only episode of WIDLAS TV.

So what is the biggest SEO mistakes that I see people do?

1. To Many Keywords
   It’s important that you write blogposts for your readers, not the Search Engines. If you put to many keywords in one article you may end up with something we call Keyword stuffing and Search Engines punish you for that and will give you some kind of penalty.
2. Dont’ Use Link Networks
   You know the importances of linking to other sites and get links back. But all those big link networks that really don’t have any content just links is not really a good way to start. It can give you an unfair advantage so that you will get an higher Page Rank then you normally would but trust me, Google knows about them and have already punished a lot of sites linking up with them. So stay away from all kinds of networks like this and you will be good.
3. Unnatural Link Growth
   Building up links to your site takes a long time. Often years to get it to sit right. You may be lucky and end up on the front page of Digg.com but a link growth like that is calculated. Also a great backlink can make you an instant success. All that is good but it’s the “I have no time so I just buy 100 hard links in one day” methods that will make the Search Engines see red flags all over. So have some ice in your belly and let link building take it’s time.
4. Don’t Overkill Directory Submissions
   There is tons of directories out there where you can submit your site to. I’ve spoken to many people in forums that outsource this kind of work and pay for this job getting done. And probably with good reason too since it’s an important part of the SEO. But there is two big mistakes that often is done here. First don’t submit to many directories at once. Do a maximum of 10-15 a month. And what ever you do, you need to vary your anchor text for your URL. Don’t use the same anchor text in each directory.
   
   
5. Use Anchor Text The Right Way
   You should always use anchor text on images and all outgoing and internal links in your blogposts. But remember to diversify the anchor text at least for all the links and images in the same blogpost. I will also recommend to do this throughout the blog. Don’t just use SEO as an anchor text, use “How to Optimize For Search Engines” and various form of that. Get it? Look at Anchor text as asking many people to describe the same thing. You would get a lot of different answers wouldn’t you?

Learn from my mistakes and get it right the first time. And please give me feedback if you found this post helpful.

Google Analytics is still free to use and it’s still one of the most powerful analytic tools for the web out there, so why not learn to use it and get the most out of it?

If you are one of those that uses Google Adsense as your part time income you are also in for a treat. Google Analytics will show you how to monitor what people read on your page so that you can preform way better with adsense ads on your site.

So head over to Smashing Magazine to get the complete Guide to Google Analytics and Useful Tools now!

Many blogs and forums also give you something called a Do-follow link. This is a peace of code that tells Google and other search engines that they linked to your site. That again is called a back link. Sites that doesn’t offer a Do-follow link will kind of hide for the search engines and tell them that they do not link to you. Kind of a white lie don’t you think?

That’s why I find blogs that offer do-follow links very valuable. They give something back to you for commenting on their posts. And the more back links your site have, the more popular google think you are. So it gives you cred at the same time that they give you traffic. What more can you ask for?

So last week when I was stumbling around for great blogs to leave my comments on I found 2 great posts on a blog written by this 17 year old girl. She have gathered a list with links to 287 DoFollow Blogs and 120 DoFollow Forums so you can get started to build your back link farm right away.

BONUS: Right before posting this I found a directory of DoFollow blogs that had over 200 more blogs to comment on. Guess the 17 year old girl did a better job, but this DoFollowBlogs.com have some nice categorizing

Hope you like it and please comment here as well with your questions and experience with do follow and back links.

• 287 DoFollow Blogs
• 120 DoFollow Forums
• DoFollowBlogs.com

I worked and played with some keywords too, but when talking to a SEO guy that I’ve been buying services from, he told me I was doing everything wrong.

That was when I thought.. why try to use a lot of time with squidoo and hubpages when all the hours I will put into it, probably will be wrong. The keywords will be all messed up and the end result will not be as good as $30 dollars will get me.

So I started to outsource the work tasks that I didn’t want to spend a lot of time learning myself. So even though I haven’t been that active on my blog lately there is still work being done. I’m working on a web show and creating my own product and at the same time I got two people writing hubpages and squidoo lenses for me. I got another one submitting my site and rss feed to 1000’s of directories. I didn’t even know of more then 20 of them. Then when my hubpages and squidoo lenses are done they are to be submitted all around the 1000’s of directories too.

I got a graphic guy that made me a bunch of banners and found a source of highly traffic blogs that had very cheap advertising rates. The traffic is not that bad but not always that targeted either so I have some mixed feelings around this. But I got time to work on other stuff at the same time there is other people helping me to succeed with my blog.

I’m not telling you to not learn new things. You should learn why you need stuff like Twitter, squidoo and hubpages. You should learn why good designed banners will make you more clicks then if you just try to make something yourself in Windows Paint. You should know what to do and why you need to do it but you should also know that you don’t need to do it all yourself. That’s how the big marketers do it. It’s just more time to do what you wanted to do in the first time.

Before I go into the steps I must say that there is no easy steps to get a lot of traffic to your blog like super fast. Well, if you don’t count buying 10.000 visitors for $45 that clearly isn’t targeted and will not stay on your site for very long. The success of a blog is based on the readers of the blog. The more people that read the blog regularly, the more contents of the blog is spreading, and then in the mean time it will develop your blog bigger and bigger. The key to success is to build great content and a core audience. That’s why my steps for getting more traffic to my blog is a bit slower then most of the students that is part of the competition. I’m going for targeted traffic and building a relationship with my readers. It’s part of a branding strategy and this week it really seams to work, so let’s get to it.

1. SEO
I’ve read a lot of different things on the SEO subject in the past week. Everything from “Do not build a bloggroll, google will ban you” to lots of interesting simple to do SEO tips. In my opinion Search Engine Optimization is the best way to driving traffic to your site because traffic from search engine is very targeted. For now I’ve made my URL readable. I’m using an all in one SEO pack plugin for WordPress and I push keyword into posts and titles, for pictures and other content.

2. Blog walking to other blogs
This is actually very fun but I understand people that say it’s very time consuming. That’s why you have to organize this with some nice time management. Like spend one hour a day to visit blogs that are in the same market or niche as you and make comments on their posts. A comment with your url in it is considering an invitation to visit your blog. That way you will slowly get some traffic back to your blog. I’ve visited quite a few of my fellow students in Alex Jeffreys coaching program, but also starting to visit blogs outside the tribe to get some “fresh” traffic to my blog. I really need to credit Gary Simpson for this since he got me started doing this when days where grey.

I’ve also noticed that many other blogs are NoFollow Free. It means that when you comment with your URL it actually counts as a backlink to your site. So I’m considering making my blog the same with some rules next year.

3. Banner Exchanges
I haven’t started with the actually banner exchanges just yet. I want to build up some more traffic first. But from my experience in the marketing world this gives more traffic back and makes you send more traffic to other sites if done right. So I will be looking for blogs that are about the same size as mine and trade with banners starting in January.

4. Buy Banner Spots
This is also a tip from my old days and I’ve started with this already with good results. I’m actually amazed how low the prize is for banner advertising in this niche. You can get a 125×125 banner for just $30 a month on some sites that actually have great traffic. So it’s all about finding the right site to buy from and make sure the traffic you will get is targeted.

5. Making Videos
I’ve already released my very first episode of my marketing show Widlas TV. I think it was very good for a first episode with a few technical problems with the sound sync. But as my mentor always says, it doesn’t have to be perfect, you just need to get started. I hope to make it a weekly show. And I truly believe that it will make me more traffic on the long run. The first episode was just uploaded to youtube. But my marketing friend Marius Ystenes is trying out some cool software that posted his videos to all kinds of websites in just a few clicks and just days after he was on the first page of google on lots of keywords. So will look into that for sure.

6. Podcasting
One tip for you video makers out there. If your video does not show a lot of graphic and you just can listen to the sound of the video, you should really think about making your video as an mp3 file too. Then you can submit it to a bunch of podcasting directories and that will bring you even more listeners and traffic. It’s also a tip for everyone out there that doesn’t like to show off their face on the net.

7. Twitter
Many marketers have called Twitter the best tool for 2008. It’s very powerful and I have heard that marketing stars with over 70.000 people on their email list and just 6000 following them on twitter actually got more signups from Twitter on their product lunch. So that’s why it’s important to build your Twitter lists and have the same respect for that list as you have for your mailing list. I’m also building my Twitter list very slow. I don’t believe in the Follow me and I follow you teory. I believe that if I get more people following me for the right reason they will be more targeted and more interested in what I have to say or provide for them in the near future.

Make use of your online power – through Internet marketing. Here are simple methods that you may employ to boost the visibility of your business without shelling out more than what you can afford. However, these techniques need patience and some footwork to produce agreeable results.

Firstly, you need a website before you can make use of these low cost Internet marketing strategies. So go create one or hire a web developer. It will display your products and services. This will be used in employing the following Internet marketing techniques.

Affiliate Marketing
This is the process of recruiting a network of smaller websites known as affiliates to drive targeted traffic to a website. Ad copy and links will be provided by the advertisers. You will have to pay a certain percentage of the sales profit to your affiliates.

Links
One of your goals should be to attain a good ranking with search engines. One way to do it is through link building. This could be done through trading links to other businesses that are related with yours.

Newsletters
Sending out newsletters to your subscribers (those who signed up for your newsletters) will help greatly in establishing a good working relationship with your customers or prospective customers. It has to be short, sweet, consistent and written for a general audience.

E-mail Marketing
As one of the best cost-effective Internet marketing tools, it stays as a very important method of keeping your customers aware of your products and services. Just make sure to avoid spamming or soon enough you will have to close down you business due to complaints.

Articles
If you put quality content in the form of articles in your website along with your products and services, search engines will have to index your website. Getting you website indexed by popular search engines means more traffic for you.

Forums
Expand your Internet network is through joining forums that mainly discusses stuff regarding or related to your products and services. Actively posting responses or answers and asking relevant information will build your reputation as that forum’s member and boost your company’s visibility through your signature files. These signature files are those that go with your every post. Links to your website could be included in this signature.

But you have an easy menu and categories in your blog you say? Well sitemaps are also where search engines look at if somebody is looking for a particular keyword or phrase. If you have a site map, you can most likely be searched.

But it sounds like a lot of work right? Well creating a sitemap, now with software technology surging in, is relatively easier than before.  You don’t need to be a programming guru to make one. All you need is a notepad, a program editor, and some patience. Here’s how you do it:

Create the listing on a notepad.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a notepad. Any word processing program will do. First off, make sure to type in all the parts and pieces of your website. Include all pages and all links you have. Create it as if you listing the contents of your book. Make a draft first. You’re sure no to miss something out this way.

Create a new page for your sitemap.
You can insert the sitemap on your website on one of its pages or you can create an entirely different page for it. Using your notepad, incorporate all tags necessary to it to make another webpage. Open up your website creator program and tag your sitemap using it. If you have created your website on your own, this will be easy for you.

Create a link for the sitemap.
You won’t be able to view the sitemap if you won’t put a link for it, of course. Create the link on the front page of your website so that visitors can view it right away and be directed appropriately.

Check your work.
It is important to validate the functionality of the links you created on the sitemap. Test each and every one in there and if you get an error, be sure to fix it accurately. Run through every single page to make sure that all are accounted for.

Upload your work.
Place the sitemap now on your live browser and double check it. It should function as smoothly as the dry run. Error should be minimal at this stage since you already have verified it locally.

The steps provided herewith is the manual way of creating a sitemap. These days, if you search hard enough on the web, you will find online programs that will do all these work for you. All you have to do it type in the URL or the link of your website and they will create the sitemap with click of a button.

Of course that method is generic. All of you who have created their sitemap that way will have an end product that is all the same, plus there’s that possibility that something else will be inserted in there too. Then again, the process is less taxing and way, way simpler.

But if you want a more personalized output, and you are pretty good with computers and programming yourself, better make one of your own.  And since you made your website anyway, creating sitemap is just like creating any other page on the website. Other than you’ll know for sure the links are accurate, you can organize the links the way you prefer it to be. Major parts of the site are emphasized compared to less significant. This is important especially if you are selling products or offering services online.

Sitemap is vital to a website. People search the web a lot for something. If your website has what that particular person is looking for, and your sitemap reports it, then you have a new customer looking at your items.  Not only that, they will see some other things up for sale that they might be interested in as well.

Sitemaps, be it generated by a program automatically or you made it yourself, presents the same purpose. That is to lead your visitors to where they’re likely headed, and for you to be seen on the World Wide Web through search spiders.  So with these, make sure your website has a sitemap of its own, lest make one.

Links to sitemap generators:

• xml-sitemaps.com
• Google Sitemap Generator
• Free Sitemap Generator
• Free Sitemap Generator for WordPress