It’s no secret that search engine rankings are important to the success of your online business.

Even though algorithms keep changing, one thing is for certain – social media is here to stay and it can be quite useful to you and your audience.

If you aren’t already familiar with social media, you might want to get started!

In the next few years everyone in the civilized world will know something about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube just to name a few.

You can find everyone there, even those who are within your target audience.

Search engine optimization is necessary if you want to achieve any useful ranking that can impact your business in a positive way.

It can take months and even as long as a year or more for websites to gain a garnered spot on the first page.

To speed up that process, you can take a look at social media to increase your visibility.

Google is now considering social media stats in their overall algorithm for website rankings.

The good news is that many of us use social media anyway, so turning it for business won’t be a stretch.

You can use your knowledge and the keywords from your website to help you attract other social media members who are in your target market.

Using Social Media

Here are a few tips to help you utilize social media to improve your SEO efforts.

Join The Social Networks That Matter

There are several social media sites but the ones most used are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

And it’s best to establish personal and business profiles on each of these sites if you haven’t already.

Within your profiles, incorporate the target keywords that you use on your site to attract visitors.

Utilize Every Area Of These Sites

Link updates on your website to posts that you make on these sites. Uploading a video to YouTube?

Use keywords in the description and add a link to your site. “Like” pages that are similar to your niche market.

Join Sites Relevant To Your Target Audience

This is an old one but a good one… For instance, when you sign up for community forums become an active member.

Two-word comments or posting to promote your site can be viewed as spamming.

You will gain more traffic from other members and influence in the community if you genuinely participate.

Follow Other Relevant Blogs

Make comments, offer to guest blog for influential bloggers in your niche and offer useful information.

The more engaging that you are on social media sites, the more you will rise to the top on the lists of others who also patronize those sites.

This can elevate your status and increase traffic to your website.

Also, communicating with your target market here can offer valuable insight towards profitable changes to your website business.

Want more tips like this? Then sign up for my weekly newsletter - Solutions for Online Business Success.

Online Business Success is read around the world and is full of creative tips and practical strategies that will help you grow your online business at an accelerated rate!

When you sign up, you’ll join the tens of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners who love receiving my business building and marketing tips delivered to them via email each week. So sign up today!

Have an awesome day!

Pam Lawhorne

The success of a blog lives and dies by its traffic so if your blog has traffic, your chances of getting more traffic, more revenues and more exposure are very high.

On the other hand if your blog has no traffic, or very low traffic it really won’t matter even if you do everything else right.

So here are a 4 ways to help you instantly begin increasing your traffic starting today!

Traffic Tip # 1: Article Marketing

The key to article marketing is to create a schedule and stick to it. Article marketing is a numbers game.

Don’t assume you can publish one article and be done with it.

The of the best online marketers publish at least a dozen articles a month and some of them even publish as many as one or two a day!

The goal of article marketing is to target many low-competition low-traffic keywords.

If you can get your articles ranked for many of those keywords, you can easily start to get hundreds of visitors a day.

It’s a lot of work, but it can work very quickly.

Traffic Tip # 2: Guest Posting

Another method of using content to generate traffic is through guest posting.

Create a list of twenty other blogs you respect and relate to.

Email them and ask if they’d be interested in having some free content in exchange for a link back to your website.

Here’s the most important part: you need to have a well-designed website with good content.

If someone visits your site and doesn’t see good content, they’re automatically going to assume that anything you write for them isn’t going to be good either.

On the other hand, if they’re impressed by what they see they’ll want to do business with you.

Traffic Tip # 3: Using YouTube Traffic

YouTube can bring in massive amounts of traffic to blogs.

Start by creating a YouTube channel and posting to it regularly.

Create a schedule, such as once a day, three times a week or once a week.

People will come to expect new videos from your channel often.

Try to pick specific keywords you want your videos to rank for.

Don’t try too hard to SEO optimize your videos, but every once in a while sprinkle some keywords in the titles.

But do use the videos on your blog and try embedding the video on your site because it will give you easy video loads, which will increases your view count.

This will allow your blog to funnel your YouTube traffic, which will funnel your blog traffic and so on and so on.

Traffic Tip # 4: Blog Commenting

Download an RSS feed reader then subscribe to ten or twenty blogs in your industry.

Set the reader to alert you whenever a new post arrives.

This will help you stay on top of every new post as it comes.

Whenever a new post is added, try to be the first one to comment.

Post intelligent comments that add value then link back to your site using the “name” field.

These are a few different ways you can get immediate traffic to your blog.

Each requires consistent action and persistence.

If you pick a method, formulate a plan and execute it, the traffic will come.

It might trickle in at first, but it can quickly grow to a torrent!

Want more tips like this? Then sign up for my weekly newsletter - Solutions for Online Business Success.

Online Business Success is read around the world and is full of creative tips and practical strategies that will help you grow your online business at an accelerated rate!

When you sign up, you’ll join the tens of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners who love receiving my business building and marketing tips delivered to them via email each week. So sign up today!

Have an awesome day!

Pam Lawhorne

Just in case you missed something, here’s what I posted on my website over the past week…

Monday, January 30th – 3 Tips For Generating Article Topics That Will Get You Tons Of Buzz 

Tuesday, January 31st - 3 Ways To Use Content Marketing To Your Advantage

Wednesday, February 1st - 3 Reasons Why YOU Should Write An eBook

Thursday, February 2nd - 5 Things Every Website Should Have 

Friday, February 3rd - 3 Tips To Help You Maintain Your Online Search Rankings

Saturday, February 4th: Podcast - How You Can Use Articles To Quickly Make Money In Your Business

Are you looking for a way to quickly start or grow a business online?

If so then join me each month for my FREE business building training session.

In my training sessions I focus on topics relating to building, developing and marketing your business online!

These are detailed, informative sessions done by myself and other top industry experts. Some of the topics we’ll cover include…

- Article Marketing

- Affiliate Marketing

- List Building Tactics

- Search Engine Optimization

- Niche Information Marketing

- Using Social Networking For Traffic

- Promoting Your Business Using Videos

- How To Increase Your Reach & Visibility

Plus so much more!  Sign up here ==>  Learn How To Earn 6-Figures A Year Online

Have An Awesome Week!

Pam Lawhorne

Did you know that one of the best ways of promoting your website, products and services can be achieved for free? And as an added bonus this “free” method can also boost your sites and sales, while doubling and even tripling your income?

Well if you hadn’t already guessed it, this free resource is article marketing and it’s one of the easiest ways to promote your website in order to generate traffic and increase your earnings.

So how does this work? Well that’s what we’re going to discuss in  today’s podcast so grab a pen and paper because I’ll be sharing some tips on how you can use article marketing to immediately boost your traffic and income!

You can also listen to my podcast by visiting iTunes.

Would you like more tips like this? Then sign up for my weekly newsletter – Solutions for Online Business Success.

Online Business Success is read around the world and is full of creative tips and practical strategies that will help you grow your online business at an accelerated rate!

When you sign up, you’ll join the tens of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners who love receiving my business building and marketing tips delivered to them via email each week. So sign up today!

Have a fantastic weekend!

Pam Lawhorne

PS. Would you like to know how you can get more traffic to your website without spending any more time then you’re currently spending now?

In my new program you’ll learn how to use articles to attract new clients, get more buzz, engage your audience better and make more money in your business.

Get started today!

Once you’re ranked in the search engines, the game isn’t over because ranking in the search engines isn’t a one-time endeavor.

You’ll need to keep working on your rankings to make sure that you can and do improve your traffic.

If you aren’t regularly working on improving your rankings, your competitors will be able to overtake you.

And by the time your competitors actually outstrip you in the rankings, they may already be way ahead of you in backlinks and other factors.

So to prevent this from happening, you need to proactively maintain your search rankings so here’s 3 tips to help you out.

Smart Tip # 1: Maintain A Steady Backlinking Strategy

Marketers often put huge pushes into getting back-links when they want to achieve rankings, then completely neglect getting backlinks once the rankings are established.

Instead, once you’ve gotten your rankings, it pays to continue putting a small amount of energy into getting back-links.

You don’t need to get as many as when you’re striving for rankings, but you should still keep your link building efforts active.

For example, instead of shooting for 100 links a month you might just shoot for 10.

Enough to show Google that you’re still active, without tasking too many resources.

Smart Tip # 2: Keep Adding High Quality Content

Continue to add content to your website because it’s much, much easier for a static website to lose rankings than a website that’s constantly being updated.

When you add new content, you get new visitors.

Then you get new pages to get ranked and then you get more back-links as more and more people find your site and link to it.

Also, Google wants to show people websites that are active.

When given the choice between a three-year old website that hasn’t been updated and a website that’s constantly adding new content, Google will choose the latter, all else being equal.

Smart Tip # 3: Stay On Top Of New Ranking Factors

The search engines are constantly updating their algorithms.

By and large, it’s not hard to figure out what their latest updates are.

For example, in 2011 social media suddenly started playing a part in rankings.

How often you’re tweeted about and your Facebook likes can now actually help your rankings.

Furthermore, Google and Bing came together to create Schema, which allows you to embed data structures into your website that helps search engines figure out what your content is about.

Stay on top of developments in the search world and make sure your website is taking advantage of all the new ranking factors.

These are a few smart ways to maintain your online search rankings.

Remember: if you don’t actively maintain your rankings, sooner or later your rankings will drop.

It’s much easier to proactively protect your rankings than it is to try and chase them back once they’re gone.

Want more tips like this? Then sign up for my weekly newsletter - Solutions for Online Business Success.

Online Business Success is read around the world and is full of creative tips and practical strategies that will help you grow your online business at an accelerated rate!

When you sign up, you’ll join the tens of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners who love receiving my business building and marketing tips delivered to them via email each week. So sign up today!

Have an awesome day!

Pam Lawhorne

There are a few pages that every website should have because these pages will help give your readers an idea of who you are and what you website about.

They’ll help your readers navigate your website also some pages are required for other reasons such as web regulations or search engine optimization.

So to make sure you’re covered, here’s a list of five things that I think every website should have.

Must Have # 1: An About Me Page

At the end of the day people want to know about who you are.

If they’re reading your website and taking advice from you, they want to know who you are.

They want to know about your past accomplishments and failures.

They want to know what makes you who you are… They want to know your story.

So put this in an about me page and make it easy for them to find.

Must Have # 2: A Contact Page

Not all website owners want to be contacted however, it’s a good idea to at least have a contact form. Why?

You could be contacted by potential partners or big advertisers.

Or someone could be considering referring a huge group of buyers to your site and just wanted to ask you a question.

You don’t have to answer every single question you get, but it still helps to have contact information up.

Must Have # 3:  Social Media & RSS

Give your readers a number of different ways to follow you.

In your sidebar, have buttons that allow people to follow you on Twitter, on Facebook and even on Google+.

You should also have a clearly displayed RSS button that allows people to subscribe to your feed.

Must Have # 4:  The Best Posts

Also in your sidebar should be a list of your best posts, most popular posts or your personal top picks.

When someone lands on your site, they don’t necessarily just want to read your blog in chronological order.

A lot of people would prefer to start by reading your 5-10 best articles to decide if they like your content.

If they do, then they’ll start reading your blog regularly and having these 5-10 top posts easily accessible helps give new visitors the best stuff right up front.

Must Have # 5:  Privacy Policy, Disclosures, Sitemap & Terms Of Service

These four pages are meant mostly for search engines and regulatory agencies.

If you’re using Google AdSense, collecting email addresses or using tracking software, you need a privacy policy.

Google strongly recommends having both a privacy policy and a terms of service.

Not having them could be detrimental to your ranking and they’re also required for AdSense.

Having a sitemap will help search engines index your site.

These are a few of the pages and items that every single blog should have.

Adding them will increase both your usability and your compliance.

Want more tips like this? Then sign up for my weekly newsletter - Solutions for Online Business Success.

Online Business Success is read around the world and is full of creative tips and practical strategies that will help you grow your online business at an accelerated rate!

When you sign up, you’ll join the tens of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners who love receiving my business building and marketing tips delivered to them via email each week. So sign up today!

Have an awesome day!

Pam Lawhorne

Have you ever considered writing an e-book?

Well in addition to being a wonderful business model, writing an e-book can really boost your business.

There are really not too many other business models that offer automated profits and you can earn money from your e-book for years to come.

Additionally, writing an e-book is a fairly straightforward task because you can write an e-book this month and be raking in the profits next month.

If you’re not interested in selling your e-book, then consider these fantastic benefits you gain whether you sell it or give it away.

Here’s 3 reasons why YOU should write one.

Reason # 1: You’ll Get An Credibility & Authority Boost

We tend to automatically give authors our confidence. So by writing and publishing an e-book you will give you and your business a credibility boost!

And what this does is essentially establishes you as an expert in your industry.

When you write a book that helps your customers and prospects solve their problems, people consider you a credible authority on your subject and they’ll turn to you for advice and assistance.

Additionally, credibility and authority are both buying triggers. You’ll earn customers when you write a book.

Reason # 2: Instant Branding, Exposure & Awareness

When you write an e-book your business brand will be instantly enhanced.

You’re going to reach more people through publication so your exposure and awareness will also be increased.

Branding, exposure and awareness all help you grow your business.

Through your book marketing efforts, press and publicity and through word of mouth, it’s not unheard of to triple your audience… You just have to write a book.

Reason # 3: You’ll Get Access To More Opportunities

Through both the press you receive for your book and through increased credibility, awareness and exposure, you’re going to catch the eye of the public.

Some of the people who read or learn about your book are going to be interested in working with you.

You’ll receive new opportunities and through these opportunities you can grow your business.

For example, you may have an opportunity to be interviewed for your local newspaper and a fellow business owner may contact you through this press and offer you a partnership opportunity.

There’s no telling what opportunities are in store for you when you write a book!

Finally, writing a book provides you with an entry into your sales funnel if you give it away for free.

If you sell the book then you have another product to market and profit from so there really is no downside to writing an e-book.

They’re easy to create and even easier to distribute because all you need is a sales page and a download link.

A little marketing and you have yourself an amazing business-building tool.

Now many people hesitate to write an e-book because they think it’s going to be a lot of work or they’re afraid they’re not qualified to write a book.

Writing a book is much like writing copy for your website.

With a plan, passion for your topic, and the ability to write conversationally you too can write a book!

Want more tips like this? Then sign up for my weekly newsletter - Solutions for Online Business Success.

Online Business Success is read around the world and is full of creative tips and practical strategies that will help you grow your online business at an accelerated rate!

When you sign up, you’ll join the tens of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners who love receiving my business building and marketing tips delivered to them via email each week. So sign up today!

Have an awesome day!

Pam Lawhorne

Content marketing is getting more and more important every day.

People today are finding more and more content through social networks and less and less through search engines.

That means that creating content people want to share is becoming even more important

So to help you get started, I want to show you 3 ways that you can use content marketing to your advantage.

Benefit # 1: It Builds Your Personal Brand

At the end of the day, the only thing that travels with you after every job, deal or business venture is your personal brand.

A lot of people fail to consciously build their personal brands when this is truly one of the most valuable assets you have.

By creating high quality, unique content for a certain market, you establish yourself as an expert.

Finding jobs, getting business partners and even attracting investors for businesses gets much easier if you’re a known content publisher.

Benefit # 2: Allows You To Build Trust With Your Customers

A customer would much rather trust their money with an industry leader who provides a lot of quality content than a site that’s just out there to sell a product.

There’s something about consistency that really builds trust.

Anyone can put up a website to start selling a product but if you’re producing high quality content for six months people will instinctively trust you a lot more.

They’ll think you’ll still be around to help them six months down the line.

Benefit # 3: Increases Your Viral Launching Pad

If you ever want to launch a viral campaign, you’ll have a base of users to start you off with.

Let’s say you want to launch a video contest, where users send in funny videos around a specific theme and the winner gets a prize.

If you hadn’t been publishing content, how would you find 100+ people to submit videos? It’d be very hard.

But if you’ve already been publishing content for months, you’ll already have a reader base you can launch your viral campaign from.

The “Secret” To Good Content Marketing

Great content marketing is really as simple as focusing on providing good content, consistently.

Good content should be completely original. If it’s based on your own personal experience, so much the better.

People should feel like they can relate to your struggles and learn from your lessons when they read your material.

Don’t be disappointed if for the first few months your reader base takes a bit of time to build up.

That’s how it works: reputations take time to become established.

Fortunately, once your reputation is established, it also builds momentum and can grow very quickly.

The web is veering more and more towards creating good content.

It’s not an overnight technique; so the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll start reaping the benefits.

Want more tips like this? Then sign up for my weekly newsletter - Solutions for Online Business Success.

Online Business Success is read around the world and is full of creative tips and practical strategies that will help you grow your online business at an accelerated rate!

When you sign up, you’ll join the tens of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners who love receiving my business building and marketing tips delivered to them via email each week. So sign up today!

Have an awesome day!

Pam Lawhorne

PS. Would you like to know how you can get more traffic to your website without spending any more time then you’re currently spending now?

In my new program you’ll learn how to use articles to attract new clients, get more buzz, engage your audience better and make more money in your business.

Get started today!

Coming up with the right article topic that will get you tons of buzz isn’t easy!

On the surface, an article topic is just one line of text but once you dive deeper into what it really entails to write an article topic, you’ll see that it’s a whole lot more.

Writing an article requires deep knowledge of your target market.

It requires an understanding of what catches attention and what doesn’t plus it also requires an understanding of what your market already knows and what they want to learn.

Here’s 3 tips on how to come up with article topics that create tons of buzz.

Buzz Creating Tip # 1: Look For Specific Questions To Answer

Go on internet forums and look for specific questions to answer.

Ideally the questions should be specific, but still appeal to the audience globally.

For example, let’s say your audience is pizza parlor owners.

One specific question they might have is how to know when they need to start planning to replace their pizza ovens.

It’s a very specific question, but it applies to all pizza parlor owners.

These questions work very well because often people have never read an article addressing those specific questions but a lot of them will still gain a lot from reading the answer to such questions.

Buzz Creating Tip # 2: Browse Around On Google

Type your search keyword into Google using various search terms.

For example, if you run a site on gold investing, type in keywords like:

“How to invest in gold”

“Gold investing tips”

“Gold investing mistakes”

“Top tips for investing in gold”

“Why invest in gold”

So on and so forth…

Try to come up with as many search terms as you can.

You don’t need to actually read any of the articles that come up.

Just use them as inspiration to come up with your own content ideas.

Perhaps open up a few of them to see what they talk about and see if you can elaborate on any of those points.

Buzz Creating Tip # 3: Writing Your Titles In An Attention-Catching Way

Once you have a specific topic that you want to write about, how do you write a title that catches attention and generates buzz?

There are a few different ways to do this.

The “X Tips” formula is tried and proven and works in just about every industry.

For example, “17 Tips for Increasing Per-Pizza Earnings” would work very well for the pizza parlor market.

A cautionary or warning tale can also get a lot of attention.

For example, “Sneaky Ways Your Delivery Guys Might Be Stealing From You” would instantly grab any pizza shop owner’s attention.

You can use the most shocking or attention-catching part of a story in the article title.

For example, “His Customers Paid In Pennies, But When He Counted His Tips …”

Finally, if you have a really great topic, you can just use a straightforward description of the topic.

For example, as discussed before, “How to Know When to Replace Your Pizza Oven” would likely work quite well as an article topic.

If you have both a good topic and a well-written title that can catch and keep attention, you’ll have a successful article.

Want more tips like this? Then sign up for my weekly newsletter - Solutions for Online Business Success.

Online Business Success is read around the world and is full of creative tips and practical strategies that will help you grow your online business at an accelerated rate!

When you sign up, you’ll join the tens of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners who love receiving my business building and marketing tips delivered to them via email each week. So sign up today!

Have an awesome day!

Pam Lawhorne

PS. Would you like to know how you can get more traffic to your website without spending any more time then you’re currently spending now?

In my new program you’ll learn how to use articles to attract new clients, get more buzz, engage your audience better and make more money in your business.

Get started today!

Just in case you missed something, here’s what I posted on my website over the past week…

Monday, January 23rd - 13 Free WordPress Security Plug-Ins And Why You Need Them

Tuesday, January 24th - How To Back Up Your WordPress Site

Wednesday, January 25th - 7 Quick And Creative Ways You Can Attract New Clients NOW!

Thursday, January 26th - 4 Tips For Becoming A Top ClickBank Affiliate

Friday, January 27th - How To Succeed With Outsourcing – A Checklist For Online Business Owners

Saturday, January 28th: Podcast - How To Use Articles To Market Yourself And Your Business 

Are you looking for a way to quickly start or grow a business online?

If so then join me each month for my FREE business building training session.

In my training sessions I focus on topics relating to building, developing and marketing your business online!

These are detailed, informative sessions done by myself and other top industry experts. Some of the topics we’ll cover include…

- Article Marketing

- Affiliate Marketing

- List Building Tactics

- Search Engine Optimization

- Niche Information Marketing

- Using Social Networking For Traffic

- Promoting Your Business Using Videos

- How To Increase Your Reach & Visibility

Plus so much more!  Sign up here ==>  Learn How To Earn 6-Figures A Year Online

Have An Awesome Week!

Pam Lawhorne