Any business is presented with the challenge of getting known. It must announce to the world that its doors are open to the world, ready for business. On the Internet that means getting listed in the search engines, so the people looking for a solutions will find one’s business offerings toward that solution. Consider the time and money invested in building an Internet presence, one’s place in the search engines should be of paramount importance. That can only happen by using the search engine’s spiders to the business’s advantage. A spider is a program that follows the links on web pages as they spread out to make up the World Wide Web. They follow links to others pages, make a record of the content, and then travel to the next pages using the links from that page.

Another way search engines gather information on websites is to allow website owners to manually submit their pages for placement. Though this would seem the quickest way to get a website listed in search engines, it may not be the optimal way to get a search engine to visit your website. Submitting manually is giving your website to search engines without context. With spidering a search engine can know the popularity of a new site, which pages are important, and the context of the site (subject manner). The search engines know this by how many links are sent to which pages, how many different sites are linked to the site, what the text is being used to reference the website (the anchor text in a link), and the subject matter of the webpage linking to the website (does the subject matter relate to each other?).

So, getting spidered and getting links go hand in hand. There are things to know about search engine spiders that will make getting listed easier. Start linking building with high traffic, frequently updated websites. These web sites get spidered more often, even if not daily. Meaning that a web site will be used placed in a search engine quicker this way, than the thousands of sites submitted cold to search engines everyday. Article directories are a good source to build links from sites that get spidered often.

Another thing to know is to attend to the business’s website sitemap. A sitemap is a single, plain webpage that lists every other page on the website. It gives the search engine spiders a single source to collect that website’s content. That single source also let’s spiders know when new pages have been added, keep it updated. Also, list on every page of the website a link to the sitemap so spiders can find it (visitors use it too). Most web sites list the sitemap at the bottom of the pages along with the terms and conditions, privacy statements, etc.

Knowing about the search engine spiders will help get a website listed more rapidly. Thereby, getting more traffic to a new website sooner.

People have profound misconceptions about home businesses and Internet businesses. People have it in their mind that a home business is lazing about in pajamas watching soap operas, occasionally making a phone call. Likewise, people consider an Internet business as easy because everyone knows how to surf the web and click a mouse. Then when the two are combined into a single business as an Internet home business, they think what could be easier or simpler?

What they don’t realize is that it is still a business and heavy work is required. True, the Internet is 24/7 and one can be online at home in any attire, but the effort is still required.

The primary focus of an Internet business will be getting traffic, without it there is no Internet business. Getting eyes onto a web site is no easy task; there is heavy competition and a jaded public. There are expensive ways to get traffic like Pay Per Click programs or email list programs, but that traffic ROI is marginal at best. The business’s goal should be in getting organic traffic that comes from being the primary website listed in the search engines. It has been stated that forty percent of search engine result traffic goes to the number one listed result.

This organic search engine traffic is gold because visitors come to a site without their guard up. If visitor click an obvious advertisement to get to a site, they are interested in that site but they are also cautious. If visitors click a search engine result to get to a website, they are interested but less guarded to what they are seeing. Their visit is more voluntary. Also, organic traffic is free traffic.

But like anything in life, what is worth having is not easy to attain. Getting ranked highly in search engine results is not easy. The search engines look at many factors of relevant websites before returning results. Some of those factors new websites will have no control over, so no sense worrying. Best advice is to focus on the factors that a new website can impact.

The largest impact that a business can have on driving traffic from search engine rankings is to work the article directories. Known as article marketing, writing content relevant to a website’s page that it wants ranked highly in the search engines is vital. Submitting that content to article directories has a number of advantages for search engine rankings. It gives the search engines context for the webpage, letting the search engine know the subject matter that is recommending that web site. It also has the advantage of allowing a couple of links that can be given the anchor text of the submitter’s choosing (helping capture the lead for desired search engine keywords). Additionally, the article can be taken and replicated on other web sites, thus multiplying the number of links in cyberspace. Finally, with those links traffic can be garnered directly from the article directory.

Like many in MMO I started using Ezine Articles for SEO link juice and on that regard I think it does its job. After being in the SEO/MMO game this long I have heard all the positives about article or bum marketing. As I am consider a new direction with article/bum marketing I wanted to revisit my history with Ezine Articles.

I downloaded my csv file of number of views, clicks, and the like to see what story the numbers tell. There are plenty of articles, in different categories, and over a period of time. What I did was develop two new numbers that I thought were of interest- views per click and days per click. View per click was checking to see how many views it took for each article before a new click is generated. Days per click is how many days an article is up before it generates a click. Now, I understand that most clicks will happen when an article is new or when SEO kicks in to generate some keyword traffic. But this was an overall review.

What I was interested in was traffic and not SEO juice. Essentially what I found was that on average I get one click per article per month. Also, that I get a “homerun” about 10% of the time, meaning articles that just leap out of the averages. But it was that one click per article per month that was interesting. Now, that is a number I can use.

See, it takes me about 30 minutes to an hour to write a decent 300 word article. I also can outsource with my favorite writer at a penny word and an article would cost me about $3.00 for 300 words. So, a click would cost me $3.00 for the first month. Relatively expensive, but when some Google adwords run between $1-2 a click and get no SEO juice, it is not that much more expensive. But consider it over 12 months, that would be 12 clicks at a quarter a click.

These are important numbers as all my sites are content sites. Not sales sites or sales pages, so conversions are a function of huge traffic. Meaning that a quarter a click is expensive as an average value of a site visitor is between a penny to a dime, depending on the site. On the other hand if I were serious about article/bum marketing I would be using EzineArticles to drive targeted sales traffic to a sales page/site. So, in some instances, depending on what I was selling and my conversation rate, $3.00 would not be that much and a quarter would be downright cheap.

Of course these figures are based on outsourcing 300 word articles at a penny a word. For the past few months I have been doing the writing, as I have not invested in outsourced articles. So, the numbers would be readjusted for what I think my time is worth. That would make the per click rates much higher as I would probably rate my time at two cents a word, so essentially double what was figured at a penny a word.

One of my biggest frustrations is when I hear people in MMO say they will ad/increase monetization to their blog “after I gain subscribers/visitors.” This is the same mentality of those people who get into business but don’t want to be pushy salesmen. Somehow, there is an accepted fallacy that if one doesn’t push their offerings, people will be so thankful for not having a pushy salesmen they will remember and come back to the buy from the person that wasn’t pushy. While a very few people may come back to the not so pushy person, the introverted salesman will be losing twenty sales in the meantime.

It is not so much that one has to be pushy, but one has to give people the opportunity to buy. Being online, that means having adverts posted on one’s site. I really don’t see the big deal (what? maybe 80-90% of web sites we visit have advertising on them), but I see many people post online that they don’t want to put ads on their site, yet they want to make money online. This is hilarious as most of these blogs/sites are about making money online. You want to make money, you have to have advertising on your site(s).

One of my favorite MMO bloggers is Caroline Middlebrook. Caroline had issues with advertising too, but as she is blogging full-time, making money is an imperative. She measured her stats against online guru John Chow. She found although John Chow had ten times the visitors, he had thirty times the revenue. Between you and me, Caroline has the much better content. Her content is never fluff, always on topic and straightforward about MMO. Yet, John Chow with his humorous posts and noodle shots surpasses her income based upon ratios.

Reason is John Chow has advertising everywhere. I counted he has seventeen graphic advertisements, and nine text advertisements on his pages. He has all this without any of it seemingly too spammy, no more so than any other site. For those that worry about advertisements on their sites, his blog grows continually.

Ultimately, if one is trying to make money online, do it. Waiting for someday to happen, that day will never arrive. Advertisements are opportunities for you to make money, so you need plenty of them. Without them, no one can bring you money to your site.

Yesterday I tried the Affomatic plugin for eBay.  Pretty cool.  Today, I work with the Amazon Search plugin by Andy Maloney.  Let’s see how it works for Native American movies.  A possible plug for my Native American Humor web site.

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