Article marketing is one of the most effective (and not to mention most cheapest) way to generate traffic to a website. The reason it is effective because a single article posted at a high volume traffic website will redirect visitors to the author’s own website every time. A single one-time effort with an included backlink will allow searchers looking for a particular subject to continuously be able to find you.

If the article posted is of high quality and evergreen value, it will generate a lot of response and new visitors as long as it remains online. There are various article directories (some of the more established ones include EzineArticles, ArticleCity and ArticleDashboard) that remains as good sources of targeted traffic. With the right article title and tags plus submission to directories with a high enough PageRank - your article becomes well-optimized to be shown in search engine results.

I have stumbled upon (literally, a contact on StumbleUpon passed me the link) BloggersBase which on first glance looked like an article directory with a niche focusing on bloggers. But upon reading the articles posted there, I found out these articles were rated for their content based on 4 criteria (Agreement, Presentation, Professionalism, Value) by readers. It was remarkably different.

…read more about Review of BloggersBase

photo credit: shawnzam

Have you heard of the expression “People do business with people, not companies” ?

This is really true in every sense of the expression. If you have to pick and buy a product from 2 salespersons who has delivered the same pitch, how do you pick who to buy from? Very likely you will buy from the person who has appealed to you emotionally. It’s funny how we try to rationalize the things we do (like after we made the purchase) when the truth is, people are swayed by emotional reasons.

So in the world of online commerce, how do you convert that pitch to a sale? You are not flesh and blood to the potential client, you are just text on pixel bits on the monitor.

…read more about The Importance of Getting Personal

photo credit: sergis blog

Building Rapport Instantaneously (Tongue Firmly in Cheek)

I used to act. Yes, back in junior college. Played the humorous female comedian whose main job was to ensure the tension from the intense drama of previous scenes were broken.

But my most important role was to ensure the play reconnected back to the audience. It was almost a 3-hour long drama (interspersed with singing and dancing ala’ Bollywood) so the risk of alienating the audience was very possible. So I had to do things like breaking the 4th wall, outrageous stunts and NC-16 jokes galore.

…read more about Building Rapport Instantaneously (Tongue Firmly in Cheek)

If you have been subscribing to various blogs - I subscribe to over 40 great sources - there are thousand of posts being generated a day. Really. Being a reader, it is impossible to read EVERYTHING. One can only skim through, choose and read those that are most interesting, useful and provide great quality information.

By the way I spend maximum only 1 hour a day to read. Will let you know HOW to do that in another post.

I picked up an old issue of Wired (cheap 2nd hand version) - a popular tech magazine that keeps up the latest in web trends.

One of the great nugget I read was how to increase the number of pageviews of your blog - according to Brian Lam who is editor of Gizmodo. Gizmodo is a very popular online Top 100 Blog that showcases the latest  upcoming gadgets.

…read more about 6 Ways To Increase Your Pageviews According To Gizmodo Editor

All website owners want high search engine rankings to list their site on top of search engines search result pages. There are hundreds of sources providing information about search engine optimization to drive more site traffic. Google has just made it simpler to master these fundamental SEO techniques. Finally no more guesswork and exact confirmation on what Google looks out for!

…read more about Download the Official Google SEO Starter Guide PDF