List Building with a Traffic Generating Blog – Part 2

This is part 2 of the List Building with a Traffic Generating Blog series, and it is the final part. Basically, I’ll be covering a few more tips about having a blog that gets more traffic to your squeeze page. So listen up.

When writing blog posts, make sure the title to each post has your main keyword in it. Put it as close to the front of the title as possible without making it look too silly. In addition, include your keyword a couple of times in the article, but don’t make it unnatural sounding. Also use synonyms and other related words as well so as not to appear to be keyword stuffing, which is heavily frowned upon by Google.

Google has something called “page rank”, which is Google’s way of determining the authority of a particular page. A high page rank often means a higher ranking in the search engines, which leads to more traffic. Things considered are whether your keywords are appropriate for your content, number of backlinks, how often you update your site, and many other things. High page rank will also attract more blog comments, which will lead to more content, more authority, and more traffic. Just be sure to watch out for spam comments. That is one of the bad things about having a high ranking blog. But I’m sure we will all happily deal with the nuisance of spam blog comments if it means that we have a popular blog with tons of traffic. I know I will.

Also, something to keep in mind when writing blog content is that search engines don’t like duplicate content. So if you have a blog article and you submit the same article to tons of article directories, you have a potential problem. Why? Because the search engines don’t want the same content showing up over and over again in the first page, so the highest ranking site typically gets credit for that article on the first page, and that site might not be yours. So it helps to change your blog articles enough when you submit them to directories so that they don’t show up as duplicate content.

One of the best things about blogs is that the search engine spiders love them. They’re easy for spiders to navigate because they’re primarily text in most cases. There’s not a lot of code to stop the spiders and send them to another site. So, blog pages are indexed quickly, and each post is considered to be one page. Therefore, the more you post to your blog, the greater the number of pages. The more pages you have, the higher your page rank will be, and the higher your blog will rise in the search engine results. That means traffic.

Try to make sure your posts have a call to action to entice people to click and visit your squeeze page. Also, make the anchor text a keyword you want to rank for.

These are just a few tips to get you in the right direction in blogging for traffic. Follow these tips, and be sure to post as often as possible, and you’ll see your traffic grow and your list building efforts will be benefited greatly.

For a complete overview of list building, visit List Money Blueprint.

List Building with a Traffic Generating Blog

Stage one of the list building process is having a squeeze page up and ready to get subscribers. The second, and most important part is to get web traffic to your squeeze page. There are tons of traffic generation techniques. One of the most effective is blogging, which is the topic I’ll discuss today.

One thing that makes people uneasy about blogging is that it requires a lot of writing, and many people don’t think they can write. Well, lucky for you, you don’t have to be a great writer to start a blog. If you can speak in coherent sentences, you’re fine. Just write the way you speak. Don’t worry about using elegant language or big vocabulary words. Just be yourself in your writing and you’ll be fine, even if you writing skills aren’t high level. People will appreciate the authenticity and it makes you appear more down to earth and approachable.

Also, if you are blogging about a topic that people are passionate about, they will read your blog based on your passion and knowledge of the topic. So if you know what you are talking about, then readers will read what you have to say and they will subscribe to your list. So put that limiting belief that you need to be an excellent writer aside. There are bloggers who speak English as a second or third language who make thousands of dollars a month and even more than that blogging.

First, be sure that the keywords for your blog get enough traffic each month to justify your time. So do extensive keyword research before you set up your blog and squeeze page to make sure the market is healthy.

Another issue people have is finding content for your blog. The more content you write, the more traffic you will get over time, because the search engines love regularly updated content. So this is a crucial issue. What did we do when we wanted to find information about a topic before the Internet was around? We went to bookstores and libraries. Lucky for us (at least for the time being), bookstores and libraries are still around. So if you want to find content for your blog, become knowledgeable about the topic of your blog. Get books, magazines, visit museums, etc. Do anything and go anywhere where you can learn more about the topic of your blog. If you are going to blog regularly about a topic, you need to become knowledgeable, and eventually an expert. So get started and you will have all of the content that you need.

In addition to using your own head, there are other options for content such as private label rights products and article directories. Also, you can feature a post from a guest blogger.

If you really don’t want to write, you can just hire the job out to someone else. You can get articles written for about $10, more or less depending on the level of quality that you want. Be careful about paying too little for articles, because you get what you pay for. If at all possible, get a writer who is already familiar with your niche.

These are some of the key techniques to get more traffic to your blog, which will result in more squeeze page traffic as well for your list building efforts. Check out the next post for a continuation of this topic.

List Building by Copying Big List Marketers

It’s no big secret that building an opt-in email list is one of the most critical things you can do online in order to be successful. So, how can you build your list? By using the same strategies, tools and resources that other successful list builders use! So, do your research. Find folks within your industry who have large opt-in lists and see how they built them. I mean go behind the scenes and see exactly what they are doing to build their lists.

Are they using a popup window to capture leads?

Do they offer incentives to anyone joining their lists?

Are they participating in any ezine ad swaps to build their lists?

How many different places at their website can you find references to joining their lists? What are they — how are they used?

Do they use a javascript alert window to capture email addresses?

Do they have a form for subscribing? If so, where?

Are they buying subscribers from a co-registration service?

Basically, you want to look at your competition and see how they are building their lists. If you find someone who has a large list, then follow their model. Do what they do (as long as it is legal and moral, needless to say) and you should see similar results. And don’t be afraid to contact them and ask. Say something like this:

“Hey Mr. Big Time Guru so and so, I’ve noticed that you have a super successful ezine with over 25,000 subscribers. I’m just getting started. Can you let me know what you’ve done to build your list so successfully?”

Use the knowledge of others to your benefit. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Why Begin List Building and How Do I Start?

When people are new to Internet marketing, they often get started in the wrong direction. Sometimes, it’s the promises made of untold wealth and freedom that catches them and they wind up in a dead-end program where only the founders make any real cash. Or, they get caught up in the hours of clicking it takes to advertise on traffic exchanges which for the most part, aren’t very effective. But it’s hard to break away from the excitement and from what you’ve been told. So, if you’re one of those Internet marketing people, it’s time you realized the most important part of any Internet marketing business. If you want to succeed, build an email opt-in list.

Building a list is the most important job any Internet marketing person has. Without a list, you’re just another random person out there trying to sell something. People are sure you’re out to cheat them, and it’s hard to sell anything at all. People don’t know you, and if they can’t trust you, you won’t make much money.

You can’t ignore list building, and it should have been your first priority when you moved into the Internet marketing world. But many of us put it off and don’t give it the attention we should. We are short sighted and want immediate profits by selling, when all along an email address is a commodity more valuable than one sale, because with it you can make multiple sales to the same person.

Now that you realize the importance of having a list, the first step after deciding your niche is to buy a domain name. It should be a name that’s easy to remember and that fits your niche. For example, if you’re selling natural perfumes, your domain should have “natural perfumes” in the domain title if possible.

Then, you need a web hosting account. If you’re serious about your Internet marketing business, it’s going to grow and you’re going to need to add more than one domain to your account. So, get an account that has mySQL database availability. That will be important when it’s time to start a blog or add an affiliate program. Look into the future when choosing your hosting account, and also look for reliability. You need your website to be up 99.9% of the time.

Your next step is to get an autoresponder service. The main concern here is deliverability. Will your email arrive at its destination? With spam filters in effect today, if you don’t have a great autoresponder, your email marketing efforts won’t be very effective.

After all of this is in place, you’ll need to build your first squeeze page. But don’t worry. It’s nothing more than a few bullet points, which provide the benefits of your offer, and and opt-in form, which you get from your autoresponder service. Images of yourself or of something you’re giving away in exchange for getting people’s names and email addresses work well, too. When you’re done with this step, you upload the squeeze page, and you’re ready to build your list.

Significant Internet marketing success rests on the size and responsiveness of your list. You need to gather a group of people who know and trust you, and who are grateful for the knowledge you can give them about your niche. When they get a recommendation from you, they’re more likely to follow it. If you follow through with the steps above, you’ll have your list growing in no time. All you have to do is concentrate on sending some traffic to your page. Then, get ready for your Internet marketing to start growing by leaps and bounds.

Email Copy: Four Tips for Compelling Writing

Learning to write effective email copy is essential to your list building success. While you want to provide your list subscribers with valuable information and resources, at the end of the day, the purpose of a list is to profit from it. And if you can’t write email copy effectively, you won’t be selling anything.

Here are four key tips to make your email copy more compelling.

Keep it Short

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make some paragraphs as short as one sentence, and make some sentences as short as one word. Also, each paragraph shouldn’t be more than about 4 or 5 lines. The key is to make your email easy to read with plenty of white space. Long word blocks are intimidating and make a person less likely to read. Also, forget what you learned in English class back in the day, you don’t need to make paragraph breaks based on content.

Don’t be Wordy

Simple enough. Keep things clear and simple. Make sure your message is clear and concise. If your messages are long, just be sure to tighten up your message and make it flow. If you want to be eloquent and wordy, become an English professor. This is marketing, so act accordingly.

Use Action Verbs

Make your sentences more powerful with the liberal use of actions verbs. You want your email to be clear enough for a 7 year old to understand. People get frustrated if they have to spend too much time figuring out what you have to say, so make it easy for them.

Use Compelling Subheadings

Your subheadings should be like mini-headlines. Use them to break up large bodies of text and to bring people back into the body of the letter. Many people will only scan your email, so make the subheads communicate a clear message.

Once you get a subscriber to your list, knowing how to maximize your profit over the long term should be your next concern. Writing effective email copy will enable you to get sales almost on demand, thereby increasing your ability to profit from your list significantly.

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