Web 2.0 is the big buzz in website traffic these days. For
those of you who aren't yet familiar with what Web 2.0 is,
for online marketing purposes, basically it is a shift away
from website design and marketing tactics directed at
search engine rankings and towards designing sites and
using marketing tactics to appeal directly to the intended
end-users. Web 2.0, also called "social marketing" is a
conglomeration of news sharing sites, social networking
sites, content sharing sites, and anything else that allows
direct interaction between people on the internet. It's
really "word of mouth" marketing in the online world.
While most successful websites continue to get a
significant amount of their traffic from search engines,
relying on search engine traffic (generated either through
"organic" placement in search listings or through paid
placements through systems like Google Adwords), can be a
risky and/or expensive proposition. Just because a site is
#1 on Google today doesn't mean it will be tomorrow. In
fact, a slight change in a search engine's algorithm could
take your site from #1 to #100 (or 1000, or 1 million)
overnight, and the majority of your traffic could literally
vanish. If you're relying on paid advertising like
Adwords, you may have noticed that competition for good
keywords is constantly increasing, and therefore the cost
of purchasing good placement for your ads is likewise
rising steadily.
By comparison, sites that get the majority of their traffic
through Web 2.0 techniques are much more stable and
maintain a low overhead. There are a couple of big
advantages of using Web 2.0. First, you generate free
links to your site, and that tends to help your search
engine placements. Second, your site gets direct exposure
to your target market - for free! Why do you want good
search engine placement in the first place? So your target
market will find your site, right? Well Web 2.0 puts your
site in front of your target market AND helps improve your
search engine rankings at the same time!
OK,Web 2.0 sounds good so far, so why isn't everyone doing
it? Well, because there's one small hitch. Marketing your
site effectively with Web2.0 techniques is a lot of work
and is very time consuming. So, if you're looking for easy
money and want the ultimate "get rich quick" system, Web
2.0 marketing is definitely not for you. On the other
hand, if you don't mind working hard consistently for a
year or two to build an authority site that gets
consistently huge traffic and can be monetized any number
of ways for ongoing high profits, Web 2.0 is probably not
only the best way to go, it's rapidly becoming the ONLY way
to go.
To do Web 2.0 effectively, you need to have some resources
and tools at the ready. First and foremost, you'll need a
list of all the social networking sites, social bookmarking
sites, news submission sites, blogs, video sharing sites,
etc. in the niche you are working in. There are various
sources for this information, including searching Google
for key words in your niche, and also searching terms like
"social networking". One of the best sources for this
information that I've found is "The Authority Black Book",
by Jack Humphrey, which is available as a free download
(see my resource box for more information).
Second, although you can of course do everything manually,
using Web 2.0 effectively is time consuming, so you'll
benefit considerably by using whatever tools you can find
to at least partially automate the process of both creating
content to attract prospects in your niche and for
submitting your content links to the various Web 2.0 sites
you want to target. Various tools are available for
speeding up link submission and generating "buzz" for your
content, which increases your popularity on the Web 2.0
sites, increasing your visibility and links to your site,
which ultimately provides SEO benefits. Some of these
tools are competely free, such as Onlywire and
SocialMarker, which allow you to submit a link to any URL
on your site to mutiple sites simultaneously (once you've
set up accounts at all of those sites you are using these
tools to submit to).
By putting in the hard work initially and streamlining the
process of content generation and promotion whenever
possible, you will reach a point where you get strong
traffic to your site on a consistent basis through your Web
2.0 efforts and are no longer subject to the whims of the
search engines.
----------------------------------------------------
George Best maintains several websites on a variety of
topics. To obtain your free download of "The Authority
Black Book" - THE reference for Web 2.0 marketing, visit
http://www.webtwo4u.com .
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