There are many benefits of reciprocal linking, however the two most prominent to the are: increased, targeted traffic to your website, and a higher ranking in the search engine results. Both of these are integral aspects of search engine optimization (SEO).

A reciprocal link is, essentially, a link exchange in which two parties agree to swap links for mutual benefit. You find a website that shares similar content to yours (a quality link) and then email the webmaster of this website, offering to post a link to his or her site and asking that they reciprocate with a link back to your site.

Reciprocal linking is an important strategy in the generation of traffic and in optimization of your search engine ranking. Link exchanges should be sought as early in the developmental and implementation stages of your site as possible so that, when your site is submitted to the search engines for indexing, the links back to your site will be taken into consideration in the initial page ranking algorithms.

Relevant quality links should continually be sought out, despite claims to the contrary that a website can have too many relevant and quality link backs. Search engine algorithms are not static, changing seemingly daily, and keeping your website optimized is a perpetual task.

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Two of the most popular internet marketing have, up to recently, been PPC (pay per click) and PPS (pay per sale) or PPA (pay per action). However, becoming increasingly popular among online marketers, is PPL (pay per lead) marketing.

Pay per lead marketing is an online marketing model in which an advertiser pays for leads instead of paying per sale or per click. The amount paid out per lead is the CPL or cost per lead.

On the PPL model, a lead is considered an actual signup for information about a product or service, or the collection of demographic information from qualified individuals (highly targeted potential customers). Generally, there is no actual monetary transaction involved in obtaining the lead. A lead can consist of as little information as an email address or it can be a more thorough set of data such as the lead’s email address, mailing address, phone number, age, annual household income, etc. Generally the more information which is collected, the more which is paid per lead.

PPL marketing works, quite simply, in the following manner: You place a PPL advertisement on your website. Visitors to your site who click on the advertisement will be taken to the advertiser’s website. Typically, a free product (such as a newsletter or report) is offered. If the consumer signs up for the free product, the company will obtain the demographic information that they are looking for, you get paid a commission for leading the individual to the merchant’s site. A sale is not required for you to earn money.

For example, a website may give away quotes from the top five auto loan companies. To obtain the quote, a visitor will have to submit certain requested demographic information (name, contact information, income, etc.) Subsequently, the owner of the website could turn around and sell the information as leads to auto loan companies for, say, $5.00-$20.00. Everyone benefits. The owner of the website makes money collecting and selling qualified leads, the auto loan provider makes money off the interest on loans made to qualified applicants, and the consumer is matched with loans commensurate with their particular needs.  

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SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the primary goals of any website owner. Once you’ve designed and published your site, you want to get as much traffic to it as possible. More traffic = more sales = a fatter wallet. Outlined below are five simple steps to take to help your site rank higher in the search engine listings.

1. Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization refers to the process of “tuning” your website so that the words and phrases used on your site, when queried in the search engines, bring in the largest amount of traffic. This one of the most important aspects of optimization as you want to draw in traffic from your target niche, i.e., those seeking out your site’s particular content, products and/or services.

One way to optimize your site with keywords is to place site-specific words into the title of your web document as this will be the first thing someone searching for your content or similar will see. For example, far too often people make the mistake of making the title of their homepage “home.” This is what the search engines will show. It is much wiser to insert site-specific keywords into the title. “Home,” while perhaps accurate, doesn’t draw in potential visitors like a keyword-optimized title would. And more importantly, it does not raise a website’s search engine ranking.

Related to the above, if possible you should also aim to place as many relevant keywords as possible into the domain name itself when you select and register your web address.

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It seems that everyone wants to get their slice of the money to be made on the internet. Problem is though that most people choose the internet marketing niche (if you can really call it that) and then profess to be an expert internet marketer seemingly overnight.

One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen is someone posting a topic in an online forum with a title such as “Help – How Do I Make Money Online?” when they are promoting an ebook in their signature that supposedly shows you how to make money on the internet. I don’t think I need to point out the irony.

What’s even funnier is another person who complained that their sales page wasn’t working. They’d had over 3,000 visitors and only made 2 sales. I checked it out, and there were 6 spelling / grammar mistakes in the main and sub headlines alone. Turns out they were selling a series of ebooks on how to help your child read and write well which included a series of worksheets designed to help with correct grammar usage. Maybe they should have taken their own advice.

There are so many internet marketing experts floating around in cyberspace, however the sad thing is that more than 9 out of 10 of self-proclaimed expert internet marketers are not making money online. Sure there are the big names that profess they make millions and they undoubtedly do but the majority of people selling stuff on how to make money online aren’t making any themselves.

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Is your website getting tons of traffic but little or no sales? If you’re struggling to sell your products online or your sales page isn’t converting as well as you would like, don’t worry, there are things you can do. Here we’ll look at the top 10 things you can do to increase the conversion rate of your sales page in no particular order.

1. Change the headline. The headline is one of the first things people see when they get to your site and undoubtedly the first thing they’ll read. Try and test different headlines, it could increase your conversion rate by 100% - 500% or more. If people are leaving your page because the headline sucks, the rest of the copy and offer doesn’t matter.

2. Hire a professional copyrighter. I know they’re expensive, but they know what they’re doing on levels you probably can’t comprehend, and if your site receives a decent amount of traffic, it’s worth the money – big time.

3. Revise your offer. This can have a tremendous impact in sales. A different price, different packaging (product/services included in package, bonuses etc.) can effectively double, triple or quadruple your conversion rate. Try different packaging and be sure to test your results.

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