Alice is a long-time business acquaintance turned friend.

She’s in the PLR business as well, and specializes in -> Step-by-Step PLR Bundles with Photos and Screenshots but she has so much more, too.

Today she's here to answer questions about how to use your PLR Articles to generate traffic.

Here's Alice.

Using PLR Articles to Get Traffic

by Alice Seba

QUESTION 1:  Is rewriting PLR necessary in order to get traffic from it?

No, definitely not.

I actually find it a little bit bizarre that people spend their hard-earned money on some quality PLR content and then either spend a lot of time or even more money to have it completely rewritten.  Not only does rewriting suck up a lot of resources (time or money), it also diminishes the quality of the content you paid for in the first place. A sentence by sentence rewrite (which is what most people do) will rarely come out better than the original content.

And all that aside, it’s just not necessary.

I do agree that in most cases, publishing PLR content “as is” is not your best strategy, but there are still things you can do to customize PLR and make it stand out from everyone else…without rewriting everything.

Here are a few things can do:

• Add your point of view to the content. Your readers are most interested in what you think about a subject, so let them know.
• Insert examples and case studies. Your readers will absorb your content better if it includes examples they can relate to or real-life case studies.
• Add statistics, facts and quotations. All these types of content add credibility to your content and a great quotation gives them something to ponder.
• Add images, video and other visual elements. These type of additions not only capture your visitors eye, they also enrich the experience and make your content more meaningful.
• Put together a worksheet, graph, spreadsheet or anything that helps your reader understand or use the information more effectively.
• Add links to relevant products and resources.  Part of being a great source of information is providing your readers with further help they need…and you can even attach your affiliate link to it.

Now you don’t need to do each one of these things for each piece of content and it’s true that these customizations take time. However, these customizations add tremendous VALUE to your content and make it possible to draw in more traffic through word of mouth, social sharing and more. When you put all your efforts into rewriting, at best you come up with a comparable article to the one you started with and at worst, you end up with an inferior version…so where do you think you should spend your time?

QUESTION 2: Can I buy PLR that is already optimized for search engines?

Now and then you’ll come across a PLR seller that claims their content is optimized for search engines. Unfortunately, SEO-optimized PLR is a fairy tale. Unless the seller is selling to one person only (YOU), you cannot publish that content and expect a flood of search engine traffic.

But please understand, I’m not sure suggesting that if someone says the content is optimized it’s not quality content. It’s possible that a very good writer had the mistaken notion that they could optimize one piece of content and then let a bunch of people publish it as is for search engine rankings. So don’t dismiss “optimized” content out of hand, but do realize that if you want search traffic, you have to do your own optimization.

Think about it. If 30 people publish the exact same article targeting the phrase, “pink poodle bows,” do you think that all 30 people will get to the top of the Google listings? No..it’s pretty much impossible.

What you need to do instead is conduct your own keyword research and optimize for a keyword phrase you choose. You can use tools like wordtracker.com or even Google’s keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool. If you use WordPress, a plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast can help you more easily optimize your posts.

If you need a little SEO checklist, here’s a short version of things you should be doing:

• Look for a highly targeted keyword phrase that will attract the type of traffic you’re looking for the content piece. Look for a specific phrase that has a decent amount of searches, but isn’t too competitive.

Once you have your phrase, you can include it in the following places:

• Title tag and headline for your article.
• Subheadlines
• Body text of your article
• In ALT tags on your images
• In the description tag

…to mention a few things, but do be natural. Over-optimizing is even worse than not optimizing at all. Be descriptive and present great quality to your readers and you’ll do well. And don’t forget your content has to be out there for search engines think it’s valuable. Links coming to your website and shares on social media sites all go toward improving your search engine rankings.

QUESTION 3:  What’s the most important thing people should focus on when it comes to growing traffic through PLR?

The focus should always be on quality first, but even if you have the best content in the world and do nothing to get it out there, it’s not going to be worth your while.

So, to simplify the answer, I’d say focus on quality first. Then promote the heck out of your quality.

Here are some ideas to help you with those two things…

Quality: Only purchase good PLR. Don’t publish something you wouldn’t be proud of. Add some personality to your content by adding examples, case studies, images and other things that will make your content stand out. Listen to feedback from your readers and pay attention to what they like. And of course, always publish more of what they like.

Promotion: Unless you have a website that has a ton of subscribers and you’re already a Google-darling, you have to bust your butt to get your content seen. The nice thing about using PLR is that it saves you a ton of time on the creation side of things, so you can focus on the promotion. Always publish your content to an RSS feed, share it with your mailing list and social media followers and link to your new content from other relevant content. Those are just a few of the many things you should do on a regular basis. As your following grows, the less active work you have do to promote your content, but when you’re just starting to grow…you have to work it and work it hard.

PLR really does provide website owners with a headstart on growing their audiences. Use that content wisely, enhance it and tell everyone about it.

Learn How to Profit from the PLR Content Sitting on your Hard-Drive:

Alice Seba and Melody Spier offer an incredible education opportunity to help you us PLR to grow your business.

If you want to learn how to publish PLR more quickly, build your list, grow your traffic and even sell more products, definitely check it out:
Click here to Learn How to Profit from your PLR.

These ladies have put together detailed tutorials and they’ll even help you each step of the way. Sign up by March 28 and you’ll be invited to 2 bonus group coaching sessions AND you can even knock $10 of your tuition by using the following coupon code…

Coupon Code: nicolesfriends
Discount: $10 off
Expiry: Thursday, March 28, 2013

Get in soon, so you can get the additional savings and group coaching opportunities. It’s well worth it.

It's Your Turn.

What questions do you have about using PLR to get traffic to your sites?  Suggestions? Frustrations?

Let us have it.

I'll be back with more soon.

Warmly,
Nicole

Recommended High Quality PLR:

• Alice's DIY PLR – Grab it here
• EasyPLR – by Nicole

PS. Here's a video that I recorded awhile back about how to customize your PLR for your blog:

As you can see, Alice and I are pretty much in agreement. I hope you enjoy it.

No, I won't be showing the undies from Expert Marketers (although that would certainly be funny) – but I will be grabbing my friends who I respect and admire and will be asking them to give brief replies to your burning questions about internet marketing and online business success. (Get it? Briefs? Yes, I am easily amused.)

I've been wanting to do this series for some time, and, thankfully, I have a great Virtual Assistant who is helping me to put this together or it may never have gotten done.

So, let's jump in. Today's topic is Link Building, specifically how to get one-way incoming links to your website or blog.

If you recall, I've posted a few blog posts about Link Building recently that you can go back and review if you're wondering what all the fuss is about Link Building and why on earth it's important.

• What is Link Building? Into for Beginners.
• What to do Before You Begin Link Building.
• Link Building FAQ: Questions and Answers

The question I asked our experts today is:

“What is your favorite method for building incoming links
to your website or blog? Why?”

I only asked people who I know are actively link-building. Of course, I have plenty of other friends who use other methods of generating traffic, but this blog post is about one-way link building so these are the experts I chose to ask along with their replies.

Willie Crawford of SellMoreBigTicket.com says:

My favorite method is writing and distributing articles.  I've written over 1500.

The reason is that not only do I get lots of inbound links from some fairly high page-ranked sites, but the articles also actually bring me in visitors who have read my material and arrive at my site pre-sold on me.

Lynn Terry of ClickNewz.com says:

My favorite method of link-building is to get featured on blogs that reach my market. There are a couple of ways you can do that. You can write guests posts for those blogs, or offer to let the blogger interview you. Text interviews are best for creating relevant content to go along with your backlink, but audio interviews with a description and live link work well too.

With blog interviews, I email the blog owner and introduce myself (with credentials, basically selling myself as a good match for their audience). I give them the option to reply with 3-5 questions (or more if they like) on a topic related to their current theme. I then reply with the answers, creating a very nice blog post for them to publish.

If you have an affiliate program, you can offer to let them sign up as an affiliate so that they can earn commissions on the interview as well.

This is one of my favorite methods for 2 reasons:

1) Bloggers need content. It's the one thing they are constantly searching for, or working on. You can step in and help them out, and help yourself out at the same time.

2) This is one of the BEST types of inbound links you can possibly get. You have control over the topic, so you get a relevant backlink from a related page. And you control the link, meaning you can deep link to an internal page on your site or blog – and use specific Anchor Text with that link.

Plus… it's easy!

The trick is to make it highly relevant to their current theme of content, or to expand on a topic they recently blogged about. You just want to find a good tie-in that makes sense both for the blogger and for their readers.

Mark Mason of MasonWorld.com says:

Nicole — getting links is all about a tradeoff between effort, quality and quality.  Often, especially when people are just starting out, they will make the mistake of spending lots of time (or money) on low quality links.

For me, time is my most precious resource.  So, when I go after a link my efforts need to be highly leveraged.  That means that for my investment of time, I need to get lots of links or really great (powerful links).  The answer almost always lies in quality content.

For example, I can write one piece of quality content and syndicate it to multiple high quality article directories using automated tools.  This get's me multiple quality backlinks in addition to whatever click-through traffic the article generates.

Or, I can write a great article for a guest response post on a high traffic blog like NicoleOnTheNet.com in exchange for a backlink from the article.  That get's me a quality backlink and clickthrough traffic as well.

Either way, the key is great content out on the internet pointing back to my site.

Susanne Myers of EasyLinkLove.com says:

My favorite way to build links is to create what I like to call a link magnet. It’s a piece of REALLY GOOD content that you post freely on your website. This could be a report, an article, a list, even an audio file or a video. You want to give away some of your favorite stuff here.

Start by thinking about what your target audience really wants. You can also do some research by asking your current readers and visitors or using sites like Yahoo answer or forums in your market to get a feel for what your audience wants.

Spend some time creating exceptional content and post it to your site. Do some keyword research and optimize the page for those keywords so you can build some free search engine. Start promoting the content by blogging about it, mentioning it on twitter and other social media outlets. Tell our lists about it and always invite people to share the link to the content.

Monetize your link magnet by adding a link somewhere toward the end of the content for one of your products. It’s important not to be pushy here or people will be less likely to link to it.

Here are a few examples of good link magnets:

$40 Emergency Menu
This is on one of my own sites. The basic idea is a low cost emergency menu that people can turn to when grocery money is extremely low.

Online Success Podcasts by Nicole Dean
Nicole has recorded several hour long interviews with various experts in the Internet Marketing Field. She focuses on delivering high quality content and does an amazing job coaxing all kinds of useful information from her guests.

Quick Extra Tip –

I always like to get the most mileage out of everything I do, especially link building. Don’t do this just for the sake of building links, take it a step further and reap even more rewards. An easy way to do this is to keep tabs on who is linking to this new page. Contact the owners of some of the best sites and see if you can collaborate even further.

And, here's my 2 cents. I wrote this before reading the others just to make sure I wouldn't let their ideas sway mine.

Nicole Dean of .. well, here! .. says:

My favorite method of building incoming links is simply sharing content. I know, it's kind of a cheater answer, but let me finish here and you'll see what I mean.

All of the most effective methods, in my opinion, revolve around sharing your own expertise. Let me demonstrate…

-> Article Marketing is simply sharing content.

-> Guest Blogging (or even hosting a kick-butt Blog Tour) is sharing content.

-> Video marketing (recording and posting videos to sites like YouTube) – again, is nothing more than sharing content.

-> Podcasts (being a guest on other people's podcasts) – is simply sharing your expertise, again.

-> Doing quick interviews like this one – you'll notice all of my experts are receiving links to their sites. Badda bing, badda boom! I'll bet those are some of the easiest links they've gotten.

-> And, blog commenting works, too. Blog commenting means just leaving comments on blog posts like this one. (Hint, hint.) Although I honestly believe that it's not the most effective method of generating incoming links, at least not compared to the methods outlined above, it's still worth doing.

Of course, you can tie in social media and link to all of these sites where you've got your content to really boost your effectiveness. But, it all starts by doing what you're already doing as a blogger – sharing your thoughts — just doing it on other websites.

In fact, that's one of the biggest mistakes that I see online business owners make is keeping all of their content on their own sites and not sharing it on others.

How Can You Learn More about How to Get One-Way Links?

Again – Susanne is the queen link builder. If you want to learn the basics of Link Building, again, here’s here course  -> Beginner Link Building Course

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

PS. Please post your favorite method for building incoming links to your site below. Thank you!

I've mentioned it before and I'll say it again… I love Web Traffic. It's a goooood thing.  And, that's what we're going to talk about today. Specifically traffic from Google.

In fact, Google sends my websites a nice bit of traffic.  Here are my stats from last year for two of my niche websites. (Not this blog.  They are two of my other sites.)

This shows how many web visitors that Google sent to each site during 2009.

and

As you can see, Google sent each of these sites over 300,000 visitors. Like I said, web traffic is a goooood thing.

How on earth do I get Google (and Yahoo and Bing) to send me hundreds of thousands of web visitors each year? Simple. Marketing. Specifically link building… which we'll talk about in just a minute.

Now, you guys know me well enough by now to know that I preach quality over quantity – and building a business that lasts the test of time. So, if you're looking for automated, spammy link-building tips today, you'll be sorely disappointed.

However, if you'd like to learn more about Link Building the right way, I've got some Link Building FAQs for you. I invited my good friend, Susanne Myers, here again to chat – and this time, I'll add my thoughts, too.

And, as a reminder, Susanne teaches a course in Beginner Link Building if you'd like to learn more about this topic.

Just click here to get started -> Beginner Link Building Course

On to the Link Building FAQs…

First, What Is Link Building?

Susanne says: Link building is the process of creating (one way or another) links on other pages across the internet that point back to pages of your own websites.

Me: Link building is getting other websites to link to your website. For example, if you like this blog post, you are free to link to it from your blog. Talk about it in a blog post and link back to it. See how easy that is?

Why Is Link Building Important?
Susanne says: Links help other people and search engines find your site. In other words, links are one of the most important things to get traffic.

Me: Link building is important for two reasons.

1. Sites like Google, Yahoo, and Bing look at how many other websites link to your site to determine how valuable and important your site is. So, for instance, a site like WebMD.com or CNN.com that is informative and is considered an authority site has tons and tons of incoming links to it. While you don't have to compete with those sites, I use it as an example to show that valuable sites get linked to.
2. The other main reason that link building is important is that having links on other websites gives you a much better chance at having people run across the links and click through them to your website. So, it's not just about the search engines. It's about placing links on sites where real people read the info and will click through to learn more about what you offer.

The combination of the two is extremely powerful. And, if you do it right, it's unstoppable traffic.

How Many Links Do I Need To Get?
Susanne says: That really depends.

My goals for building links are always to:

1. Get traffic directly from the link. (From people clicking on my link.)
2. Move up in the search engines for my keyphrase for that particular page.

The more links and the higher quality the links you are building the better. For SEO purposes, keep building links until you are #1 on google for your search terms and for traffic, just take advantage of any and all link opportunities.

Me: It's an ongoing process. I recommend that you do something “Marketing-related” every single day to get links to your website… forever.

What Are The Best Ways To Get Links?
Susanne says: I have two different ways of getting links. Some I actively create and others that are generated on auto pilot. Let me give you a few examples for each.

Active Link Building

• Write and submit articles to article directories
• Write and submit articles to quality sites in your niche
• Write guest posts for popular blogs in your market place
• Participate in forums in your niche linking back where applicable and in your forum signature line. (Make sure you comply with forum rules before posting any links).
• Leave valuable blog comments on blogs in your niche.

Passive Link Building

• Create a “Link To Me” Page that explains that it is ok to link to any page on your site and invites readers to grab links and buttons with simple copy and paste code that they can add to their own pages.
• Add a Share This button to your blog. It will allow people to bookmark and email your link. There are several wordpress plugins out there that will do this and automate the process of using social bookmarking sites, twitter, facebook etc.
• Write great content that people want to link to. Answer most commonly asked questions, create a list of resources, write a report or record a video. Create something of value and share it with your readers letting them know that it’s ok to link to this page.

Me: I love Susanne's answer. The only things I'd recommend in addition are Video Marketing and doing a lot of interviews on other people's sites — like this one.

Can I Just Buy Links?
Susanne says: Yes, you can, but it’s not a good idea. In the eyes of the search engines buying links on a site is cheating and they are constantly working on finding those links and punishing the sites that are involved in link buying schemes. In other words, if you value your site and your traffic, just don’t do it.

You can however outsource a lot of link building tasks. This basically means that you pay someone else to go out and post valuable comments on blogs, participate in forums or hire a writer to ghost write blog posts and articles for you.

Me: I'm with Susanne on this one. While there are shortcuts, I don't recommend purchasing links, especially when marketing is FUN! (Well, if you're geeky like me, it is.)

How Can I Learn More about Link Building?

Again – Susanne is the queen link builder. If you want to learn the basics of Link Building, again, here's here course  -> Beginner Link Building Course

I hope this was helpful!

Please let us know if you have additional questions by commenting below. We're happy to keep answering questions as long as you keep asking.

Have a great day!

Warmly,
Nicole

Now, yes, one of the benefits of article marketing IS an increase in incoming links. I don't debate that.

HOWEVER (Yes, here's my big BUT) …

Here is my reply.

I do think that one of the things that isn't being discussed enough is quality vs. quantity. I'd much rather have my article picked up and published on popular sites and/or in an ezine sent to 50,000 people than to write junk articles to trick the search engines.

Therefore, I think those who spend the extra time to write quality will see more benefits than those who are trying to game the system. Five *really* good articles can get you more leverage on big-time sites and ezines than 50 junk ones sent just to the directories. Really good articles can also get you interviews and open doors to JVs. Junk will not.

I think it comes back to the question whether you're building a business for the long haul or not.

Please share your thoughts. Are you writing for quantity or quality?

Nicole

PS. www.EasyArticleMarketing.com is still a great course for learning the benefits of writing QUALITY articles as a method of marketing your website.

That's a pretty loaded question. Yikes.

The first thing you really need to do is figure out how much control you want to have over your website and how technical you are.

Option #1 – Pay someone to create your website.

I create websites for businesses, so this is something I am familiar with. This option is only best if you don't plan to add content to the website after it is created.

OR if you plan to learn how to maintain the site down the road.
Otherwise, you're going to be paying me or whoever your designer is every time you want to make changes. Ouch.

Option #2 – Use a Site Builder.

A lot of moms opt to go with this option. It's easy are pie. The only hard part here is that you pay a higher monthly fee, but it does include hosting so it's your only fee.
Here are the programs I recommend –
http://www.internetbasedfamily.com/?offer=EasySite
Includes a shopping cart. This is as easy as it gets.
and
http://buildit.sitesell.com/startnow9.html
This is the Rolls Royce of site builders. It not only helps you build a website, but it also helps you choose keywords to make it rank well in the Search Engines.

My recommendation? Both companies offer a trial period for free. Sign up for each, log in and play around. You'll quickly discover which is right for you.

Option #3 – Go with a WordPress blog.

It's a simple and easy content management system. If you're not technical, you can pay someone to install it relatively inexpensively, and have a website in the blink of an eye.
I have several Word Press blogs.

HOSTING –

You'll need hosting for each option above except the site builders.

The hosting I use and recommend can be found here –
Web Hosting Reviews
If you are building one or two small sites, the 1.25 per month plan is plenty.
If you plan to build a lot of sites, or store large audio and video files, then I recommend the unlimited plan listed.
I use both.

Whew. Please let me know what additional questions you have about starting a website. I'm happy to get more in depth and cover things like logos, pictures and content in the coming weeks.

Warmly,
Nicole