2 Create a Website – The Blog

Rather than jumping on the bandwagon and writing another article flooded with Google Penguin speculations and predictions, I’d rather focus on a strategy to help you loosen your SEO dependency. Today, I want to focus on email marketing. Uh oh… am I losing you already? I say that because my posts on email marketing are [...]

In the early days of WordPress, tag clouds were a very innovative way of revealing the popular tags you used for your posts. There were even some SEO benefits to using them.  Anytime you could create anchor text to link to your content was always a good thing. Today, the value of tag clouds seems [...]

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post about Pinterest, I love the benefits I’m receiving with very little time and effort. You just can’t beat that kind of traffic. I’m a very light Pinterest user and probably use the site less than 30 minutes per month, but continue to receive more and more followers and [...]

If you follow my blog regularly, you already know I never get too excited over the latest social media crazes. However, it’s really hard to ignore a website site that generated notable traffic even before I joined. That’s what happened with my Flat Stomach Exercises site and Pinterest — one of the fastest growing social [...]

Have you ever paid attention to how your WordPress posts perform in the SERPS vs. your pages? I am often asked which is better for SEO, so I decided to create a video revealing my opinions and discussing what has worked best with my newest WordPress website.

If you’re like many Internet Marketers, you have an e-mail list, but you’re not getting the maximum benefit from it.

Perhaps you desire a better open rate, or you’d like to engage your subscribers better.

Well, in this post I want to talk about list engagement.

I thought long and hard about this topic for today. After just telling you to stop relying so much on Google, here I am publishing another article about SEO. Well my timing may be a little off, but after realizing how lazy I’ve been with keyword research, I felt compelled to write this.

The latest Google Panda (algorithm) updates shook the online world like an earthquake. I’ve heard horror stories from massive layoffs to long-time Webmasters/Bloggers having to look for 9 to 5 jobs again. If you think about it, it’s very scary how one algorithm change can negatively impact a site’s revenue in seconds.

One of my pet peeves with some blogs is the lack of static pages, which can make browsing and finding information a complete nightmare. By default, most WordPress themes are designed to display the content newest to oldest and by category. While this organization works for some blogs (news oriented), it’s not ideal for

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know by now that Google officially opened their Google Plus social network to everyone last Thursday. For months, it was an invitation-only kind of party, now everyone’s invited. So the question is… Should you show up? What is Google Plus? For those who don’t know, the [...]

Obviously the short answer is “No.”  Social media may have impacted the way we choose to get updates from our favorite sites, but people still make lots of money from their email lists. Having said that, I personally read email newsletters less and less  — especially ones related to Internet marketing.  It seems that most [...]

Every now and then I’ll get an e-mail from someone who is just getting started with their site.  They are overwhelmed by all the social media sites, tools, etc.  (Who can blame them?) Some are even so turned off by social media, they tell me they want nothing to do with it. Others believe it [...]

Am I the only one getting tired of the social sharing mania?  Really, it’s getting to be too much for me. I know it’s the world we live in now, and as a blogger/webmaster/affiliate marketing I often feel the pressure to keep up when it comes to adding these buttons to my site. So of [...]

This is a guest post by Ana Hoffman. If there’s one thing I learned about learning internet marketing, it’s this – never take a marketer’s point of view without caution (unless of course if it’s Frank Kern or Dean Hunt and the likes that are talking). Take list building for example. Left and right, we’re [...]

You may remember my post last summer about renting a forum on WebsiteBabble.com.  I have been working out all the kinks, terms and details of this sponsorship and I’m ready to offer a free trial to one or two people who fit the ideal profile for sponsorship. I believe this can be an amazing opportunity [...]

With so much noise about backlinks, PageRank and all the other common SEO terms and strategies thrown around these days, sometimes it’s easy to forget about the basics. I was checking my Google Analytics stats last week and viewing various traffic trends, popular pages, etc. One thing I noticed is that a handful of my [...]

This is a guest post by Leo Widrch. Efficient Tweeting is something that took me very long to figure out. I tested many approaches. They ranged from “pure” tweeting where every tweet was spontaneous and I had to spend lots of hours on Twitter. Or to the other extreme, a very automated form of tweeting [...]

I received a message from a new “friend” on Facebook.  Right after I accepted him as a friend, he sent me a message asking me why I don’t upload more pictures to my Facebook page. Actually, I do.  But only my real-life friends and family can see them.  “Friends” who know me from my websites [...]

I received an interesting e-mail the other day from a lady named Carrie.  She asked… I want to create a vBulletin forum.  I already have a pretty active Facebook fan page, so I’m thinking of using that audience to announce and promote a new forum.   Should I stick to my fan page, switch to a [...]

This is a guest post by Mark Collier of Link Building Mastery. Over the last month I have been doing a lot of guest blogging after the release of my first eBook, Link Building Mastery. And I have discovered one major thing… My guest blogging strategy needed some adjusting. I understand the guest blogging credentials, [...]

This is a guest post by Angela Wills of www.MarketersMojo.com My name is Angela Wills and I’m so excited for the opportunity to share some of my own experiences here as a guest blogger.  As I write this post, I currently have an ad running on 2CreateAWebsite.com. What I’d like to do is create a [...]

Google’s most recent algorithm update (A.K.A. Panda) is causing quite the stir in the land of SEO. The main purpose of the update was to remove shallow sites, content farms, and sites overloaded with ads.  According to a recent Wired.com article, it affected roughly 12% of all search results. Even though Google claims this update [...]

This is a guest post by Kiesha Easley of WeBlogBetter.com. I’m a huge fanatic of The Sims game. Okay, that’s an understatement – I admit that at one point I believe I was a tad addicted to the game. I would pop the disk in and vow to spend no more than 30 minutes playing [...]

It may be Valentine’s Day, but I have no love in my heart for FaceBook right now. Sometimes I wish they would just leave things alone.  As soon as we get used to how everything works, they change it up on us. This time they really screwed with fan page owners.  And a big thanks [...]

This is a guest post by Jo Barnes of StartYourBusinessSmartly.com. I have to be completely honest with you. I am brimming with self belief. As an experienced business owner (albeit offline), I have no doubts about my capabilities and am 100% sure I can be successful at anything I turn my hand to. When I [...]

I was perusing through my Twitter stream and noticed a couple of resolutions that involved increasing Twitter follower counts. Of course, it looks impressive to have a bunch of followers, but shouldn’t the real goal be to get more conversions, responses, clicks, etc. from your followers and connect with them? I remember when I first [...]

Over the past 12 years, I’ve watched SEO (search engine optimization) evolve. People often ask me to do an updated video on SEO to talk about what I do differently now.  (My last SEO video was published in 2008.) I hate to disappoint you, but my SEO strategy really hasn’t changed much over the years [...]

Automation can be great for business, as long as it’s used in moderation. Obviously you don’t want to become an impersonal social media robot, but finding the right mix of automation and personal interaction can really improve your productivity and sales. Even though I don’t do a ton of automation myself, I realize it has [...]

I’m probably shooting myself in the foot by writing this, because it could be taken the wrong way.  But I would really like some feedback on this issue. One common Twitter strategy that seems to be growing in popularity is when people @mention someone to let them know they’ve been mentioned in an article they [...]

Exactly two months ago today, Google launched their Google Instant (GI) technology. As you type a keyword phrase into Google’s search box, GI attempts to predict what you want to search for and populates keyword suggestions and results in real time. When GI first launched, many affiliate marketers were in an uproar.  Some claimed Google [...]

This is a guest post by Carletta Sanders of Successful-Homeschooling.com. Don’t overlook contests as a fun and effective way to generate ideas, build content and promote your site. For the past 2 years, I’ve run an annual contest on my website that has resulted in over 1,000 product reviews, increased traffic and higher ranking in [...]

When I first started making money online in the late 90′s, there was no such thing as social media.  My marketing strategy centered around the search engines. I spent my days altering meta tags and on-page keywords trying to climb to the top of sites like Infoseek, Webcrawler, Excite, Lycos, HotBot and AltaVista.  (Memorieeeeees!) The [...]

Your avatar. It’s the little square that appears next to your tweets, FaceBook posts, etc.  It’s your identification for social media online. Someone recently asked me why I never change mine. I simply replied… It’s part of my brand. For the most part, I use the same icon for 2 Create a Website everywhere.  (There [...]

Please Note:  This is one of those posts that can be taken the wrong way if you don’t read carefully and watch my video below.  Please understand that I am not by any means guaranteeing a massive traffic increase.  This is only a suggestion based on common sense and SEO. As you may know, your [...]

Earlier this year, I asked you about your top referral traffic categories (search engines, direct/bookmark traffic, referring sites, etc.) So I thought it would be cool to see what specific sites send you the most traffic. My top 5 traffic sources in the past month were… 1) 2CreateAWebSite.com 2) YouTube.com (From my two channels combined) [...]

For months, I’ve been toying with the idea of letting people rent a sub forum to promote/announce their sites/services on WebsiteBabble.com. Now that the forum has been upgraded to the new platform (vBulletin 4.0), I am almost ready to move to the next step. But first, I need some feedback from you. Who Can Rent [...]

This is a guest post by Ann Smarty of MyBlogGuest.com. It’s Part 2 of last week’s post, The Step-by-Step Guide to Guest Blogging. Last week, Ann provided outstanding advice for those who want to become successful, active guest bloggers. This week’s post will focus on blog owners and highlight ways to make your blog more [...]

This is a guest post by Ann Smarty of MyBlogGuest.com. Lisa’s Note: This is a very solid article by Ann, so I hope you take the time to absorb her information.  Her strategy for guest blogging is superb, and it’s why she’s been featured on so many high-profile blogs. If you’ve been submitting guest posts [...]

This is a guest post by David Tiefenthaler of tips4running.com. Hello fellow website builders. Here is by far the best advice I can give anyone who wants to increase their traffic and visibility. Interview people! My website was growing ever so slowly until I started interviewing people for my website www.tips4running.com. Now my traffic has [...]

This is a guest post by Jane Martin of torontoshopoholic.com. A while back Lisa posted about her experience selling advertising through the OIOpublisher marketplace. I am also using OIOpublisher, but the marketplace hasn’t been a source of ad sales for my site, torontoshopoholic.com. Not all of us have a recognizable brand like Lisa or a [...]

One of the most popular ways to promote your site is through social networking. However, many of you are taking the “social” part out of the equation because you are relying too heavily on automation. By automation I mean using various online tools and apps that automatically post content to multiple social networking sites at [...]

If you’ve been involved in affiliate marketing or AdSense for at least a year, you’ve probably received at least one free Google AdWords credit. For those who don’t know, Google AdWords is a pay per click program (PPC) that allows you to bid on keywords, and you only pay when your site gets a visit [...]

I receive traffic from numerous sources; from my e-books to YouTube, social networking sites you name it. But when I look at my traffic stats and review my top two sources, they have been the same for many years… 1) search engines 2) bookmark traffic Of course, the percentage of traffic I receive from these [...]

There are certain techniques that I put into the worthless, “busy work” category… 1) Spending several hours per day on directory submissions 2) Re-writing other people’s content and submitting them to other sites 3) Posting worthless (“Great Post!”) comments on people’s blogs Be careful of spending too much time on empty promotional techniques.  Measure the [...]

A gentleman named Stephan asked me last week… Lisa, how much money do you make from Twitter? My short answer… Nothing. However, if I were to answer that question more indirectly, I’m sure it would be greater than that. Here’s what I mean. I promote my sites a lot of different ways online (through my [...]

A Twitter user, (we’ll call her Jane Doe), sent me an email last week because she doesn’t understand why she receives very few @replies and RT’s (retweets) on Twitter. Just for the record, she is using Twitter to promote her craft related blog by networking with other people in her niche and announcing her blog [...]

The Self Promoter Some people join Twitter and have absolutely no intention of providing value or developing meaningful relationships. They look for popular users and blast them with @replies about their own products and services. I checked out one guy’s profile and he was doing nothing but sending self promotional @replies to me, Oprah and [...]

There’s been a lot of buzz about the value of directory submissions on my forum, so I thought I’d do a video that gives my opinion on this topic. If you’re reading this post via an RSS reader or email, click this link to view the video on my blog. Here’s the link to Matt [...]

Even though I’ve had a Twitter account for a while, I didn’t become active until about 6 months ago.  Here are a few things I’ve learned. Keep in mind, many of these tips are only relevant if you use Twitter for site or blog promotion. 1. Your Last 20 Tweets Say a Lot! When someone [...]

I was reading, Darren Rowse’s blog, TwiTip.com, and came across an article that struck a chord with me. It was written by Skellie of Skelliewag.org. The article is called How to Follow Everyone Back on Twitter Without Ruining Your Experience. Skellie suggested that you follow everyone who follows you in order to grow your number [...]

I have really grown to love Twitter in the last two months. I must admit, when a friend told me about it a few years ago, I thought it was kind of dumb. But now I see the value of it from a marketing/researching/networking standpoint. At first, I only used it to announce my blog [...]

One of the biggest challenges I face with teaching people how to market their sites online is the constant comparing.  People want to know exactly what I did to draw in so much traffic over the years because they are convinced if they do the same, they’ll have the same (or similar) results. One guy [...]

In the last site review I mentioned how offering e-books from my site has really helped boost my traffic and income over the years. So I thought I’d create a video showing you how simple it is to create an e-book using Adobe Acrobat Professional. Adobe Acrobat is quite expensive and may not be in [...]

JohnnyInArizona is having dinner Helen12345 just got a traffic ticket KristenWilliams is late for work If you’re a Twitter member, these are the kinds of updates you might see when you login to your account. Ahhh yes, good ole’ Twitter — the official place to spy on people you know (or don’t know) 24 hours [...]

What is your ritual for creating a web page to rank high in the search engines?  Do you spend time counting the keywords in your meta tags? Do you obsess over the number of outbound links you have, thinking they might be hurting you in some way?  Do you copy your competitor’s meta tags hoping [...]

Do you spend an excessive amount of time checking your Alexa rank? Do you often wonder how long it will take your PageRank to go up to the next number? Are you stuck in the site brainstorming phase until you find the the perfect supply/demand combination in the AdWords Keyword Tool and WordTracker? If you [...]

Sometimes it’s the little things you do that help build loyalty, and I’ve made a vow to come up with more ways to reward my visitors — particularly the ones who continue to add value to my blog and forum. With the emergence of the social networking scene, developing connections and acknowledging regular contributors is [...]

I’ve always been a stat junky. I love checking my RSS feed subscriber numbers, my AWeber subscriber stats, Google Analytics account, etc. multiple times per day. I’ll admit, I might need therapy. However, if you really take some time analyze your traffic stats and even stats from other sites (I’ll explain that part in a [...]

When you’re first starting a website, it can be tempting to seek new advertisers, build a community (forum) and add other features/additions that can generate revenue and make your site look appealing. The problem is, if you don’t have enough traffic, your site will end up looking vacant, smallish and unimportant. So I thought I’d [...]

I just logged into my YouTube account today and noticed my videos have handy little “Add to MySpace and Facebook” buttons below them. Now anyone who likes your mini flick can post it on two of the most popular social networking sites with greater ease. I’ve toyed with using another video hosting service because I’d [...]

They’re everywhere… Blog posts, forum questions, emails, website articles, etc… all about improving your PageRank. Google is clearly the front runner in driving free, targeted website traffic, so everyone wants their site to rank well in any measuring tool Google produces. First of all, I’ve seen no indication that your PageRank affects the amount of [...]

If Google suddenly dropped your site for good what would happen to your online income? For many Webmasters, it would be a total disaster. If you’ve been around long enough to remember the infamous “Florida Update” of November 2003 then you heard the cry around the Net when thousands of Webmasters lost their Google rankings. [...]

Getting ranked #1 in Google for those heavily searched, relevant keywords is the dream of every Webmaster. And if you’ve been around for a while, you know that task is not as easy as it once was. Years ago you could stuff keywords, hide content in your background and perform all kinds of tricks to [...]

Sad but true, many Webmasters still stuff the keyword meta tag and stress over how many (or which) words to use. Most search engines don’t even read this tag anymore so it certainly does nothing for your search engine rank (at least for the search engines that really count.) I know some people will disagree, [...]

I just got serious about blogging in December of 2007. I had a blog on Blogger.com for 2 years, but rarely updated it. Then in November of 2007, I installed Feedburner and discovered I had 430+ subscribers. I was shocked due to the fact I hardly ever blogged. I didn’t want to lose those subscribers [...]

If you’ve been marketing online for any length of time, no doubt you’ve read articles that emphasize the importance of collecting email addresses. Well, I’ve taken that a step further by using an autoresponder, which is a script that automatically sends emails at intervals specified by the user. I’ve been using AWeber’s autoresponder on my [...]

People often stress over domain name choice because they worry if they choose a certain name, they’ll only be found for the keywords in that domain and nothing else. While the domain name is important for branding, letting people know what your site is about etc., don’t stress over getting every “important” keyword in the [...]

I saw a comment on another blog from a new Webmaster who was frustrated about his lack of traffic. He recently submitted a sitemap to Google and Yahoo and wondered why his traffic hadn’t increased. So he titled his blog comment, “Sitemaps Don’t Increase Traffic!”. There’s a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to sitemaps. [...]

Building traffic to a site or blog is an ongoing process that takes time. And over the past 10 years, I’ve learned it’s about the sum of the little tasks you do often. For example, you may not think much of that 3-paragraph blog post you wrote this morning, but two years from now that [...]

If you haven’t tapped into the video world, you may want to consider it. Not only does video help build credibility for your site, it builds traffic too. Just like a website on Google.com, you can optimize your video for YouTube searches, and drive more targeted traffic to your video. Learn how to turn this [...]

You know about search engine submitting, blogging and writing/submitting articles for other sites. So what do you do when you’ve done all these things and still can’t get enough traffic? The video below discusses topics which often get overlooked when people create websites. While some of it may seem like common sense to you, why [...]

In case you don’t know, Yahoo! Answers is a free Q&A community that allows people to ask and answer questions on virtually any topic. I was doing a backlink check on Yahoo the other day. (A backlink check is a way to see how many other sites link to you. Go to Yahoo.com and type [...]

There’s a nifty little tool out called “Page Strength” and it takes Google’s PageRank to a new level. It offers more insight into how valuable, important and popular a site or page is as compared to others on the web. Check it out here.

If you are trying to build traffic to your website, giving away a free item that your audience values can be an excellent way to generate visitor loyalty. It’s even better if you can give away something on a regular basis. Just make sure if you do decide to do this, your gift is relevant [...]

Here’s a book I wrote on traffic building. It’s called “20 Ways to Build Traffic to Your Site”. In this eBook, I discuss various methods (most of which I still use) that will help bring in more visits to your website. I’ll admit some of the tips are pretty elementary if you’ve been marketing on [...]

If you want your search engine traffic to grow, you MUST build an effective link exchange campaign. And I’m not just talking about building a “Links” page where you swap links with other webmasters. Those are not as effective anymore. Search engines are starting to ignore those kinds of links pages because they realize webmasters [...]