Two things I need to tell you about in this post, both of which will have immediate and lasting effects on your search engine rankings… both take minutes to implement.

The first of these things I’ve written up totally in this post, and the second one is at another link. So relax and read all the way through this post now…

#1: If You’re Doing This, Stop NOW

As Andrew Hanson taught in his Unstoppable Affiliate course, one of the more distinct changes in the Google algorithm implemented in the Panda update is the integration of user feedback data as an influence on search results (no, it doesn’t mean people commenting on your blog).

That sounds complicated, but all it means is that now – more than ever – Google is looking at how searchers for YOUR keywords, and visitors to YOUR sites are actually interacting with your site and using that information as a judge of the quality of your site.

It’s no longer just how many keywords are on your page or how many links you’ve got… it’s how users interract with your sites too.

This has a few parts, but let’s talk about just 2. How people react to your search listing, and how they react to your content.

How Users React To Your Search Listing

Say you’re ranking on page 1, position 5, of Google for your chosen keyword. Google has a broad idea of what percentage of the search impressions you should receive if your site is of real interest to users searching for that term.

If your site is getting less than the expected number of clicks, (because your page title and description aren’t enticing enough), Google may decide that you shouldn’t be ranking in that position. If your site is getting higher than the expected number of clicks, Google might determine that your site is highly relevant, and boost it up in the listings. This is a simplified example demonstrating a real principle.

NOW…

Let’s say you… excited about how your sites are progressing… go and search your target keyword every day. You just enter the keyword, check where your site is, then close the window. You do that 3 or 4 times a week.

What YOU’RE doing, is sending the message to Google, 3 or 4 times a week, that NO sites ranking on page 1 for that keyword were enticing. You didn’t click any of them, did you? Right, so that’s what you told Google. You’re telling Google that none of the sites – yours included – should be ranked there.

Post Panda… this WILL harm your rankings.

How Users React With Your Website

Next, Google is looking at what the users do after they click your listing in the engines.

How long do they stay? At what rate do they click the “back” button? How do they leave your website? Via a link you shared with them, or another way?

Generally, the longer they stay the better… the deeper into your site they get (the number of pages) the better, and if they leave following something you’ve recommended, that’s better.

NOW…

Let’s say on those times where you search your target keyword, you click on your own site. You just want to see it’s loading properly… see it’s all still there.

You let it load up – see it’s all good, then click BACK.

BOOM… Bounce Rate adjusted. User left the site in 4 seconds. Site may not be highly relevant to searchers.

That’s what Google sees.

OR…

Let’s say you search for your keyword and and want to check out your competitor’s sites. You click on their links, you spend 10 minutes analyzing all the elements of their page, you check where their affiliate links go to… and more.

Message sent to Google: Competitor site is high quality – kept user on site for a long time – user left via a recommended link. Boost this site up the listings.

YIKES!

Bottom line… and yep, this one’s going in caps…

STOP SEARCHING YOUR OWN KEYWORDS. STOP CLICKING YOUR OWN SEARCH LSTINGS!

If you want to track your rankings, add your site to Google Webmaster Tools (or use another tracking service like Piwik or Clicky). They’ll update you on all rankings for all your keywords every day… simple as that. You’ll see them all plus how they’ve changed, how much traffic they’ve brought, your click through rates and more. And you can check your Webmasters account as often as you like with no penalty.

Ok. Let’s move on.

#2: PR 7 Backlinks For FREE In Under 60 Seconds

This is the coolest SEO trick I’ve seen for a while.

If you want to quickly get PR7 DO FOLLOW backlinks to any site you wish, for FREE (they normally cost a few hundred dollars per month each) then you have to check out the free video at the link below.

And I don’t mean like “on a PR7 site” either, where you get a link from an inner page on a PR7 domain – no, no, no. I mean a real link on a real PR7 page. Just one of these links can skyrocket your rankings.

It’s from Matt Carter, and you have to enter your email to see the free video, but if you’re not on Matt Carter’s list, you should be anyway (he’s one of the best affiliate SEOs on the planet, period.)

Click Here To Watch This Video Now

Trust me, you’ll thank me for this one

Alright, those are two things that will change your rankings, traffic and income today.

A few days ago I asked my email list what topics they’d like me to write about. One of the top requests was on how to drive traffic to their websites. So with that in mind…

Getting Website Traffic

There are both free and paid ways of driving traffic to your sites. Of the paid ways, expenditure runs from a very modest couple of bucks to $100+ per month for subscription based services.

While free methods are fine, their big drawback is the amount of time it takes. The more sites you have, the more time you have to spend building backlinks. For the normal Joe with just a couple of hours free in the evenings to dedicate to websites, that time can be quickly eaten up by all the manual backlinking that has to be done.

That’s where the paid tools start to come in. If you want to save time , or spend less of it building backlinks, you’re going to have to put your hand in your pocket. Time is money as they say.

However, various people have various budgets and while one might be able to afford $100+ per month on a subscription service, another may only have a couple of spare dollars to play with.
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The heart of any website is the content it contains. It’s what draws visitors, keeps them coming back and influences how the search engines (particularly Google) value your site.

A site that’s all bells and whistles with little or no real content will always be outperformed by a more plainly designed site that has content.

In other words, a site that has somthing to offer human visitors is what you need to strive for.

Many newbies to website building make the fundamental mistake of attempting to tailor their sites for the search engines, forgetting about the people who’ll (hopefully) be visiting them. The flaw is in thinking that because you get better rankings in the search engines you’ll get a lot more (human) visitors. Initially, that might be true, but sites that don’t have anything to offer visitors will soon start dropping in the rankings. So you’ll see that initial quick rise in page rankings, a short-lived peak and then a gradual (or sometime sudden) descent through the rankings.

The trick is to design your sites for people, not search emgines. People bring activity and backlinks. Search engines notice that and reward sites accordingly by increasing their rankings.

But this brings up the question of where to get content for your sites, especially if you’re building sites about a topic you personally know little about.  So here are some suggestions on ways of getting content for your sites (most, unfortunately, are not free):

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