I’ve been operating two small retail Websites for several years with modest success. Recently, I decided to branch out into a different area of e-commerce. I set up five different Websites at once and I wanted to find a way to obtain a lot of links to my Websites in a hurry. I wasn’t interested in paying for promotion, and I don’t care for the tedious process of exchanging links. On a lark, I typed the phrase “unusual Website promotion techniques” into Google, just to see what sort of search results came up.
That search yielded mostly Websites for companies that were offering to promote Websites for a fee, but one link did catch my eye – a site that mentioned writing articles to provide free content for Websites. I read the article on the Website and realized that I had found what I was looking for. This seemed to promise inexpensive, useful, fast results. I would write articles about topics that were relevant to my Websites and submit them to sites that would provide them to other sites that needed content. In exchange for this, I would receive a link back to my site. I decided to give it a try.
I did a search for “free content” on the Web, and made a list of sites that accepted articles and offered “live” links to the author’s Websites. I wrote an article of 400 words or so, submitted it to several different free content sites and waited. In order to accurately judge the effectiveness of this technique, I used a version of my name that I generally do not use as my author name. That way, I could do searches for my name in search engines and be certain that all results related to articles I had written. I submitted my first article in the afternoon and I I did a search for my author name in Google the next morning. I was astonished to see that not only had my article been published by several sites, but my author name turned up in search results just fourteen hours after I had submitted the article!
Clearly, I was on to something. I began writing articles in earnest. It wasn’t hard; as I am promoting seven different Websties, I had seven different topics to choose from. In the six weeks or so since I published my first article, I have written 60 more on topics relating to seven of my Websites. In that six weeks’ time, the total number of links from external sites to my own sites has increased from 765 to 11302. The growth in the number of external links to my sites has been explosive, and I’m now getting daily traffic to each of my sites. In just six weeks, I have managed to obtain a level of traffic that previously took me more than a year to obtain through traditional Website promotion methods. If you have a knack for writing, submitting free content articles is a great, fast, effective Website promotion tool. I highly recommend it.
©Copyright 2005 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Retro Marketing, a firm devoted to informational Websites, including End-Your-Debt.com, a site devoted to debt consolidation and credit counseling, and HomeEquityHelp.com, a site devoted to information regarding home equity loans.
Home Loans – Identity Theft Protection Could Hurt Home Sales
Identity theft has been a hot topic in the news during the last few years. Just a month or so ago, forty million credit card numbers were compromised due to a computer attack on a credit card processor. Consumers are rightly concerned, as it can take years to unravel the problems created when someone’s identity is stolen. New legislation in Texas and California, also proposed elsewhere, is designed to protect consumers by letting them put a “freeze” on their credit reports. Those in the real estate industry are worried, however, that doing so may make it difficult for some people to buy homes.
Debt Consolidation – How to Protect Your Credit Accounts from Theft
Last week, a security exploit at CardSystems Solutions, Inc, a credit card processor, may have allowed thieves to obtain as many as 40 million credit card numbers from unsuspecting victims. The theft was brought about though a virus introduced into the CardSystems that allowed external hackers to obtain access to the account information. Adding to the problem was the fact that CardSystems wasn’t supposed to have the account information at all. It appears that CardSystems “inappropriately” held onto the information after clearing the credit card transactions. At that point, the account information should have been deleted. CardSystems held onto the account information for supposed “research purposes.” Fortunately for those involved, the compromised information only included account numbers and not Social Security numbers, which would have assisted the thieves in identity theft scams. This latest security breach at a credit card processor outlines how anyone can be vulnerable to account or even identity theft. Is there anything that can be done about it?
New Bankruptcy Law – Targeting the Wrong People?
Last April, President Bush enthusiastically signed into law the oddly-named Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act. This bill, representing the biggest overhaul of bankruptcy law in twenty-five years, was written in order to discourage “bankruptcy of convenience.” Proponents of the bill, which included the credit card industry, say that the bill is necessary in order to stop an avalanche of bankruptcy filings by drug users and compulsive shoppers and gamblers. The law makes it harder to have debts wiped away, requires credit counseling for those considering bankruptcy, and holds attorneys responsible for paperwork errors by their clients in bankruptcy cases. The net result will probably be chaos, as fewer attorneys will handle bankruptcy cases, credit counselors will raise their fees, and more consumers with problem debt will be clueless as to what they should do next. Adding to the confusion are some new statistics that suggest that a large number of bankruptcies that are thought to be personal are actually business bankruptcies. As a result, the new law may be unfairly targeting consumers for punishment when they are not actually the biggest part of the problem. Worse, it could be harming small businesses.
