Doorway pages are “Meet and Greet” professionals! Their job is to invite and welcome visitors and to direct them towards a site which is relevant to their needs and offers more information. In other words, to funnel traffic towards sites which are designed to convert traffic into revenue.

Proper design of these doorway pages is vital to their success. They are your frontline troops. However, instead of arming them with guns, they are designed to express enormous charm and visitor appeal! They are acceptable and appealing to human visitors as well as the search engines.

Some Useful Tips For Your Doorway Pages:

1. A doorway page should load quickly, to encourage the visitor to enter and explore the site instead of getting peeved and impatient, building resistance. So keep your graphics to a minimum. Banners and logo should be small and linked to the next level up - the sales page. Also include your keywords within the image “ALT” tag. Beneath your logo, prepare an intriguing sentence that you link to the next level.

2. Host your feeder sites cheaply. This can be done by signing up with a host that allows muliple, even “unlimited” domains on the one account, such as reseller accounts. Having multiple blogs serves a similar purpose. It’s possible to buy domain names very cheaply - around $5 each. Blog names are free.

3. If you use any questionable marketing (”black hat”) tactics, such as automatic page generating software, do not use them with your star and planet sites. Don’t risk having them banned. Likewise with your advertising accounts. If you display ads, such as Adsense, be sure that those sites are squeeky clean, so that you don’t risk your account.

4. Select three keyword phrases that closely describe the site (doorway page) you are designing. For instance, if the page is to be about dog training, you might have keyword phrases such as: dog training, obedience training, house training. Place these in your keyword meta tags, between the heading tags, of your web page source code. Separate each phrase with a comma.

5. Prepare a descriptive sentence about this site using the keyword phrases you’ve selected, such as: “Dog Training Course: Expert Tips For Successful House And Obedience Training.” Use this sentence for your DESCRIPTION meta tag. Note the initial caps.

6. For the TITLE meta tag, simply use your primary keyword phrase. For example: Dog Training.
Also suitable would be a line that includes the secondary keywords, separated with a pipe: Dog Training | Obedience Training | House Training

7. Place your keywords in the comments tag. This can be done throughout the web page as you organize your content.

Example:
!–Begin Dog Training Introduction–
!–End Dog Training Introduction

These are not visible on your web page but can be read in the HTML.

8. Provide valuable content that contains your keywords every couple of sentences. It does not need to be lengthy. It could be in the form of a comment, report or article of about 250 - 350 words. Your aim is to provide keyword rich, search engine friendly, useful material.

9. Save your doorway page using one of the keywords.

Example:
dog_training.html

If there are multiple pages, a number can be added to distinguish each one:

Example:
dog_training1.html
dog_training2.html

The power of doorway pages to attract website traffic comes from the valuable, keyword-rich content that you’ve designed to have BOTH search engine and visitor appeal. Of course, you don’t have to stop with just one page! Imagine the flow of website traffic if you have a hundred, or more, of these focused doorway pages, all feeding traffic to your site…

This article began in Part 1 with important details about a marketing strategy which utilizes doorway pages to generate a huge flow of traffic to selected websites in the system. Both parts are available online.

Doorway and Feeder pages can be immensely powerful in building a flow of traffic to your website. In particular, they attract TARGETED visitors that convert more readily to sales and subscribers.

It’s important to see these pages as part of an overall marketing strategy, with all the elements working together towards attracting and channelling your target audience.

First, what is meant by doorway (or feeder) pages? In the sense that I’m using them, they are web pages especially designed to rank high in the search engines for a particular key word or phrase. I’m NOT including what is basically a blank page - without any useful content to the visitor - that redirects to another webpage. The doorway pages I’m describing here (and recommending) are content-rich and optimized for your chosen keywords.

They could be articles you’ve written yourself, modified Private Label articles, and even reprint articles that have been preceded by your own specially prepared, keyword rich, introduction.

It’s tempting to see your website as the center of your particular universe. But the strategy I’m describing does NOT pack your website with doorway pages. Rather, I’m suggesting that you step back and see your main website as the star, or center, of your solar system.

Assume that your main website has been handling, say, 30 products related to the care of dogs. This could include Dog Training, Hunting With Dogs, Feeding Dogs, Health Care For Dogs, Breeding Dogs, etc.

The structure that I recommend you consider requires you to register a domain for each of the products that you sell, or for each major theme. For each of these you create a mini site for that product (or theme). This will contain a sales and ordering page. The ordering page will point back to your main website (where the sale is concluded). These mini sites form the planets of your system and they link to the center - the star.

Each of these mini sites is served by at least 5 doorway (or feeder) sites that contain the information rich pages referred to above. These can, for instance, be generated by programs such as Article Miner or Traffic Equalizer. The feeder pages, naturally, all point towards their related mini site. They form the satellites for the planets and link to them.

You provide useful information to the visitor, but the main purpose of the feeder sites is to direct traffic that has been received from the search engines to the planets, ie, to the mini sites, and finally to the star.

If designed properly, page ranking will also be passed forward, as will the links. By having numerous feeder sites that rank well with the search engines, you are creating valuable back links for those sites they link to. Just be sure that the linking is pointed one way - towards the planets and the star.

However, do note that mini sites are not highly regarded for ranking purposes by some of the search engines. If you are selling products on your mini sites, this can be acceptable. If you are aiming for free traffic that you want to funnel towards higher paying Adsense-type adverts on your main site - the star in your system - then you will want page ranking that can be passed on to the star (to atract more traffic). In this case, use a content-rich site for the planet, with ten or more Private Label articles on the topic of this site. Don’t use articles with anyone else’s outbound links. Save these for the satellites.

This article continues in Part 2 with important details about the structuring of doorway pages to provide them with the powerful search engine appeal that sends traffic streaming to your website. Both parts are available online.

Writing Articles is a great promotional method and a quick path to widespread acceptance and recognition in your chosen field. Eventually it can be great fun, but often first articles are reworked many times before you achieve a reasonably polished result. However, this doesn’t need to be the case.

Or rather, some paths are much easier to follow. That is not to say there is no work involved - and sometimes hard work. After all, you still have to walk the path and some are steeper than others.

Here’s a “quick start plan” to get you going:

1. First, keep in mind that your articles should reflect your personality and style. Not everyone writes in the same manner. Your style will spring from the way you express yourself, using words and phrases you feel comfortable with. To add “personality” to your writing, share some of yourself with your readers; make your writing uniquely your own. It’s fine to read ezines and others’ articles to see what people may be interested in and spark your own ideas, but don’t pattern yourself after someone else. People want to feel that they know YOU - your knowledge and personality. This is what builds loyalty.

If it fits with your subject, don’t be afraid to mention your product or service, but DON’T write a “glorified ad” and call it an article! That can offend many publishers so that they won’t even consider articles from you in the future.

2. You’ll also need some basic tools. Get a notebook and pen or, if you are a “cut and paste” writer like me - a word processor or computer, and just brainstorm ideas for articles. If you’re at a total loss, read some articles in other ezines and websites - that may spark an idea for a different approach to the same subject or remind you of your own experiences in that area.

Think about what YOU need or want to know. Is there a problem area that has puzzled you? If so, it’s likely that others are also curious about it and, if you research and write about the subject, would like to read your thoughts. Also consider what you have learned from experience that might help others? Once you get started you will come up with many ideas. Write each one down. If you think of a good title for that article, write that down too. Make it “catchy.”

3. What you should do next depends on you. There are several ways writers work, depending on their personalities. One good approach is to organize your points by making an outline of the information you plan to include or the points you intend to make. Then all you have to do is go back and “flesh out” the points, adding useful facts or links to more information.

Another approach, if you like to teach, is to write just as though you are explaining the subject to the reader in person. Either method is fine, just do what is comfortable for you. One method may work best for one kind of article and the other for another kind.

4. Be sure to use a spell checker! If you have one, run the grammar checker, also. Have someone else proofread it for you. This is especially the case if English is not your native language. Even professional proofreaders will tell you that they try to have someone else proofread their own writing, because it can be very difficult trying catch your own mistakes.

5. Try reading aloud the finished article so that you get a feeling for the rhythm and flow - and especially the sense - of it. Better still, read it to someone else who will ask questions if they don’t understand some point. (This might also prompt an idea for a sequel!}

6. Think ahead to how you intend to distribute your article. Once you have finished it, and made any necessary changes, you will need to submit it to as many websites and ezines as you can. Search the web for “article directory” and you will find many places to submit your article for free. There are also, of course, paid services and software that will do the submissions for you. Distribution can be labor intensive and very time-consuming. To keep up your motivation and free your time for writing articles do some in-depth comparative shopping. Professionals lean towards paid services as the most cost-effective approach. There are also several good software programs available for article submission and a search of Google will quickly list them for you.

The fastest and easiest way by far to get a following of people who recognize your name and listen to what you recommend is to write articles. For many people, clicking on the links in articles, forums, and discussion groups signatures is their primary method of finding good information.

This method also helps to locate the “experts”. From my own experience, I reasoned that if the person was published, odds were that they were somewhat of an expert on that subject. And, if they were experts, the products and services they sold or recommended were likely to be good. Those were the people whose products I bought and whose lists I joined.

By including a signature or bio with each article, including a line or two about your business and your website URL, it will generate traffic for you - the best kind of targeted traffic, too!

Once you’ve written your first article, the path gets much easier. In fact, you may discover, as I did, that you have a hard time stopping!

Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. And the promotion is so low cost that not investing in it could be downright business suicide. All it takes is a great idea, maybe a good addictive game, a funny story, or a fascinating Ebook or piece of software. Many ideas are still out there that will create gossip or a buzz. Often movies are promoted by using scandal and gossip to make them more popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”?

Big companies have tried viral marketing and there have been many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. The creators utilized the scheme and it has worked wonders for them.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.

Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing, also known as Viral Advertising, is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of your product or company. Many techniques are used to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product but by riding on a transferable item that is appealing enough to encourage the recipient to actually pass it on, along with the company advertisement.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of an item they will pass it on to their friends and family. In effect, someone known sponsors the item, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, and passes it on to another with the company brand or logo or the product’s description or any other content that helps promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because it is relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing utilizes the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of someone they know as the sender, they won’t block it and will open it as well.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral products. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing is expected to reach in determining the amount or number of incentives that are attached.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic of potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Most sites and companies are catching on to the effectiveness of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business if the competition has adopted it. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Creativity.

This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. With so much competition and rivalry, every available method of marketing must be employed.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worst of all, you business could just get killed.

While there are many methods and schemes used by e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral suggests a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.

However, the viral effect, with the message about your website or product spreading from person to person, can have a powerful impact on the volume of traffic that visits your site, and correspondingly, your profits.

There are so many ways to monetize your traffic. All it takes is a little work, a little knowhow, and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site. The internet is a huge source of information, with tips and guides available that will show how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit earner.

For instance, when purchases are made from a merchant by customers that you send to their sales page, you can get a percentage of that sale by joining the merchant’s affiliate program. That enables you to monetize your traffic without needing to carry a product or process the transaction. The merchant attends to such matters.

It is generally understood that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. By focusing on traffic building techniques and promotions you develop a flow of prospective customers. Then it becomes a matter of offering opportunities to your visitors to convert that traffic into some form of financial return.

With a consistent flow of traffic, you at least have a fighting chance to achieve that end. Monetizing your traffic will optimize your chances of building revenue and making a profit.

The internet has proven to be a very reliable source for the information, product or service that meets your need. It has made the world a smaller place. You can advertise a product from the suburbs of Istanbul and find a buyer in the center of Philadelphia. The global market has become little more than a village.

Of course, generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a lot of competition and also have to demonstrate a fair amount of competence if you want to attract your fair share of traffic flow. But if you do it successfully this can open up many possibilities, one being the chance to monetize your traffic flow.

Affiliate Programs

One method of monetizing your traffic involves registering as an affiliate for selected programs. You can link up with respected online merchants and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of their sales generated by traffic coming from your site.

The basic idea is to divert traffic from your site to another site that offers a sales page for a product that you do not carry. The affiliate management program, such as Clickbank, will keep track of visitors and transactions that originated from your site.

Establishing your own e-commerce site is not as easy as it used to be. There are thousands of eager marketers offering competition, all hoping to get a bigger share of the pie. Every method you can find to refine your sales (or pre-sales) technique should be considered.

Most of us hope to make a profit. We try not to spend time and effort just for the fun of it. While there are some who will treat their online activies as a hobby, there are also many who would like to see profit, as well as have fun!

Making Money Out Of Your Traffic

One of the best and most widely used methods of making a profit out of your traffic is onsite advertising. As there are many millions using the internet every day, if you can attract only hundreds, and possibly thousands, to your web pages where they will see your offering, you have a chance of converting them to customers or “click through” prospects. Google has an advertisng program called Adsense which will pay you every time someone clicks on an ad they provide and visits the site of the advertiser. Yahoo has a similar program.

Likewise, ClickBank also provides advertising that can appear on your web site but, in this case, you only get paid if the visitor actually buys from the advertiser, not when they click on your ad. Needless to say, it’s much easier to get interested visitors to click onto an ad for more information than it is to get them to purchase.

So, to get to the core of it, the more traffic you attract to an appealing, content-laden site the more likely you will be able to generate a profit from your website. Basically, traffic equals profit and advertising is the name of the game to convert that traffic into cash.

When you have a good traffic flow you also have a good number of potential customers; customers who can make your website a paying proposition. Some of this traffic can be directed to sponsored advertising links that are willing to pay you for sending them a portion of the traffic that you have generated. You will be paid for every click a visitor to your site makes on an advertisor’s link. So, the more traffic you generate to click merrily onto sponsors’ ads, the more profit you make.