We’ve gathered 20+ sites that will help you with getting your press release out in the world for free. 

24-7PressRelease.com – Free release distribution with ad-support

1888PressRelease.com – Free distribution, paid services gives you better placement and permanent archiving.

ClickPress.com – Distributs to sites like Google News and Topix.net, Gold level will also get you to sites like LexisNexis.

EcommWire.com – Focuses on ecommerece and requires you include an image, 3 keywords and links.

Express-Press-Release.com – Free distribution company with offices in 12 states.

Free-Press-Release.com – Easy press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.

Free-Press-Release-Center.info – Distributes your release, offers a web page with one keyword link to your site. Pro upgrade will give you three links, permanent archiving and more.

I-Newswire.com – Allows for free distribution to sites and search engines, premium membership differs only slightly in adding in graphics.

NewswireToday.com – All the usual free distribution tools, premium service includes logo, product picture and more.

PR.com – Not only will they distribute your press releases, but you can also set up a full company profile.

PR9.net – Ad supported press distribution site.

PR-Inside.com – European-based free press release distribution site.

PRBuzz.com – Completely free distribution to search engines, news sites, and blogs.

PRCompass.com – Distribute your press release with a free or paid version, others can vote it up ala Digg style.

PRUrgent.com – Not only distributes your release, but attempts to teach you how to write one, and even offers downloadbale samples for you to work with.

Press-Base.com – Submit your release for free and get on their front page and the category of your choice.

PressAbout.com – A free press release service formatted as a blog.

PressMethod.com – Free press release distribution no matter what, but extra services based on the size of your contribution.

PRLeap.com – Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds. Fee based bumps get you better placement.

PRLog.org – Free distribution to Google News and other other search engines.

TheOpenPress.com – Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases, fees for HTML-coded releases.

By: Sarah Evans

On an average business day, more than 2,000 press releases are distributed by the five leading wire services in the United States – Business Wire, Marketwire, PrimeNewswire, PR Newswire, and PRWeb. What can you do to set your press release apart from the pack and allow your target audience to find you? Implement the use of search engine optimization, or SEO.

To put it simply, when someone Googles you or your company, where do you show up in the search results?

SEO allows you to:

• Garner media coverage
• Create quality keyword anchor backlinks for your website. (Check out: Creating Website Backlinks and Anchor Texts)
• Rank in Google and Yahoo News for your keywords
• Bring content to your audience

While the use of SEO leads to increased visibility and ultimately more views of press releases, it is imperative to remember that you write first and foremost for YOUR AUDIENCE – the most important “traffic” of all. It is too easy to forget the individual consumer and begin to write for the general masses. The tips below are meant to ease you into the world of SEO, but not take you away from what matters most—see #10.

1. Don’t use jargon!

Regardless of SEO, you need to tell your story for your customers. Find out how your audience is searching for you and your competitors via search engines. Use these terms in your release.

Tip: Can’t stop the jargon train? Try the old fashioned way—ask someone outside of your industry to proof your release. If they don’t understand it, change it.

2. Use key words

This is especially important in your headlines. An example of what I deem a great headline—Google Big Daddy Searchquake About to Rock Your Ranking? Go ahead and type this headline in Google, it comes up as the top ranking and makes for an easy search. (Important keywords: Google, Big Daddy and ranking) While there are many tools out there, try using a keyword search tool to make your life a little easier. (Know your keywords before you write even one word of your release!)

TIP: While a difficult task, ensure that keywords are not too far apart from one another in the headline.

3. Hotlink and bold critical words (and phrases)

A simple, but extremely useful habit. Just as important as using keywords, bold other critical (or secondary) words and phrases in the release and include a link to additional information. Hotlinks are useful for both consumers and journalists. Links offer the reader a choice to explore for additional information.

TIP: Another simple best practice. ALWAYS include the http:// portion of the URLs in your release or the link will not be clickable when published.

4. Research free SEO tools

I don’t know about you, but I’m still learning about SEO. Therefore, I rely heavily on trusted experts and free tools to learn more. Try out these SEO tools (if you don’t like them, try a search of your own and share what you learn in the comments, below).

5. Use anchor links

Include anchor text links with your keywords. Using anchor links increases your chance of driving viewers back to your Web site.

TIP: Make sure at least one of the keywords links to a page on your Web site other than the homepage.

6. Optimize first 250 words

The first 250 words of your release are essential to both your overall search results and it’s also about the time you will lose a reader if your content is not interesting. You want your release to be “clickable”—meaning someone wants to click on the release to read more. Practice the basics of press release writing. Make sure tips 1-5 are incorporated into the first 250 words!

TIP: Always write your releases in third-person perspective.

7. Patience

If you’re reading this my bet is that you haven’t mastered SEO tactics. That’s okay. I must often remind myself that writing is an evolving skill. Just as it took time to hone your press release writing skills, so too will it take time to learn SEO.

TIP: Set up a learning schedule for yourself. I currently read one new article about SEO each day.

8. Engage customers, journalists and bloggers

Do you rely heavily on behind the scenes, third party or Internet-based research? Try something new (or old) and take it to the streets. Ask your customers, industry bloggers and beat reporters what they search for. Not only does it give you credible feedback, but reminds your community that you value their feedback.  

TIP: Send out a personal email or call your favorite customers, journalists and/or bloggers to get their opinions. It’s an investment in your future (and theirs).

9. Write great copy

As a PR professional, incorporating the use of SEO only forces me to be a stronger writer and improves my overall content. Brush up on your writing. You’ll thank me.

TIP: Don’t include a date in your release. It makes your information seem outdated and ultimately hurts your credibility.

10. Be newsworthy

Be the content that intests your audience NOT that which interrupts them. I can’t stress this point enough, if you don’t have a good story to tell, no amount of SEO will help you.  What is the impact of your information? What is your news angle? WHY DOES IT MATTER TO ME?

TIP: Ask yourself before writing the release, “why would my mother, brother or aunt care about this?”

Since most would-be readers use search engines to find blog posts, you need to make sure that Google ranks your site highly when those readers search for terms related to your business and the content you're writing.

You could spend thousands of dollars to have a search marketing firm optimize your business's blog for search engines, but chances are that you can learn a lot of the fundamentals yourself, saving yourself a lot of money as long as you have the interest and the time. Here's a basic primer on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your company's blog.

1. Always Include Search Terms In Your Post's Title

When Google reads a website to index it, it reads the code directly, not the snazzy presentation that humans see. The way most blogging platforms are built, the headline or title of your blog post is among the first things Google sees, and Google generally assumes the words that appear earliest are the most important. That's why the title is the most important part of your blog post when it comes to SEO.

Think about who you want to reach with this blog post, and what that person might be searching for when looking for your business's goods or services, then include critical words from that hypothetical search in the title. The most important terms should appear as quickly as you can reasonably fit them in. Just be careful not to make the title unreadable or awkward to human readers — that SEO effort will have been for naught if the reader is immediately turned off by the content once he or she finds it.

Here's a pro tip: You're not likely to win strong ranking for more than one or two search terms at once, so minimalism is a virtue here. Don't get over-ambitious. Focus on one potential search term, then if you want to rank for a second term, write a separate and unique post specifically with it in mind.

2. Link Important Words to Earlier Blog Posts

Search engines generally assume that a blog post that has been linked to has more authority than one that has not. They also consider exactly what word or phrase linked to the post; a blog post about the iPhone is going to be more likely to show up in Google searches on the subject if another page links the word "iPhone" to the post.

You'll get the most value from external links from sites that Google or other search engines already consider to be an authority of the subject (if the top blog about iPhones links the word to your post, you'll get a huge boost), but all incoming links will still pass rank to your page, even those from elsewhere on your site.

So be sure and link important keywords to other pages or previous posts on your blog to gain some credibility and search rank. It will make a big difference. Just don't overdo it; not only do human readers hate reading blogs so filled with links that they might accidentally click on something, Google may penalize you if you go overboard, too.

3. Hit the Tagging Sweet Spot

Most blogging platforms let you apply tags to your posts. Tags help organize your blog so both humans and search engines can find what they're looking for. They're terms like "consulting," "local" or "technology" that reflect the topics and content of the post.

Google tries to recognize tags and use them to prioritize your site in its search ranking for those terms. The tags are usually links to other pages on your blog (usually a backlog of other posts with the same tag), and like we said earlier, linking search terms to other pages on your site helps too.

So by all means, add pertinent tags to your blog post, but be warned that Google and other search engines are wary of sites that try to game this system. They will penalize you in the search rankings if you use so many tags that the web indexing bots suspect you might be attempting to associate your content with unrelated topics just to score extra traffic.

The method for determining this is arcane, but a good rule of thumb from a pro blogger is that five to 10 appropriate tags are usually right in the sweet spot.

4. Use Google Insights to Find the Best Search Terms

You don't have to play a guessing game about the best tags or search terms to link or put in your post's title. Since Google is the most popular search engine, it makes sense to focus your efforts there. Whenever you're not sure which terms to go with, hit up Google Insights, a web-based tool that compares the popularity of any search terms you want to know about.

For example, if your business is a coffee shop but you're not sure whether would-be customers are more likely to search for "café" or "coffee shop," Insights can tell you which one is more popular.

Why do you in your articles, not to mention numerous online marketers and webmasters alike, avoid linking out to other websites? Do you feel you’re doing yourself a disservice by including outbound links to other websites and other articles? Do you fear that you will somehow lose your Google Page Rank by doing this? Or are you just too lazy?

Whenever I read articles on Triond, Bukisa, Xomba, and other publishing sites that operate in the same manner, I am amazed that people writing articles miss out on the most obvious links they could include in their articles to make them more interesting, to make following up on a theme more easy for the reader (which I consider common courtesy toward the reader who wants to know more), and to improve your Google Page Rank

Some of you may believe that outbound links will add little if nothing to your ranking and that those links are inserted at the expense of inbound links. The arguments run along two lines: on one hand that outbound links drain your Google Page Rank (by somehow metaphysically jumping to other pages, I suppose); and on the other hand that the massive reciprocity of all those sites you linked to will result in enough inbound links to cause Google to think you’re using magical black hat techniques.

Neither of these arguments holds water.

First, outbound links do not somehow inexplicably cancel out the good that inbound links do to your articles. Let’s suppose that the Google Page Rank of Socyberty is at 4 and you are writing an article for that site containing external links. This will neither affect nor actually harm Socyberty’s Page Rank. It might help the PR of another site (for example Quazen), but not at the expense of Socyberty. The amount of Page Rank oxygen you’re blowing into a site you link to is equal to Socyberty’s PR divided by the number of outbound links on all Socyberty. The amount of oxygen going out is minimal as per link, as there are thousands in all the articles, but the sum of all oxygen going out is always equal to the total Page Rank; it can’t go into the negative, draining Page Rank out. What goes out to individual sites is marginal, but it is a little like positive karma. As with plants, the oxygen given off by a site is not harmful to its source.

This logic applies to internal links, too, and the link oxygen they carry between Socyberty’s pages.

Second, the argument that if you have outbound links resulting in a flood of reciprocal links will make Google think you’re using nefarious tactics has little truth to it, too. First of all, you should be linking out to sites that are relevant to your article’s theme. If you are very lucky, these sites might give you a back link in return, and that will only improve your ranking. If you’re linking to good, non-spam, non-link farm sites, reciprocal inbound links will not harm your Page Rank. The incoming karma is just as marginal as the one you give out, but all those bits and pieces will add up over time.

Make sure your outbound links don’t cause problems. Choose links that are relevant to your article, and keep the outbound links spread throughout the body of the article. Don’t build an interminable links’ list full of outbound links because such are not well received by Google.

If your article is considered a useful provider of content, the more high-quality and relevant outbound links will help you. While it may seem counter-intuitive to be giving other sites extra exposure, the truth is that you will profit from wisely chosen links. Apart from using inbound links (Socyberty to Socyberty, Bukisa to Bukisa, etc.), using outbound links (Socyberty to Quazen, Socyberty to Bukisa, etc.) will profit all concerned.

This is why you will find that my articles always contain links not only to my own articles that are relevant, but often to other writers’ articles and outside sources, if available, relevant, and worth reading.

The idea of making money online is attractive to many, primarily because of the benefits it offers. Two main incentives are motivational factors here: The lucrative potential of the internet as well as the personal freedom that comes with working without a fixed schedule or geographic location.

One doesn’t need to suffer through monotonous day jobs which offer poor returns for the time invested.

Indeed, why make $7 an hour selling coffee behind a counter when you can easily earn the same amount by spending 10 minutes to write an article on your blog?

Even if you’re not looking to work full-time at home, the internet offers a viable source of money which can help to supplement your regular income.

Cataloging the Different Ways to Make Money Online

A basic search on Google will reveal many ways to make money online and most of the websites listed in the search results pages all seem to focus on the same methods of making money.

I thought it’ll be a good idea to categorize and compile a list of the online money making methods available so that future visitors to Dosh Dosh will have a reference point which provides them with all information they need.

This list uses a rather broad categorization, which I believe covers most of the ways to make money online. More methods and examples of how to make money online will be added to this list, which can be considered a work in progress.

1. Set up a Blog or Website for Profit

One of the best ways to make money online is to create a website or blog which allows you to earn money from the display of advertisements or the sale of products and services.

There are many different types of money making blogs which will help you to make money and you’ll need to pick a model that suits your interests, schedule and skill levels. A simple no frills blog will allow you to easily pull in at least several hundred dollars in a month through the use of paid blogging websites alone.

Apart from blogs, other websites can easily help you to generate passive income as well. These can range from e-commerce websites, social communities and information portals to basic landing pages for affiliate programs.

2. Learn about Affiliate Marketing and The Art of Selling

This involves promoting a specific product or service and earning commissions whenever the referred user makes a purchase based on your recommendations.

Affiliate marketing is a big and profitable industry that covers a wide spectrum of topics and fields. If you’ve got an interest in fitness, you can make money promoting fitness videos or courses. In terms of fashion wear, you can earn commissions by recommending friends to clothing or t-shirt companies with affiliate programs.

The amount of money you make depends on what you are selling. Done correctly, affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make money from the web. Amazon, Commission Junction and ClickBank are three of the biggest affiliate marketplaces you can use if you’re branching out into affiliate marketing.

3. Start an Online Business

Starting your own online business or company allows you to make money off the provision of specific services or products you may have. Some examples of popular online trades include web design, copywriting and internet marketing.

It isn’t difficult to start a business. It’s all about hiring the right people or having enough knowledge and connections within a specific industry. You should do some in depth research before you decide to settle on a specific niche for your business. Entrepreneur.com has a good collection of tips on how to start an online business.

4. Try Out Domaining and the Online Real Estate Trade

This is the business of buying, selling, developing and making money from domain names. A domainer purchases many domain names and sells them to interested buyers. This is similar to real estate investing offline and domainers also make money by developing websites and reselling it to a buyer.

This practice is known as site flipping and can make you a tidy sum of money if you know how to build an attractive and profitable website. For a rough estimate of how much money you can earn from site flipping, check out the SitePoint Marketplace to browse through the collection of websites for sale.

5. Participate in Get-Paid-to Websites

There are hundreds of websites out there which you pay you to read emails, do surveys, sign up for trial subscriptions and surf the web. Websites that pay you to complete offers are worth examining because they usually include affiliate programs with recurring commissions to be earned.

The benefit of get paid to websites is that you don’t need to have your own website or any personal skills at all. The downside is that there are a lot of get-paid-to scams around and finding websites that are legitimate can be fairly difficult. Scam.com is a forum you should visit to learn if the get-paid-to website you’re interested in actually pays its members.

There are also several Web 2.0 or social media websites out there that will pay you to participate in their community. This collection of social media websites usually operate via a revenue-sharing system, which allows you to earn a share of the overall ad revenue. How much you earn depends on how much your submitted article, video or image is viewed.

6. Find a Virtual Job or Make Use of Your Expertise

Not only limited to data entry jobs, online jobs in the new economy include virtual assistants, gold farmers, online life coaching and support for open source software. Mini consultation networks like Bitwine and Ether allow you to easily set up shop and offer advice on specific topics through the web.

Most of these virtual jobs involve direct communication through electronic mediums like internet telephony, instant messengers and emails. Which means that all you need to get started is a home computer with an steady internet connection.

If you are an expert in a specific topic, you can offer consultation via websites like Jyve or Just Answers. Other skill or knowledge based vocations also include participation in online competitions in areas such as photography, writing, designing and even gaming.

7. Freelance and Work on a Contract Basis Online

If you have a skill such as web design, programming or copywriting you can offer your services online in exchange for money. Traditional freelancing jobs include transcription, proofreading, translation services on top of the ones already mentioned above.

Online marketplaces that you can use to offer your services include Guru.com and Elance. One of the best ways to find freelance jobs is to visit webmaster forums because webmasters usually require a variety of web-based services, which range from programming and content writing to design work.

If you’re focusing on writing and don’t own your own blog, you can still make some money by registering for websites which will pay for your content. Another alternative is get paid to write for other blogs either as a staff or guest writer.

8. Create Your Own Product and Sell it

Products you can create include website templates, sound clips or even your own ebook. Websites like Lulu allow you to easily develop and sell your own collection of electronic products like calenders, brochures, artwork, images and ebooks.

If your specialty is images and photography, citizen journalism websites like Spymedia and Citizen Image will pay for your images. You can also try using Shutterstock, the most established and lucrative micro-stock photography website. Illustrators and videographers are also welcome at Shutterstock.

This also ties in with the concept of creating your online business, which will allow you to sell the products you create or own without resorting to a third party website which will usually take a commission of the sale.

9. Get Involved in the Online Retail Trade

Ebay and Craigslist are the two of the most popular websites you can use if you are planning to get into the online retail trade. You can purchase products from either website to sell to the other.

Alternatively, you can specialize use site-specific methods of participating in the online retail trade. For example, Ebay dropshipping and arbitrage is a method whereby you’ll with offline retailers or exporters in other countries, or buy from one seller and sell to another.

Future Updates

In the future, each of the points listed on this list will have it’s own webpage with more in-depth information for each specific topic.

Hopefully, this article will serve as an helpful introduction for anyone looking for information concerning ways to make money on the internet.

Even more ways to make money online here

Visitors often visit websites and perform keyword searches in order to find the information they require. One way to make money from this often repeated user action is to display targeted advertisements on your search results pages.

Ideally, you want to monetize while adding value for your visitors and a means to achieve this aim is to use Google’s Adsense for Search, which places text-based ads next to your search results

What is a Google Custom Search Engine?

Simply put, Google Custom Search Engine is a tool which allows visitors to search your website by using Google’s core search technology. This enables you to list search results according to the sites and pages you specify. According to Google, the Custom Search Engine also allows you to:

• Apply your Website’s look and feel to the search results page.
• Provide search refinements within results pages to make it easier for searchers to find the information they’re looking for.
• Make money from your Custom Search Engine by participating in Google’s AdSense program.

There are two main ways for visitors to experience your Custom Search Engine. One way is to direct them to a Google-hosted results page when they type in a search query and the second way is to integrate it by hosting the search results on a page within your website.

Example of an Integrated Google Custom Search Engine

Currently I’m using Google’s Custom Search Engine for Dosh Dosh and you can see it on the top right hand corner of every page. Typing in a search query and clicking ‘search‘ will bring you to a search results page on the left, where the content section is currently located.

Here is an example of a search for ‘make money blogging‘. Note that the Adsense ads appear at the top (this is changeable) and the search results show up below it.

Why I am Using Google’s Custom Search Engine

I am using Google custom search instead of the internal Wordpress search function because I feel that Google’s search results are far more relevant and precise. I also choose to use Custom Search because it allows me to make money from Adsense for Search, which allows you to monetize your search results pages with ads.

A look at my Adsense stats shows me that I’ve earned approximately $20 in this month. It’s not a lot of money at all but it is still an additional source of income, particularly if you are already running Adsense on your site.

Like the traditional Adsense units, how much you earn might vary depending on the ad placement and traffic levels. If you like Google’s search results but don’t feel the need to monetize, set up the custom search engine without advertisements.

How to Set up Google’s Custom Search for Your Site

While writing this article, I found out that SEOmoz had a similar post on how to perform the same steps. I’ve decided to use my own commentary instead, as some readers have been asking me how I set up the google search box on Dosh Dosh.

There have also been some changes (additional features) within Google’s Custom Search function so this will be a more current post on this topic.

Here are the exact steps needed to successfully set up and integrate Google’s custom search engine into your website. This will teach you how to make the search results show up within a designated page on your site.

1. Create a Webpage for Custom Search

Start first by creating a web page on your domain for the search results page. If you are on Wordpress, simply click on ‘Write’ and then select ‘Write Page’. Name the page by using ‘Search results’ or something similar as the Page title.

Leave the text box blank and publish or save the page. Note down the URL for the webpage as you will need to use it later.

2. Create Your Custom Search Engine

Visit the Google Custom Search Engine homepage and click on the ‘create a custom search engine‘ tab. After which, fill in the name of your search engine, along with the keywords. Be sure to select the ‘Only sites I select‘ option and then list your site URL in the Sites to Search box.

Also remember to select ‘Show Ads on results pages‘ if you intend to run ads.

After creating your custom search engine, you’ll be asked to test it by entering some keywords. Type in some keywords related to your site to see the results.

3. Determine the Look and Feel for Your Search Engine

After you’ve created your search engine, go to your control panel and click on the Look and Feel link. This is where you will able to determine the branding style for your search box, along with the style of the search results page.

Choose the right colors so that the results pages fit your overall design.

You can also choose to add a logo to the Google hosted results page but in this case, it won’t be necessary as you are hosting the search results on your own site.

4. Set up Adsense for Search

If you want to make money from your custom search engine, you’ll have to set up Adsense for search by clicking on the ‘Make Money‘ navigational link and connecting custom search with your Google Adsense account.

If you already have an Adsense account, simply check the appropriate box and then type in the email, zip code, phone and location details associated with it.

After doing this your custom search engine profile will be connected to your Adsense account. You can then set up a custom channel to track the amount of searches and money you are earning from it.

Simply do this by typing in a name for your custom channel. For example, I’ve used ‘Dosh Dosh Custom Search‘ as my channel name. This means that the same name will show up in my Adsense Dashboard reports as well.

5. Insert the Code on Your Blog

After you’ve completed the above steps, its time to insert the code on your blog. Go to the ‘Code‘ section of the control panel and select the iframe option.

The new Overlay option will allow the search results to show up in a nifty Ajax-style overlay but unfortunately only the first 8 search results are displayed and you cannot make money through Adsense for Search.

Only consider the overlay option if you are not planning to run ads. After choosing the hosting option, specify the search results details by inserting the URL where you want the results to appear. This would be the page you’ve created in step one.

Then scroll down to the second half of the page to grab the search box code. Take the first code you see and place it where you want your search box to appear. After which, copy the search results code in the lower frame and place it where you want the search results to appear.

Which means you’ll have to paste it on the new page you’ve created.

For Wordpress blogs, simply open up your new page, insert the code in the empty text box and publish.

And That’s All You Need to Do

After completing all the steps above, you should have Google Custom Search set up perfectly for your website. One possible drawback I think of when using ads on the search results pages is that users will click away from your website.

I don’t think this is really that big a problem because users who actively use your website to search for a specific items are people that are interested in your opinion or content. I would believe that these visitors would return to your site eventually.

An easy solution to this would be to run no ads at all. The choice is yours.

Every website has a bunch of web pages which get more search traffic than others. These pages are constantly visited daily by new visitors, people who have never seen the site in question before. I call these ‘money pages’ because they are a reliable source of immediate and future income.

But they’re not just ‘money’ because they bring in revenue: they are one of the easiest ways to grow your audience without much work. If you learn how to optimize these money pages (its not hard to do), you’ll really improve your website in so many ways. More revenue, more members, more influence and authority. Doesn’t that sound good?

We’re always focused on creating new content and getting new visitors to these new pages that we forget about what’s going on in other parts of our website.

This is tailored towards content publishers and bloggers but the main strategies here apply to other site types as well, you just need to find the right tools to do it. So lets get started.

How to Optimize Your Money Pages

There are many things you can do to money pages, in order to make them better or more profitable. It’s important to decide the extent of your work according to your goals and resources. How much time do you want to spend and what’s most important to you? Do you want a bigger readership? Or are you just concerned with increasing your daily revenue?

Here are a list of things you can do for your money pages:

1. Monetize. The aim here is to get more revenue out of each page. There are various ways to achieve this and they generally involve the placement of ads both around and within content. There is also an indirect future revenue from lead capturing.
2. Capture Leads. The money page is optimized to encourage a visitor to subscribe to your mailing list, site feed or register for your website. The main aim is to find a way to continue to reach your visitors after they leave your money page. This helps to grow your site audience and is also a component of revenue generation.
3. Improve Relevance. This involves revamping the money page in order to provide up-to-date information or better content in order to accommodate visitor needs. This provides  an improved user experience for all and can result a host of benefits like more referral/citation links and greater visitor loyalty/trust. Relevance is also important when your main goal is to capture leads or increase revenue.
4. Make it Rank Better.  Doing on-site and off-site optmization will help specific money pages to rank better on the search engine result pages, hence driving more traffic back to your site. This increases your site reach and revenue at the same time.

Step 1: Find Your Money Pages

Open up the web analytics program you’re using for your website. There should be a section which reveals which pages have the highest unique views per month. Extract the urls for the top 10 pages and put them somewhere for easy access. Or bookmark them on your browser. If you don’t currently use an analytics tool, I recommend setting up Google Analytics.

How many pages you choose to optimize really depends on your website and preference. If you have a lot of webpages that get solid traffic, you can do more. If you don’t have many pages that get web traffic, then you have a lesser amount to work with. I like to focus on the top 10 because if its a manageable amount of work for an acceptable returns on investment.

My personal guideline is to only work on pages with a minimum of 200 unique views everyday. It’s a basic number that’s good for some decent conversions. Adjust this figure to something you can work with, if your website is new or gets less overall traffic.

The point to remember is that not every page is hot. The goal is not to optimize every single web page you have. There has to be a limit. So learn to prioritize and work only on the pages that are currently receiving the most traffic to your website.

Step 2: Improving Content Relevance

Visitor search queries reveal what people are looking for and what they want to get from your web page. It tells you what information they expect and is a way to understand their desires or needs. Many are ready to pay for a solution or subscribe to get knowledge in their inbox.

Better relevance = better conversions. It’s that simple. By making your website as relevant as possible to search queries, you’re making visitors more likely to stick around, opt-in or buy. Users are going to click away if they find that your web page doesn’t fulfill their info needs. So the first step is closely examine your money pages in relation to search traffic terms.

My goal is to include every search query in my money page. Every question typed into search engines by visitors who access my site must be answered. One very easy and quick way to do this is to add a simple FAQ to the page to address the visitor’s specific needs. Just phrase the same exact search query as a question. Then write an answer which responds to it.

Another method for search query relevance is to create new content and insert it into the money page. It’s important to edit your pages so that it doesn’t display content that is simply outdated or useless. You’re not going to presell anyone with stuff like that. It won’t work.

Either rewrite the entire money page or include update notes specifying new information and linking to other pages on your website with newer content. Whenever new information or changes occur, go back into the money page to make necessary adjustments. This is one reason why I asked you to keep those 10 URLs bookmarked or easily accessible.

Note that by increasing your money page’s relevance and informational value, you are also increasing its linkability: People are more likely to link to it because it is a detailed and useful reference page on the topic. Whenever possible, I try to fashion my money pages on blogs after Wikipedia in terms of comprehensiveness.

Step 3: Monetizing Your Money Page

While you can monetize your money page and capture leads at the same time, I find it better to optimize for one goal instead of trying to achieve both. Because when it comes to monetization, captured leads are usually a good source for long term income anyway.

There are formats for each goal (monetize or lead capture) and you’ll get better results if you either choose to monetize fully or go all out to hook your visitors by making them sign up or subscribe to your website. If you put up too many well blended ads, the visitor can easily click away instead of subscribing to your newsletter, so either pick one goal or balance both.

Let’s talk about monetization first. This is easy if you’re using ad networks like Google Adsense. Go to your money page and insert an additional ad unit, blend it well with your content and make sure that its quite visible while not being too obtrusive.

A well placed Adsense unit can really increase your overall daily income. I’ve seen a jump of more than $20 a day for a site that I own when I took the time to test and optimize a few money pages. While you may have default ads already on every page of your site (sidebars, header etc), these may not be truly optimized for a money page.

Money pages need to be treated differently from the other pages on your website. They’re the ones that bring a lot of visitors (big sample size) so you can really use this opportunity to test the profitability of specific ad schemes. You can even remove the default ads specifically for this page so you have more room to experiment.

Other ways to monetize include the use of commission-based affiliate programs which range from digital products to established eCommerce retailers like Amazon.com. Clickbank is a digital product marketplace you can use. Sign up, search through the marketplace for a product, grab your affiliate link, insert it on your money page.

You can also try CPA networks with relevant pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale programs. Commonly used CPA networks are Market Leverage, Max Bounty, NeverBlue, PepperJam, Copeac, Azoogle and Hydra Network, among many others. Affiliate programs can work well but remember to keep them related to your content.

Alternatively, you can promote your own products on your money page by including a short pitch for it and linking to a proper sales page. Or you can try to sell your visitors away from the money page by getting them to first subscribe to an email list. This brings us to the next step.

Step 4: Optimizing to Capture Leads

The goal is to capture not just the email of the visitor but his/her permission to allow you to reach them away from your website. For some of you, you want visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed so they’ll continue to read your content or hopefully participate on your site.

Many set up email lists and auto-responders with the aim of eventually monetizing by selling their own products or recommending those of JV partners. Their aim here is to get users to opt-in to receive newsletters or special offers. The same goes for online retail stores.

Good email marketing providers are Aweber and GetResponse, both of which charge a monthly fee that you should be able to earn back easily. There are free alternatives available but you’ll often lose out in terms of features. If this doesn’t bother you, you could try starting with any of the free email software or plugins available.

To optimize a money page to capture leads, you’ll need to do some offer customization. Look at what content/product is on the page and create a specific offer that’s relevant to it. Provide an incentive for someone to sign up: perhaps a free digital product with related or more in-depth information. Or simply the promise of future discounts or special product offers.

To get into the mind of the visitor and understand what entices them, you’ll need to go back to the search queries you’re getting. If someone is interested in ‘what causes wrinkles’, you’ll know they’ll be interested in an ebook on natural anti-aging remedies. Do up a free guide and offer it to them only if they register as a member or sign up to your email list.

How about lead capture for communities and membership sites? Apart from providing incentives you can use teasers. Restrict visitor actions by only allowing them to view a limited amount of content or interact in a limited fashion. This limit will be removed when a user registers with your community. These are methods commonly practiced by paid membership sites, forums and social media sites to entice signups.

Step 5: Sending Internal Traffic to Your Money Pages

Now that you’ve optimized your money pages for maximum conversions, you can also send over visitors from other pages of your site. You’ve already done the work to make the pages incredibly relevant and usable, they shouldn’t just be seen by search engine visitors.

If your money pages are related, by sure to interlink each one so that each visitor is funneled to another optimized page. This not only improves your bounce rate but makes sure that each visitor is given two opportunities to convert if they aren’t persuaded the first time around.

Another method is to use a script to autolink specific anchor keywords or phrases on your entire site to the specific web page. This helps with SEO and is very easy way to get more eyes on your money page. If you’re using Wordpress, try the Internal Link Building plugin or the SEO Smart Links plugin. Both help to auto-link keywords on every page of your blog. There are quite a few similar plugins out there but these two work well for me.

If you’re a blogger producing content daily, endeavor to link to the money pages whenever it’s pertinent to your post because you’re driving traffic to pages that will perform well. Alternate the links to each money page so your audience won’t get sick of seeing them all the time.

There is an alternative way to highlight your money pages: Group the ones about a similar topic together and list them all in a reference page, which will funnel traffic out to different locations. Instead of linking to each individual money page, you can just link or promote the reference page, which will then direct the visitors you get to each money page simultaneously.

A simple example of this is DoshDosh's reference page on social media marketing, which collects both money pages and less visited pages together under a specific theme. There’s also the option of creating special banner ads or images to link to either your money page or the reference page, it doesn’t always have to be promoted in the form of a link within content.

Step 6: Improving Your Search Engine Ranking

This is the final step in the process and should always come after you’ve optimized your money pages for maximum results and set up a method to promote it internally on your site. After you’ve done all that, it’s time to look at boosting a major factor for earning more money: your website’s ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This is an optional step because if you’re getting a lot of visitors, you’re should already be ranking quite well. But if you’re on the second page of Google or not yet in the top 3 queries for a keyword/phrase that is sending you a good amount of traffic, why not bump it up and get even more visitors per day?

You’ve already got your list of top money pages based on search queries. Now you should find what these pages are ranking for, which is something you can easily discover through your stats trackers. If you’re already using it,  Google Webmaster Central is a free tool that shows you the top 20 search queries visitors use to reach your site.

Off-Site Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a pretty big topic: its hard to cover everything that needs to be done so I’m going to simplify it into one fool proof method of improving your search engine rank for Google. This is something that is unanimously agreed upon by everyone.

All you need to do is get links from other sites, especially with the specific anchor text you are trying to rank for. But not just from anywhere. You want links from quality, relevant websites.

Let’s see what Google itself says about ranking:

Sites’ positions in our search results are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

One more. From Google’s warning on link schemes:

Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.

It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest.

Links matter a lot because Google’s algorithm is set up to use the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance. High quality links boost the trust, relevance and authority of your web page. This is somewhat the same for search engines like Yahoo or Live.

Ideally, the best type of links you can get are from the websites that are already ranking well for the keyword or phrase you are targeting. But these links might not be easy to acquire, since you’re likely to be viewed as a competitor and a threat.

So, what I personally like to do is to do some research on the people ranking for your keyword/phrase on the first two pages. Dig into their backinks by using something like Yahoo Site Explorer and find out who is linking to them. Try to get those same links if possible and even more quality links that your competitors don’t have.

There are many ways to build links, some are blackhat and others are more compliant with search engine guidelines. I favor the strategy of creating valuable services, tools and content in order to attract links from bloggers. It’s stable and works extremely well for every niche out there.

If your money page is optimized for relevance and is high on informational value, it is already a potential link magnet. So here’s something you can do immediately. Send email pitches about your money page to relevant blogs. If you contact 1,000 blogs, you might easily get 50 to 100 extra links (or more), which may be enough for you to outrank other websites. Sometimes all you need to do is to get the word out.

And there are many other ways. Article directories. Blog/web directories. Social bookmarking websites. Social news sites. Social media communities (Flickr, Youtube etc). Contests. Link exchanges. Blog comments and carnivals. Donations/sponsorships. Forums. Press Releases.

On-Site Search Engine Optimization

On top on link building, another aspect of ranking better is on-site search optimization, whereby you make your webpage compatible with search engine requirements and the specific search query you’re targeting. Google’s webmaster guidelines, Yahoo’s Webmaster Resources and Live Search’s Webmaster Center has a list of the most basic stuff you should be doing and ways for you to track your site in their search engines.

Basic pointers for on-site optimization involves having a good site architecture, where pages with similar themes are grouped together with a focus on great navigation and usability for visitors. On site-optimization also involves having your targeted keywords in the title tags and an appealing meta-description, which may affect SERP clickthrough rates. For the WP users out there, you might find this excellent guide to Wordpress SEO useful.

Other on-site factors include keyword density, which is the number of times a keyword appears compared to the total number of words in a page. And latent semantic indexing (LSI), which examines a page in relation to groups of associated words/terms used within it.

I wouldn’t worry too much about latent semantic indexing and perhaps even keyword density because a content heavy page is likely to include the associated terms and keywords naturally, because of its depth. The main point to note is to maintain a tight focus on your chosen topic and not divert too much from it in your content.

And then there’s the controversial topic of PageRank Sculpting: using the nofollow tag on internal site links to optimize the strength of specific pages, thereby enabling them to rank better in search engines. Perhaps a useful tactic, although one that isn’t quite necessary. Any possible success here partly depends on how knowledgeable you are with SEO.

On-site optimization isn’t a difficult process, as long as you have a good site architecture set up from the start and follow search-engine guidelines. The hard part is really the task of getting people with relevant/quality websites to link to your money pages.

Time for You to Do Some Work…

These are the fundamental factors involved in optimizing your money pages. After completing the first step of finding your money pages, you don’t need to work on the other steps in a sequence. As I’ve said earlier, it depends on your goals. Personally, I go through all six steps when I’m looking at money pages that receive a substantial amount of daily web traffic.

The good thing about money pages is that once you optimize them, you can just leave them alone for a while. If you’re busy every day, you might want to spend an hour during the weekend on your money pages. Or just assign them to a colleague or a member of your staff. Set aside some time to optimize them and you’ll definitely see the results.

For more ways to make money online click here

One way to get more search engine traffic is to optimize your website for Google Image Search, a tool which allows users to easily find images by typing in specific search terms, phrases and keywords.

Many people utilize Google Image search to find images for a wide variety of topics, which can range from pictures of cars to celebrities and furniture.

Images can not only make your website visually attractive: they can help you to gain more daily search engine traffic.

Highly relevant image results show up at the top of Google’s search results page when one searches for specific topics. Getting listed in this prime position can possibly send a great deal of traffic to your website.

Introduction to Google Image Search Optimization

Google Image Search optimization is not a difficult process and only requires that you pay attention to how you label and use your images within the regular framework of your website. A lot of image optimization involves basic search optimization factors such as the inclusion of relevant keywords in the content, title and meta tags.

All of the articles I’ve read on the topic of Google Images optimization seem to be in common agreement and they offer similar suggestions, although a few of them do highlight some different methods of utilizing Google Image Search.

19 Ways to Get More Traffic Using Google Image Search

I’ve made a full list of all the methods I’ve come across so that all of you can have an accessible reference point, should you decide to use Google Images as a method to drive more traffic to your website.

Also added are a few points of my own, specifically dealing with how targeting specific image topics and integrating them within your webpages can help to attract a great deal more traffic through Google images.

Depending on your niche and images used, you’ll be able to attract a great deal of extra visitors easily with very little additional work. I highly recommending putting at least a few of these points into practice on your own website.

Here is the list of Google image optimization tips in full:

1. Insert keywords into your Alt Text.

This is the most important part of image optimization and you should include a keyword or phrase that is relevant to the image and your webpage. The alt text should be inserted in the code for your image file.

Here’s an example: <img src="filename.gif" alt="Alt description goes here">

2. Name your Images with Descriptive Titles.

If you have an image of Lindsay Lohan, you could use the term ‘lindsay-lohan.jpg’ to name your image, instead of simply going with the original file name which could be something like ‘b473.jpg’. I usually name my images exactly the same way as my alt text.

3. Use relevant text around your images.

It is recommended that descriptive text with your targeted keywords be placed immediately before or after the image itself. If you do a search for any term on Google Image, you’ll find that a short description of 20+ characters beneath every image. You’ll probably notice that the keyword is listed in bold as well.

4. Use Adsense to assess overall content relevance.

Insert an Adsense unit on the page where your googe images are placed and see what type of Adsense ads show up. This will tell you how Google thinks the overall theme of what your page is about.

Change your content until the Adsense units reflect the keywords you want to target. In my opinion, this is not only applies to Google images but is a generally helpful method as it improves your overall latent semantic indexing score and makes your site appear more relevant to Google for targeted key phrases or words.

5. Optimize Your Title and Meta tags.

This should already be part of your overall optimization strategy and it purportedly helps your site to rank better in image searches as well. Like the use of Adsense for testing, paying attention to this point will help you to have better visibility in Google’s main search engine as well.

6. Use anchor text keywords in links to images.

When you link to a specific image, use keywords instead of a generic phrase. For example, instead of using “See here” or “Click for Full Size“, try something like “Lindsay Lohan Picture” or “Lindsay Lohan in Rehab“.

7. Use Internal and Social Site Tags for your Images

If you are using images with little or no textual content, it might be helpful to tag your images using internal tagging functions or social tags like Technorati. This may add more weight to your image and help it to rank better. If you are uploading your images using Flickr, remember to use the appropriate keyword tags as well.

8. Use Broad Categories of Images to Get a Larger Audience

If you’re running a gadget website, you don’t have to only upload pictures of gadgets. Try upload pictures of web 2.0 sites, web applications and pictures of items related to your gadgets. For example, you can upload pictures of living rooms instead, if the gadget was designed to complement residential space.

9. Make Your Image folder accessible to search engines

Ensure that your robots.txt file does not limit search engines from accessing your image files. This is essential if you want your images to be ranked on Google Image Search. Try not to use javascript links on image files as well as it will limit search engine access as well.

10. Re-upload your pictures to maintain search freshness

If you have a picture that focuses on highly popular keywords, you can try to remove and re-upload another version of your image because freshness might affect relevancy and may rejuvenate your ranking on the Google Image Search engine.

11. Make your Google Images Standards-compliant.

One way of making your images fully standards complaint requires you to include not only the alt tag but also the width, height and title tag for the image as well. Here’s an example of a fully compliant image reference you can follow.

12. Enable Google Image Search in Webmaster Central.

Visit Google Webmaster Tools and click on the Diagnostic tab on the menu bar. After which, select enhanced image search on the left sidebar and click on the checkbox to opt into image search for your website. This can only be done after you verify your website with Google so do that before proceeding further.

13. Try out Google Image Labeler.

Apparently, the Google Image Labeler is some sort of a online game which allows you and others to write tags for images that show up. These tags are then taken into consideration and may influence the Google Image search results.

14. Use Javascript to prevent framing of your webpages

By adding a piece of javascript code, you can prevent your images from being framed when users click on the image within Google Image Search. Visitors will not see the Google image frame but the full site and this may encourage more pageviews for your site as well. This practice may not entirely be endorsed by Google so try at your own risk.

15. HotLink Images from Google Search

This involves going to Google Image Search and to do a search query for the image you want. Visit the original webpage and copy the image location to hotlink it on your own website. This helps your website to show up high among the image search ranks. For an example, check out these search results for Jessica Alba (slightly NSFW).

Most of the images in the top row are hotlinked and actually rank better than the original image source. You should probably note that hotlinking is frowned upon by most webmasters because it leeches their bandwidth, not to mention that you might be violating copyrights as well.

An alternative method of hotlinking is to hotlink Google’s cache itself. This short tutorial gives clear indication of how to do it but this method only allows you to use thumbnails, not to mention that some webmasters have reported seeing no results after trying this method.

16. Use Image Sizing to Target a Search Term.

The size of your image may determine the amount of visits you receive from Google Image Search. Some people use Google Image to search for wallpapers and if you’re targeting a specific keyword, try creating it in the form of a wallpaper or in the form of an icon, depending on how much competition there is for the specific image.

17. Use Images about ‘Hot’ Topics.

One easy way to get more visitors from Google images involves the deliberate use of images to catch visitors who are searching for ‘hot’ topics, some of which can be easily found through the use of Google Trends. For example, screenshots of popular ongoing TV shows could be integrated in some way in some webpages. Note that for maximum effect, your content should be relevant to the image used as well.

18. Create a separate page and link to the page and image

This process involves adding an optimized page webpage on your website along and link the image to that specific page which visitors can access via the ‘back’ anchor on the new page whenever they find your page through Google Image Search.

I have not personally tried this but some have claimed that it helps both the regular search rank as well as the Image Search rank. See this page for the method in full.

19. Monitor the Number of Google Images Indexed

An important part of Google Image Search optimization is to monitor how many images on your website are indexed by Google Image Search to see if you are taking the right steps to optimize your images.

The easiest way to do this is to use a site search operator. For example, here is a list of images indexed on Boing Boing. Simply change boingboing.net to your url: http://images.google.com/images?q=site:boingboing.net

Converting Google Image Search Visitors

Getting traffic from Google Image Search is very nice but you’ll need some way of converting them into a customer or future reader. This can be quite difficult because visitors are likely to click away if after they find the image.

Here are some conversion tactics you can use:

• Place your image on a webpage with highly relevant content
• Link to other relevant webpages and image galleries
• Promote a special offer related to the product image that you’ve used
• Allow users to copy the image and paste it on their website (try this script)
• Include call to actions at the start and end of webpages

Try Experimenting with Google Image Search..

I’ve recently gotten a decent number of hits for a image which was experiencing seasonal surge in search queries for a specific term and I’m sure that the list of tips above will help you to get some extra traffic from Google Images as well.

You can start by first trying out a few images in your webpages or new blog posts to see if you actually get some traffic from it. Remember to monitor traffic through your stats package and tweak for optimum results.