These are my favorites:

Squidoo – Squidoo has a fantastic platform and is very easy to use.  It does pay 2 months behind, but once you get going it is steady income, even if you take a break for a while.  Join SquidU and ask questions, share your latest pages (lenses) and ask for critiques and suggestions.  If you are a WAHM (Work At Home Mom) then you are especially well off.  Join Rocket Moms for an already built exclusive community of  friends.

HubPages – HubPages is easy to use and has a different payment scheme than Squidoo, but according to several people I know, you can earn much more than on Squidoo.  Many of us are active on both.

Associated Content - It’s pretty simple, you create the content, which are typically short articles, and Associated Content automatically distributes it to their huge list of topic-related Publishers.  Write about your favorite sponge for cleaning and it will be published on someone’s kitchen website.  Nifty! You earn money based upon how many visitors (hits) it received.  You could also link back to other related pages (such as your Squidoo or HubPages).  It’s win win!

Blogger – Sign up for Amazon Affiliates and you can easily display Amazon product links via their built-in tools.  You can also link to your other sites.

You will find that the months leading up to and including December are the most lucrative, being that it is Christmas shopping  season.   All of the above sites pay into your PayPal.com account.  Then you can set PayPal up to transfer to your real bank account down the road.  It took a few months of part time work and I was earning a few hundred dollars per month.  My results are probably typical for an active member of these sites.  Some people earn much, much more than me.

The key is to become part of the affiliate community by taking part in forums, social networking sites, and within the above sites, so that your friends will visit and hopefully bump up your pages or whatever.  For example, if you like to be on Facebook, look for and add Squidoo friends.  If you are a person that likes forums, then join SquidU (Squidoo), HubPages Forum, and others.  You will find very active members and probably become good internet friends with a few dozen people.  A lot of these folks are even meeting via Meetup.com and becoming “real life friends”, after all it’s always nice to make a new friend or a dozen.

So, if you are looking for more potential followers, sign up for Twiends!

TrafficG

The first one is TrafficG.  It is not the largest or most popular, but  the layout is immediately easy to understand.   Unlike so many sites out there this one does not try to confuse you into clicking on something else.

The main page shows you your current credits (how many you have earned), the sites in which the credits can be distributed, and the Start Surfing button.

The Start Surfing is also available on the left side of the screen, along the menu.  Each page you visit uses a Captcha in the upper left corner, in order to deter automation.  You simply click on one of the three Captcha choices that you see.  Currently it is set to 20 seconds minimum between sites.

Features include:

1. Very simple site navigation and layout
2. One “splash page”
3. An excellent referral program, including contests
4. Many banners to use for referrals
5. A simple to use toolbar
6. 20 second timer

EasyHits4U

EasyHits4U is the most popular traffic exchange around.  It has existed since 2003.  The layout is pretty easy to follow, with a menu bar at the top of the site.

Features include:

1. Earn real money or credits toward more traffic
2. Includes a directory to add your site
3. Includes many prebuilt splash pages
4. Option to create your own splash pages
5. A site rotator to help you to manage, host, and track your sites
6. 20 second timer

StartXchange

StartXchange looks like it will catch up to others because of the founder very aggressively comping up with creative ways of gaining visitors and members.  He also hosts a very popular traffic exchange directory, which certainly helps.  It is the oldest, having been created in 2001.   Many of the traffic exchange sites out there are using a script written by the founder, Tim Linden.  He created the first version of StartXchange when he was 15 years old.  If you’re looking for an innovative traffic exchange then this is it.  They set the standard.

Features include:

1. Chat option
2. Contests and prizes
3. Ability to join various teams of people competing for prizes
4. An active forum
5. A very good referral program
6. Easy to understand layout and navigation
7. 10 second timer

• The potential that you could rank higher is the way in which your lens is constructed and the fact that you could have more related content, thereby probably ranking higher in the SERPs than a competing page.
• You can add easily add the song’s Youtube videos and other content that is not included on other lyrics sites.
• Another benefit includes your including Amazon links to the album or MP3 single.

First, take a look at How To Make A Lyrics Lens.  He did a GREAT job describing how you can make one and the benefits of it.

My modifications include:

• Using the Amazon Spotlight module for the album
• Using the Amazon module for the singles (mp3 singles of just the one song)
• Adding a Blackbox module at the bottom, pointing to other related lenses
• Lensroll your related lenses together
• Adding a Flickr module and set it to a slide show (for the artist or band)

I just started and am already seeing good traffic.

After you’ve got your lenses out of WiP status (work in progress) add them to the following groups.

Lyrics Headquarters – add your lyrics lenses to groups, including this one

Here’s some of my current lyrics lenses:

Beck – Replica

Beck – Modern Guilt

Beck – Volcano

Beck – Orphan

Portishead – Hunter

Portishead – Silence

Constantines – Our Age

Constantines – Hard Feelings

Constantines – Trans Canada

Usher – Moving Mountains

Fleet Foxes – Your Protector

How does one target a specific geographic region/country/city?

There are a few areas of SEO and marketing that you can do to improve your site ranking within a particular region, known as ‘geotargeting’. The biggest challenge would be ranking well in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) across a range of regions. It would probably require several regional campaigns.

1. Domain TLD: You can register your domain with a country specific TLD, such as “.co.uk”. This should help you rank better in the UK. The same can be done for other countries.
2. Hosting: This is a major factor, if web host server is located in France, then you are likely to rank well in France. Unfortunately, you may not rank well for search engine users in other countries. You should look around for webhosts from that area, for example: you can be hosted on a Maui server, if you are targeting a Maui audience.
3. Languages: If your site includes more than one language, you will have a better chance of ranking well within countries where that language is spoken.
4. Keywords Usage: If your website has too much content for “German”, as apposed to the “UK”, then the search engines may perceive this as the website is targeting the location mentioned in the content. I do not believe in keyword density as being of any value, but I do believe that including the keywords within the content would be relevant.
5. On page/site SEO: Create individual pages or sections of your website for the area you are targeting. Your efforts should then focus the traffic to these pages/areas. This includes link building, advertising, and other means to direct traffic and improve your rank in the SERPs.
   
6. Localized Link Building: Find local bloggers and websites (government city, state, country too!) and see if they’d link to you. Even better, see if they would write an article or two about your site or services.
7. Create a network: Buy domains and host them on localized webhosts. Create original, good content and point them to your main site. You may even get some referral traffic from them as well.
8. Google Local Business Center: By using the Google Local Business Center, you are also narrowing your site down to local areas.
   

   Use the Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even coupons to print out and bring to your shop. It’s easy, free, and you don’t need a website of your own.









9. Google Webmaster Tools: Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to Tools, Set geographic target. You can associate a particular geographic location with this site if you are targeting users within that area. You are currently not able to designate multiple regions.
10. Google Adwords: You can target regionally specific traffic via Google Adwords. This is an excellent way to get targeted traffic.
    
11. Yahoo! Local: You can list your site locally within Yahoo! Local for some additional traffic.
12. Use other local directories: You can use other directories to bring in local customers.
    • Verizon SuperPages
    • DMOZ
    • CitySearch
    • TrueLocal
    • Qwest Dex
    • Localeze
    • Merchant Circle
13. Use localized SEO companies: These companies specialize in improving your regional presence. If your own efforts appear to be limited or you do not have the knowledge or time, then definitely consider going with an SEO company such as these.
    • GeoLocalSEO
    • BoostLocalListings
14. Seeing the search engine results: Use Geoseo.com to view how your site/pages rank in the SERPs for specific keywords. It will show you results for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

If you’re not using this, it’s worth giving it a try. The purpose for this is to have notification when new links to your site are found by Google. This can be very good for any linkbuilding campaign.

Click Here: Google Alerts

The search terms should be similar to any one or all of the following:

link: http://www.example.com <— notice the space between link: and http?
link:http://www.example.com
link:www.example.com
link:http://example.com

The question has been asked, “what does the space do?” It’s strange, but it does bring up different results of backlinks, so it’s worth using this modification. Why there is a difference, I have no idea.

It’s very handy for watching progress of Google picking up new links to your sites.

You can set the frequency to:

• as soon as it happens
• once per day
• once per week

Also, it can be set it for Blogs, news, web, etc.

What is the maximum number of alerts I can create?

You can create up to 1000 alerts. To create more alerts, you can either delete any existing alerts or request alerts to be sent to a different email address. Please remember that you can only have up to 10 unverified Alerts at any given time.

Linkbait is simply creating something that sparks peoples’ interest enough that they would create a link to you or use something that you offer, such as an image or a tool. They may knowingly or unknowingly create a backlink to your site.

With Google’s Matt Cutts doing a writeup of linkbait recently and an older one, it made me think more about it. The real thing always serves as the best example, rather than just explaining it. This seems to be an acceptable way of getting links, according to Google.

Here’s his definition: “On a meta-level, I think of “linkbait” as something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are a lot of ways to do that, including putting in sweat-of-the-brow work to generate data or insights, or it can be as simple as being creative. You can also say something controversial to generate discussion (this last one gets tired if you overuse it, though). Sometimes even a little bit of work can generate a reason for people to link to you.”

Examples of Linkbait

www.stclaire.com – PR4 – Links 2,630



Matt Cutts used this “Technical Communications” site that had a clever sign making section.

Ning – PR7 – Links 761,100
Create your own social network for anything
A clever way that allows the user to create their own social network. It reminds me of meetup.com, but that is strictly internet based.

Muglo.com -PR0 (very new) – Links 0
Create your own smiley-faces for blogs, forums, etc

This is similar to the sign making site, but is limited to smiley faces. It has a simple name that is easy to remember.

One Red Paper clip – PR5 – Links 33,000

This guy was inspired by a Canadian boardgame called “Trade Up”. He had a stroke of genius when he decided to try it for real; trading a red paper clip all the way along until he ended up with a house.
He has since written a book about his experience. In addition he runs a forum in which you can try to trade other people for things, including paper clips. I’m curious if it would still work for others.

Road Trip to Oprah – PR4 – Links 1,680

You could do something extravagant like these guys.

We are on a quest to ask Oprah for $1 to join the producers of The 1 Second Film. The 1 Second Film is a non-profit global collaborative art project bringing thousands of people together to make a film that makes a difference. Anyone in the world can help produce The 1 Second Film by donating $1. From Kiefer Sutherland to Kevin Bacon, thousands of producers are already participating. All profits from our finished film will benefit the Global Fund for Women. It’s the start of a 5 Phase Plan to bring the world together, one second at a time.

Maybe it’s a little over the top…

SEO Tools – PR3 – Links 6,040

Search Engine Optimization Tools
If you have the technical skills or are willing to hire someone to create your idea, then you could come up with some useful tool. Other examples would be calorie calculators, sitemap generators, or interest rate calculators.

If you are struggling with how to create linkbait, have a look at this post called Link Bait Kindergarten for some great ideas on how to be creative.

The following are Social Bookmarking Sites that provide dofollow backlinks to your site. As always, it is important to provide good content to these sites, as well as being relevant content to yours. Most importantly, we should not abuse or misuse these Social Bookmarking sites.

Are these really “DoFollow”? Read this to see other ways of blocking the spiders.

Ok, as I add new ones (or take away bad ones), then the number changes.

• Slashdot PR9
• Mister-Wong PR7
• Furl PR7
• Bibsonomy PR7
• Spurl PR6
• Unalog PR6 – Registration not currently available (thanks dauclair)
• Jumptags PR6
• Searchles PR6
• Plime PR5
• BlogHop PR5
• MyLinkVault PR5
• A1 Webmarks PR5
• ClipClip PR5
• Diigo PR5
• Listible PR5
• MyVmarks PR5
• Complore PR4
• OnMyList PR4
• Kapely PR3
  
• info4it PR3
• MyPIP PR3
• SyncOne PR3
• Yattle PR2
• Faves PR0
• UPCHUCKr PR0

NoFollow – How the attribute is being interpreted differs between the search engines. While some take it literally and do not follow the link to the page being linked to, others still “follow” the link to find new web pages for indexing. In the latter case rel=”nofollow” actually tells a search engine “Don’t score this link” rather than “Don’t follow this link.” This differs from the meaning of nofollow as used within a robots meta tag, which does tell a search engine: “Do not follow any of the hyperlinks in the body of this document”.

What is a good way to check if a link is Nofollow? Download Firefox

Install the Firefox SEOQuake Plugin from the tools page.

You may also like the DoFollow Forums List
*If you notice any changes or possible additions, please post a comment.

The definition of nofollow:

nofollow is a non-standard HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.

As a possible incentive or through a lack of desire to block links in forums, some forum owners and moderators have decided to allow backlinks within a forum post or within the signature (aka sig). One reason for having nofollow links and/or not allowing sigs in a forum is to prevent spam.

For this reason, I do not encourage or condone the abuse of these forums. I see it as a perk for actively taking part in the forum. Along with possibly getting some “link juice”, you may get some traffic from readers of your posts, especially from forums related to your links.

What is a good way to check if a link is Nofollow? Download Firefox

Install the Firefox SEOQuake Plugin from the tools page.

I have organized a list of dofollow forums into categories and alphabetized it. It is a permanent page within this site and will continue to be updated.

List of DoFollow Forums

Google has an answer on their Official Google Base Blog, however their advice is odd and a pain in the arse at best, and very bad advice at worst. Their answer is to create another page just for the Google Base visitors, thus creating duplicate content, which contradicts Google’s own webmaster guidelines. Nice.

Regular landing page: http://example.com/page1.html
Unique Base landing page: http://example.com/page2.html

By creating two versions of the same page on your website and submitting the unique landing page URLs to Base, Google Analytics can show you exactly how much traffic is being sent to your website from Base. Just make sure to include the unique landing page URL in the link attribute of your bulk upload file.

A much, much better answer was supplied by Scott Horne over at WebProNews. They even provide great graphics to help you. He suggests adding a query string to the end of the url link in Google Base, such as ?ref=base.

It would look like this: http://www.example.com/nifty-product.html?ref=base

You would then log into Google Analytics, go to the specific domain, go to Content, Top Landing Page, and do a search for ref=base.

Very simple!