I received this comment on one of my blog posts and it’s such a good question (one that I wrestled with for a long time) that I wanted to share the answer with all of you:

STAN WROTE:
If you wanted to put all the pieces of the IM puzzle together, what one source would you start with and why? I too have studied all and researched what marketers use such as Screencast for webinars, Infusion, Aweber, 1SC, WordPress, etc.

BUT what about all the pre-market research. I have never found any one of these guys by searching. It always came from a guy who promoted from the stage, who received my contact info, and then passed along to another marketer, etc….

Do you really know of a way to get organic free traffic through search enginc or social media syndication?

We have yet to find a proveable source that can provide niche traffic organically.

ANSWER:
Stan – ooooh you’re playing my tune! Love the question and it frustrated me for a long time too. And I spent lots of moola on ‘experts’ (as you can see if you read through my other blog posts on this site). However, I am pleased to say that I have indeed figured this out (only took me 10 years!) and so I am most pleased to help you shorten your learning curve.

If you go to my main site, you’ll see that it ranks very high in organic search results. How did I do it? 
Well, like most things, it’s via a combination of things, but here’s an overview of the top actions that made a difference:

1. Get a WordPress blog going on your main site.

Install and host this blog as part of your website, on your own server – do not host on wordpress.com or use their free hosting.

Next, set it up for automatic pinging. Here’s how to do that:

Go to Settings –> Writing

and in the section marked “Update Services” paste these into the box:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

and then “Save Changes”

Also install the WordPress “All in One SEO Pack” plug-in and make sure you fill out the fields for EVERY single blog post. Very annoying at first, until you get fluent in thinking up likely keywords, but this plug-in made a HUGE difference in search engines picking up my content.

Lastly, have the titling of your blog set up so that the URL for each post contains the actual title of your post (thus displaying the keywords) rather than random letters and number. For example, the URL for this post looks like this:

http://www.ziggazag.com/biz/how-to-generate-organic-free-search-engine-traffic/

See how that’s more search engine friendly than (for example):

http://www.ziggazag.com/biz/?p=173

Search engines love blogs and with these two things set up, they will really love your posts. I’m a bit miffed actually, as I spent 4 years establishing a forum with tens of thousands of posts (back when search engines liked forums) – which is now pretty worthless in terms of organic search results. But there you go, this is a dynamic environment and you have to keep shifting along with it.

2. Build content and drive as much traffic to your blog as you can

Now that you’ve got your blog set up and configured properly, it’s time to really build up your content on your blog. Don’t worry about posting every day – yes, it would be ideal if you could, but it’s not necessary to get good results.

I know this is the main thing about blogs that puts people off. One of my biz consult clients groaned whenever she even thought about getting a blog going. She doesn’t like writing and the thought of having to do it “regularly” made her shudder.

So I showed her ways to get a substantial amount of content up on her blog without having to write much, and sometimes even nothing. Here’s how:

- Re-do content you’re sending out as reports, email autoresponders, etc. so that it sends people to your blog for the full report, info, video, or how-to (rather than giving it all in the email).

- format any past articles or content as blog posts and get them up there – hire someone from elance.com to do this really fast and cheap.

Note: When posting to your blog, make sure all hyperlinks to other websites open in a NEW window – so that people don’t lose your site when they click on a link (just click on a link in this article to see what I mean).

- then take those same articles and submit them to article websites (like ezinearticles.com or a niche service for your market like selfgrowth.com). Again, you can hire someone to do this very cheaply. Have your bio at the end of every article link to your main site/blog.

Also set up a “subscribe by email” opt-in box on your blog and then email subscribers every time you post to your blog (also email your newsletter list). Just give them a teaser, or an article summary in the email with a link to your blog to read the whole piece.

WHY am I telling you to drive all the traffic to your blog on your main site??

Because search engines LOVE blogs and the more visitors you get to your blog, the higher your ranking.

3.  Get natural keywords throughout your site

Make sure your html tags for each section of your site are set up to maximize your keywords on your site: title tag and meta tags. But don’t put in too many meta tag keywords or it will backfire – the search engines will assume you don’t have the actual content, you’re just trying to fool them. Stick with 4 or 5 keyword that best represent what you’re talking about in that section of your site and use those.

Likewise, have your keywords appear in the text on your page – but only where they would naturally occur, otherwise, again, you’ll be penalized by the search engines for “keyword seeding”.

I set up a site for my hubby’s business and we didn’t set up a blog (cause he didn’t want to do any writing) but I did do the above keyword method for every page and he’s since worked with numerous clients who just found him through organic search results – and he does ZERO marketing for this business cause he’s pretty busy with our other business and referral clients.

4. Get some videos going about your information or how your products work

Again, videos will rank high in search results and they will also get picked up and featured on other websites without you even knowing. I found YouTube to be the easiest to use (I also tried Viddler) and since being acquired by Google, the keywords are working even better.

As you can see from my videos, these are very easy to do and you don’t need to do any slick production – they are very simple, but just give good info. And don’t worry, as time goes on you’ll get better, because you’ll get a better camera once you see how they benefit your business, and you’ll also get more fluent in your editing software (I use iMovie). Of course you’ll get better as a presenter and more comfortable. You can see the natural progression/improvement that takes place, from one of my first videos to my latest one I just uploaded. But customers don’t care, expectations are really low for DIY videos and they really just want the information.

If your business is mostly to do with selling products – like lawnmowers for example – then just demo the products. Let people see what they sound like, look like – does it look like it’s heavy for the person to push (if you’ve got a super lightweight one then video a child or old person mowing the lawn), let them see what the lawn looks like after you’ve mowed half it, etc.

I know, when it’s our own business/products, we’re so familiar with them, we’re almost bored. And it’s hard to imagine that people would want to watch you just pushing a lawnmower, or mixing up a shake – but they do!

Oh yes, and after you put your video up on YouTube – don’t forget to put it up on your blog too. Just copy and paste whatever you wrote for your Video Description on YouTube and copy/paste the Embed Code and you’re done.

5. Social media like twitter, facebook, etc.

I don’t know, jury’s still out on these as to whether they are worth the effort. I have farmed this out to an SEO guy – he has increased my twitter followers from 64 to almost 2000 in 2 months, so we’ll see if anything happens with that. No results/changes to sales as yet.

Stuff posted as Hub Pages, Yahoo Answers and things like that have made no difference – I think you would have to really get into these big-time to see a result, but even if they drive traffic, if it isn’t your core, qualified traffic, then you’ll see an increase in visitors and possibly an increase in opt-ins, but you won’t see an increase in sales – even if you wait 6 months. This is what we experienced.

My SEO guy has also made some techy changes to my sites, improved the xml sitemaps, made WC3 compliant, improved meta tags and submitted lots of articles for me and that has made a difference by significantly increasing the number of opt-ins to my free content. No increase in sales yet, but it’s only been 2 months, so we’ll have to give it a bit longer, since my customers typically do not buy right away.

The Bottom Line:

There is no magic formula for achieving good organic search engine results – where someone types in what they’re looking for and your site pops up – and thank god there isn’t!

I mean, I’m really glad the search engines are continually looking for ways to thwart Internet Marketers, because when I do a Google search, I actually want to find the answers to my questions – I want GOOD information, or a place I can buy the product from a reputable site.

So, if you want to improve your organic search engine results, then just pretend to be your customer:

• What do you want to see, hear, read, etc.?
• What will answer your questions?
• What will make you think that this guy/product/consultant/service really knows what they’re talking about and is trustworthy?

And then provide that on your blog and in the pages of your site. It’s really that simple. And the longer you’ve been doing that, the more the search engines like you, because if your site’s been up for 5 or 10 years, it shows Google that you’re serious and that your info is reliable.

GOOD HONEST CONTENT = GOOD SEARCH RESULTS

Hope that’s given you some good ideas and enough how-to so you can going on implementation.

Soar higher,
Jini