These last few months, I’ve been spending my time creating or editing sites related to Twitter. Because the number of these Twitter-related sites and tools keeps growing every day, it gets harder and harder to get people to visit them.

Below, you’ll find a list of sites and directories I use to drive traffic to my new Twitter sites and apps.
Visit them to keep track of all new launches, or submit your own.

Twitter Only

• AllTwitterTools - a directory with Twitter related applications, tools, products & resources

• Twitdom - Twitter application database

• TwtBase - Twitter application database

• Twi5 - Twitter application database

• TwitterEye - 440 Twitter tools, and counting..

• TwitterLittle Star - a visual Twitter apps directory

• TweeterApps - resource for all things Twitter

• Tweerrific - Twitter apps, codes and widgets

• Twapps - archiving the best Twitter apps

Web2.0

• KillerStartups - a user driven internet startups community
  

• FeedMyApp - a Web2.0 sites & apps directory

• Ziipa - visual directory for Web 2.0 websites and applications.

• MakeUseOf - cool websites, software and internet tips

• Listio - a community directory of Web2.0 apps, tools and services

• Go2Web20 - a visual web2.0 directory

• LaunchFeed - an RSS Feed and Companion website to keep you informed on all the latest website launches

Check Out These Sites Too:

• ReTweet.it - Tweet Exchange

• TwillionDollarHomepage - pixel ads page

Determine Your Goals

Want to know how to prioritize your SEO efforts? Start out by defining your goals. Whether you want to sell products or services, build brand image, or increase site traffic, you need to determine what your priority is and focus on the aspects of SEO that will help you achieve that goal. Once you figure out what your top priorities are, create key performance indicators, or KPIs. The more specific your KPIs are the better. When you have specific KPIs, you can easily determine whether you are meeting or missing your goals. Some examples of KPIs include the goals to get 1000 new newsletter subscribers in one month, sell 10 information products in one week, or rank in the top ten Google results for a specific keyword term.

When you outline your goals and create KPIs, you will know what strategies are required in order for you to meet your goals. The tactic you use will depend on the goal in question. For example, if you want to rank in the top 10 results for “dog shampoo,” one of the steps you’ll want to focus on is link-building with anchor text containing that keyword. If you are trying to increase the number of subscribers to your newsletter, you may spend a lot of time creating and marketing killer web content that targets your particular demographic.

Decide Whether You Need to Focus on Quality Content or Link-Building

You may have heard that the most important aspect of SEO is link-building. This holds true more for new websites than old, established websites. Sure, links remain important no matter what but older sites that have already built up sufficient link authority can get pages ranked simply by adding new content and linking to it internally. On the other hand, if your website is relatively new, your on-page tweaking efforts will have minimal effects until you build link authority. Your basic on-page SEO factors such as optimized content, optimized title tags, crawlability, internal linking, and flat site architecture should be taken care of but your primary focus should be on link-building after that.

Spend Time on the Most Critical Aspects of SEO

Determining your goals and focus is important but no matter what your ultimate aim is, you should always keep the big picture. Pay attention to the most critical aspects of SEO, which are links, interesting content that is optimized for target keywords, crawlability, site structure and optimized title tags.

If you are in the early stages of SEO, focus your efforts on forging relationships with other people online in order to build links and attract traffic. Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned webpreneur, use target keywords in your title tags and make your site accessible for humans and search engines for better crawlability. And don’t forget to provide your visitors with content worth linking to!

Take these simple steps to ensure that you head in the right direction for SEO success. Define your goals in the beginning so you can determine which strategies will give you the most “bang for your buck.” Nevertheless, don’t neglect the critical aspects of on-page and off-page SEO in your quest for achieving specific goals.

I’m the head copy writer for an SEO Company called SEOsapien.com. You can find all our search engine optimization services, SEO Consulting and more SEO Articles at http://www.seosapien.comArticle Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/focus-your-seo-campaign-on-your-needs-936256.html

You would probably work harder at optimizing it for the proper keywords if you knew how much traffic your website could get from search engines. It is amazing how many Internet business owners do not practice basic search engine optimization.

In this article we will talk about a few of the basics any serious Internet business should be following.

1. One mistake people make is they think they need to start from ground zero and either totally overhaul their existing website or get a new one. In reality there are probably many good things about your existing website and some of the pages may have already been spidered by search engines.

For this reason you want to employ a few of the other tips we will talk about with your existing site and not make major changes to it.

2. Define your target audience!Many websites are scattered and appear to have no focus to them. Defining your target audience means knowing exactly who you are aiming at when a person sits down and begins to search keywords on their favorite search engine.

3. Another thing to consider is how fun your website is. When you get visitors to it you want them to stay and browse around on additional pages. Adding graphics, banners, video, audio, polls and so on make it more intereactive which makes it more fun.

4. Target keyword phrases and longtail keyword phrases. If they have less competition you stand a better chance of ranking high for your keyword phrases. Longtail keyword phrases of four, five, or even more words are easier for you to get on page 1 of a search engine for.

These phrases may not bring you as much traffic as the shorter phrases, but over time if you target enough of them you can develop meaningful quality traffic using this strategy. You can build your keyword list by starting at the free keyword search tool here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal he

5. Make sure your site is set up targeting specific keyword phrases with hyperlinks that your visitors can click on. For this reason you may not want to post affiliate links on your homepage. Before passing them through to an affiliate page always send your visitors to a blog post or an additional page of your own website.

6. Another thing you should do is develop webpages and blog posts around the keyword phrases your are building. Include those in the title as well as in the body of any at text you’re posting on the page. Simply put you are trying to let the search engines know what that page is about so they can rank you well for those specific words.

Jeff Schuman invites you to visit his make money at home website for 4 ways to make $10 a day taking surveys, JV With Jeff free training, and Hands Off Article Marketing. Please click here now: http://www.Team-Schuman.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/seo-basic-tips-for-your-internet-business-922059.html

These last few weeks, twitter and my website flipping adventures are taking up almost all of my time, yet my eye fell on a little tool Google added to their search result pages: The Wonder Wheel (sounds promising, doesn’t it?)

You can find it by clicking the ’show options’ link underneath the Google logo on the search results page. In the menu that appears, you’ll find a link to the wonder wheel.

When you click it, the wonder wheel will open, and you’ll be able to dig in deeper into your subject, and find some popular related search terms.

Just try it out. it’s a nice little addon!

In earlier days employers never accessed Internet to find out more about a prospective employee just because there was no Internet. These days it is the first function any employer will perform- search you on the Internet and click on what is said about you and what are you saying. If you have a Twitter profile in your name, that will appear in the results near the top and a click will reveal a lot about you to your employer. If you were an employer, what kind of an employee will you look for- let us list the qualities.

1. Sincere
2. Hard working
3. Efficient
4. Effective
5. Proficient in his/her work
6. Good communicator
7. Fun loving
8. Team worker
9. Ready to learn, etc.

Now look at your profile. Does your profile and the background you have used on Twitter convey these qualities? If yes, great, otherwise it is time to make changes so that when any prospective employer looks at your profile he/she is encouraged by that.

Let us first discuss backgrounds on twitter. Have you used a background that is based on themes such as love, cartoons etc? Time to change them to more sedate backgrounds such as flowers, butterflies, flags and so on. Since you do not yet know the preferences of your employer you should choose something neutral.

How about what tweets say? Are some of them meaningless? Delete such tweets. All of your tweets should be sensible and such that convey the above qualities and do not suggest any lethargy or slip shod approach. Look at your profile as a neutral person and make all the changes needed.

The author likes to write text messages and advises for internet and social networking content like twitter backgrounds and myspace comments. He also writes quizzes on subjects like relationship, personality, etc.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/how-job-opportunities-are-affected-by-your-twitter-profile-916816.html

“What is Twitter? I don’t get how will it help me promote my book to tell people what I am having for breakfast,” I replied. “It would take me too long to explain, just try it out,” he said.

What follows here is a week-by-week review of how I learned that Twitter can be an important business-development tool for lawyers and law firms.

Week 1: Signing up The sign-up at Twitter. com was just like everything else. I needed to add a picture but luckily, I was still holding on to the picture used for my attorney bio, so I uploaded that. A bio. Usually I leave them blank, but this one was limited to 150 characters, so I wrote: “Father, husband, attorney, and aspiring author. Follow me as I work to get published.” I was pretty happy with myself, it was a perfect bio for someone trying to get published. After I finished my profile, Twitter suggested that I start following a bunch of famous people like Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O’Neal. Was it the real Shaq? Turns out it was. These famous people have almost 80,000 people following them, and the truth is I just didn’t get it.

Week 2: I start following people I needed help finding some publishers to submit my manuscript to, so I used the Twitter search function. I searched using the term “publisher” and turned up about 50 results. So I started following all 50 of them. Some were small publishers, some were big, but the cool part was that they were all posting stories and links all about writing and publishing, one of the articles was “10 Things Every Author Should Do Before Submitting a Manuscript.” This was good stuff, exactly the types of things I needed to learn in my situation. I also realized that, as I started following people, the majority of them followed me back. Now I had more than 30 followers. I was feeling pretty good.

Week 3: A fortuitous connection Some total stranger was asking about my book, this was great. So I explained my book to him, and we chatted back and forth using Twitter’s Direct Messages, which are kind of like an e-mail message or private messages on Facebook. He was an author who has self-published in the past, and he gave me the phone number of one of the gurus of self-publishing. Out of the blue, I call this guy up, and he takes an hour and talks to me. He gives me advice and shares a few contacts with me.

Week 4: Spreading the message When someone shares an interesting link to an article on Twitter or shares a good quote, it gets repeated. This is called a “retweet.” I noticed that whenever I posted articles, they never got retweeted. Why not? Because they weren’t interesting enough. So I started paying attention to the types of articles that were retweeted. Usually they announced breaking news or shared really interesting content on blogs, so I started trying to think of something to post on my blog that might garner some interest. I posted a satirical response to an article one of my buddies from law school posted, and it spread like wildfire, or at least like a small brush fire. I had 170 unique visitors to my blog in just an hour or two in response to that one post. That was fun but, more importantly, it made me realize the power of Twitter. Here I was with fewer than 100 followers, and my message spread well beyond that circle.

Week 5: My first corporate client “Does anybody know an attorney that practices contract law?” “Yeah, that’s actually what I do, what do you need?” I replied suspiciously. “My friend needs some legal advice about a contract, could you talk to her?” “Sure, send me a direct message with her contact into.” After exchanging e-mail addresses and a few phone conversations, my firm had a new client. All our communication was exchanged over the phone and e-mail, and the retainer and payment were paid by credit card. It was so easy, it made me realize that maybe there was more to Twitter than just promoting books. Maybe I could use Twitter to find clients. You see, Twitter functions like a giant cocktail party where thousands of conversations are going on simultaneously. You can listen in on any conversation you please, you just simply need to “follow” the individuals having the conversation. Unlike two other social networking sites, Facebook and Myspace,you don’t need to be accepted as someone’s “friend” to listen in on their conversation. For example, if MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice (both of whom are on Twitter) are having a Twitter conversation, then you may listen in if you have a Twitter account- you can even try to add your own clever enough comment or question to be included in their discussion.

Week 6: Automated searches Using the free program Tweetdeck, I set up searches so that every time someone mentioned “contract law” on Twitter, from anywhere in the world, their post was filtered through a search that arrived instantly on my computer. I soon learned how to create an alert that would send me an e-mail or text message any time the term “contract law” was mentioned in a Twitter post. That allowed me to respond in real time. Return for a second to our cocktail-party analogy. Here you are at this gigantic cocktail party, and you overhear a conversation about contract law. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear you are looking for a corporate attorney. Could I recommend someone? And like that, a new relationship is created that is specifically targeted. Here are a few of the comments I saw posted on Twitter after setting up my search: “I urgently need an immigration attorney, can anybody recommend one?” “My friend is getting a divorce, can anybody recommend an attorney?” “Does anybody know a NY attorney I can ask a malpractice question to?”

Week 7 and beyond: A world of opportunity I have been on Twitter for 14 weeks. I have a large following now, but more importantly, I have learned some amazing tools that are helping me to expand my zone of influence beyond just Western New York. Every day I see potential leads- some of which I pass on or have to ignore because they are outside of my area of expertise. There are some 12 million users of Twitter now, mostly highly educated people in urban centers, and they are talking about every single legal topic imaginable. My recommendation for any lawyer? You just need to jump in and give it a try.

Adrian Dayton is an attorney who was recently admitted to practice law in the state of New York. He is also an author awaiting publication of his first book “The Year of 12 Virtues.” He can be found on Twitter @adriandayton or at his website http://adriandayton.com/blog/Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/how-i-learned-to-twitter-in-7-weeks-915428.html

Top 25 Twitter cartoons from across the Web compiled by Chad Richards of www.socialyst.net

Twitter can be an incredible asset to your business, just like email can be.  But (just like email), it can also be a huge time-waster and can suck hours out of your day without you even noticing.  You get on Twitter and then the next time you look up it’s an hour later!

A portion of self-control is important for any business person.  If you are self-employed, it becomes even more important!   Wasting time is wasting money. 

Wasting time on Twitter is like sitting around the water cooler and chatting with coworkers about last night’s American Idol segment - it might be fun, and it passes the time, but it wasted time that could have been used to make money.
 

Here are some tips on how to keep your Twitter time under control:

1.  Schedule a time for Twitter. 
Just like you can spend hours online checking emails and just surfing the ‘Net, getting on Twitter 10 times a day doesn’t help you at all.  Schedule two Twitter times per day - once in the morning and once in the evening - and then stick to it.  Your Twitter buddies can survive without knowing your entire itinerary for the day.

2.  Decide the purpose for your visit before getting on Twitter. 
Are you sending a tweet about your latest blog post?  Are you trying to find local business people to network with?  Deciding what you want to do before you log on is a big time saver.

3.  Jot down notes during the day for your Twitter time.
It doesn’t have to be anything long or fancy.  A sticky note will do.  Just keep track of your thoughts so when you get on Twitter you can accomplish what you want and then leave the site.

4.  Do not tweet about every single thing you do. 
No one cares if you are going to the store.  They don’t agonize over the fact that your hamster ate too much.  Keep your tweets limited to important stuff.

If you take control of your Twitter time, you can take control of how well it works for you.

Not so long ago, I became to know and love Twitter.

• It allows me to gather and share knowledge and tips, without having to write entire blog posts - which - for me - is pretty time consuming,
• It provides the opportunity to quickly interact with people, without having to abandon what I’m doing

While I was learning the ropes, I thought it would be a good idea to share my findings on a special blog. TwitterKnowHow.com was born…

Unfortunately, I have too much on my hands right now to keep managing the blog. I’m already working on several other projects, and I simply can’t spare the time.

So I’ve put up the site for sale.

Before I did, I figured I had to drive some traffic to it, in order to make it an interesting offer. Because traffic generation is not one of my best skills, I started looking for ideas…

While exploring Twitter-related site, I had noticed that the ‘Follow Me On Twitter’ buttons and button generators were extremely popular with the Twitter audience. I could see stats of hundreds of buttons being created every day.  If I wanted traffic, that was the way to go. So I came up with the  Twitter Ribbon Ad Generator, a free service that allows you to create  - you probably guessed it - ‘Follow-Me-On-Twitter’ ribbon ads to put on your site.

What happened next completely surprised me…

All I did was tweet about the service, and soon people all around the world started tweeting about it too. As a result, the site started receiving much more traffic than expected. And by installing the Viral Twitter Script, which requires visitors to tweet about the service in order to get access to all available ribbon ad templates, I can be assured the stream of traffic will keep growing.

Mission accomplished… This would really bring up the value of the site.

Next thing I did was read through a couple of ebooks about website flipping (I can really recommend FlipNoobs), got myself a reseller account at Hostgator (since I’m planning to flip sites more often, I thought it would be a good investment. And by using the coupon code ‘wordpress‘, I got the first month for only $15 instead of $24) and listed the sites at Sitepoint’s marketplace.

At first, I didn’t set a BIN (’Buy It Now’) price. After all, I’m new to all this, and I honestly have no idea what the sites are worth. Unfortunately, people kept asking me for one, so I decided to set it to $975.  I realize the sites are probably way underpriced, but to me, $975 is a huge amount of money. And if I have remembered 1 sentence from the ebooks I’ve read it’s this one: ‘don’t be greedy - if you can get a price that you think is sufficient, don’t hesitate to sell.‘

I’ve only listed the site yesterday, but there has been some interest already. I must admit: I’m excited like a schoolgirl.

(And maybe the best part is - even if I don’t sell the sites, the learning experience has been more valuable than all the money in the world )

As a result, I simply don’t have time to write a long blog post, yet I want to give you a little something - being Christmas and all

The ‘48 Hour Action Plan - Your 2-Day Action Plan To Affiliate Profits‘ is my new step-by-step guide that will show you how to set up your own money-making website in less than 48 hours, without having any experience or a product of your own.

The report is available to download at no cost - you don’t even have to sign up to get it -, and as a special bonus, you’ll also receive Master Resale Rights ánd a rebranding kit, which will allow you to distribute this report to others and profit from it even more!

Get the report now!