But take a look at this chart I took a few moments ago:

The chart above is a one-year graph showing my search engine referrals from Google.

Now before October 13th, all was great. As you see, the graph was steadily marching higher and higher – gradually. I like that…

… But then out of nowhere Google slapped me (for the first time ever). And for the last month or so, traffic averaged about 30% normal levels. (The good news is it's rising back to normal levels).

A lot of my subscribers are upset about this…

… But for me, it really doesn't matter much, because I get my traffic from a wide VARIETY of sources. I actually get my biggest competitors sending me free internet traffic. Yep, it's true… and I have a guy half my age across the pond in the UK who showed me how to do it.

I featured him back in February. Here's what I said about him earlier this year in my email alert to my subscribers:

Does this guru suck?

If you've subscribed to my email alerts since
November of 1997, you know I throw just
about every "guru" and "expert" under the bus.

They suck. Seriously. They blow
and offer awful money-making advice -
no matter what the price tag.

But yesterday, I stumbled upon a life-changing discovery.
And I don't hype.

His name is James A. Penn. And everyone
marketing their online business should
get to know this guy.

What's remarkable is he's just 21 years old…
a university student from "across the pond".
And he already earns a full-time income
using part-time techniques.

Penn just released a new ebook that's sick…

… Sick as it's the most comprehensive
guide to online profits I've ever read.

I'm embarrassed to say it's even better
than the information I publish to you.

And it's also sick because it's less than $10.

You must order this right now… right here… without delay:
http://www.fetch123.com/attractbuyers

You must pay attention to this because
you're going to pick up 2 major takeaways:

#1: How to setup a funnel to attract
precisely-qualified buyers to visit your website.

If you only buy this ebook to see how he
choreographs you through the buying experience,
it's worth 10 times the asking price for this alone.

No joke. It's brilliant. The sales funnel is just AMAZING.

And unless you really pay attention, you have no
idea how Penn cleverly guides you to
BEG to pay him more money.

I'm stealing many of these new techniques. And I'm going to use
these strategies starting next week (stay tuned).

#2: 50 pages of an endless parade of gold nuggets.
Actually, the ebook is 53 pages, but I can't recommend
Strategy #3. Yes, you'll do okay using this tactic,
but the liability is not worth the gain…

… But other than that, this ebook is just phenomenal.

I'd like to think I know a lot about internet marketing,
but this 21-year old college student was schooling me.
I'm taking tons of notes so I can put these strategies
into action right away.

Seriously. Skip that $10 crappy lunch today and
buy this ebook instead.

You'll thank me for this recommendation.

Click here to get this instantly:
http://www.fetch123.com/attractbuyers

- markus

What's interesting is I've been even more impressed with James since earlier this year. In fact two weeks ago he revealed a genius strategy that's going to help some of my clients make 6-figure incomes starting in about 3 weeks. (I'm not kidding.) He revealed how to get any competitor to literally BEG to send us their most profitable customers. It works the same day it's put into action. It costs NOTHING to do it (except a few hours of our time). It's VERY profitable…

… But the best part is Google could go out of business and this strategy is going to work day after day – for life!

Bottom line: You don't have to let Google mess around with your livelihood. It's best to have many different methods and strategies that get you traffic free to your website…

… If you're a writer (freelance, book author, blogger or online entrepreneur), click here to get my FREE tutorials on how to turn your writing into cash using free traffic methods.

If you're not a writer, but you're a marketing junkie (like me), you might be interested in joining my private club.

Finally, if you're a paid member, today's Stump Markus is going to be all about finding alternative ways to get free traffic (that doesn't solely rely on Google).

Backlinks are like votes. And the search engines rely heavily on these votes to determine what position you show up in a web search.

We're all guilty of listening to all of the wrong "gurus" and "experts" and make classic backlinking mistakes… everything from using automated tools to using link wheels with "footprints" — even backlinking too much, too fast.

Yes it's true. Getting too many backlinks too quickly actually works against you. Let me prove it to you below…

… Here's a snapshot of my webstats. Here we see my how-to tutorial on writing a personal biography example gets me a lot of traffic – 67,232 visitors in just 90 days:

This webpage has been on my site for years. And while I currently average more than 700 visitors a day to this webpage, it wasn't always so bountiful…

… I too listened to the wrong people and made all of the backlinking mistakes one could make. It even got me banned from showing up in Google's search results for years.

So back in the Spring of 2009, I reversed engineered some sites and figured out how to make Google happy and get a steady parade of traffic to my webpages. To my surprise, I found that working too hard and too fast actually worked against me. Instead, I invest just 15 minutes a day on building links.

As a result, I'm getting this:

See how the graph continues to steadily grow in numbers month after month?

The best way to build backlinks is to "prime the pump". Go slow. I avoid automated backlinking tools – they leave "footprints" and "signals" that you're trying to game the system. Instead, I shoot for less than a dozen backlinks to get my webpage on the first page of Google – take a look:

When you look at the top, you see I have SEOQuake installed… and it shows the PR:0 (I have a PageRank of zero… yes that's a 0) and Y!:8 (yes, just 8 incoming links to my webpage). So once again the "gurus" and "experts" are all wrong – you don't need to have hundreds or even thousands of backlinks to show up tops in the search results to get 700 visitors to your site each day. In almost every case, my most visited webpages have less than a dozen inbound links.

Just 8 incoming links to my site gets Google to send me this:

See how I'm getting hundreds (even thousands) of free organic traffic referrals from Google? If I were to pay just 10 cents a click using Google AdWords' pay per click advertising program, this would set me back thousands and thousands of dollars. Instead, I get this traffic 100% FREE!

Most of the keywords are a result of showing up on the first page in Google. (And I got a bunch from Yahoo! and Bing, too.)

So what's my secret? How in the world am I able to get just 8 backlinks to my site and get 66,182 visits in just the last 90 days?

Here it is – the tactic that made the BIG difference:

One of my secrets is to post a "nofollow" link. Yep, while all of the "gurus" and "experts" tell us to avoid "nofollow" backlinks, it was this link above that made all of the difference. I know it because I track this stuff… and as soon as I posted that link (shown above), my visits more than doubled the very next week. And since then, traffic to this webpage of mine has gone up more than 11 times.

Later today I'm holding a teleseminar about this. I'm going to reveal my #1 backlinking secret location that no one is talking about…

Update: I just completed this seminar about backlinking. And this email from John Patten just arrived shortly after:

… This teleseminar is FREE when you join my Marketing Junkies Club. And dont' fret if you can't make the call… I record everything and make the replay available the very next day. To access this call, look for the 7/7/2011 teleconference replay.

These plugins give us additional functionality within the WordPress software – giving us the ability to put our blogging on autopilot.

Here's my recommended… must-have list of my favorite WordPress plugins I use myself to enhance my WordPress blog (listed in order of importance):

All in One SEO Pack – This is my all-time favorite WordPress plugin.

It adds automatic search engine optimization options into each WordPress post… ultimately attracting visitors to your blog almost automatically.

I say almost automatically because there are three empty fields to fill out for each post you make:

- Webpage title

- Meta description

- Meta keywords

When you fill out these the right way, you're going to get a lot more clicks from search engine results to your blog post.

WP Auto Tagger – -This plugin automatically scans your blog post and looks for popular keyword phrases. It takes these phrases and creates a backup search engine friendly duplicate page.

Don't fret about the technical details of this plugin. All I can say is that after checking my blog stats, a large majority of my search engine referrals come as a result of WP Auto Tagger creating these tags.

Google XML Sitemaps – This amazing WordPress plugin generates a special Google-friendly sitemap every night helping you get your blog post noticed by search engine spiders and bots.

Google XML Sitemaps creates a file called "sitemap.xml" — an A to Z index listing the details of each blog post. For example, mine is found at:

http://www.marketing-ideas.org/sitemap.xml

Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo! and Bing and watch your blog content show up faster in these popular search engines.

AdSense Now! – If you're not making money with your blog, you should.

And Google AdSense is the fastest and easiest way to make money I've ever tested (when you put my AdSense secrets into action, that is).

The AdSense Now! plugin makes it a breeze to add Google AdSense revenue sharing into your blog… just install the plugin, copy and paste your AdSense code and configure the positioning settings to display your ads between your blog post's headline and content:

Top: Center

Middle: Suppress

Bottom: Suppress

W3 Total Cache – WordPress is great, but it's notoriously slow loading. It takes many many seconds just to start to see your blog content display.

In today's world, speed is everything. If your site doesn't display in a second or so, your visitor clicks to your competitor.

The good news is this WordPress plugin DRAMATICALLY improves the speed of your blog by adding page and database caching which displays your blog faster.

wpuntexturize – By default, most WordPress themes add "graphic embellishments" to your blog posts… that includes those sometimes fancy curly quotes.

You've probably seen the problem frequently… you go to read a blog post and it's riddled with question marks and other weird characters. This happens when a blogger copies and pastes content from another blogger with curly quotes.

This simple plugin prevents WordPress from making HTML entity code substitutions of single and double quotation marks with their curly alternatives.

Broken Link Checker – Search engine robots and spiders don't like it when your hyperlinks to recommended sources are outdated and don't work.

This WordPress plugin checks your posts (while you're sleeping) for broken links and missing images. If there's an issue, you're notified in your WordPress dashboard just after logging in.

Blogging has been around since 1993, but really became mainstream in 1999. And the benefits of blogging have remained virtually unchanged since then.

I LOVE blogging and know you will too. Here's why:

FREE lead generation
For me, putting my lead generation efforts on autopilot is the single biggest benefit of blogging.

Every word I write on my blog has the ability to show up in a search result at the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing…. in just days (maybe even in a few hours). And when a Google customer searches for words that also appear on my blog, I have an excellent chance to have that same visitor swing by my site FREE.

While my competitors are paying 50 cents… a dollar… or even up to $50.00 for each lead, getting the same precisely-qualified visitor to my blog at no charge is quite exciting.

That's an amazing concept worth repeating…

… Every word you display on your blog is likely to show up in a Google search in hours (or even mere minutes). And when a Google search matches the words on your blog, there's an excellent chance to have that same searcher click to read your entire blog post.

That means every time you write on your blog, you're almost instantly scaling out your lead generation efforts. How awesome is that?

Gain international fame
Blogging positions yourself as the expert on the topic you choose to write about. It's true. The fact that you've put your thoughts in writing is much more powerful than saying it out loud. And the more you blog, the more your "fans" (i.e. repeat visitors) are going to adore you.

Become an instant free agent
Another one of the many benefits of corporate blogging is it gives you instant "free agent" status. Just like a star football player.

When you name your blog with your actual name in the blog title, you retain ownership no matter where you blog from (or for whom you work for).

In today's economic climate, odds are you're not going to retire at the same company you're currently employed with. But the good news is blogging vritually bulletproofs your job security. If your boss threatens to fire you or let you go, just remind him/her that the competition would LOVE to have you continue blogging for the away team.

Blogging is easy
And blogging today is easier than ever. The latest version of WordPress sets you back about 30 minutes to install. After that, you're done. Time to blog. Internet marketing couldn't be easier.

WordPress' blogging software offers us hundreds (maybe even thousands) of "plugins"… almost always free software enhancements that adds additional features to your blog.

I currently use 8 plugins. These plugins help speed up the load time of my blog pages… display the best-matching corporate sponsors next to each blog post… and even handle the SEO work automatically.

The bottom line is no aspect of internet marketing delivers as many benefits as corporate blogging… and the best part is it's all entirely FREE.

Creating a great webpage title is a surefire way to attract precisely qualified visitors to any of your webpages. It's for this reason I always invest more time on my title tag than any other aspect of my webpage (and suggest you do the same).

Here are my best-kept tips and techniques to create the perfect title tags:

Turn your title tag into a new-visitor magnet
The title tag has always been (and will probably always be) one of the most important factors in gaining high search-engine rankings.

The keyword phrase used in your webpage title draws visitors to your website from search engines.

When the words placed in your page title matches a search query, you have a chance of getting that visitor to your site. No other phrase on your webpage carries this weight. Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing rely heavily on your webpage title to determine the rank of your featured listing in their search results. They reward you with higher rank when the webpage title matches the overall theme of your content.

The actual text you use in your title is one of the most important factors in how search engines decide to rank your web page. And all major web crawlers use the text of your title tag as the text they feature in their SERPs (Search Engine Result's Pages).

I HIGHLY recommend using popular keyword phrases in your webpage title… especially at the beginning. This is known as prominence. Search engines put more weight in ranking words that show up at the beginning of your title tag.

The most common mistake I see is placing a company name as the title. This is a waste of crucial space as you only have 66 characters to work with (any more are cut off from most search engine results' listings). Make every character count.

Use call-to-action wording
Just because you rank #1 doesn't necessarily guarantee clicks to your website. This is a very common problem, and the good news is it's easy to fix.

Remember, Google (and most other search engines) clone your title tag and display it as a clickable link to your site. What you want to do is encourage these searchers to not only see your link, but to visit your website. You do this by writing additional teaser copy.

For example, this link might get some clicks:
German Chocolate Cake

But I KNOW this link is going to gain a lot of clicks:
German Chocolate Cake – Best Chocolate Recipe You've Ever Tasted

Avoid long-tail keywords
You might think twice about using long-tail keyword phrases in your title.

Long-tail keywords (as the name suggests) are search queries that are longer than average… typically 5 or more words.

For example, a long-tail keyword is something like ‘German Chocolate Cake Recipe’ while a short-tail keyword is something like ‘Cake Recipe’.

Spammers typically try to game Google and other search engines by adding long-tail keywords to their webpage title… and this might work against you if you try the same.

My testing shows 3-word keyword phrases seem to be just the perfect length.

The perfect length
Most search engines only display the first 66 characters of the title of your webpage. Suggestion: Keep your web page titles no more than 66 characters so they show up in the SERPs without being truncated.

A waste of precious time
A lot of internet marketing gurus give us bad information about titles for webpages… instead referring to it as the title meta tag. The title meta tag is not the same as your webpage title. In fact in my testing, I find filling out the title meta tag is a complete waste of time. Instead of generating a meta title tag, just focus on a webpage title.

A before Z always wins
The title of your webpage also doubles as the default entry in your visitor's Favorites when they bookmark your webpage… and most web browsers sort Favorites in alphabetical order — so you might have your first word in your title tag start with the letter "A".

History
Just like Bookmarks and Favorites, browsers use page titles to label pages in the browser’s web surfing history. Having a descriptive webpage title makes it easier for your visitors to return to your webpage.

Final tip
There's no reason for you to struggle with writing a webpage title. If you're ready to write better title tags to get you more leads from search engines, you might want to grab these webpage title tips, techniques and methods.