Twitter may be known in some circles as the place talkative folks go to blow off some steam, but in reality there is a lot you can get out of Twitter. Twitter is the place that content can go viral. A lot of folks are now using Twitter to find blogging ideas and if you are lucky, you can get a lot of links from the community. You obviously going need a decent number of followers and a good piece of content for this strategy to work. You can always get ideas about how to write good Twitter content by using tools such as TwittLink.

So what these top stories have in common? Simple. They address an issue that is important to the Twitter community. It’s actually not hard to find what Twitter is talking about. Yahoo! Sideline is another great tool that shows you exactly what people are talking about on Twitter.

Now you shouldn’t go imitating the top guys but you get the idea here. You need good, relevant content to get the best out of Twitter. You also need to be involved. Don’t be too afraid to ask people to ReTweet your content. And don’t forget to retweet other people’s content too. As long as you keep building good content and fostering new relationships, there is no reason Twitter can’t be a good traffic and inlink driver for your website.

Recently, I had a chance to take a look at Slumdog eMillionaire course that promises to show you how to drive traffic to your website and make a lot of money online. I am not exactly a fan of these courses that promise you  how to make money online. Like many others, I have been burned before, and it has been my policy not to buy too many of these things. To be fair, this course has been highly popular and a lot of folks have already taken advantage of it. I am not planning to write a review for it but rather respond to some of the points made on the website. Here is my take on some of these points:

you should make money first then worry about testing later

This could work for a short period of time, but I am not sure it’s the right approach for the long run. You should make money while testing. Testing helps you make more money as you optimize your landing pages, keywords, and so on and make more money.

you should NOT promote your own site

I do agree with this point somewhat. You shouldn’t over promote your sites on social media sites. You should focus more on creating high quality content than trying to promote low quality content.

testing testing testing will NEVER make you any money ‘ever’

We got to agree to disagree here. Testing has worked out very well for me. In fact, I don’t know how to spend my days if not writing content and testing landing pages and keywords. I do agree that testing is not for everyone. And you can still make money without testing. You can grow your business without testing, but that would be due to your luck than your tactics.

affiliates will send you free traffic without you lifting a finger

I completely agree with this point. These companies that are cutting their affiliate programs during the recession are doing themselves a big disservice.

the headline of your website WILL bring in up to 90% of your TOTAL sales

This may sound crazy, but it’s actually true. Your headline plays a big role in your product’s success and failure if you are selling on the Internet. Now, I can’t say it accounts for 90% of your sales, but it plays a very big part.

Why you should NOT worry about PageRank as ONLY the traffic brings in the money

I couldn’t agree more here. Your PageRank means nothing. It does matter if you want to sell your website, but even that is due to the misconceptions about the importance of your page’s PR. PageRank is an overrated metric and not as reliable as it used to be.

The moral of story here is you can make money online in a short period of time. You may even make a lot of it. But a business should rely on strategies rather than short-term tactics to stay afloat. It’s one thing to have a great month. But wouldn’t you want to have 24 very good months instead of 1 great months and 23 dismal ones? That’s why you should keep testing and looking for new ways to promote your business. Testing does matter! I guess that’s where Slumdog eMillionaire and I have to agree to disagree.

As the economy struggles to rebound, a lot of companies are cutting their advertising budget and even getting rid of their SEO teams. There is no question in my mind that doing the exact opposite is the way to go in these tough times. But you can’t always convince folks to spend money when they are hurting. If you are a small business and can’t afford to hire a company to do your SEO for you, you can always try to learn how to do it yourself. A lot of people ask me “who I get started with SEO.” There is no one size fits all solution here. You can always pick up books and take your time learning about search engine optimization. A faster way to do it is by purchasing a video course and going through it on a weekend. But my favorite method is attending a Search Engine Strategies training session.

Search Engine Strategies training sessions are one of the best ways to get an overview of what search engine optimization in just a few days. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about getting outdated information in these sessions. You get the latest developments and tricks in the SEO world from world class experts. These sessions are not cheap, but you learn here can help you save a lot of money in your business and set yourself apart from many of your competitors. Here is what you can expect to learn from Search Engine Strategies training sessions:

• Website Programming + SEO
• Keyword Research
• SEO Analytics
• Linking Strategies that Increase Rankings
• Social Media
• SEO In a Corporate Environment

SES training sessions are going to cost you a few hundred dollars but that’s only a small fraction of what you would be paying a SEO firm to optimize your site for search engines. And most of those services are overpriced anyway. You just can’t learn SEO any faster than by going to one of these sessions.

Your turn: will you be at Denver for SES training?

If you talk to a SEO consultant about ways to optimize your website for search engines, you are going to get a list of things you need to do to have a chance at those high rankings on Google. I have no problem with writing good content, and optimizing your title tags for search engines. But my tests now show me that the keywords in your URL are perhaps more important that the SEO community thought it to be a few years ago. I know a lot of smart marketers talk about building your brand and owning your name, but in reality you should probably register a bunch of domains that are rich with industry keywords.

Take the term “credit card rankings” for example. It’s true that you can get ranked for this term using Wikipedia and other authority sites, but if you look more closely, sites that have these words in their domain have a better chance of getting ranked higher. With more competitive keywords, your domain will not be enough, but those less competitive terms can still drive traffic to your website, and who wouldn’t like getting ranked on the first page of Google.

In reality, your URL is not the only thing that matters when it comes to your SEO ranking. But it is certainly a big part of the equation. And if you are a niche marketer, you’ve got a real opportunity here to make a lot of money and gain a competitive edge over your rivals by registering all those keyword-rich domains. Google may have a very complex algorithm, but you can still dominate Google with the less competitive keywords as long as you register the right domains! Who says domains are overrated!

If you have been reading the latest SEO blogs, you have probably realized that article marketing is making a comeback. In reality, article marketing really never left us to begin with. It’s not a tactic that brings you millions of new visitors, but if you need a little push to give your site some momentum, article marketing is the best way to go. I have personally been writing articles for over 4 years now, and I keep going back to it when I need more traffic for my websites.

Matt Callen’s latest service, MyArticleNetwork, is designed to help you get as much traffic as possible from your articles. He has created his own article submission network to help you gain traffic from distributing your articles on thousands of partner websites. MyArticleNetwork.com allows you to submit multiple versions of your articles to the network and have it posted on network sites in random. You can also track the number of times that your article has been submitted and the backlinks that you have gotten. In other words, you can measure your efforts and find out what articles have worked for you.

Here is how the system works. You have site owners who want to get fresh content on a consistent basis. These guys sign up for the service and agree to publish articles from the network. The authors write articles for the network and have them posted as “guest blog posts” on these sites. Unlike regular article marketing services, you can actually put hyperlinks in the body of your articles, which means there is no need to play with the author box anymore. Not only that, you can even embed YouTube videos in your article.

My Article Network provides you with article spinning feature as well. You obviously have to read the instructions to get this right, but it’s a nice feature to have.

My Article Network is a subscription service. Unlike EzineArticles, your articles are shown throughout the network as long as you are a paying member. But think about it. You are getting your posts distributed on hundreds of websites, and you are no longer limited to the restrictions set forth by most article directories. Now that’s what I call Article Marketing 2.0. As long as you can write killer blog posts, there is no limit to how much traffic you can get with this service.

MyArticleNetwork is currently closed, but you can use this backdoor to register for a free account. And you’ll have access to tutorials to get ready for the big launch in April.

YouTube is one of the best innovations of our time. Who knew that these guys would be in a position to challenge Cable TV with their content? Maybe they are not a direct challenger, but they do compete for viewers time. TV has Lost. YouTube has lots of videos that you won’t find anywhere else. You can literally spend 24 hours a day watching videos on YouTube for months and still have new content to consume. But as powerful as YouTube is, if you are in the business of making videos for a living, you shouldn’t just focus on YouTube. There are many other sites that you should take advantage of to distribute your videos and get your content in front of more people.

Here are a few sites that you should consider submitting your vlogs to:

1. DailyMotion: a great site to submit your videos. It has lots of content and can get you a lot of new viewers.
2. Vimeo: another great site to share your vlogs.
3. MetaCafe: this site allows you to submit your work and get paid if you hit it big time. They literally send you a check.
4. ClipShack: a YouTube copycat but still gives you another place to reach out to new folks.
5. Viddler: Viddler is used by many top vloggers in the world. You can even get some branding done if you are a big shot. A certain wine guy use it. I am sure you can tell who.
6. Veoh: Veoh is a monster site that has so many videos. A great place to go viral.
7. Blip.TV: if you are looking to monetize your work, you won’t go wrong with Blip.tv. But you should create your own videos.
8. Yahoo! Video: Yahoo! Video is not as good as YouTube but is still very good. And you gain access to Yahoo! audience as well.
9. EyeSpot: Create you own content by mixing other people’s work with yours. EyeSpot is a great way to reach out to viewers on the Internet.
10. JumpCut: yet another avenue to promote your vlog. It is owned by Yahoo!

Vidmetrix and MogulTube are two great places to send your videos to all popular websites. If you don’t want to go through each and every site and submit your videos, these two services are great to save time and get more done. Remember, video is the present, and there is no easier way to dominate the search engines than creating your own videos.