You don’t have to be a genius to know how powerful social media sites are today in not only driving traffic to websites but also helping businesses get more exposure for their brands and connect more effectively with their customers. Traditional SEO professionals are also intrigued by social media sites as the “do follow” networks provide them with plenty of opportunities to get one way links back to anywhere they want.

Submitting your sites to top social media sites can not only get more traffic to your site but it can help you climb up the rankings. The only problem is, there are thousands of social networks out there. How do you find time to submit to each of them one by one. The process is not as easy as it seems. You’ve got to create an account, possibly verify your account, and submit your stories once your account is activated. Going through the process once or twice is not that hard but doing it for a large number of sites can be a hassle. That’s where Social Maximizer comes in.

From the creators of Directory Maximizer, Social Maximizer is a brand new service that lets you submit your website to social media sites for 19 cents per entry. Social Maximizer is designed to let you submit your sites to hundreds of social media services with a click of a button. You can also add multiple titles and descriptions for your submissions which is a big plus. You don’t want to just  focus on one anchor text with your SMO efforts.

What I like about Social Maximizer is the fact that it allows me to choose the sites that I want to submit to. So you don’t have to just go with what they are suggesting. You also get progress reports on your submissions on a consistent basis. For 19 cents per submission, that’s a steal if you ask me. The service is evolving, which means you can expect a whole lot of sites to be added to Social Maximizer in the soon future. If you value your time and want to focus more on your core capabilities, Social Maximizer is a great social submission outsourcing service to consider.

EzineArticles and Article Dashboard are two of the best article marketing services on the market. The articles that you publish on these sites can drive you traffic and help you climb the rankings on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. But you shouldn’t just limit yourself to these two sites if you want to maximize your traffic from this channel. There are hundreds of article marketing services out there, and what you don’t want to do is ignore those smaller directories that can help you drive lots of traffic to your website. And you don’t want to sit and submit all your articles to 200 directories by hand. That’s why premium article marketing directories matter. They save you time and money at the same time.

Here are 4 top premium article directory services that can help you get a whole lot of traffic to your website:

My Article Network: My Article Network is an innovative service that lets you get a whole lot of back-links and traffic from the blog network that is My Article Network. Your articles are put on highly ranked websites in your niche, and you not only get relevant back-links, but a whole lot of targeted traffic. Best of all, you can put links inside the body of your articles (unlike EzineArticles).

Article Marketing Automation: very similar to My Article Network, but Article Marketing Automation has its own collection of highly relevant sites that you can submit your articles to and get links back to your website. Their goal is to have 60,000 top article sites that you can publish your content to. Not a bad way to earn a whole lot of back-links.

Isnare: Isnare.com is a dear to my heart as I have been using it for my link building campaigns. Isnare is not only an article directory, it’s also an article submission service. You can submit your articles to up to 40,000 sites by using Isnare’s premium service. Each submission is going to cost you $2 which is a steal if you think about it.

AffSphere: AffSphere is a premium article marketing service that lets you publish your articles and get a whole lot of links back to your sites. What I like about AffSphere is the fact that there aren’t many limitations on what you can put in your article’s body. You also get a piece of Adsense revenue from your articles. You can also get a lot of impressions but submitting a banner. You could say it’s the glorified version of EzineArticles.

Ultimately, there are many services that you can try to start building traffic and climb the rankings. You shouldn’t just settle on EzineArticles (no matter how well it performs for your articles). The more links you drive to your site from relevant sites and the more traffic you get, the more successful your business will be.

Your take: what’s been your experience with the above services?

Amazon has done something amazing recently. It allows you to publish your blogs on Amazon! Think about, you with your very own product on Amazon. You can make money from it too. Now, you only get about 30% of revenue when dealing with Amazon, so you are not going to make a whole lot of money unless you have thousands of Kindle subscriber. What the platform allows you to do is add your blog and a bunch of targeted keywords to your Amazon page. Amazon is a super authority site, and I for one wouldn’t ignore the opportunity to spread the word about my brand on Amazon.

Adding your blog to Amazon is not that hard. All you have to do is add your feed, choose the right category for it, and get a few screenshots from your blog to show Kindlers what your site is all about.

Here are a few things you want to pay extra attention to get the most out of your listing:

• Title: Choose a descriptive blog title. Here is your chance to add a keyword phrase or two to your title. Don’t just go with one word for your title.
• Tag line: if you have a catchy tag line, this is where it goes. If you don’t, you better start coming up with one.
• Product Description: the most important aspect of your blog listing. The more information you provide here, the better chance you have of getting subscribers. Don’t forget to talk in details about what your blog is about and how it can help your readers.
• Category: don’t choose unrelated categories. Choose the three categories that fit your blog the best.

There you have it. It usually takes a bit of time for Amazon to list your blog, but as long as you don’t own a spammy blog, you should be approved fast. Best of all, it’s all for free. Don’t know about you but using this service seems like a no-brainer for me.

Finally, a new book by the legendary Bruce Clay. For those of you not familiar with that name, Bruce is a legend in the SEO industry. His site (bruceclay.com) is one of the best resources that you can find on this topic on the Internet. I learned a lot of things I know today from his website. Search Engine Optimization 10 in 1 book is Bruce’s latest book and has it all as far as SEO is concerned. This is really 10 books all fit into 1. It has everything  to take a newbie from a beginner to a pro fast. The book is designed to give you a solid foundation on what SEO is all about. You’ll learn how search engines work, the mentality you need to succeed in your SEO campaigns, and the tactics you need to implement to gain competitive advantage over your rivals in the SERPs.

The book teaches you how the search engines work. If you want to be successful in this field, you want know exactly how search engines work. What you don’t want to do is leave anything to the divine intervention. You’ll learn what’s important on each search engine and how you can modify your SEO strategy to succeed on these search engines. You also learn how to develop a keyword strategy that will give you a competitive edge over your rivals. Keyword research is more complicated that it sounds. Bruce teaches you how to choose the right keywords that will keep driving your site traffic. You’ll learn how to play chess with your keyword strategy while your rivals are stuck with checkers.

Designing a SEO friendly site is not as simple as it looks. You need a plan for it. You need to pay attention to how you set up your information structure. This book teaches you how to design a website that keeps visitors coming back for more. You also learn how to get links to your website and optimize your internal link structure to maximize your SEO rankings. And it does help that Bruce covers how you can go about optimizing your content management system for search engines as well.

My favorite part of this book is Book VIII. This is where you learn how to sell a SEO plan. If you can’t measure a campaigns success, you can’t possibly justify your SEO campaign in a corporate environment. This book teaches you how to track your campaign’s success for your business or your employer.

The last chapters are dedicated to teaching you local and global SEO. If you own an international business or want to go global, you are going to pick up a lot of nuggets here. If you own a business, you owe it to yourself and your business to try some of these tactics.

Overall, Search Engine Optimization All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies is one killer book for anyone interested in the field of SEO. You are going to learn every aspect of search engine optimization in this book, and by the time you are done reading this 750+ page book, you are going to know more about SEO than the majority of folks in your industry. If you have money to buy only one SEO book, this one is a no brainer.

I have been testing Squidoo vs. EzineArticles to find out which one provides the biggest bang for the buck. It’s true that EzineArticles ranks well on Google and other top search engines. It’s also true that article marketing does not often offer you the most traffic. After all, if you don’t get ranked for a highly competitive keyword term, there is a good chance you won’t get too much traffic from your articles.

Article marketing is a great way to drive links to a website. If you write a killer article that others are willing to put on their website, you can get a lot of links back and improve your own ranking on search engines. The problem is, a lot of these websites will be junk blogs and useless blogs that don’t provide you with enough of a push to put your site on the top of the search engines. There are really two approaches to writing articles for EzineArticles. You can focus on quantity or just quality. Article writers who focus on quantity bank on getting a few visitors per each article. Let’s say you get 5 visitors per each article you submit to EzineArticles. If you write 10,000 articles, there is a good chance you get some decent traffic to your website. Will it be enough to pay for your bills? Probably not. And let’s not forget that article marketing can be too boring for a lot of folks. Quantity articles are those that you work hard to write and properly research to make sure they provide value to yoru readers. These articles are easier to promote and while you may not get to write many articles this way, you get better quality traffic this way. You can always build more links to your articles to make sure they rank well on Google. High quality articles make you look good.

Squidoo is a whole different animal. I got started with Squidoo after reading Squidoo Queen. Squidoo is not about writing a one page article. It’s about creating real value to your readers. The community is a bit tighter than EzineArticles and the traffic opportunity is much more significant here. I know a few folks who are driving hundreds of visitors a day to their blogs from their Squidoo lenses. The key to success on Squidoo is writing valuable content and getting involved in the community. You want folks to review your lenses and give it some love. The more votes you get, the better your rankings will be. Your traffic also affects your ranking as well. Squidoo is  hit and miss than EzineArticles. You can create a Squidoo lens that bombs badly on you. But if you get it all right, one Squidoo lens and blow away 10 quality EzineArticle pieces.

In reality, you should focus on both avenues to drive as much traffic to your site as possible. Squidoo lenses take a while to create, and you need get more work done to improve your ranking and get more traffic. EzineArticles and GoArticles can drive you a lot of traffic as well. But article marketing can be a bit boring if you focus on quantity instead of quality. You can always create a killer Squidoo lens and use it to drive traffic to your top articles but I rather use Squidoo to promote my own web properties. The other way around works very well, however. It’s a great way to drive links to your Squidoo lens and help improve its ranking. Overall, if you are looking for free traffic, you can’t afford not to use both Squidoo and EzineArticles.