How Can I Get My Trails to Produce More Money for Charities?

Here are some simple things you can do to get your trails to generate more money for charities:

Link to Your Trail

You can link to your trail in a number of different ways. This will get more people to your trail directly from these links. In addition, more links to your trail on the Internet will get your trail a higher ranking on the search results at Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, so you'll also get more search engine traffic. Here are some ideas of ways you can create links to your trail:

• Add a link to your trail to Delicious.
  
• Digg your trail on Digg.
  
• Favorite your trail on StumbleUpon.
  
• Post a message with a link to your trail in forums and message boards that are related to the subject of your trail.
  
• Link to your trail from a blog, or get someone else to do it.
  
• Email the link to your trail to your friends.
  
• Do you have your own website? Link to your trail from your site.
  
• Do you have a friend or relative with a website? Get them to link to your trail.
  

Search Engine Optimize Your Trail

AntStorm gets your trail indexed on the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. We have built our trail pages to optimize them as best we can to rank as high as possible on the search results pages of these engines. However, we can't do it alone. The textual content you use in your trails has a great deal to do with how high your trails are ranked, and therefore how much traffic you'll get from the search engines. You'll also get better targeted ads, with higher click rates, and higher payments per click if your trail is well focused in this way. Here are some tips to improve your rankings and traffic:

• First, think about what keywords people are going to use to find your trail. Whatever those keywords are, be consistent and use the same keywords throughout your trail. For example, "saltwater aquarium". You can't have a trail serve many masters. In other words, it's better to consistently use the exact same keywords in your trail over and over again rather than using different variations of the keywords. If you focus, you'll rank higher for your target keywords, and you'll get traffic from the search engines. There is too much competition on the Internet to do well if you don't focus.
  
• Use the keywords you've chosen in your trail name.
  
• Use the keywords you've chosen in your trail description. Don't go nuts and repeat them over and over again in the description. But be sure they're in your description at least once. Maybe twice or three times.
  
• Use your keywords in most or all of your link names and link descriptions.
  

Build a Great Trail and Maintain It

While linking to your trail and search engine optimizing your trail are great ways to get more traffic, these won't do much if you haven't built a terrific trail. It's best to build trails about subjects for which you have real passion and expertise. If you don't have a lot of expertise, you can make up for it with a really solid research effort. For example, if you wanted to learn about equipping your home with solar panels, and you conducted a good deal of Internet research on the subject, you could probably make a very strong trail using the best links you found while researching this subject. Whether through passion, expertise, or research - build great trails and you'll get more traffic and generate more money from them. You'll also want to maintain them so they don't get stale.