This is not the kind of book you would normally think of as an entertaining read. But like most people who drive a decent amount I have some fairly strong opinions about driving habits, rules and customs. So clearly this is a topic that promises to be of interest to someone like me.

“Traffic” takes a very interesting (and detailed) look at some of these habits, rules and customs, and analyzes some of the (often mistaken) assumptions we make about things like speeding, congestion, lane changing, traffic safety, and so on.

A word of warning: if you are looking for support for a pet theory (such as “large trucks cause lots of accidents” or “slow drivers are more dangerous than fast ones on 4 lane highways”) you probably won’t find it here. Generally speaking this book is an examination of the statistical evidence that supports such theories, and for the most part the simplistic theories that you and I have – especially if you have contrarian views - are not supported by the evidence.

One interesting suggestion the author makes right near the beginning of the book has to do with the practice of “late merging”.  This is what you do when you come to a “merge left” sign (usually because of construction or an accident on the highway). 

 There are three possibilities at such a sign: early merge (get over as quickly as possible), gradual merge (merge gradually, but don’t wait until the end of the lane), and late merge (go right up to the end of the disappearing lane and merge at the last minute). 

The most socially acceptable method of merging in such a situation is the early merge. We Canadians, being the polite people we are, seem to consider it almost our duty to get over as soon as possible – what you might call “extreme early merging”.

This is not so much a matter of traffic efficiency or even driving etiquette as it is a reflection of our character. You know - that guy who busts past you in the right lane and expects other people to let him in ahead of the rest of us obedient drivers. Isn’t that queue jumping?

Well, it turns out that according to Vanderbilt, studies have been done (of course they have!) that show it is more efficient to late merge. If you go right up to the end of the lane and then merge into the adjacent lane you win on two counts. First, you maximize the available space by keeping the disappearing lane full. And second, there is much less jockeying and anticipating as you look for someone to let you in.

In other words, late merging is more efficient. And it would be even more efficient (and safer) if drivers just accepted the same kind of rule they accept at a four-way stop. Stop, let somebody from the other lane go, then go.

That’s pretty simple, but it’s not the rule we use because, as Vanderbilt says, “there seems to be a whole worldview contained in each of the merge strategies that have been tried.” And many people simply cannot get over the attitude that “I’m acting like a selfish SOB if I push right up to the end of the line.”

I found this especially interesting because of another contrarian merge strategy I use every time I merge onto the highway just outside of our town – often several times a week. It’s what I call the “inside move”, or in this context might be called a “delayed merge”.

The scenario is this: a long two-lane on-ramp merges from the right with the regular three lanes of the highway. Well back on the ramp people are told a merge is coming and they obediently line up in the left lane. Not only does this slow the entire left ramp lane down, but it leaves the right lane virtually empty.

So with the “delayed merge” instead of slowing down and moving left I just stay in the right lane and cruise by everyone in the left lane. By the time I reach the actual merge point (extended over about half a mile), everybody has started to move left anyway and I can just move over with them.

Whenever I do this with a passenger in the car I notice they tend to get a bit uneasy. “What’s going to happen when we have to move over? Aren’t we going to get squeezed into the right-hand guard rail?” Happily after doing the delayed merge hundreds of times I have yet to take out my first guard rail.

I suppose if too many drivers were to use the delayed merge it might be a bit chaotic at the merge point, and it might be more dangerous too, since by this time cars are moving more quickly.

But as Vanderbilt demonstrates over and over in his book, you can’t take an assumption like that to the bank. You simply cannot say with any certainty how drivers will behave in an unfamiliar situation. There are lots of things the traffic engineers can predict about driver behavior. And lots of things they can’t predict.

About three weeks ago, in response to the popular Perry Belcher videos I decided to give it another try.

Here are some conclusions so far:

1. You can definitely drive traffic with Twitter. You need followers, content, and well written tweets.

2. The best way to get followers seems to be to…

- define your niche properly
- keep cranking out tweets
- write tweets that get attention
- use the appropriate keywords in your tweets

3. If you have a stubborn niche, follow first in order to get followers. For example, I created an account called the “kwtweetnet” to see if I could zero in on just local tweeters (in the local Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario region). The best way to get followers is to find local tweeters (I used Twellow.com), follow them, and then wait for them to reciprocate.

Keep cranking out the tweets, but make them substantive pointing to good content on your target sites.

If you have a website promoting local services (such as a local real estate site) it is difficult to compete with search engine optimization experts who have built sites targeting your most important keywords. These “experts” have no interest in serving your market with useful information. What they want is to gain local ranking so Google will send searchers to click on their pay per click ads.

It’s a free world, so people can do whatever they want with their websites. But it’s too bad Google has to reward website owners who play the game this way.

First, traffic is going to be taken much more seriously when calculating rankings. This will change SEM (Search Engine Marketing) a lot, because it will no longer just be a matter of optimizing on page text and building inbound links.

Google has been threatening this for a long time, but it seems in early 2009 they will begin implementing a system that ranks sites on the basis of traffic, bounce rates (how long visitors stay on your site), conversions, and other measures of visitor behaviour. The sites that offer engaging content based on an analysis of visitor behaviour will be the winners.

With the cooperation of web owners, the big G has been gradually building the system to gather this kind of information. It’s called Google Analytics which web owners install on their web pages or blogs. Analytics allows Google to track total traffic, quality of traffic, where visitors come from, how long visitors stay on your site, and much more. So it certainly seems that if G starts using this data you will have a definite advantage if you install Google Analytics – a convenient coincidence for Google, and one which promises to strengthen their hold on the search market even more.

Personalized Search Results

The other thing that is about to happen (according to Bruce Clay, a speaker at PubCon) is that search results will vary from person to person. Searching for something like “web marketing” may turn up one set of results for you and another set of results for me.  Your results will be based, at least partly, on your past search history – what type of sites you have visited, and what type of searches you have done.

This will also make it difficult to track the results of SEO programs, and will force SEM specialists to refocus their efforts. They will have to get much more serious about meaningful traffic building, and the implementation of effective systems to keep visitors on client sites and convert them into subscribers or customers.

Resources:
Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?

First, it is important to study the site in question (Digg, Twitter, Youtube, whatever) from the tactical point of view. Take a close look and learn what readers respond to. Generally to develop a following you have to create content that has broad appeal. And the best way to do this is to use a kind of “template”. As an example of a template Maki pulls apart the approach used by Cracked.

In short, they use  what he calls an attention grabbing frame into which they can plug almost any type of content about anything. By virtue of being packed into the frame it gains mass appeal. The Cracked formula boils down to this (supposedly tongue-in-cheek) -

The” + (Number) + “Most” + (Over the top adjective) + (Subject) + Of All Time (Synonyms like “in History” or “Ever” will also be accepted) = Popularity

For example, “The 6 Most Stupendously Obvious Political Lies Of All Time”

Of course you will then have to go on and actually provide some content about whatever it is you’re talking about.

Also, assuming you want this to be relevant to your own target niche it should be something that people within your own community of interest will find interesting or intriguing.

I don’t want to be overly anal about the marketing angle in all this, but from the marketing perspective, what’s the point of getting “diggs” from people who have absolutely no interest in what you are trying to market. Or as I’ve said elsewhere, what good is getting thousands of views of your “dancing monkey” video if you can’t convert that into interest in whatever message or product you are trying to push?

So the challenge is not only to find the “attention grabbing framework” that works, but to find a way to cram your marketing message into that framework. Off the top of my head, the best example I can think of is the “Will It Blend” series of videos.

If you like this article, why not follow me on Twitter

.
My Biz
.
http://www.GetRichFromHome.Biz
.
Traffic Geyser:
http://www.HomeBizFreeLeads.com

Gregg Davison teaches other marketers video marketing

http://www.top20seotools.net/
Watch all 20 SEO tools now.

In social networking sites tags identify your pages with other pages sharing similar themes. For instance, if your Hub Page, Squidoo Lense or Youtube video is about “muscle building” or “golden retrievers”, tagging it with a broad range of related tags will get your hub, lense or video featured in the list of “related” pages that almost always accompanies a viewing of a page sharing your tags.

It is not always clear in these sites how the “related” items are chosen, but you can be sure that it has a lot to do with tags. So tag your items with as long a list of tags as you can get away with – for Hub Pages you might use as many as 40 different tags.

A Simple Tagging Strategy

Don’t deliberately use unrelated tags just because they will get traffic. Instead, find pages in your niche that are already getting a lot of traffic, and then use the same tags as they do. This will immediately give your items a chance to come up when people view those high traffic pages.

 For a more complete description of this tagging strategy see

The $5 Traffic Trick

If a website or blog is generally about some topic such as “dog care”,  or “home repair”, then articles, posts, comments, and products found on the site will reflect that focus through the use of terms or phrases related to the general topic. This is the basic assumption made by the search engines when analyzing the focus of your site. It the SE finds lots of “dog care” terms, then your site will be considered relevant to “dog care”.

A “dog care” blog, for instance, will contain many different but related terms such as “dog health”, “pet care”, “dog food”, etc., not to mention products related to dog care.

A “home repair” site will contain different terms such as “home repair”, “home renovation”, “bathroom remodeling”, “kitchen upgrade”, etc., etc.

So when writing content for your site, be sure to focus your content on the correct keywords or keyword phrases. Bear in mind that the search engines focus on specific terms when deciding who will score well in searches. It is not good enough just to be vague and use general terms relating to your category.

Marketers who want to reach a specific “niche” will often start with a set of popular keywords, and then build their site around that set of terms.

For instance, if you have reason to believe that a lot of people are interested in ”kitchen renovation tips”, then you can build your entire site or blog around that keyword phrase and others closely related to it.

This process should begin with detailed keyword analysis. Most online publishers or marketers have a rough idea of what they want to focus on. A keyword analysis tells them how to narrow their focus to specific terms within their general area of interest.

That is the best way to gain traffic from the search engines.

You can find many more articles and products related to keywords and keyword research in the Linknet Bonus Vault.