Are you using keywords that give you excellent returns?

Hopefully you already know that traffic is the secret to Internet success. Keywords are the easiest and the most effective way to attract hordes of traffic to your website. Why? Simple. Search engines crawl through your content and pick up your keywords. So, if you happen to use a popular keyword, you will be listed as often as the word is searched.

Next, how many keywords do you need per website? I’d say roughly 80-100! Your Blog or site is a collection of pages and each page should have a different set of unique keywords. The obvious advantage: each of your pages will be working to pull traffic, instead of just the index page or the “About Us” page doing all the work.

Using multiple keyword phrases will give you more numbers of filtered traffic.
Hint: Including your most relevant keyword or keyword phrase in your title works wonders in getting your pages ranked and listed.

So, what’s the secret behind selecting keywords that pull traffic?

Selecting targeted keywords or keyword phrases is a little tricky because of two things:

• You obviously don’t want to use words that nobody is looking for, unless it is a high-priced specialty item. So you have to devise a way to know what ‘phrases’ people are looking for. For example, using a word like ‘natural Isapgol Fiber’ will not pull many hits. Swap it for something like “Diet supplement for speedy weight loss” and you will see a drastic increase in web traffic. Why? Because that is the phrase people search for.
• You need to keep away from the top 10 generic keywords in your niche. Ranking among the top 10 for the most competitive keyword/keyword phrase in your niche may be impossible. For instance, using a keyword phrase like “Make money online” is highly competitive. It is extremely difficult to feature in the top 10 in this category unless you are doing solid work.

So, you want to select a keyword or phrase that gets a decent slice of traffic without being too competitive. A nice keyword that has low advertiser competition is something worthy of exploitation. This way, the keyword bids for paid searches through search engines like Google could be low.

Experts suggest that you should try to build 8-10 websites around certain keywords and go back to those sites that click. You can use a number of tools like Wordtracker or Google Keyword Selection Tool to find the half a dozen or so keywords to optimize for your webpage.

Type in your keyword in the service of choice. This will give you a list of total number of daily searches. Just multiply the figure with 30 for the average figures for a month. Try this with every tool you have, so you can filter your list down to the choicest few.

After that, it is time to dig deeper to collect a crop of related keywords. You can search for your keywords in Google and Yahoo listings. Then, look for keywords and phrases that your competitors are using in their meta tags and articles.

As you can see, keyword research is an important part of your duties if you want to make money online.

Popularity: 30% [?]

If you have heard of the Internet marketing business for quite some time, then you already know that niche marketing is one of the most popular methods of making money online. Best of all, this market is nowhere near saturation because of the ever-increasing demand for quality information.

So let us quickly look at how you can select a niche that pays.

Choosing THE right product from a hot list of products is probably the most difficult thing for a marketer. Coming up with an idea that sells is something that gives jitters even to the experts. Here are a few things you can do to improve your chances.

Keep your eyes open: The first thing to do is to spend some time surfing the net. Look at ads on websites. What products are they selling? Visit blogs and look at the “paid sponsors” section. Watch the news and read papers. See what products are being offered on the market right now. Search for a keyword and see what comes up in the search engines. Visit websites like google.com/trends or wordtracker.com and look up the demand for keywords you like. Watch TV and find what products are selling hot. Market research is vital to finding the right niche.

Look inwards: What ideas do you have in your head? Are your ideas already on sale? Explore new ideas and new angles of old ideas. Can you come up with a better idea and beat your competition?

Turn to ClickBank: Just as their tag suggests, ClickBank is the world’s biggest marketplace. So, they have a finger on the pulse of the market. If it is selling hot, it will be on ClickBank. Visit their website and click on “Buy products”. This will open up a large category of products. Clicking on any of these categories will take you to the sub-categories of that category. Click on any of the sub-categories and see what kinds of products are selling in that niche. Read through the sales pages of these products and discover their USP. This will give you a good idea of what you should select.

Once you have identified your niche, half of your business structure is in place. But you need to build the other half too.

The power of niche marketing comes from the fact that the market consists of consumers looking for a particular product. Even if you develop a product, you can’t succeed till you shine a torch on the fact that you are the best in your field. You need to reach out to people.

For this, it is essential that you know your target audience. Knowing who you are marketing to, makes it easy for you to channel your energy and marketing $$ only on that section of people.

For example, take a car dealership. The first thing you have to decide is where the dealership is located. If it is in New York, chances of consumers coming from Seattle to buy from you are less. So, narrow your focus to people within a 50-mile radius. This increases your chances of clinching a sale.

Defining your target audience helps you to:

• Maximize your profit by targeting a defined market. Your efforts will no longer be like a shot in the dark.
• You can optimize your search engine accordingly, so your customers can easily find you.
• You can offer solutions specific to your niche.
• This makes it easy for you to develop new ideas for supporting products.
• It is easier for you to dominate the market if you know the dynamics of your niche.

This should give you a good idea of how to develop a niche and become the expert of your field.

Now that you have the product, it is time to market it. Niche marketing can be done in two ways: Membership websites and websites with no up front charges.

Membership websites obviously ask for a fee upfront, before they give members access to their site. This is a recurring income business model where members keep renewing their subscriptions if they are happy with the product you offer.

Websites without an up front charge are a little different. They offer the cake free of cost and tell members to pay up for the icing. If you like the cake well enough, you will pay for the icing.

Popularity: 38% [?]

I am thrilled to share with you some information on how to maximize profits from your membership websites because I’m sure these keys will help you multiply your membership income.

In the last couple of years, membership websites have literally taken the internet by storm. Today, paying for online information is the norm rather than the exception. More and more ‘infopreneurs’ are making money with membership websites because this business:

• Guarantees steady, recurring income.
• Has high profit margins.
• Requires negligible to low startup and ongoing cost.
• Can be expanded easily as your business grows.
• Allows you to make a supplemental  income doing something you love and know.
• Allows you to earn extra money through affiliate marketing and cross selling.

In this era of super-specialization, a membership website is the easiest way to get paid for what’s in your head. What’s more, if done correctly, you can develop several highly paying streams of income from a single website.

So let’s get started straight away and look at Key #1: The Internet’s Best Paying Niches.

Obviously, the very first step towards creating a highly profitable membership website is to figure out the products that sell. Notice, I am not talking about finding a niche market. I’m talking about finding a niche market that sells. There is a difference.

These days, you can easily find a niche using tools such as ClickAdEqualizer. But just because you’ve identified a popular keyword phrase does not mean that people are willing to spend their hard-earned cash on it. The trick is to find topics that people are willing to spend money on, and develop them.

Here are some of the most popular moneymaking categories on the internet today:

1. Business research, information and content sites: Includes business news, business research, corporate information for investment purposes and investment advice.
2. Community sites: Subscription based member-only websites that have been formed by a close-knit community of users.
3. Personal growth and self help sites: Information on self-improvement in specific areas like goal setting, building self-confidence, parent-child relationships and educational counseling etc.
4. Health and fitness: Concise guidance on proper eating, diet and exercise regimes are very popular with thousands of people. In fact, the term ‘losing weight’ is one of the most researched key phrases on the internet.
5. Games: Online games are opening up in a big way.
6. Home business: Nearly everybody wants to know how to make money from home. The market is huge and growing at a tremendous pace.
7. Sports: Sports news and news on sporting personalities and avenues.

How do you spot your niche?

Well, what are your hobbies? What do you do on a regular basis? Is there anything there of value to others? Zero in on a topic that you feel passionate about and start building up your knowledge base. Become the expert. How? Go to Membership Riches to find out now.

Popularity: 33% [?]

While keyword optimization plays a vital role in getting you access to those coveted “top positions” in search results, competition analysis is an equally important factor too. Once we know exactly what our competitors are doing, only then can we figure out how to do it better than them! Therefore, the 3-step program to success is:

1. Search for your competitive websites
2. Analyze the competitive websites
3. Surpass your competitive websites

Now that we get the big picture of what we need to do, let us look into the details of each step.

Searching For Your Competition

This step is fairly easy. If you have already read “The #1 Keyword Secret That You Always Wanted To Know“, then you must have already worked out the most competitive keyword phrases in your particular product segment. So you must already be familiar with the list of keyword phrases that seem to be doing the trick for your competitors.

So simply search for those exact keyword phrases on various search engines, and make a list of the top websites displayed in the results. These are your competitors - the ones you have to beat, in order to get their traffic directed towards your website. You have to work your way up, to a position higher than these websites. How? Read on.

Analyzing the Competition

Analyzing the competitive websites in your market segment is probably the most difficult and the most time-consuming part of the process. That’s because you have to go through each of your competitive websites individually, for a whole set parameters, like:

• The design and layout of the site (color scheme, fonts, positioning of important page elements, level of interaction with the users)
• The keyword combinations on which the site pages have been optimized
• The content of the top ranking pages, and the positioning and density of keyword phrases in those pages
• Finding and analyzing the link partners of your competitive websites (how high they rank, the kind of content on their pages, their traffic, what kind of content pages on your competitive websites are they linking to)
• The product range of your competition, and the ways they have used to encourage their visitors to take action and become customers

As you can see, this is a mammoth task, requiring several man-hours of hard work per website you analyze.

Surpassing Your Competition

Once you have completed this process however, that’s when you reach the stage where you can actually work out ways to make your website better than your competitors in all respects mentioned above.

However, time is a crucial factor here. In today’s dynamic world, statistics tend to become “outdated” at the drop of a hat! So if it’s going to take you weeks, or even months, to go through the research and analysis of your competition, by the time you have worked out any substantial improvement methods for your own website, they would have made improvements in their websites too. You don’t expect them to be sitting idle, do you?

So the whole purpose of doing this elaborate research and analysis on your competition stands defeated if you cannot take advantage of their weaknesses right now! You have worked out what seems to be working for them and where they lack. So if you can act faster than them, and exploit their areas of weakness immediately, you can beat them at their own game.

Well then, is there any quicker method of doing the competition analysis? As a matter of fact, there is. There is a way to automate the entire process of competition research, analysis and implementation of improvements. Find out how you can do this with SEO Equalizer right now.

Popularity: 22% [?]

In my last article, “Discover The #1 Secret To Leverage Forums For Traffic“, I talked about forums and how you can leverage them for traffic through the content you post. Blogs can also be monetized through content. Blog marketing is a hot topic with internet marketers, so lets see how you too can get the best out of them.

Blogs are easy to start. Blogs are cheap Internet advertising strategies. You can start one for free on blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc. They are often a great alternative to building and maintaining a website. In fact, most Newbies in online business get started with a blog to get a feel of the whole thing and then plan bigger projects.

The success of blogs is mainly due to that thirst for information, which leads visitors to browse the Internet. Happily, the search engines also demand good quality content and since you need to rank high with the search engines so that they bring you focussed traffic, you can use blogs to achieve this.

Blogs are must-haves for Internet business success. Bloggers wield a lot of powerful influence because when someone is considering buying something, they prefer to turn to their favorite blogs for more information and product reviews and to express their concerns. People trust blogs and visit them regularly, especially when it is refreshed on a daily basis. See what we mean? Now lets move on to ways in which you can pull traffic using your blog.

• Your blog title and description must be keyword specific. When you sign up to start a blog, say at blogger.com, you are asked to give a title and a brief description. Here’s where you think hard. Based on who is your target audience and what topic you are passionate about writing on, you can do some quick keyword research with the help of a keyword research tool and name your blog.
• Generate keyword rich content for your blog. You want to be found by your niche market don’t you? Update your blog on a daily basis so that your visitors bookmark you and keep visiting to see what is new. While original posts are best, you can also use an automatically updating feed getting content from other blog posts and articles. With each post treated as its own page, to the search engines your blog will appear like a multi page website with regular fresh content that is rich in keywords and links.
• Your blog profile must be complete with information about yourself as a person. Visitors love to see that you are for real, what you like and dislike, your favorite things etc. Sprinkle in a few relevant keywords, too.
• While at it, you can also post on other blogs and link back to your blog. Make contact and start the process of relationship building. The more links you have to your blog, naturally the more traffic you will see.
• Allow people to subscribe to your blog through RSS feeds. The advantage is, your content will be delivered to your readers by their consent. Each time you post new content they are notified about it.
• Submit your blogs to RSS directories as a one time activity.
• Each time you update your blog, ping it to let the directories know.
• Preferably create an RSS reader of your own - it’s a good branding exercise for increased visibility.
• Consider pod casting. Technology changes by the day and you might like to keep up with it. There are pod casting services that can upload, store, host and set up the RSS and submit to directories as well as ping.
• Try video-blogging.

Blogs are probably the easiest way to be indexed by the search engines for your specific keywords, and are a great platform to launch your products, pre sell your products and keep in touch with your niche market.

Popularity: 27% [?]

In this article, I am going to cover how you can select the best performing keywords and phrases for your business.

Before I go into that, let’s first discuss the purpose of setting up any business, virtual or real. A business is set up with the intention of making profits from it, right? And how can we make higher profits? There are several ways of doing this actually. The most important ways, however, are:

1. By cutting costs
2. By increasing sales

This article deals with both these methods of increasing revenues and turning your online venture into a money-minting enterprise! But first we’ll see how we can increase the sales volume by attracting more free traffic to your website with the use of correct keywords.

What Are Keywords?

When a person, belonging to the market segment you are targeting at, wants to search for your product on the internet, he opens up a search engine first, like Google, AltaVista, MSN, Yahoo or HotBot. He then enters a specific word, or a combination of words, to search for your product. Then, depending upon how well a particular webpage has been optimized for that specific combination of words, it is displayed in the search results. Needless to say, the better optimized pages are displayed first, and as such, they have a higher probability of a click through, leading to a potential sale.

Keyword Research And Analysis

This means that if you want to increase traffic to your website, you need to find out what keyword combinations in your industry are being searched for the most, and then optimize the pages in your site accordingly, so that they are displayed at the top positions in the search engine results. This is what is called keyword research and analysis.

In simple words, keyword research helps in searching for competitive keywords and phrases, and then analyzing those keywords and phrases in order to surpass your competition.

1. Keyword research helps you find the number of times a particular keyword has been searched for.
2. It also gives you the alternate phrases that can be used for a particular keyword.
3. Keyword research lists your various competing sites for that particular keyword.
4. It helps you track your website’s search engine position for the various keywords and phrases related to your product niche.
5. Keyword analysis helps you optimize your pages for certain keywords and phrases, based on keyword density and keyword location.

Use Of Automated SEO Software For Keyword Research And Analysis

By using some SEO software for keyword research and analysis, you are able to:

1. Completely automate the entire process of research, analysis, and optimization which is associated with highly targeted keywords
2. Quickly analyze why a particular website has a higher ranking for a certain keyword or phrase
3. Conduct a quick and easy automatic optimization of your web pages for the specified keyword phrases, turning them into lean and mean search engine magnets

Popularity: 19% [?]

You have probably heard and read a lot about the concept of search engine optimization. This is important for all Internet marketers in order to be found by prospective customers online. This is possible through keywords, which are identified through keyword research. Keywords must be relevant to your business since they bring visitors to your website.

For your website to rank high with the search engines that are responsible for bringing focussed traffic, some serious keyword research is essential so that you can find out exactly which ones are used by your visitors. Finding these keywords will also enable you place them in the right locations.

You can shortlist your keywords via brainstorming with peers and friends, competition analysis, and use a keyword research tool for evaluation. What we now want to share with you are crucial criteria to bear in mind when you select keywords to receive targeted website traffic:

• Select key phrases rather than keywords, as you are likely to get better- focussed traffic and appear in more specific results
• Keywords must be related to your website and be relevant to your product or service on offer
• The more specific the keywords, the better the chances of prospective customers visiting your website and the lesser the chances of facing competition
• Pay attention to the variation of keywords used in different locations across the world. Accordingly web pages must be optimized for the audience. The English say ‘lift’ while the Americans call it an elevator - so take care to use the right ones at the appropriate domains.
• You primary keyword can be used for website optimization. The secondary keywords can be used to draw traffic.
• Remember that keyword research tools are effective, but your own knowledge also counts just as much.
• The final keyword list must be tested. This may seem like a tedious process, but it is necessary in order to enable you finalize a list that is effective and ranks well with the search engines
• A variety of relevant keywords is more effective than the same keyword being used over and over.
• Keywords must be located in the title tags, header tags, ALT tags, anchor text, URLs, meta tags and comments. There are efficient tools that help by suggesting the best ways to do this.
• Also add keywords that are spelt slightly differently by users to your list since they are equally responsible for traffic
• By including a site search function on your website you will be able to monitor the keywords being used by your visitors, as well as making it easy for them to navigate your site.
• There are keywords that have a high search rate even though they are low in terms of competition. These keywords are just as important.

To be successful, keywords must have a high conversion rate. This means you must be able to turn your visitors into customers.

Popularity: 24% [?]

All Internet marketers maintain a meticulous action list of the important activities involved in running their business. But there are some crucial mistakes that must be avoided and we have carefully compiled this list. These can make all the difference in making sure your business flourishes. In fact, you might like to even print and use this as a ready reference checklist. Here it is:

• If you are running a particular promotional campaign do not group all the keywords in your list. For example if you short-listed fifty keywords for this promotion split them into smaller subgroups with related keywords. You could even have separate landing pages for each of these subgroups, enabling your focussed traffic to find it easier to navigate. The more specific you get, the more the chances of your niche market reaching you.
• Do not forget to use square brackets around your keywords and key phrases. By using square brackets you can get your ad noticed easily when this particular keyword is searched for.
• Do not set your keywords with Google AdWords and leave it at that. Constant tracking is necessary to know which keywords are profitable. This will help you drop the ones that are not. You can also reallocate your promotional dollar to focus on those that bring in results.
• Do not ignore grammatical errors, dead links and complex web pages. Just imagine visiting a sloppy website where links lead to a 404 error page - it’s the best way to lose a customer. No one has the time to browse around a website that is complicated and ill maintained. Links must point to the intended web pages, audio and video clips.
• Do not underestimate the importance of using reviews as a promotional method. Reviews make you appear as a fair unbiased marketer who prefers to be honest. As an Internet marketer you will obviously use forums and blogs - so make sure writing reviews is a regular activity. And enjoy the sales that pour in.
• If your traffic is not targeted, you cannot have consistent sales and you cannot track your activity. Be wary of traffic sources you did not target - like pop unders, free links etc.
• Not making an action plan is the worst mistake an Internet marketer can make. You cant set up a website, run a Google ad and relax hoping things will take care of themselves. When your customer places an order, they must be directed to your autoresponder. When your visitor asks a question, they must be directed to your frequently answered questions page.
• Do not analyze every how-to ebook or report you read too deeply. The time could be better spent on actual practice and experimentation. In many instances learning is better through action.
• Do not lose focus on the system you have set up after a lot of research. It is necessary to be organized and stay through with what you plan until it runs on autopilot.

It is not unnatural to want to respond to every new strategy that is promoted or launched in the market, but then there will never be an end to it. What is listed above is just a partial list.

Popularity: 21% [?]

In Internet marketing, even though you may not need a website right away, eventually you will have to build one as you grow. The website you build must not only be successful, but also search-engine friendly. We have put together the most vital points that you need to follow to achieve this goal.

Content

This is the most obvious, but sadly the most overlooked. Google and your visitors both love quality content. So make sure that you have plenty of it ready so that you keep refreshing it on your website. Stale content does not work. Google likes ranking a website that frequently has new information with the keywords that the prospective visitor is looking for.

A Website With A Simple Design

There’s a misconception that graphic and html rich websites are best. But that’s not true. A simple professional website that has more text than html is always best. Too many complex components like JavaScript, flash elements etc. can be quite annoying as they take time to load. Can you imagine someone with low bandwidth smiling over this? Also, your website must be viewable no matter which browser is being used by the user.

Smaller Pages That Load Quickly

Size matters - and this time it is small that matters. Your website must load quickly. No one has the time to wait around.

How Much Content

Lots of it. Try and add at least one page per day - a length of 300 to 600 words should be fine. Use your keywords. And don’t forget to use the spell check. Here’s a tip - on your blog, rather than make journal like entries, go for short keyword rich articles.

Keywords

You have short listed keywords relevant to your business. Use them especially in your title and description tag, page subtitles, your URL, on your page in bold, italic and in your content summary at the beginning.

Linking

Within your website, have links between relevant pages. It would be even better if you use your keywords in these links. Link your high-ranking pages with those of other sites. Ensure that the content is complementary.

Site Submission

This is an important activity - you must submit your website to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, etc. and other search engines and directories. Keep track and resubmit if you don’t appear on their list in 3-4 months.

Monitoring

Keep track of where your focussed traffic is coming from and which methods for attracting traffic are working successfully.

Anticipate

If you plan to introduce something big, now’s the time to build a web page. Why? Search engines need time to index the page and show it to your prospective customers.

Words, Words

Your visitors want content. Write for them. Research for what they are looking for. Your chances of becoming a top ranking website is greatly enhanced when you add fresh content every day.

Popularity: 33% [?]

We already know that success on the Internet is founded on niche marketing. This involves finding a niche market that is not too large. A list of relevant keywords is then made through research. The next step is to write keyword rich content that you can post on your website enabling your niche market to find you. Now here’s where a blog can be tremendously valuable because you can get massive amounts of free traffic.

Basically, a blog is like a simple website. You can start one with zero investment and publish your keyword rich content online. You’ve probably seen people use a blog as a personal diary or to just post news. The fact, however, is that you can use a blog as a niche site almost effortlessly. Blogs are the best way to keep adding fresh keyword rich content and making it available to your niche. It brings in heavy traffic much more quickly than your regular website - and blogs are perfect for niche marketing.

But don’t just set up a blog and keep posting content - also add categories and moveable type. Your category titles must preferably be your most important keywords. Remember the list of keywords you made when you researched your niche? Post relevant keyword rich content under each category. This is crucial because as you keep building the blog site, you’ll have hundreds of pages. Every page can be linked to the ten or so categories you’ve made. These links will be made of your best keywords and through these, your niche website will get a high ranking with the search engines since your category names are made of your keywords. It’s a fact that Google is partial to blogs in particular!

Niche blogs can be submitted to the special RSS and blog directories and start generating focused traffic right away. Interestingly, you’ll find that the kind of traffic you get from this source is a lot more than the search engines bring up. It is easy to find the top blog directories online and get yourself indexed. Each time a new post is added, you can ping these directories to alert them, inviting the search engine spiders to visit your site.

It is important at least initially to keep adding fresh content every day because this will make it attractive to the visitors as well as the largest search engines. Assuming you build a niche blog site that has at least thirty new entries by the time it is thirty days old, you can expect a big and steady flow of traffic.

Because of how easy it is and hardly costs anything, niche blog sites are the preferred way to reach the niche market since blogs are one of the vital places to find your niche site. You need not limit yourself to one blog. If you intend selling more than one product, you should set up a niche blog site for each of these products.

Popularity: 14% [?]