Keyword Research has become an integral part of starting up your own business or growing your business (exponentially). Search engine marketing is here to stay for the long term, hence finding customers through keyword research should also be an integral part of your marketing.

Earlier, all you needed to do was to enter the description of your business in the title & meta tags and you were done with optimizing your web-site. Things have changed! And hence this article…

How does Search Engine Optimization (SEO) relate to keywords?

SEO is the process of increasing the number of visitors to your web-page by the careful and deliberate use of targeted keywords and their specific placements designed to get the page to show up on the top listing for such keywords. (SEO also includes other strategies not discussed here.)

TIP: Keyword Research is very useful to you when you decide to start a pay-per-click campaign to drive visitors to your website or increase revenue using adsense.

Here are the seven simple steps to keyword mastery that will cause your page to be indexed correctly by Search Engines and your link to be displayed at the very top on the search results page.

Step 1) Start with the most common words you use to describe your business(or your niche, if you operate in one). If you are in the automobile service business, you may have the following: Car Repair , Body Shop, Car Repair, New tires with car repair, Wax and Shine etc. If you actually have a niche business such as Jaguar Service And Repairs, then it becomes even more easier.

Step 2) Call your friend. Ask him how he would try to find your widget on a search engine if he lost your phone number and he wanted to look you up on the Internet. What if he forgot the name of your establishment? What if ….

Your perception of how people see you may be different from your customers’ perception of you. Add these new words to the list.

Repeat this as many times as you can with different people.

Step 3) Find other words related to your original list. such as names of the brands. Lexus Repair, Lexus spare-parts, Honda kit, etc.

Mix and match keywords with your original list to find even more keywords.

Step 4) Go to google and run a search for your widget. See what keywords bring up your competition and what words do not. Add them to your list .

Step 5) Add plurals and common mis-spellings too.

Step 6) Figure out as to how often people search using each of the phrases you have identified in your list. You can use the google adwords tool for this purpose.

TIP: Use adwords tool to see how many people have searched for each of your phrases in the recent past. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . This also suggest keywords you might want to use.

Step 7) Make sure your keywords are placed in the following locations on you web page: Page Title, Meta Keywords, Meta Description, Header Tags, Alternate Description for images, First Paragraph on the page, strong Tags, Em tags, Ordered and unordered lists, Anchor Tags, File names, Folder Names, Footer Tags, Any URLs and links in your pages.

Should I use many keywords in the same page?

Yes. Use as many keywords as it makes sense. Don’t overdo it. If your content becomes just a keyword trash-bin, users will start skipping over it and the search engines will catch on pretty fast. So avoid using too many keywords where it does not make sense. It’s best if you have multiple pages offering up different keywords.

One caveat. You need to be aware of ‘Keyword density’. Sometimes, if your usage of keywords is too high, and it looks like you have placed too many keywords, the search engine may not give you the best ranking. “Sprinkling” is the key-word when it comes to using them on each page.

You should also be aware of negative keywords. These are keywords you need to use in your PPC(Pay-per-Click) text so as to make sure that people do not click your link expecting to get freebies.

e.g. If you said : “Self Clearning Widgets- $500 and up”, you keep out the people who are looking for cheaper stuff.

Are phrases better than individual words?

Depends! If your customer is searching for self-cleaning widget, then you should use self-cleaning widget. If your customer is searching for just widget, and auto clean, you should use these words separately.

How often do I have to check my keywords?

As often as you can. Your customers react to various influences around them and search for different terms at different times. To be able to remain on top with a good ranking you need to keep on top of your keywords. Sometimes they react to an offer made by a competition and start searching for similar offers.

I know. You are saying:”But I don’t have that much time to devote to just keyword research.” That brings us to the next question.

Do I have to do it all by myself?

I have had many websites in the past few years. In the beginning I did everything manually the old fashioned way.

Lately I’ve found a few tools that help make life easier for me, though you could do it all by yourselves if you had the time and the tenacity(which I sorely lack). I suggest you find yourselves a tool to do the work for you.

I use Keyword Elite now, though I’ve used WordTracker in the past.

Pick 1: Keyword Elite tool : If you really plan to take your business to the next level, this is a great tool. From generating your own keyword lists, to analyzing pay-per-click listings, to studying your competition, this one accomplishes quite a bit. This tool works with Google, Yahoo,MSN, Ask etc. It will save you tons of hours of wasted time and effort. Also, I like the fact that it is multi-threaded(lots of more power.)

WebSite: http://www.elitekeyword.net

Pick 2 : WordTracker: Offers a free, ‘lite’ version, as well as a paid version. Features include an online management system for different keyword projects, searching for often misspelled words, a system to calculate your best keywords, and much more. WebSite:Wordtracker.com/FreeWordtracker

Pick 3 : WebCEO :From a free version to a $389/- version this company has various options available. For small business owners, the $199/- version would be suitable.Go for the $389/- version if you have multiple web-sites running and your business model is solely online. Web Site: http://www.webceo.com/cgi-bin/go/clickthru.cgi?id=linkflow

What next ?

Use keyword research to identify the most likely phrases for your business.

Master keyword research just like I outlined in this article and create a massive list of targeted keywords.

Make a list of the 5 most promising keyword phrases.

Head over to your favorite domain listing / hosting company (eg. http://www.GoDaddy.com) and see if you can buy that phrase in the .com domain.eg. Self-cleaning-Widgets.com

Point your existing website to this url. If you don’t have an existing web-site, create your new website using all the keywords you identified.

Submit your site to the search engines.

Happy hunting!

Copyright (c) 2008 Dave James

The most important online marketing strategies that can help you be successful with optimizing your business on the web include building a plan, blogging, an email list, press releases, and much more. Be sure to have these items on your checklist and you will have an excellent and productive website for your business.

The first and most important strategy for optimizing your search engine for your website is to create a plan for your site and your business. You should determine all of the most important things. What are your goals for accomplishments with your site and who is your audience going to be? That is, what types of people do you believe will be interested in your products and what people do you believe you need to target that will continue to come back for more. You need to make a decision how you are going to make your website better than others, how it will stand out from the rest and grab the attention. All of these answers to these questions should be the base of your web plan to optimizing your website and they should be at the top of your checklist.

The next thing that you need to do for optimization of your website is to create a marketing plan that will work and get the word out about your business and your site. This includes writing press releases and getting them out to every contact that you have in the media. You should also post the press releases online to every place that will allow you to. In addition to writing press releases for your website, you should write extensive articles about your website, your company, your products, and more. These articles should contain important keywords that will take people back to your site. You should also include your website and company information in all of the articles including contact information if people have questions.

Creating a blog should also be on your checklist for total optimization. This is the one way you can have the keywords that you need for your site to be pulled up in search engines and remain at the top. You should start relevant conversations, add posts, and useful data to your blog and keep people coming back for more. If you are talking about a subject that is important to people they will discuss issues with you, in return, adding more keywords to your site. You should also get on other blogs across the Internet and talk about your website and your products in other blogs. This is good advertising for you also.

You should build a mailing list for optimizing your site. This can be done by determining who your audience is. Your email list may be created over time as people enter in their information and if they request to be on the list. It is important to respond to requests through email and to let the people that do come back know that you care about them as a customer. The best thing about email is that it is free and extremely helpful for your business.

Another way you can optimize your site is by offering incentives to people who visit your site. You can offer free stuff, discounts, and more. People often search the web just for free items and by doing this you are generating more traffic to your website.

There are many points you should add to your checklist when you are concerned about optimizing your website on the Internet for your business.

A pay per click report will inform you of how many visitors you have had to your website, what keyword they used to get there, and some monitor how long they were there. These reports can be daily, weekly, or monthly. There are free pay per click services however they do not give you all the information that you can get from a paid service.

Companies mainly use a monthly report on the traffic to their websites. In order to utilize the pay per click service to it’s utmost ability, they must report data from web marketing as well as other crucial information. This will allow the user to examine their marketing strategies to decide if they are working.

Some pay per click companies put a tracking code in your website to monitor sales. How many customers have signed in and what they are interested in is also tracked. Most will prepare a report that is easy to understand. It will contain information about the sales generated by the people using pay per click, visitor breakdown, and anything else they think is of particular interest to the website owner.

The benefits of using pay per click are invaluable to companies that want to use their website to generate more income for the company. With so many people having access to the internet, it is the number one way that customers seek and find the company that they want to use for their needs. These reports will allow you to see how well your company is doing by how many internet visitors you have each day.

One of the benefits of using a pay per click report is the tracking of keyword use. When advertising your business, keywords are used to direct traffic to your website. When you use pay per click the reports you get will show which keywords worked the best and which ones you need to replace. A good keyword will have more hits on it and the keywords with the least hits means you need to find another. By doing this you will know the difference.

The reports can show you how to optimise your initial web site page to get more visitors. There are certain items that people look for when going to a web page. With the reports from pay per click, the ones that work the best will be suggested so you can get the most from your website.

Pay per click reports can help you to know for sure how many people have logged into your website. It is the best way to be aware of just how well your advertising is doing. You could advertise in the newspaper, on a billboard, or by direct mail but how are you going to know the number of people who have seen your advertisement? Plain and simply, you are not.

By using pay per click you will know the exact number of visits to your website. This report will become an important tool to help you make the most of your web page and give you the knowledge you need to optimise the site you use for generating income.

Why write articles

Writing articles can make your affiliate pages unique and drive more traffic from the major search engines, resulting in more sales.

In some instances the merchant’s affiliate program may not provide you with more than a banner and a few text links.

If your traffic levels are low than this will not do much to drive traffic to your affiliate links.

If the merchant does provide you with content then this can be viewed by search engines as duplicate material depending on how many affiliates are promoting the same product with that content.

Beginning Your Article

First begin by reading all the information on the merchant’s site about the affiliate program, if you are not already familiar with the product.

It is very important that you learn what it is that you are offering to your customers such as,product features,capabilities,limitations and specifications.

Many merchants will include these details with the description.

Researching your article

Use one of the many free or paid keyword suggestion tools to build your list of niche keywords.

Google Adwords, Digitalpoint and CBtrends all have really useful keyword tools which are free. Experimenting will help you discover search trends.

Testing these keywords in major search engine will give you a sense market saturation and competition.

Include Keywords In your Article

When writing for search engines your article should be keyword rich. Include long tail keyword phrases in your article title and subcategories. Product specific keyword phrases will help drive targeted traffic from search engines to your specific niche.

What to include in your article

Creating an outline will help you organize your article and supporting subcategories sequence.

Including descriptive keywords such as, size, color and dimensions in your article will further help drive targeted visitors to your site.

Helping your visitors solve a problem

When promoting affiliate programs through article writing, bring attention to product features that will help your visitors resolve a problem.

Use examples and illustrations of how these features can be applied in real life situations.

If your product is easy to use, then bring attention to why you believe it is better than similar products.

Ways to emphasize product features

Use bullet points, numbering or italics when writing articles to emphasize and bring attention to helpful product features.

Free content

Articles provide free instant content for ezines,newsletters and website publishers. This free content is used to optimize and attract free search engine traffic.

Submitting to article directories

There are countless popular free article directories, where your can submit your article for publication. Arcanaweb publishes a list of many popular directories. These directories allow anyone to reprint the article as long as the resource box is included at the end of the article.

Read and follow the guidelines before submitting your articles

Do not include affiliate links in your article or resource box.

This may cause your article to be rejected by the directory.

Do not plagiarize another writers material.

Resource box and backlinks

Writing articles can increase the number of one way links or backlinks to your site.

Included at the end of every article is a resource box,where you can include a brief bio and link back to your site.

Free article directories

Free article directories will allow you submit content but you are not paid for your article. Goarticles,Isnare and Articledashboard are among some of the large high traffic free article repositories.

Article distribution and submission services

Article distribution services will submit your article for a fee to article directories,ezines,newsletters,article email groups, social bookmarking and article announcement sites.

Article submission software

Article submission software such as Artemis Lite and Article Submitter 2.2 are free and may expedite the process once your are registered. You will need to do a manual submission for sites using an access code.

Paid article directories

These directories will pay you for writing articles or reviews.

Compensation may be in the form of revenue share or per word.

Paid to write reviews

In addition to getting paid for writing articles, reviews can be another avenue to earn extra income. Review rates can range anywhere from $2.00 to $200.00.

Reviewme, Reviewstream, Softwarejudge and Epinions are just a few of the popular paid to review sites that can put extra cash in your pocket.

You can also earn money with your clickbank id at Reviewsarena for up to 60 days.

Paid to blog

Writing blogs are yet another alternative for earning extra income.

Payperpost and Smorty are blog sites that pay weekly and compensation may range anywhere from $5 to $100. In some cases, you may be able to negotiate a price with the advertiser.

In conclusion

Do your research before writing an article,use targeted keywords on affiliate product landing pages. Submit to high ranking article directories to increase the number of quality backlinks. Check site stats for increase traffic levels. Test and improve your writing skills by reading writing tutorials and ebooks. Learn from mistakes and continue writing articles.

For those of you who don’t know what an FFA site is, it’s basically a website where you can post a link/add to your website for free. Generally it is also posted to many other sites at the same time and hopefully somebody sees your link…free advertising in other words. This also creates backlinks to your website. When you post a link, you are also giving permission (whether you know it or not) to receive confirmation e-mails back from the site owner.

What seems to happen though is many people see this as free advertising and get angry when, not only do they not see a flood of sales come pouring in, but they start receiving other people’s offers. I know when the first time it happened to me, I couldn’t figure out what was going on and was frustrated at the results.

Let’s back up a moment and look at the bigger picture of what an FFA site is and its TRUE purpose. The true purpose of an FFA site is for the owner of that site to promote his/her business. It’s really not just because he’s a nice guy giving people a free advertising place.

(If it were such a goldmine for pulling in sales, he would be doing it himself). That is just the bait, getting people to his site to post their links, thinking they are getting free advertising, so he can respond with “confirmation” of your link, and his business ad.

Those confirmation e-mails are NOT spam. You had to agree to receive them in order to post your link. Who are reading these ads anyway? So is posting to FFA’s a total waste of time? Not necessarily, you do get an occasional sale, people do go back to post their links and sometimes take a quick look through the links to see what’s there while they’re at it.

So what’s the answer? Get your own FFA site to promote your business. There are many excellent resources out there. I have found from personal experience however,that many of the services offering FFA’s sites, offer a free version or a paid upgrade. The phrase “You get what you pay for” comes to mind with these. I’ve used several kinds and found that the paid upgrades more than paid for themselves in sales. Shop around however to compare between companies.

You can promote any product through this method; information products, crafts, vitamins, whatever. You could have the very best on the entire internet, but if nobody sees your offer, it’s not going to get the sales you desire. It takes traffic to get sales. These sites are options for driving those numbers to your site. Free classified ads sites are also in this same category with the same purpose and can be worth pursuing.

Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you want think that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you are contending in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

In the mean time, Good Luck on your journey to success…

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