Guide to make money online!

The Internet is the place for rumours and misconceptions as well as hard facts and untold amounts of great information. Unfortunately this has lead to mistakes in search engine optimisation that have been the cause of many online businesses having failed optimisation and marketing efforts.

Optimisation cannot be implemented after a website had been designed. Optimisation should be an integral part of the website design during each stage. Failing to do this means you have a excellent website with zero web traffic. Trying to rectify it afterwards is a nightmare and cost your business hugely in lost customers. Content is king and without search friendly content you do not have a hope of being indexed.

Far too many people think that by having a website crammed with extravagant graphics is good enough. The web crawlers will ignore the graphics and without meaty content move on to other websites. Your web content must be keyword rich text that is appropriate to the page title, meaning the title should be include a term that the majority of searchers will use in a search for the products or services you offer.  Another common mistake is the lack of research into keywords.

You cannot simply go with a generalised keyword or phrase that describes what you offer. You must use keywords that tightly focus on those searchers who specifically search what you offer. Once you have those keywords you need to regularly update as the Internet is ever-changing. What worked this week may be totally inappropriate in a few weeks.

Do not put all your eggs into one basket by relying mostly on paid search advertising. Balance between paid advertising and correct implementation of organic optimisation throughout your website. Do not build links for the sake of link numbers. You will shoot yourself in the foot if your links are inappropriate or not related to and compliment your own products and services. Do not underestimate the needs and wants of your web traffic, if you do you will have a very low conversion rate. Your conversion rate will be abysmal if your whole website is not supporting the conversion process with user friendly ways for visitors to easily become customers. You will lose them if they battle to place and order or cannot contact you.

There are a few things that search engines do not like, such as when you use graphics instead of text in your links. They do not like frames and they do not like splash pages. SE’s do not see graphics and if they battle to index your content you will be ignored and the web crawlers will not trawl your site regularly.

When this happens the bell is tolling for your website and you begin the slide into anonymity.  The golden rule is that search engines and humans look at web content entirely different. You have to attract the SE’s first before you will have web traffic to please.

There is a huge array of free marketing techniques now available to internet marketers, so does the phrase "you have to spend money to make money" apply to affiliate marketing?

After all, there are content sites and social networking sites that will give you web space and a web presence at no cost. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, and a little bit of time.

Is there any reason to spend money while setting up your campaign? There is: pay per click (PPC) advertising.

Many people avoid pay per click advertising. The reasoning is that they can drive traffic to their sites using other methods and pay per click is just money down the drain. Well, there is merit to that argument, but pay per click advertising should not be dismissed out of hand.

To determine if pay per click advertising is right for you, you need to determine a few things: do you have the necessary capital; will your pitch be strong enough to turn prospects into cusomers; and what is your current customer reach?

First thing is the capital. Do you have enough money on hand to cover these advertising costs? Dovetailing into this question is the next, how strong is your pitch.

If you have very strong and persuasive sales copy on your website that has a high success rate, then pay per click is probably a good option for you. Every click will cost you money, but when you are converting those clicks to sales, the cost is minimal. If your pitch isn't strong, then PPC advertising might not be a good idea.

Advertising such as this is paying for people's attention. After they have clicked through to your site, you need to grab their attention, and convert it to a sale.

The last question is what is your current customer reach, and more specifically, what are your goals, in relation to customer building? Do you already have a good system in place to manage your customer list?

If everything works smoothly and you have good convert rates, then it is a good idea to build that list, thereby building your sales, and pay per click may help you get more people into your list. Conversely, if your list is growing fast from your regular techniques, then you probably don't need pay per click.

If you are a beginner, pay per click can be a delicate balance. You need to build your list, but may not have the money on hand to do it. In such cases, learning from someone who has mastered the art is priceless.

When looking for PPC training, always be sure that your mentor has actually walked the talk, and is not just selling you a product and leaving you to it.