Guide to make money online!

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination—your website—you need to provide them with effective signs that direct them right to your site by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame!” of the Internet. Find the exactly right words, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or overused, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site—or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive—decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase.

Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties.

You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to your site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work—and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

When it comes to writing articles to promote your online business, it’s important to consider more than just your marketing goals: it’s essential that you also focus on writing articles that people will want to read. In other words, you don’t just want to use words; and you don’t want to market and sell your business directly. Instead, you want to make an effort to be engaging and influential.

The first tip that will help you to increase the readability of your articles is to write with the reader’s concerns in mind. If you are unsure of exactly how to do that, you may want to look into article ghostwriters who understand article marketing and who only focus on writing articles for Internet audiences. When you work with article ghostwriters, you can focus more on your business and know that someone else is working hard on your behalf to write articles that will be read.

Getting The Best Results From Your Article Marketing Campaigns

Still, if you want to keep article writing within your company, rather than outsourcing it, here are some tips for getting more out of your article marketing campaigns:

1. Hook your readers from the start. Article writing is a lot more effective for marketing your business when people will actually read the articles. The best thing that you can do is to catch their interest right away. Your article title will determine if people will open your article, and the first paragraph will ensure that people keep reading the article.

2. Avoid the temptation to overwhelm your readers with a lot of information. Article writing is not about telling the reader everything that there is to know; it’s about sticking with a central focus and giving your reader an introduction or overview of the information they want and need to solve their problems. In an article that probably won’t be much more than one thousand words, you will never be able to tell the reader everything they need to know to solve a problem, but you can help put your reader on solid footing for moving forward towards a workable solution.

3. Break up information into digestible chunks. Writing articles is about expressing some key points. When it comes to writing articles for the internet, what you are going to find is that many readers skim rather than read your articles. Using numbered lists (like this one) will help you to present your information clearly, and let readers find what they are looking for quickly. Similarly, if you use bullet lists or break up your text with subheadings that are in a larger font and bolded, you can be sure that after reading your article, the article’s key points will be easily recalled.

4. When it comes to article writing, particularly when you are working to establish yourself as an expert, it’s important to show that you know what you’re talking about. A great way of doing that - and to break up the text of your article - is to include quotes from more established experts. If you are writing articles and are more established, you too should quote other sources, possible letting the readers know why you disagree with another writer.

5. Focus on spelling and grammar. Just as someone who is hiring article ghostwriters should take the time to find ghost writing services that are well versed in your point of view, it’s also important to be sure that you’re writing in the native language of your target audience. American English is different from that spoken and written in England and India. Paying attention to your spelling and grammar shows that you care about what you are saying and that you are a professional.

A good example of the difference between the usage rules in British English and American English is the story of Paul Marshall from Dallas, Texas. When Paul was running his mortgage business, he had hired some Indian writers to develop content for his website. When he received the copy from his ghostwriters, the copy used the word “mortgage scheme” in the text eleven times. Paul was pissed, as you might well imagine. In British English, “scheme” does not carry any negative connotation. Yet, as you may well realize, “scheme” in American English is one of the most negative words that can be applied to any business model. It denotes “dishonesty” and “fraud” in American English. His Indian writers could not understand his anger with their choice of words, but you can understand his anger.

Professionalism In The Article Writing Process

Professionalism, unfortunately, is frequently overlooked when it comes to article writing. Great writing flows, not just for the writer whose aim is to get the words and message out, but also for the readers who are consuming the information.

Because of this, one key element of an effective article is not the writing itself: it is the readability of that article. Take the time to look at the articles that grab your attention and jot a few notes about each of them. Specifically, focus on the following:

• How did the writer grab your attention (or, if you weren’t interested in the first paragraph, what turned you off?
• What sort of spacing did the writer use in the article?
• What did you come away with after reading the article? In other words, what were the key points of the article?

Writing articles is neither purely science nor purely art at its best; it is a good combination of the two. A great article focuses on a key issue, isn’t stuffed with keywords (you do want search engines to find the article, but too many keywords in an article takes away from readability), and is as easy to skim, as it is to read.

When all is said and done, an article that gets read in its entirety will carry the reader to the Author’s Bio at the end of the article. Ideally, the reader will read the entire article and feel a desire to visit the author’s website to learn more about the writer of the article. It is article marketing at its best, when the reader likes the article enough to click on the link in the Author’s Bio and visit the author’s website to learn more about what the author is offering.

Here are several fixes you can do that will make your video readable by the search engines. Search engine crawlers read html very well, but not your video.

At the present time, Google’s freshbot crawler cannot read inside a video. You will need to help that little freshbot.

Consider these factors:

1. Make sure that you tag your video with keyword tags. Keyword tags is what you type into the search box to find what you need. The keywords might be “how to”, “video”, “strawberry rhubarb”, “baking”, “pie” if you did a video on how to make a strawberry rhubarb pie. You would not use the quotes around the keywords, however.

2. You have to give the search engines enough of a description to help them to determine what is in the video. Keywords must be used in this text. The crawlers can read html code extremely well, so tell them what the video says. Do a good job of summarizing the content of the video in a paragraph or more. It wouldn’t hurt if you printed out the text that you used to record the video, assuming that you didn’t free-wheel it. Surround your video with the text which is keyword rich.

3. Inbound links to your videos: Be sure to use keywords in your anchor text.

4. The title of your video is very important. Do some research. Look for a keyword phrase that has a small number of searches per day…about 3,000 to 5,000 searches per day. If you use those keywords in your title, you will probably rank very well.

5. Submit your video to Digg and Mixx which are social sites. Make sure that you check the box that says that this is a video.

6. Submit your video to RSS feeds. A good one to use is rssfeedsubmit. There are many others to choose from. Simply type in “rss feeds” into your search box. A number of choices will show up.

7. Another trick you need to do is add your full URL in the description area of your video. Make sure that you precede your description with your full URL when you type in your keyword rich description in to the video sharing site. Your full URL includes the http:// This allows people to go directly to your site if they find that they liked your video and want to see more of what you have to offer.

Video optimization has become more and more important as video becomes mainstream. You need to change the way you publish your video if you want to experience the full, search engine optimization, (SEO), effect of your video production. Consider what the web crawlers can read and adapt your publication accordingly.

Let’s face it, anyone can build a website, there are countless companies out there offering a vast array of web building solutions, some good, some great, and some quite frankly are a complete waste of time! But throwing together a website is really only part of the story, only part of the process. There are literally, hundreds of thousands of web pages, that will never be viewed and therefore stand no chance of commercial success. Some of those sites are relatively good; unfortunately their owners have misunderstood the process and have the cart before the horse… In the online world nobody just happens by your website, credit card in hand! If you’ve yet to build your website, or about to create a new site, stop! consider first exactly what you wish to achieve with that site, before you start. “Creating a website should follow a process proven to deliver a commercial end result… or run the risk of ending up, just another pretty picture in cyberspace!” Fortunately there is a process, and I highly recommend you take a look at it… perhaps you already know it…

1. Content
2. Traffic
3. Pre-sell
4. Monetize

A time tested, 4 step process, proven to produce websites that deliver… commercially! Ok so, let’s now look briefly at each step and why they work in this particular order.

1. Número Uno, as always. Content.
Very, very important. Building information-rich sites is crucial. You must have high quality, unique, relevant content on your site, A; because you want to attract visitors in the first place and B; to generate long term, search engine based free traffic. Online, people are looking for solutions, for information that leads to solutions. They use the search engines to hunt for the most relevant facts to reach this end goal solution. your job is therefore easy… give it to them… but don’t just plonk down any old garbage and hope for the best… take your time, put in the effort, provide good quality information that will over-deliver and keep your visitor interested, satisfy her need and you will be rewarded. Over time, gradually add new fresh, useful content and you will be creating web pages valued by humans and search engines alike. On the internet, high value content is king!

2. Traffic… Ahh! The Holy Grail
Much has been written on the subject, and many are making a good living providing (?) this elusive element. Truth is, (excluding social media) there are but two ways to get it, you either pay for it, or you optimize for it. If you take the time to understand the basics, you can easily do both. Paid search, (PPC) such as Google Adwords has its place, and can provide an immediate stream of targeted visitors to your website; however it is a study of its own and can, if not understood, be very costly very quickly! If you want to go that route learn with small amounts (of money!) and don’t be tempted to throw good after bad…owch! been there! Safer and arguably better, is optimization (SEO) for the organic results, as reached via a Google or other search engine search. This is simply intelligent website construction, a process anyone can do. The important point is, the optimization should be built in during the creative process, at the time you’re constructing the site; you are literally building your website to principles that make it search engine friendly, thus leading to high natural positions in organic search results, leading to of course, significant free traffic flow to your site…

3. Don’t sell… Pre-sell
You have created a website with value rich content, and fully optimized its pages for indexing by Google (and other search engines)….Folks are arriving at your site as directed by their search results. You are keen to have them buy your goods or services, ready with your pitch… but wait! There’s another vital step in the process of converting your visitors into customers, and you’ve done half the work already… Pre-selling is a warming up process, whereby you develop trust and confidence in your offer… its already well known that people are more willing to buy from those they like, trust or respect. By over-delivering relevant high value information, without appearing to be forcing a sale you will almost by default, create an atmosphere that inevitably leads to sales. Simple! As far as your visitor is concerned, her needs are being met, his wishes are being fulfilled, you are providing the very information that is the solution to that which they are searching for in the first place. Pre-selling creates an open-to-buy mindset that smoothly introduces your visitors to your monetization offer.

4. Monetize
Ok thanks for sticking with me, here’s the home run… This is where you make your offer enticing by introducing and highlighting the many benefits of your product or service, and detailing exactly how it offers the solution to their predicament. You have paved the way with informative relevant content and can now look to close with persuasive sales copy, (See below). Your call to action should be strong and concise, tell your prospect exactly what they need to do to order. If you have a good product, and you should, let them know exactly how they will benefit by ordering from you… Today! So there it is…in brief… A formula simple, yet highly effective. Generate targeted free traffic via your highly optimized website, provide information packed content that offers solutions, warm up or pre-sell your visitors by over-delivering on the quality of that content, then and only then, monetize by introducing persuasive, benefit focused sales copy to convert pre-sold visitors into enthusiastic customers… For full details on how to implement each of these steps (with no technical knowledge whatsoever!) grab yourself a free 48 page e-copy of The Simple Art of e-Persuasion at the info link below…or visit my site…

People who purchase products online aren’t much different than people who purchase off line. They may be a little more cautious with how they spend their money, due to security and privacy reasons, but for the most part they care about the same things, foremost among them being value. The following five factors that influence buying decisions are important considerations if you expect to close the sale on your website.

Factors That Influence Buying Decisions

Online consumers today are more sophisticated than they were ten years ago, or even five years ago. They’re not afraid to make a purchase online, but they will go out of their way to make sure they get value and are very concerned about privacy and security. If you expect to close the sale on your website then you need to consider the following five factors BEFORE you ever ask for the sale:

• Security
• Privacy
• Value
• Approach
• Emotion

Customers Buy From Secure Websites

Online consumers are very concerned about security. They’re also educated. They have read up on cyber security and you should too. If you cannot convince your site visitors that your site is completely secure and that their financial information will be handled with care, they will go leave your site and go somewhere else. Security is one of the most important concerns for online consumers, especially today.

The Growing Concern Over Privacy

In addition to security, online consumers are concerned about privacy. They will guard their e-mail addresses and other personal information with great care. If you want to build trust for your brand then you should start with assurances. Make sure that you put your website visitors’ minds at ease with constant reassurances that their private information will not be sold or shared with third parties.

Regard for privacy online has been growing for the past couple of years. Some European countries have sued Google over privacy issues and Yahoo! announced last December that it will not store search information on searchers beyond 90 days. Privacy is important to online consumers. Having a well thought out and clear privacy policy on your website will go a long way to building trust and confidence in your business.

What Do You Offer Of Value?

Many consumers would still rather drive to pick up an item for purchase instead of making that purchase online for less money. In order to convince online consumers that purchasing your product online is safer and better for them, you’ve got to go out of your way to establish value in their minds.

Even then, providing a local retail outlet where consumers can order online and pick up their items later is a viable business model and could be the way to go for many online retailers. Still, value is in the forefront of consumers’ minds. In order to get them to purchase online you’ve got to ensure that you offer loads of value.

What Is Your Approach?

How you approach online consumers determines to a great degree how you build trust. I still see veteran Internet marketers make the mistake of talking down to their customers or making basic assumptions about behavior to that lead to dismissal or rune behavior. Just because a person has not made a purchase in the past does not mean that she won’t make a purchase in the future. But how you treat a consumer with your content may determine whether they do business with you at all - now or next year. Check your approach and ensure that you meet the emotional needs of your readers before you ask for the sale.

What About Emotion?

People buy for emotional reasons and defend their purchases logically. If you want to close the sale online then you’ve got to make the most basic emotional appeals and meet a real need in the minds of your readers. You have to connect with them on a gut level. Sometimes that takes more than one touch point. Pre-sales is just as important as closing the sale and savvy Internet marketers are learning how to set the stage for the sale down the road by spending a large amount of their time on pre-sales communication that builds trust and confidence.

Conclusion

Different people buy for different reasons, but at the heart of every consumer action is emotion. If people trust you they will buy from you. If you fail to earn their trust then it doesn’t matter how well you do everything else. These five factors all contribute to whether or not a consumer trusts you enough to exchange their hard-earned money for your product or service.

In the paid search world, one of the most overlooked elements of campaign success is geo-targeting. For national advertisers, PPC geo-targeting is an absolute must; however, few are utilizing this tool to its full potential.

Unlike traditional media (such as TV or print) or display advertising online, paid search gives you (the advertiser) plenty of controls to reach your audience based upon their location. Furthermore, you have continuous control of these markets and campaigns. Paid search is not like a billboard run or TV spot that’s purchased months in advance (campaigns that are not easy to change once flight dates have been established). As a paid search advertiser, you have the control to make changes at any point.

While having controls over campaign changes gives paid search an advantage over traditional media, the ability to get granular with PPC geo-targeting is very valuable. With paid search, you’re able to reach a customer internationally, in specific countries, in specific states, in a certain city or DMA (Designated Market Area), or by coordinates around a particular point. This type of targeting capability is simply unavailable through traditional media avenues. The unparalleled quality of PPC geo-targeting options ensures more targeted and effective use of media dollars, eliminating media waste.

The Searching Efficiency of PPC Geo-Targeting

PPC geo-targeting lets you target two types of searchers: (1) the searcher who is within a given location looking for a general keyword and (2) the searcher who is searching with a geographic location included in the search query. For example, Jane is looking for a pet clothing boutique in Los Angeles. She may visit Google and search for “pet clothing stores.” In this search, she may see plenty of paid search ads, but what are the chances she’ll find an advertiser in Los Angeles?

Frustrated, Jane continues her search and tries searching for “los angeles pet clothing stores.” In this case, the search results are little more useful for Jane and she moves forward with her research.

This example demonstrates that to fully capitalize on search behavior, advertisers must be present during both types of searches; a search query with geographic location and a search query without geographic location. Your potential customers are searching this way, and you must ensure they can find your website through both avenues by testing general keywords with and without geographic locations.

All Markets Are Not Created Equally

PPC geo-targeting is also extremely useful for testing new and unique promotions per market. In many cases, many national paid search advertisers will roll out a new promo, new landing page, or new version of the website throughout the entire nation. However, by using the PPC geo-targeting capabilities of the search engines, the same advertiser could test only a couple of markets for performance, gauge results, then roll out to the entire nation. In this scenario, you are not crippling yourself in the event your new initiative doesn’t generate the results you anticipate. You can test first, learn, adapt, and execute initiatives that will generate proven results.

PPC geo-targeting is also beneficial for advertisers who provide services and sales, but perhaps not both to each market. For example, a computer parts shop sells product through its website nationally, but only provides services and performs repairs in its home city. In this case, the store can create multiple paid search campaigns, one set that targets sales, while the other set of campaigns target service, repairs, and installation.

Although trying PPC campaigns in test markets before rolling them out nationwide is extremely valuable, it’s also important to note that every market is not created equally. This is a common mistake that many of our clients’ previous SEM agencies make. How a keyword, ad, or landing page performs in Los Angeles isn’t exactly how it will perform in Atlanta. Yet, a majority of paid search advertisers have no way of knowing exactly how each market is performing on the media side, or with regards to conversion, sales, revenue, and ROI. Usually, an advertiser will make overall campaign changes to a poorly performing nationally targeted campaign, when in fact it’s only a couple of “rogue” markets that are negatively influencing results.

The Nitty-Gritty of Paid Search Success

To truly get this granular, an advertiser would need to geo-target and create unique campaigns per market. In this scenario, you can treat each market to its own ad copy, making the ad more targeted and qualified to the searcher. You can create a geo-specific landing page that aligns with your ad copy and resonates with your visitors. And, ultimately, you have greater cost controls over each individual market.

Some challenges associated with PPC geo-targeting usually involve campaign management. In the situation where an advertiser builds out a massive list of geo-targeted keywords, the management of this extensive list can certainly become a challenge. Think about all the different cities, counties, and zip codes you could associate with general keywords. Needless to say, building an extensive list like this will make the campaign management process a bit more challenging. Thankfully, there are campaign management tools and applications out there (ideal for your PPC geo-targeting needs) to help mitigate this issue.

So as you’re developing or having your SEM agency work on your campaign, keep in mind that there is an entire world outside of general keywords. This includes an extensive opportunity to find geo-targeted keywords for inclusion in your campaign. Also, where it makes sense, think of creating unique campaigns per top market. While a bit more management and time is required initially to learn the ins and outs of PPC geo-targeting tactics, the measurement capabilities and performance of creating geo-targeted campaigns are vital to any organization’s paid search success.