Category: Online Biz Fundamentals

Using keyword search engine ranking to help propel your website to the top of the search engine rankings is one very effective way to drive more traffic to your website all for free.

Besides the free traffic another wonderful benefit of this type of traffic is that it meets yet another criteria for quality website traffic: all the traffic that comes to your website via this technique will be very qualified and targeted.

You may be wondering how I can know that, simple, since the people who visit your site are doing a search for a keyword phrase you are targeting you know that they have a big interest in your product or service, they are very targeted.

Don’t worry, I know this can sound complicated… and it can be complicated, but in it’s simplest form it looks a little like this:

Let’s say you are selling a book about improving your golf swing. The whole focus of your website is to help golfers improve their game by improving their swing.

You’ve isolated a list of keywords that are very focused on golf swings. These keywords get decent monthly traffic and relatively low competition.

For this example, let’s say you are targeting the keyword phrase “improve your golf swing”. Using this phrase in your website optimization plan will help the search engines find your site. They will be able to identify that you site is about improving golf swings.

If they believe your website can offer valuable information on improving golf swings to anyone who visits it, they will rank your site very high. Ideally you want your site to be ranked within the first page of results.

So, if someone goes to their web browser and types in the phrase “improve golf swing” and your site is one of the first ones that show up, they will very likely click on the link and be taken to your website.

Since they were actively searching for the term “improve golf swing” you know that they have a high level of interest in improving their golf swing which makes them a good potential customer of yours.

This technique works well for not only your website but you can also use it for distributing articles for article marketing as well as for all your blog posts.

Just use your keywords as the basis for your posts and articles. If you choose the right keywords and submit them to good article directories, your articles or blog can show up in the top ten for that particular keyword phrase… again, good free traffic.

There are a few things to keep in mind: for one thing, the algorithms that the search engines use to determine how relevant any particular site is change frequently.

To be really competitive, especially in a competitive market, you need to stay on top of your optimization efforts (or hire someone to do it for you), but you can still benefit from this method even with just a few simple tweaks to your website.

As a business owner you understand the importance of getting every advantage you can and using

keyword search engine ranking techniques is one of those advantages.

Starting an online business has become a very popular venture in recent years as more and more people become acclimated to using the Internet in their everyday lives. As little as twenty years ago, the Internet was new to the average consumer and not much more than a novelty; today, it’s rare to encounter a home in the Western world that’s not stocked with at least one computer. Most middle class houses in America have multiple computers at this point.

What this means is that starting an online business can be profitable if done correctly, given the predominance of the Internet in the average household. People who are naturally entrepreneurial or those who have already started a non-internet based business will definitely have a leg up on the rest of the game, but for the right person who’s willing to take appropriate steps to ensure success, starting an online business can be easy, fun, and even profitable.

In general, the differences between online business and traditional businesses are slight but distinct. Here are a few things that potential online business owners should take into consideration before jumping on the Information Superhighway:

Lower start up costs/high effort. One of the greatest things about online businesses is that they typically don’t cost much to get started. There’s no need to rent out a space or pay utilities, and there are lots of free avenues to advertise with over the digital waves. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that “less money invested means less work,” because nothing could be further from the truth. Online business owners often feel like their computers are grafted onto their hands!

Be a jack of all trades. It’s not good enough just to have a stellar idea or a fantastic service. In order to be successful, you need to be able to do graphic design, understand web server technology, programming, and knowledge of the Internet as a marketing medium. For those that can’t do all of this single handedly, outsourcing is an option, but this raises overall cost.

Think globally. This isn’t opening up a small Mom and Pop store in your neighborhood. The business will be able to reach all corners of the globe, thanks to the Internet. The good part is that this potentially means more business – the bad part is that owners will have to make provisions for costs such as international shipping, and maybe even pay for translated versions of their websites.

Marketers make the market. There are thousands of ways to market on the Internet, including pay-per-click, viral, drip, social networking, AdWords, and many others. Don’t know what these things mean? Owners of successful online businesses take the time to learn!

Some of these attributes make working online easier, some may prove to be more of a challenge – but they all make online businesses unique!

If you are a search engine optimizer you know how important link building is to your rankings. The problem is that these days most people are aware that link building works and have found ways to exploit and dominate the process.

I have heard stories ranging from Chinese sweatshop link builders to automated software solutions that essentially pollute the Internet with garbage (fake profiles, bogus blog comments, etc.). Anyone who attempts to game the system is usually doing everyone a disservice. There will be a short-term gain from getting ranked well for your keyword but eventually you will be removed altogether.

I am sure that the engineers at Google are already working on several plans to make link popularity less relevant in the future. I have made a short list of things I think would be useful tools to judge the popularity of a website, brand, person, product.

Mentions Within The Social Media Space.

Increasingly, social media sites like twitter offer new metrics into the world of popularity. Not only is the data up-to-date and current, it’s much more difficult for anyone to mimic a piece of content going viral and social media. Companies like Google could easily make deals with Facebook and twitter to access their data feeds and use them as a gauge for popularity.

Additionally, Google could search for mentions of the name of a company, twitter account for that company, or any subsequent products as a measure of likability.

Mentions Within E-Mail Communications.

Google is now one of the largest free e-mail providers in the world. It would be very simple for them (if they aren’t already) to monitor the number of times a link is sent through Gmail’s mail servers. This would also be difficult to game because your accounts would quickly get flagged for spam. Additionally Google can monitor the Gmail accounts to see which ones appear to be trying to increase their footprint.

Although I believe that your link popularity score will always play a role in your final ranking. I think it’s time for that metric to stop beating the primary source of data for Google. Once this happens, companies will increasingly be working towards social media strategies to help their bottom line.

If you participate in any kind of link building consider this. Quality will trump quantity in the future. One really good Flickr profile will be better than 100 crappy blog comments. Try to engage the communities within each one of your social profiles online.

Many online marketers really miss out on a great opportunity, they don’t know how to write a good seo article or blog post. They spend a lot of time churning out great articles but don’t get as much from them as they could.

There is a lot of debate about what is better: writing for the search engines (making your articles search engine optimized) or for humans. I say, why not do both?

You can use your articles to not only inform your readership and provide them with valuable information, you can also get the added benefit of using your articles to drive free search engine traffic. increase the amount of free organic traffic you drive to your website.

Of course you need to make sure that you don’t skew too far into the seo realm so that your articles are stuffed with keywords and are virtually unreadable for your readers.

In order to get the best of both worlds your first step will be to identify those keywords that drive a lot of visitors and don’t have exceptionally high competition.

Make sure you consider keywords that are related to your niche but may not be the most popular searched for keyword. Try to get creative and don’t hesitate to use the free keyword tools online to expand your list even further.

Now that you’ve got your keyword list, it’s time to start writing your seo article. You don’t have to stuff the article with keywords to get a great benefit. As a matter of fact, if you put in too many keywords it can actually hurt you. Your article must read naturally.

The first place to put your keyword is in the title of your article. That is the first thing the search engines will see.

After the title you will want to include your keywords a few times in the article body. How many times is enough? Well that depends on the length of your article but a good rule of thumb is to include it in the first paragraph, the last paragraph and once or twice more. Try to strive for a keyword density of no more than 3%.

While there is some debate on the best article length, you must have at least 250 words. I personally wouldn’t go much higher than 500. That is a good range because it provides a lot of information without becoming too long and boring to read.

If you are writing articles to drive traffic to your website as well as provide your readers with good information, than remember it is a numbers game. The more quality, keyword focused articles you get in circulation the more traffic you will get.

Many of these keyword optimized articles can continue to drive traffic for months or even years to come. That’s a big bang for your time and well worth it.

You don’t have to choose between writing an article for your readers and writing for the search engines, you can do both with one article. Use your keywords properly and you can get both benefits from just one seo article.

A web address refers to the title your customers will type into the toolbar at the top of the screen. The web address of the media giant Amazon is amazon.com. You can check out what Disney is up to at Disney.com, and so forth. When you have your own online business, people will be able to type in your web address in order to see what you’re up to, as well!

This may seem like a somewhat obvious concern, but you will have to think up a web address that is catchy, evocative, and easy to remember, which is no small feat. By this point in the history of the Internet, a great deal of the short, snappy names have been taken. For instance, if your business is called Good Times, well, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to land goodtimes.com for the purposes of your site.

It’s gotten to the point where many people choose to name their businesses based off of what web addresses they can land rather than basing the web address of the name of the business. In fact, it’s probably a smart idea to check out what web addresses are available before building your site if you have the luxury to do so: those who are building websites to bolster a previously existing business won’t have this luxury, obviously.

There is a lot of fuss on the Internet regarding using hyphens in web addresses. In an overarching sense, whether or not to use hyphens in your web address comes down to personal preference, but it is true that most people don’t stop to note hyphens in the names of addresses unless giving specific directions to a site. Thus, if you have a great name that is available only when you use hyphens (“blue-money.com”) but goes to a different site when the hyphen is removed (“bluemoney.com”), it’s probably best to think of another name, lest you end up accidentally sending customers to an unrelated site or, worse, a competitor.

Also of contention are the extensions for web addresses, which can include .com, .edu, .net, .org, .us, .info, .biz, and many others. There are also country specific web addresses such as .co.uk. Of course, the most popular one of these is the .com, and in general, if you can land the web address of your dreams that also happens to be a .com, then the stars are smiling on you and it’s your lucky day.

However, if there’s no chance of that happening, .org and .net are well-known as well and most customers find them perfectly acceptable alternatives. Just make sure to publicize your website with the full web address should you not have a .com extension. The country-specific domain names are great for local businesses – after all, if you’re working out of Australia and are only serving the Australian community, having a .co.au site helps identify you as a local resource and will heighten the chances of your website popping up when a consumer does a search for local businesses.

Using seo article marketing methods can do a lot to drive very targeted traffic to your website all for free. If you know how to do it right, you can really get a lot of benefit out of all the articles you write.

many people seem to think that you can either write for humans or you can write for the search engines. They don’t seem to understand that you can actually do it both ways with one article.

To get the most out of all your seo article marketing efforts the first thing you have to do is find a good list of quality keywords associated with your niche website (fairly high searches with little competition).

Once you have your keyword list all you have to do is write quality articles around that keyword. As long as the articles you write are quality and provide good information that’s going to be half the battle.

Do not get stuck in the idea that you have to include your keyword in every sentence of your article. That is considered keyword stuffing and won’t do you any good.

Strive for no more than 3% keyword density. Put the keyword in your title, the first and last paragraph and a few other times throughout your article. That’s all you need.

The simplicity, yet effectiveness, of this methods is why it is so popular. By writing articles you will set yourself up as an expert in your niche. you can use your articles to provide a lot of helpful information to all you readers.

Online, it’s always best to give something of value before you expect to get anything. By giving your readers some good and helpful information and advice, you are building trust with them.

The other huge benefit of doing this, with the proper keywords, is that the search engines will reward you for your content with a high search engine ranking. This will give you a lot of organic traffic.

For example, if your niche is bird houses all you need to do is write some keyword optimized articles around the keyword “bird houses”. Then when someone does a search and types in the phrase “bird houses” your article may well be one of the first that shows up on the page! How is that for free traffic!

The same basic principle holds true for making blog posts. When you are adding content to your blog you simply follow these same basic steps. That way when someone does a search for your keywords they will see your blog post and subsequently land on your blog.

This provides you with a great opportunity to add an autoresponder to your blog and capture the visitors email address so you can contact them again.

Using this seo article marketing method can really help you ramp up your website traffic and the best part? It’s all for free! Just be careful to not fall into the mind set that if one keyword in an article is good, ten must be better. Don’t try to stuff your article with keywords, a few well placed keywords is all you need.