Starting a Home Based Business – Building an Authority Site the Google Way
There is so much advice online today, that its no wonder people get confused when starting a home based business. No matter which so called expect you listen too, they all have some ideas on what is the best way to optimize and build authority sites on the search engines. There are so many theories out there, but who should you trust? So put on a fresh pot of coffee as this post will be long today.
So, you’ve decided to jump into the online world known as the internet. What were you thinking? Seriously, just having some fun as we unravel some of the mystery surrounding how to rank well on page 1 of Google. Oh you might be thinking, there are hundreds or thousands of search engines out there, why focus on Google? First, G is the king of search engines and based on estimates, they control most of the market when it comes to people choosing a search engine to find information on the internet. On the low end of the organic search market, they have about 70% to a high around 90%.
The point here, is that Google dominates the search engines and if you are thinking of starting a home based business to make money online, then you need to understand the rules and follow Googles terms of service. If you violate them and they find out, your website will get de-indexed with the push of a button and all that hard work will have been a waste.
So what is Google looking for?
Quality and relevant information for their users. Basically, G and the other search engines, want to give people that are looking for information online, the most relevant search results. Even more importantly, they want to ensure their end user – you and me are happy with the results.
What classifies as an Authority site?
Basically, an authority site is a website that Google has trust for and contains dozens and usually hundreds of articles over time. Yes, you read that correctly. An authority site contains relevant and useful information to your readers. Whereas, a niche site could have 1, 5, or 10 articles on a very focused long tail keyword like, “how to make money online”. The key advantage over the long term and yes you should look at this as a long term strategy, is that when you post articles at that authority site, Google will give it a lot of weight or relevance.
So what’s the process to building an authority site?
Step 1
Picking a Domain Name
It all starts with, what is the name of your website because that will be your focus depending on the name. One of the best strategies that you can do to help you rank better in the search engines is to try and buy a domain name with your keyword in it. Yes, I know this domain is not focused on the keyword, but I knew nothing about SEO – search engine optimization 8 years ago, so I picked the one that had a catchy name. However, this website name is also 8 plus years old which makes it valuable. Why not use that to my advantage, provided that I am giving real content to my readers.
For example, say you were going to focus your website about making money. You would try and find some combination of a domain name with the term make money, make money online, how to make money etc. The point is, you can still pick up good keywords even today with a little imagination.
Step 2
Picking Keywords
Now that you have a domain name picked out, you need to start focusing on your keywords. Are you going to go after a primary keyword term like home based business, make money or work from home? If you are new to this internet game, then my suggestion is to forget those keywords and go after a long tail keywords like how to start a home based business, how do I make money online etc. This is the foundation of everything else you will end up doing with your website. So take time and choose those keywords wisely.
So here’s my recommendation. Start at the lower end for searched keywords and competition and work your way up the food chain. Think of it like training for a marathon. You don’t decide one day to run a 26 mile marathon – right? Hell no! You first start off maybe running for 10 or 15 minutes. Then gradually you increase your time over many months where you are running 5 miles, then 10 miles and so on.
That is the same process with internet marketing. Google is not going to reward you on any keyword overnight with 1 or 2 articles, especially its it has competition. In some cases, with very little competition, you might be able to get on page 1 with only a few highly targeted articles. On the other hand, G wants to see if you are serious and only those that are committed will see the big G-bucks.
Remember, any major searched term online with the results on page 1 have usually been there and are firmly entrenched.
Another way to look at this, is similar to building a new home. You need a good foundation first – right? Well, first you dig the hole where your home is going to be built. Then you need to add footings, so that your concrete walls will have something solid to be placed on.
Same with a new website that you want to build as an authority site. You need to add say 10 plus good quality articles first to the actual website to begin with. Now these are articles that you should write and invest some time to produce some quality information. Actually, your main site should always have original, unique and quality content. Yes, its time consuming, but you will be rewarded over time if you do this step properly.
Start with a good foundation and build it up, 1 article at a time. Like I mentioned above, good strong authority sites will have hundreds of articles over time, so don’t be tempted to add 100 articles in a week. Google will look at it in a negative way. They want to see a natural progression to your site.
Every time you post a quality article, you accumulate points. Google is keeping score and you can tell how well you are doing by ranking higher in the (search engines) SERPs. The higher your quality score, the better your results.
A final word on keyword and picking them. There’s a lot of people recommending you buy this or that product like Word Tracker to pick out the right keywords. A say bull crap because Google provides the tools for free, so stop wasting your money because giving you back results on how many times a day a term is searched is only an estimate anyways. It’s never 100 percent accurate. Go here to Google for your free keyword tool. Another place you can go is here. Aaron Wall is very knowledgeable about this area and uses the free word tracker tool.
Step 3
The Link Building Process
So far, I have discussed picking the right domain name and picking keywords to go after. The other key part to building authority for your website is how many quality links are pointing to your site. A link is something that points back to your website, telling Google about it. So here’s where the real work comes in.
You must write lots and lots of quality articles to make money online. There is no short cutting this process. Well, there is some tools you can do, but the point is to provide you free information where you are not spending several hundred dollars a month like sourcing out your article writing or buying software to help you with spinning articles etc. Google does not really want us to do that because the articles in many cases does not make sense. There are some that are pretty good, but that is for another post.
When you write articles, you want to ensure you are targeting your content. For example, if you are going after a long tail keyword like, “how to make money on the internet”, then you should mention that phrase 2 or 3 times in a 400 to 500 word post. Don’t over do it folks. In other words, don’t keyword stuff your articles, cause the spiders can factor that into your article. If you mention it 2 or 3 times, that will be sufficient for Google or any other search engine bot to know your article is about that subject. Oh one more important point. Try to include the keyword phrase in your title.
Where to post?
Now that you have written your article, where the heck do you post to get both exposure and a link to your site? I would suggest places like EzineArticles.com, Go Articles.com, Idea Marketers, hub pages, etc. You see when you post an article other than your own site, you are telling the search engines about it and there’s some kind of point value given to it. How much? Who knows as that is a trade secret. But, the more quality places you post to, the better the quality of the link juice you will get. The main point, writes lots of quality articles and post them all over the place in different article directories, blogs, forums etc. You want to post to as many different IP addresses as possible. In other words, you want your articles all over the place.
Here’s a key piece of advice though when posting articles. Make sure that the links are a dofollow link. You might be wondering what I mean since many people have never heard that term. For example, many article directories will allow you to post articles, but they have in essence via programming, told the search engine spiders not to follow your link. So its fine posting your article for a potential vial effect if lots of people read it and follow your link. I think its unfair actually for them to pull that crap and here’s why. They are the ones getting the most reward because their website gains massive authority because they won’t pass any link juice off to your website. Why do you think places like Wordpress.com have a page rank of 9. Its because they are greedy and only want it as a social networking place.
However, from an seo perspective its a complete waste of time. You have to right click on the page to find out if your link is a do follow or no follow. Just go and search the term, “dofollow” and you can read up it to understand more about it. I found a good quality article that has a list of dofollow directories at the following link: Click Here.
If you are using Firefox, they have a free plug in here, that you can add to your browser and it will tell you automatically if the links are do follow or no follow. Once you download it, all you need to do to activate it is, click on your tools tab on top, beside the phrase “nodofollow” make sure there is a check mark beside it. When you place a check mark, its now active. You can turn it on and off by having the check mark there or not. You will see links in either purple or pink. The ones in purple mean they are dofollow links. This will save you a lot of time in trying to figure out if the article or comments section will allow a dofollow back to your website.
Seriously, despite all the smoke and mirrors, you can learn everything you need to for free online and it doesn’t have to cost you anything other than hosting your own website for $10 or less per month. You can use a free blogger account or Wordpress , but the problem is that if you do something wrong, they can yank your site right from under your feet and there’s no much that you will be able to do. So pay the $10 bucks or so per month to have your own hosted website. I suggest Hostgator as the place to start. There service is excellent and their rates are cheap. I have never had an issue with them for the past 2 years.
So when starting a home based business, you need to keep several things in perspective. Just remember several key things and you will do well if you are willing to do the work. First, find a domain, try and use a keyword phrase within your domain, pick some keywords, write lots of unique quality articles and post them all over the place. They should be different and not the same article. Be patient as this will take some time.