Home Based Business

The biggest mistakes I see a newbie to internet marketing do is to go after the big keywords like home based business or starting a home based business without any thought as to what or how they will rank on page 1. Based on the latest updates by Google and the more I study SEO techniques, the more I realize that its probably best for most people to start with go after the low lying keywords.

So what is your SEO strategy or do you even have one?

The reason for the high failure rate for most businesses is the lack of the so called quick money for internet marketers. The see a glossy ad popping up telling them if they only fill out there name and email address, they can get access the the secrets to making a killing online. Then when the newbie gets the email, clicks on the link, they tell them how they can make 10k a month with little to no work involved. Ah the secret is out or at least that’s what you thought as a newbie.

The key is to first realize there’s really no quick money per se unless you understand what you are doing and willing to start investing 30 to 40 hours per week on top of your full time job commitments. Then and only then if you pick the right keywords with decent CPC with low competition, can you pick up some so called easy money. But be warned, this is typically not the case.

But here’s an interesting thought. What if you picked some really low competitive long tail keywords that say had 100, 250 or 500 searches per month. Now you might be thinking, why would you waste your time and money on something like that. But here’s the deal. What if those low competitive, low lying fruits were easy to obtain page 1 rankings in only 2 to 4 weeks? Now, what if you get page 1 and start to earn 5 to 10 bucks per day? Now after a month or 2, you start to build that up to 10 to 20 bucks per day. All of a sudden in 2 or 3 months, you are earning 300 to 600 bucks. Big deal – right? Well, that can buy a lot of extra personal keyword rich websites plus outsourcing some of your content writing. Now, you might be thinking, hey that doesn’t sound too bad.

That’s the point, the more that I uncover about how people make money online in starting a home based business, the more that I realize, going after the big keywords is simply a fools games. The reason is because getting page 1 on a major keyword for something like home based business or make money may take you a minimum of 18 to 24 months before you see any benefits. Most people don’t have the stamina to do that. Hence the reason for the high failure rate.

By utilizing a strategy of really low competitive keywords, like how to start a home based business, you may be able to make 500 to 1000 bucks way quicker in a shorter period of time. Then you just keep repeating the process for your niche marketing area and before you know it, you have an authority site that you can look at going after the big keywords. I see too many people fixated on them and waste their time and efforts doing so.

More and more people are going the way of really focused niche marketing efforts, realizing they can make some relatively quick Google Adsense money or Chitika money.

I was reading some article’s today and came across one about being productive. Now we all know this first hand, that we probably get high marks for procrastinating and not really getting what we know we should be. It’s Saturday night and what am I doing? I was actually watching a movie called The Matrix. Great movie by the way and realized after about 15 minutes into it, hey I didn’t get my monster article done today. So rather than sit back and watch any more TV. I decided to sit down in front of the computer with no distractions and get this post done.

You see, until I am making the kind of money I want, I am wasting my time watching TV. Now some of you might think watching TV and making money is at opposite ends of the spectrum and you may be right. On the other hand, getting some time away from the computer to re-charge your mental batteries is equally important.

So my question is; How do you get more productivity out of your day?

Well, the simple answer is stopping doing non-productive things like watching TV or going to a movie. Instead, when you first start your day, sit down and actually do some planning on what you want to accomplish. This goes hand in hand with making money in a home based business.

One of the best lessons I learned today was actually going off-line, grabbing my lap top and start writing my articles. You see without distractions, you can probably get those tasks done that you need to every day if you really get organized. Every day, most of us are reading emails, reading some new articles or visiting our favorite forums. There are a couple of really good make money and starting a home based business sites that I enjoy reading. But in all honesty, what if they shared some new insights into SEO etc? Well, that may satisfy my mental appetite, but certainly does zip for getting any actual work done.

So I decided that I would not read any posts or go to any forums until I got my other priorities completed. That way, I treat it like a reward after the hard work is accomplished. I think if more of us structured our time like that, we would find we were actually making money in our business.

However, just sitting down without any real road map can equally be a waste of time. So you need to plan your day, week and month out properly. Some say plan out your entire internet marketing plan for an entire year. Wow, that seems hard core. But you know what? That is what we all really need to start consider doing to really kick ourselves in the butt and take action.

Some final tips on being more productive.

Plan out your day and what you want to accomplish.

Decide how many articles you can realistically complete each day, especially if you work full time.

What keywords are you focusing on today for your articles?

Where are you going to post?

Where are you going to get those all important back links from?

By being more organized, going off the grid (the internet), and avoiding the deadly pitfalls of distractions, you will get much more done in a shorter period of time than you thought possible for your home based business opportunity. Now back to watching the Matrix, now that my work is actually finished. By the way, from start to finish, I completed the article in about 30 minutes.

We have all heard about people having sports coaches, financial coaches, learning coaches – right? But when have you heard about an internet coach for your internet home based business? You see, with the flux of the internet, it’s almost impossible to stay on top of the day to day things changing on the internet.

So what can an internet coach do for you?

They can cut your learning curve dramatically – that’s what they can do. Is it really necessary to have a coach for your internet home based business? Well, that depends on current level of knowledge. You see, learning how to do it properly will take a tremendous of time and effort on your part to learn the necessary elements to be successful to make money online.

Understanding and knowing our limitations is the door to wisdom. Many people don’t like to admit they don’t know something for fear that they will look stupid. We can’t know everything and people that are really interested in helping you will take the time to help you. Even if you are a successful business person, going into unchartered territory can be overwhelming.

So what should an internet coach cover for your home based business?

I would recommend that you find out first what is your baseline of knowledge for online marketing.

In other words, what do you know about internet marketing?

As a coach, some of the basics that are very critical in the beginning is to understand

What is search engine optimization?

What is search engine marketing?

What keywords should I use?

How to I buy a domain?

Where should I be hosting my domain?

What is the purpose of article writing?

Where are the best places for posting articles to?

Google has specific requirements to rank on page 1 of organic search results. What is organic search results. It means that when you go to Google, type in a phrase like home based business, home based business opportunities, make money, baking brownies etc., you will get a number of search results back from Google. Sometimes, its a few thousand result, other times its tens of millions search results.

That leads into Search engine optimization as its the methods used to rank on page 1 of the major search engines. That should always be your goal by the way. You won’t get much traffic on page 2 or make money. Ok, you might make a little money on page 2, but it diminishes quickly being off page 1. In fact, most of the people online will pay attention to the top 3 to 5 spots. So aim high when building your online presence.

SEM is really one in the same as SEO because you it means to gain or increase your visibility online. So when you see the terms used, they really are one in the same point of reference. That is to get your website to the top of page 1.

One area that all of us need to understand is picking out keywords. This one activity will be the cornerstone of what you do for a long period of time generally. Why? Because if you are going after small long tail keywords, then it may only take a few days to a few weeks to accomplish that goal. But if you are going after any competitive keywords like home based business opportunity or make money online, then it will likely take you 12 months or longer to achieve page 1 results.

You can go to Google’s keyword free selector tool and type in your phrase. It will give you results on a monthly basis. Remember, this is only an estimate and often times, its just incorrect. You just need to know that advertisers are going to pay for a particular keyword phrase if you plan on using Google Adsense or Chitika Ads. If you go to G, type in the phrase. Then look to the right side of the page and see if anyone is paying to advertise based on that keyword phrase.

If you see at least 6 or more ads on that page, then I would recommend its a pretty good keyword phrase. If that phrase is on more than 1 page, its even better for you. Don’t go out and buy some keyword selector tool because its not necessary and a waste of money. I used the paid version of Wordtracker and never got any real different results than the free stuff. It only has a few more bells and whistles that you don’t need to make money online.

To buy a domain, just go and type in domains, domain registration and you will get thousands of results. I use Go Daddy and have never had a problem. Their prices are competitive to most other companies. What you need to be aware is do they offer 24/7 live telephone support. If they do, great. If they don’t, then what happens if you have problems? Right, you have to send them a support ticket via email. It works, but I just have never felt comfortable with that limitation.

I do use GoDaddy to register my domains, but I really don’t like their actually back office hosting. That’s my opinion. I found that Hostgator seems to be one of the best and I have never had any problems. If they do arise, I have the option to send them a support ticket via email or if its more serious, I can pick up the phone and call them 24/7. But there are dozens of good companies out there, so don’t get bent out of shape if you use another hosting company. I am giving you my real time experience as of today after using Hostgator for 18 plus months.

The biggest part and the one that involves the actual work is writing articles. You might be thinking, wait a minute, I can’t write articles. Then your choices are to either hire someone to ghost write your content, start learning how to write your own content or quit. Sorry, you may be thinking that’s a bit harsh, but its the truth. If you can’t do 1 of those activities, then you can’t make money in a home based business.

I know of many people that could not write if there lives depended on it at the beginning. The only way you will get good is by doing, not reading. If you want to learn to swim or ski, then you need to actually just do it – like the Niki commercial. Sorry, no shortcuts to success here folks.

What if you are stuck for ideas on what to write?

Ah very good question and here’s some ideas to generate ideas. Go and type in the area that you are interested in. For example, say you wanted to know how to renovate a bathroom. I would type in how to renovate a bathroom or how to renovate a bathroom tips and see what results I get. Find an article that can give you some ideas or tips. Then based on the tips, write it in your own words.

Now some people may consider that to be stealing someone’s ideas. I disagree for a reason. It’s all re-circulated content, but in a individual’s own perspective. So don’t copy there content, just get some ideas flowing. Then write it in your own words.

The top place to initially post your content by far is Ezine Articles. They have tremendous authority and millions of unique visitors each month. In fact, the last estimate I read was 15 million unique visitor each and every month. That’s why they are a powerful place to post unique quality content. Don’t ever try and submit duplicate content, because they manually check each article.

In the beginning, its an incredible amount of work to build an internet home based business. Most of the time, you will actually be writing content and posting it online to give your website presence online and brand your name.

As time goes on and you make some money, you can look at other ways to offset your time writing by hiring ghost writers. Those are people that for a fee, will write an article about your subject. I do this all the time. Pay people to write quality articles and post them at various article directories. Now I do write some of my own content, like this post because I like to write long monster posts and cover many aspects of internet marketing. I would recommend that you do some writing yourself for awhile. Then look at the other options.

When you start to make 10 or 20K a month, you may even look at hiring out someone to do all your posting to article directories etc. For additional places to post, just type article directories on G and you will get plenty of places to post.

Being coachable is critical to your long term success. If you look at successful people like sports, finance, real estate etc., you will discover that in all cases, each person had a mentor or coach to help them along the way. Finding that coach that we trust and admitting we need help is a huge quantum leap for many people to make. There you have it, some ideas and tips for choosing to work with an internet coach.

To Your Success

1. Is Google Seeing your site?

Well, is G seeing your home based business opportunity site?

Is G indexing your site?

How would you know?

I would say if Google doesn’t know you exist, then how is anyone else going to find you? The answer is simple – they won’t. No traffic equals no sales. There are of course a number of ways to get your site noticed. Two key ways are adding good quality content to your website and adding good quality content all over the internet linking back.

2. How relevant is Page Rank?

With all the changes going on all the time, people are still consumed with page rank. Now don’t misunderstand what I am saying. Page rank still has some weight, but overall, it’s not a big deal in the scope of things. For example, I see sites higher up on page 1 than higher page ranked sites. Why? Good question so keep reading.

Google has de-valued page rank and another indicator is they removed it from the back of their analytics information as well. Too many people were gaming the system. It got so bad online that people would not link to other sites for fear they would loose some link love from G-man. That was never G’s overall plan and it really back fired against them in my opinion.

Now before you go off on a tangent and start cursing me, I will also acknowledge that a back link from a page 5 site, I would generally agree that it would have more weight than a page rank 1 site, but not always. I believe part of the reason is that page rank 5 site has been around for a couple of years and probably has lots of back links.

3. How related are your keywords to your website?

Oftentimes, you will see people having a lot of unrelated content on their site. Now if that’s your goal, that’s fine if you want to be a blogger. But, if you want to rank in the SERP’s, then you need to have your site focused on the keywords you are trying to get page 1 on. For example, if your site is about home based business ideas, then you want to find sites that are about home based business to get the best type of link pointing back to your site. Although it’s interesting to see that when you get a link from a real authority site, it doesn’t seem to matter. for instance, if you submitted a comment at a .edu or .gov site, I would bet it’s going to a quality back link. Even if its totally unrelated because Google give a lot of weight to sites like that.

By the way, don’t go and spam all the .edu sites because they will just end up deleting or closing the comments. When you comment at different sites, if you do at all, submit a quality comment that adds value to the discussion. If you like to do comment marketing, then find sites with do follow links, post a relevant comment and move on.

4. What you need to know about Paid Links

One thing that Google reminds us of is they hate paid links or do they? I have to question whether this is really accurate for a couple of reasons. Any major article directory like Ezine Articles and Go Articles have a paid membership and for a fee with Go Articles you can be on their high page rank location. so has G de-indexed them? Not at all. So I have to wonder if it’s more related to who you are online versus just being an obvious link paid farm. Ezine article also has a paid membership, which in essence could be argued as a paid link farm, but I am sure that Google will not be de-indexing that site anytime soon with over 15 million unique visitors per month and making G a ton of cash.

Just be careful about any obvious paid link farms and work on getting more quality unique content out to various directories. It is true, content

5. Outbound Links

How many do you have pointing elsewhere on a single page? It’s all about balance in my opinion. I do believe that to rank well, Google likes to see outbound links to other websites because it looks and feels more natural. Remember, the more links you have going out, the less link juice for all the links on that page. Rule of thumb – keep it to 10 or less links pointing to another site per page. Normally, I won’t have more than 5 actually.

6. Inbound Links – The Important Part

The most important part to really ranking well in the SERP’s. Its all about the quality of backlinks pointing to your site. Everything is gravy in my opinion. Try to make sure you get a keyword anchored text link pointing back because that has the most power for link juice.

7. Link Placement does matter

Since the updates from Google, its important to use text links within the body of your articles. The footers and side columns don’t get much link love from G anymore. Yes, it still counts, but not much because people could game the system to easily. In other words, G wants to level the playing field as much as possible and provide the best possible results back to their customers.

I still have links on the side columns for simplicity and functionality, but realize I am not getting too much link love from it.

8. To Follow or Not to Follow

Recently, I became really aware of this issue called do follow and no follow links. But first, you might be wondering what the heck I am referring to. When Google spiders or indexes your site, articles etc, they follow links that you have included in the article. However, some article directories for example include within their programming, an attribute called no follow. That means, when G finds your links on that particular site with ‘no follow’ attribute, they won’t pass any link juice back to your site.

Here’s a real life example when I used to post to a quality article directory called Bloglines because they had a page rank of 9 on their sites. I didn’t realize that when I posted my articles, the links are no follow. So basically I was doing Bloglines a big favor by posting good content, but not getting any SEO benefit in return.

9. Does Domain Age Matter?

Yes it does. Part of the reason is that Google places trust on a website that has aged for awhile. Spam sites are not usually sticking around for a few years from what I have seen and read. I recommend you buy and register your keyword focused domain for at least 2 years, preferably for 5 plus years is better.

When buying a domain, although not really expanded upon, try to ensure that your keywords are in the domain name. Google does count that as part of the overall strategy when ranking sites. Just like ensuring you include the keyword phrase in the title and randomly in your article. If you are going after make money, then your domain should include the phrase make money. I have always done and recommend this when buying domains, although this website is probably the exception.

Oh give me a little slack, I didn’t know anything about SEO 5 years ago, so I picked a nice sounding name. But this site does have age and the G-man will count it and has some good solid back links.

So basically you just want to ensure you are doing the right activities. Those that have the best quality inbound links win the ranking game. It’s really that simple on how to look at the SEO game. Write unique content, hyper link your targeted keywords within the article. Rinse and keep repeating till you hit the top of page 1.

Regards,