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.

As time goes on and the internet matures, there is an exponentially increasing amount of new people coming online trying to make money online. Having said that, there is also a tendency for new people to go after the make money online or starting a home based business category to make so called easy money with Google Adsense.

If that describes you, then stop and take a breath for a minute. You won’t be able to compete in any major keyword category, especially if you are new to internet marketing. It takes a great deal of time, dedication and a steep learning curve to master the art and science of obtaining top positions on Google. You can if you are smart, focus your energy on the niche marketing area because there’s lots of low lying fruit that will make you money when first starting a home based business. Why go after the fruit on the very top, when you can pick it up from the ground?

That’s where I see the real money in the short term for anyone wanting to jump on the internet marketing game. With enough top position on low competitive keywords, you can in time make a full time income. For example, say you went after the term “home based business ideas” which is a fairly competitive term. It might provided you are building lots of back links to your main target site, 6 months, 12 months or longer to actually get on page 1 of G.

Why would you do that?

Well the simple answer is that you shouldn’t because it’s zapping productive time from you in building a solid home based business income. The goal is to make $1 a day, then $5 per day and so on. Small incremental amounts each day will win the race. This is a marathon folks, not some sprint.

So where do you begin on selecting the right niche market for you?

First, realize people will pitch you all kinds of nice software tools like Wordtracker and its only $55 per month. Ah, got news for you. Don’t waste your money. This is my opinion because I had purchased the program for a year and it never produced any more accurate keyword results than the free Google tools.

Say what?

Yup, you heard me correctly. G offers all kinds of amazing free tools, so why pay for something when you absolutely do not have too. Even their free keyword selector tool doesn’t give you an 100% accurate keyword summary. Its only an estimate for a reason. Life changes on the internet in micro seconds, not minutes. Click here to discover this yourself instead of relying on someone else.

Keyword Selection Ideas

Just type in the keyword that you want and see what results you get. For example, don’t type in home based business and think that’s the keyword. No, look at all the long tail keywords on the list. Usually there will be for something like that, a couple dozen long tail keywords like how to start a home based business. Now when you get your results, you want to pay attention to a few things. You will get a list of results initially including various long tail keywords in addition to your primary one that you entered. In addition, you will see to your right of the keywords, things like advertiser competition, monthly and global search results. You need to understand that its only an estimate and that’s where most people get lost.

Nowadays, I look for monthly search results below 5000 even. Why? Because there’s money to be made with Google Adsense and the competition is much lower. So why struggle for 2 years trying to get the big Kahuna of keywords, when there’s thousands of smaller islands with less people on them. Heck, I’m even looking at monthly search results of less than 1500 because I can usually get the page 1 within a short period of time and make money.

To get the full results of what you are really interested in when choosing your keywords, is to ensure you click the drop down menu selection and click on “choose column to display” is the “show estimated average CPC”. That will give you an estimate on the amount of money advertisers are paying. Now keep in mind its usually much lower, so if you see a keyword paying $10, you will only likely see 10 or 20$ of that in real dollars or less.

Google’s CPC Defined

According to Google, “Estimated Average Cost-per-click (CPC)
The system predicts the average cost each time a user clicks your ad on the associated keyword. The cost is specific to the position range shown in the Estimated Ad Position column”.

So what is the lowest CPC you should consider?

That’s an individual choice, but it should be above $1 for CPC. Many other’s would suggest go after ones that show a $3 to $5 range. The bottom line is you need to test this out and nothing else will really give you the necessary feedback you need to make decisions.

So when looking at choices of keywords, consider the competition you are going up against, your level of internet marketing experience, the estimated CPC, the monthly local and global search results.

People often times will pick the top paying keyword thinking, hey no problems, I will just go after that and bingo, be rolling in the dough. Wrong! Start with the lowest possible competitive terms, rank that on page 1 of Google, then rinse and repeat the process.

What happens over time, you will start getting that website to be an authority site, which is what you ultimately want. From what I have read and what I see going on the internet, especially with websites getting to page 1 is authority sites.

The game is constantly in flux and changing. That really is the only constant is change itself. So what worked in ranking well 2 or 3 years ago has likely changed. What has not changed fundamentally is writing good quality content and posting it to quality places. That’s in addition to of course placing unique content on your own website and building it up.

There are many people who want the A – Z step by step process on what exactly to do and what keywords should they pick. Sorry, why would I tell anyone what I’m going after. Never going to happen because I don’t want anymore competition than necessary. I like to help people though and I am by giving in my opinion up front advice on how to rank well in the search engines.

What I am telling you though is accurate information on how to do it. The other part of the equation is for you to actually get to work. So stop reading and get writing and posting your content all over the place. Of course, just don’t submit the same article, because Google will not count it for much anyways. Better off writing good original content that your readers will find useful and receive value for. That’s how you build a solid home based business opportunity business with Google Adsense.

Summing up this monster post

Choose a niche market that you want to go after. Then go to Google’s keyword selector tool, type your phrase in and check out the results. Look down the list and evaluate it to see how much CPC is for each phrase. Write some content around it. Post it at article directories, your own website and keep repeating that process till you rank on page 1 of Google. And that folks is how you create an income with Google Adsense and make money in a home based business.

Regards,

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.