Want Free Search Engine Traffic? Choose the Correct Keywords!

If content is king, make your keywords your servants! It's pretty simple; good keywords bring lots of traffic, bad ones don't. If you want that free search engine traffic, the first thing you need to do is to find out what exactly it is that people are searching for in the area that you are interested in. Then you pick key words that relate to your topic of interest, and that people are really searching for. You can have the best content in the world, but if you optimize for the wrong keywords you still won't get that sought after traffic.

For example, let's assume I am going to build a site about water heaters, and I want people to come to my site. I need to find out what kind of information about water heaters that people are looking for so I can build pages optimized for the keywords that people are really using.

The first thing I do is go to a keyword tool to do my keyword research. There are a number of keyword tools online, my favorite is Wordtracker. Others include KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool There is simply no substitute for doing your keyword research. With these tools you can put in a seed word or phrase, and the tools will provide you with lists of related keywords and keyword phrases that are searched for, and how many times per month they are searched for. Using these tools there are ways to estimate the size of the market for products and services, ways to optimize you web pages, find new niche markets, and much more.

With Wordtracker I find quickly that many more people search for "tankless water heater" than search for water heater...which surprises me. Nearly as many people search for "hot water heater" as search for "water heater". Wordtracker also informs me that there are far fewer websites trying to be ranked high for "hot water heater" than for "water heater". Ah-Ha! I'll be sure to optimize a few pages for "hot water heater". In fact, I find that the terms "tankless water heater", "tankless hot water heater", "tankless water heaters", "electric tankless water heaters", and "tankless heaters" all have more people searching for them than "water heater".

Single word keywords are very difficult to get high rankings for, so it's wise to shoot for longer keyword phrases. Three and four word phrases are what I use most often.

After finding out what information people are looking for, and what keywords they are using to find that information, you can build the appropriate pages and optimize them for those keywords that have significant traffic searching for them.

Now that we have our keyword list and we are ready to build our pages, where do we put the keywords?

The first and probably one of the most important places to have your keywords are in the title tag. This is one of the tags in the head section of the html code of your web page and lists the title that is displayed in the web browser. Internet Explorer displays this tag in the top bar of the browser window. It's very important that you always write for humans. The search engines are getting smarter and smarter, and they are looking for sites optimized for humans, not search engines.

Get some of your keywords into the keyword meta tag, not crucial but it won't hurt.

Make sure you have some keywords in your Alt tags for your images...don't overdo it though. Write it for humans, but try to work a few keywords in if you can. Alt tags are displayed as a popup when you pass your mouse over an image.

The Description Meta Tag is still a valuable place to use your keywords. Many search engines will look at the description Meta tag for keywords to compare against your body copy. Yahoo uses your description tag as the description of your site in their listings. Consider the description tag just like it is named, a concise description of your site. Keep under 50 words.

Your body copy is obviously a very important place for placement of your keywords. Remember, write for humans. If your keywords don't appear in your body copy, you won't place high in the search engine results for those keywords. Work your keyword into the text appropriately. Select one or two keywords and make the page specifically about those keywords.

Use your keywords appropriately for humans on your site where you can. This will increase your search engine effectiveness.

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About the Author: William Lund has been a webmaster since 1998. His website provides free information about website design, development, promotion, and monetization. For more about keywords and other website topics visit: Lund One Web Marketing and More. Mr. Lund Also has a blog: Pondering Everything

"Is a Home Business Right for You?"

by Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy

Every morning as people wake up and make the commute to work, many dream of the day when they will finally work for themselves. Every time the boss lets someone know that they must give up their weekend plans for the good of the company, people contemplate the benefits of being the owner of their own business.

Are you one of these people?

If you are, it is important to ask yourself some very important questions before you make the uncertain leap into self-employment.

Many dream of the benefits of home business ownership, but few take into account the sacrifices that must be made to bring the dream to fruition. Please don't make this mistake yourself.

You must approach home business ownership with your eyes wide open. Ask yourself the important questions, and more importantly, answer your own questions openly and honestly.

AN IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION

Are you the type of person who relishes every chance to gather around the water cooler for social interaction?

If so, then home business ownership may not be the right decision for you.

Instead, if you feel that you can be quite content sitting alone at your desk, speaking only to clients and really minding your own home business, then you might have what it takes to succeed as a home business entrepreneur.

If you feel at ease with your own company and don't need a dozen co-workers milling around your desk, then you, too, could savor the freedoms that will allow you and your family to live the lifestyle you know you want and deserve.

THE KEY TO HOME BUSINESS SUCCESS

Self-motivation is the key to success when you start a home-based business. You need to possess the ability to push yourself ahead. Your drive and determination will be reinforced with every new sale.

The level of success that you will achieve greatly depends on the time and effort you are willing to put into your new home business. Your organization, planning and marketing skills will all be put into practice when you embark on your liberating journey from employee, to being your own boss. In fact, you will be the wearer of many hats and gain a wealth of business experience along the way when you finally make that commitment to work at home.

YOUR SUCCESS RESTS ENTIRELY UPON YOUR OWN SHOULDERS

You will now be the boss. Are you truly able to work independently? Do you have the drive, the tenacity, to persevere with your home-based business? Will you be able to invest the necessary time to nurture it, to watch it grow, and see it through, from germination to full, glorious bloom? When you're the boss, you are responsible for the success of your home business, from A to Z, from disappointments to victory.

When you work at home, it will empower you to achieve many things you were unable to do when you were stuck working for that tyrant boss. Remember him? He's the guy that wouldn't let you take time off when your baby was sick. . . the same guy that called you in to work on Thanksgiving Day.

A home business means that you can take good care of your family and make money from home, simultaneously. You will have the best of both worlds! Just think--no more dirty laundry piling up--you can do it while you work. No more scurrying around at the last minute searching for a babysitter, either. And no more worrying about getting fired; you'll be the boss!

IN CONCLUSION . . .

Stay positive and focused on your home based business, even if, when sales aren't up to par, you get occasional negative remarks or derogatory comments from people with stuffy, dead-end jobs. Ignore their cutting words and bear in mind that success is the best revenge! Keep your admirable, positive attitude at the forefront and show them what you're made of!

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About the Author: SStone Evans, The Home Biz Guy has helped thousands of people in over 200 countries around the world start and run a successful home business. Discover 3 easy steps to start your own home business and subscribe to The Home Biz Guy's Free Home Business Secrets Mini-Course at: http://www.HomeBusiness.us,

10 Sizzling Tips For Affiliates

1. Create an infopacked mini site. Build your mini site for a specific niche audience and then choose affiliate programs specifically for that niche audience.

2. Test and track your ads and promotions for your affiliate programs.

Tracking and testing your ads will show you exactly which ads, promotions and affiliate programs pay off the most for you and are excellent choices for you to continue to promote.

3. Publish an ezine.

Your ezine will give you a powerful way to promote your affiliate programs to your subscribers.

Choose affiliate programs that relate to the content of your ezine and that make it worth your while to promote them.

4. Promote your affiliate programs by recommending their products.

You could recommend your affiliate programs to your ezine subscribers in your publisher's note or you could create a recommended resources section where you promote your affiliate programs in every issue.

You could also recommend your affiliate programs to your visitors by creating a recommended affiliate programs section where you list your favorite affiliate programs along with descriptions of their products or services.

In addition, you could create a best affiliate programs section that helps you build up your second tier by listing the affiliate programs that have paid off the most for you.

5. Write product reviews where you detail the benefits you like about your affiliate program's product.

Make your product reviews honest and hype f~ree and post them on your site along with your other articles.

6. Write your own ads for your affiliate program.

A good way to create your ads is to look at the ad copy on the site of the business you want to promote and also ads they provide for their affiliates to use, and use their unique selling proposition or USP to write your ads.

Their unique selling proposition is a unique benefit that they promote in their ad copy that their competitors don't stress or offer to their visitors.

It could be that their product saves lots of time, is easy to understand, that their product is a complete answer to a problem, or it could involve their price.

Some businesses develop more than one USP so you'll be able to choose the one that you think works best in getting more targeted visitors to their site.

7. Try out the support of the companies you want to promote by asking questions.

This will help you to find out how long it takes them to respond to emails (if they respond to emails) and how professional they are.

8. Create freebies that promote your affiliate programs.

You could offer your visitors a f~ree email course, an ebook filled with your tips or articles or an ebook that provides your visitors with places to promote their businesses.

When creating freebies for an affiliate program that is 2 tier, increase your profits by letting your affiliates in your second tier use your freebies as a promotional item.

9. Create a directory.

Your directory could be an article, ezine, ebook or affiliate program directory.

List your own resources within your directory to increase your commissions. For example, you could add your own affiliate programs to your affiliate programs directory or your ebooks to your ebook directory.

Add a what's new section to your directory to garner more repeat traffic from your visitors.

You could also provide a tutorial on the subject of your directory, or add things to your directory that your visitors can use on a regular basis to get more repeat traffic.

10. Run ezine ads for your affiliate programs.

You could purchase sponsor, feature, classified or solo ads for your affiliate program.

Choose ezines with subscribers targeted to be interested in the products of the business you want to promote.

Run your ads for multiple issues in a row when possible to maximize the profit you get from your ads.

You can also run f~ree ads in ezines as many ezines offer
f~ree advertising on a weekly, monthly or per issue basis to
get more new subscriptions.

Running f~ree ads can help you find out which ads work best,
and which ezines are most responsive before you purchase
ezine advertising.

Article by writer, Ken Hill. Get more marketing tips by
joining Ken's Top Notch Marketing Ezine at:
http://www.netpromarketer.com/