Bob's Home Business Blog

If you’re just beginning your Internet marketing career online as a home based business owner one of your first priorities should be getting your website ranked by the major search engines on the web. Getting ranked means when people are conducting a search, with Google for example, for a topic related to your website theme your site turns up in the search engine results. Of course the higher your website is ranked the more traffic will be directed to your home page which will ultimately increase your sales and profits.

SEO or search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website to improve your overall ranking within the major search engines online by researching the best keywords to place in strategic locations on your home page in order to attract the search engines attention. You can then work at improving your ranking by increasing the number of quality backlinks to your website which will increase your traffic and your sales.

There are many very effective SEO techniques and tactics available on the web and also several invaluable free tools you can use to help improve your website’s overall ranking online including, but not limited to, these 5 devices:

1. Perhaps the best known and most widely used of these free resources is Google’s adwords keyword research tool. This instrument tells you how many times the phrase you type in has been searched for online during a month, on average, as well as suggests alternative keyword phrases you can use.

Before optimizing your website for a certain set of keywords you must determine whether or not people are searching for these words online. If you optimize your site with phrases no one is using in their searches you will receive very little traffic directed to your home page from the search engines.

2. Wordtracker is another free keyword suggestion tool you can utilize in your optimization strategy. After entering your keyword phrase in this device it will generate a list of 100 related keywords and give you an estimation of the number of searches that are conducted on a daily basis for these phrases.

Because none of these instruments are totally accurate you would be wise to use more than one of these tools in your keyword research in order to gauge the most popular responses.

3. Another very effective device you can employ is called the link popularity checker.  This apparatus allows you to discover how many backlinks your website has in place as well as telling you how many of these links you’ve established within the major search engines online such as Google and Yahoo.

One of the biggest influences on your overall ranking within the search engines is the number of backlinks you have on your home page so, of course, the more of these links you have the better your ranking will be for certain searched for phrases.

You simply enter your website address into the window of the tool and it will generate a report telling you how many backlinks you have in these search engines. This is also a great way to discover how many of these links your competition has online.

4. A fourth SEO technique you can use to attract the search engines attention is to create a site map for your home page. A site map contains links to each and every page on your site and by using a sitemap generation tool you can create a map in either html or xml format which you can upload to your website.

This device helps ensure that the search engines find all of your pages on the web which helps improve your overall ranking. You use this tool by simply entering your URL into the window and your website’s site map will be generated automatically.

5. Finally, a fifth free tool you can utilize to help improve your search engine ranking is the keyword rank checker. This instrument allows you to discover where you’re ranked within Google for a particular keyword phrase. Of course the higher your ranking within Google the more traffic you will see on your website because most of the traffic is delivered to websites listed on the first page of the search results.

For this reason your goal should be to get ranked on Google’s first page. You simply enter your URL into the window of this device as well as your keyword phrase and the checker will generate a report describing your ranking for this phrase.

SEO is a very important component for any Internet marketing strategy and how well you’re ranked within the major search engines online could ultimately determine the overall success or failure of your home based business on the web.

Bob Withers

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One of the main keys to becoming successful online as a home business owner and Internet marketer is finding profitable markets for your products. One very important point to remember is always find your market before creating your merchandise. People often make the critical mistake of creating their product first only to realize when it’s too late there’s no market for their finished good.

In other words no one wants it. Now, unfortunately, you have to start all over again only this time you should investigate what people are searching for on the web and the best way to do this is through keyword research. Simply put, keyword research involves finding out what words people are typing into the search engines most often and these words help you determine what people are looking for in the way of goods and services online. This of course tells you what product you can create which would be most in demand by the buyers on the Internet.

There are many tools available online to help you with your keyword search including Google’s software however there are others available for a reasonable price such as Overture. When using these tools you simply type in the words or phrase you’re interested in and this program will send back the results showing you how many times this particular term was searched for on the web last month thereby showing you what kind of demand there is in the market for products related to your search.

Next you need to find out how much competition there is in the market for these keywords. In other words how many websites are selling something related to your word or phrase? You do this by typing the words you’re wondering about into Google’s search engine and analyzing the results.

For example, if Google returns an astronomical number such as 15,000,000 websites found using your search term then the competition may be a little too intense to enter that particular niche. On the other hand if you see a number such as 160,000 then you should seriously consider entering the fray with a product of your own depending on the results of another important factor.

Now you need to determine your R/S ratio for your keywords. This ratio helps determine what kind of demand there is for a certain product by comparing results to searches. For example if you found your keywords were searched for 14,000 times last month and you also discovered that 160,000 websites were using this same term on their home page the your ratio would be 160,000/14,000 or 11.43.

Unfortunately this isn’t a very good result because the lower your number the more profitable your search term or key words will be for you if you build your niche website around these words. Of course the lower the number of websites also competing for these words the better chance you have to make a profit from a related product.

Your next step now would be to go through all your search terms and discover the R/S ratio for each while only considering the ones which are lowest in comparison, for example 2 or less. At the end of your keyword research, which can be tedious at times, you should have a solid list of words which you can build a home business website around by only promoting or creating products related to these terms.

Bob Withers

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