So, you’ve finished setting up your website; you have introduced your online business and presented the products and services that you offer. Your website includes promotions to catch your visitor’s attention. So far you have followed the standard blueprint for creating a website servicing an online business. So why you are not seeing the commercial results you were hoping for? The chances are that you have not planned and implemented an effective website promotion campaign. There are a few things you should be aware of when promoting your site.

Any promotional effort should be maintained at a constant rate. It is obviously no use spending a few days promoting your site then taking your foot off the gas as it were. Constant and persistent promotion will be rewarded with gradually improved SERP results and you will also begin to gain attention within your target audience. Patience is a virtue, so they say. You will need to experiment with each promotional technique until you are satisfied that you are using the most effective free methods available. Testing each method is, of course, of paramount importance.

Having said the above, here are four zero cost promotional techniques that you can experiment with until you find what works for you:

Search Engines and Directories

You can place a description and free link to your website in many search engines and online directories. There is usually a paid upgrade option, but most basic listings are free of charge. You will need to search out these online directories and place your link in the sections most applicable to your business.

Link Exchange

Search for other websites similar to your own and contact the webmaster about a mutual exchange of links. This is usually beneficial to both parties so most webmasters will be agreeable to such an exchange. Make sure your link anchor text contains your keyword.

Classified Ads

Search online for sites offering free classified ad placements. One benefit of these ads is that they may be viewed by persons outside of your target audience but who may also be interested in the products and services that you offer.

Free Internet Banners

Place a free (or, in the worst case, low-cost) banner on sites which provide this service. Banners are extremely effective at catching the reader’s attention, however it is important not to ‘overdo’ your banner with multi-colors and flashing text.

When you have implemented the above it is important that you track how your visitors arrive at your site in order to identify the most effective and, by elimination, the least effective promotional techniques. Continual monitoring of your website traffic together with refinement of the effective promotional techniques should result in you seeing an increase in visitors to your site.

Building a mailing list is one of the most important – and one of the most satisfying – aspects of running your home based online business. Your mailing list can be considered a long-term investment…something that can provide an income for the future. Getting started on building a list is relatively straightforward; you need an auto-responder (preferably not a free version) and a squeeze page…plus something, say a short report, that you can give away as an ‘inducement’ for people to opt-in to your list.

This article does not cover the technical aspects of setting-up your list building page – there are plenty of tutorials available on line for this. Rather, this article covers three ways you can place an advertisement on high-traffic online websites (at little or no cost) thus giving you a good chance to build your list at a decent rate.

Place your report on Upload.com

Upload.com (part of CNET) attracts a huge amount of visitors and you can place your report on the site as a giveaway in return for an opt-in to your mailing list. Placing your report on Upload.com is free although there is the option to upgrade to paid insertions, giving faster approval times and other benefits. There is a three stage initial sign-up process, each requiring approval, to get through and this is time consuming, however, this is a one-off process and is worth the effort in order to tap into the potential of the site.

Use eBay Classified Ads

For a few dollars per month you can place a classified ad on eBay and, again, give away your report in return for an opt-in. In fact you have to put a price on the report (say $0.01) but in effect you will give away the report, since eBay allows you to place an opt-in form on the sales page. A professional looking description and adding some free graphics will make your ad that much more appealing to visitors.

Sign-up to Giveaway events

Giveaway events are, as the name suggests, online sites that host a giveaway for a fixed period (usually two to three weeks). You sign-up for the event as a contributor and upload your squeeze page URL. To do this is free, however there is almost always an option to upgrade to paying contributor (recommended by the way) and by paying, your product will be given preferential exposure to visitors. There are a number of websites that promote giveaway events (such as giveawayeventssite.com) – a web search will provide all the information you require.

Building your list can be done with little or no extra expenditure (over and above your regular business outgoings).

You will need to make sure your giveaway report is of value and is your own work – do not just hack a free PLR report together…spend some time putting together something of worthwhile, even to the extent of investing in some graphics if your budget can stand the additional pressure (if it cannot then you can search for free graphic generators on the Internet). With practise, putting together a list-building campaign will become second nature.

Done well, keyword research is ‘key’ to driving targeted visitors to your website. In fact, the success of your business correlates specifically to the effectiveness of your keyword research.

It doesn’t matter if you are marketing your business or selling products or serices via your web pages, you can only make profit if people actually come to your site.

However, you must attract not just anyone, but visitors who are interested in the product, service or opportunity you are marketing. The better the match, the more targeted your visitors and the higher quality they are as prospects for your business.

Why keyword research is important to your business success

Your best strategy will be based upon driving targeted visitors to your website. Keyword research is partly about exploring your niche ‘target’ market and partly about forcing the search engines to find your pages and rank them highly.

Getting on the first page of the search results is important to your business, since this is where the majority of people will find you. 70% of web searchers never look past the first page and the ‘hottest’ area on page one is upper left side where the top five sites are listed.

So how does keyword research help you target your visitors? Well, first, it can help you identify what words or phrases people are typing into their search engine, especially those most predisposed to your offer – in other words, highly targeted prospects equals high quality traffic.

What do people who are seriously interested in starting a home business on the Internet, for example, actually search on? How specific are their searches? This tells you where they are in the decision making process – are they ready to buy or apply or are they still browsing?

Second, how often (to a degree) your page uses certain words and phrases will determine how a search engine values it. All major search engines use ‘algorithms’ to decide how highly to rate any page they analyze. Such algorithms are essentially little programs, called spiders, which scan the text on your page and then index it based upon what the words and phrases tell them the page is about.

A properly constructed webpage should focus on one particular keyword or phrase you are targeting. You need to have your “key” words and phrases in places the search engines notice the most. These are the page title, description, meta tags and body, even the alternative text ‘tags’ for your images and videos. This is partly what search engine optimization (SEO) is all about doing.

How to identify your best keywords

The first step in your keyword research process is to find keywords that best match your most targeted visitors’ searches. Get into the minds of your prospects. What are their hopes, fears, desires, dreams?

Can you recall what your search was when you were exploring starting a home business? What were your challenges, problems, worries, needs?

As Perry Marshall says: “What’s the conversation that’s going on in their head?” The more you can step into your prospects shoes, the more targeted and specific you can make your keywords.

You are not looking for one golden shot here. You should identify a range of keywords and key phrases, come at it from all angles, test them out and see what converts best for your particular business.

Start off by selecting niches you connect with as an individual or have some expertise in. For example, moms looking to work from home around the kids or people who want to own a franchise business. Either may have an entrepreneurial spirit. People’s initial search may clue you in on where they are coming from.

The second stage is to identify keywords that are profitable. It’s important not to go after the obvious or most popular keywords, like home business or Internet marketing. These are far too broad and it will be either too expensive or take too much time to rank high for these in either the natural or the paid search results.

The focus of your keyword research must be on identifying longer more specific search phrases, we call “long tail keywords”, that give you a good chance of appearing in the top 5 results on the first page of Google, Yahoo or MSN.

How to use free tools to identify long tail keywords

There are many different ways of undertaking effective keyword research. Many actually make use of free or low cost tools. I’d advise starting with the free ones.

The simplest method is just to brainstorm. Write down every phrase or term you can think of that could possibly relate to your business opportunity, product or service.

Another way is to use Google itself. Type in a broad phrase like home business and you’ll see it returns millions of pages relating to that keyword.

But watch what happens as you are typing. Google will create a short list of popular searches that start with that broad keyword, so you can then type in these, and get more suggestions again. You’ll also find related keywords at the bottom of the results page for any search you do.

You can also use the free keyword research tool at Wordtracker.com to drill down in much the same way.

Although these “long tail” keywords will generate lower volume, they are usually far less competitive. For example, look first at home business, then you might drill down to “home business opportunities in Denver” or “best home businesses in UK”.

A good rule of thumb is to identify a keyword that comes up with around 5000 searches for its specific exact match search (i.e. with quotes). E.g. “how to start a home business”.

Once you have a list of potential keyword phrases you believe are a good match for your business, you can move on to more detailed research based on actual search volumes and potential CPC (cost-per-click).

Use Google’s own free keyword tool, which can be found under Tools in your AdWords account. SEOchat.com, QuantCast.com and Spyfu.com also have some free tools you can use to spy on your competition.

It’s certainly getting more competitive out there on the Internet. Check out Google Trends (Google.com/trends) or NicheBot (nichebotclassic.com) to review the competition. Be on the look out for new terms coming up that match your business then test those out using the free keyword research tools again.

Keyword research is the solid foundation for your marketing and therefore your business, so using some ingenuity and persistence to find gaps in the current competition in your niche can really pay off.

Ranking high for your keywords

Once you have your list of potential long tail keyword phrases, you should check out the competition in terms of what websites and other content is already out there. This will allow you to create unique content around your keywords that stands out in the market place.

Put each keyword into your favourite search engine and review what comes up. If one of your keywords generates search results for a lot of authority sites or sites with a high page rank, you may find it hard to get your domain website ranked high.

However, you might have good success with a blog page, an article or a video tagged with that keyword phrase, since the search engines love web 2.0 properties like these. But if there are lots of videos out there already, just make sure you create a different web 2.0 property, e.g. a Squidoo lens or hub page, or podcast maybe.

If you develop content that is both unique in type and keyword-rich for your chosen niche, you are putting yourself ahead of the game. Both the search engines and your human visitors will love your stuff and hopefully pass it on and jump start the social viral marketing process.

Testing how well your keywords convert

At the end of the day, all the keyword research in the world will only give you an indication of likely success. The real proof of how effective your keyword research has been is in the testing.

It’s important to track your keywords against conversions rather than click through rates. This is the only true test for whether you’ve hit a profitable niche for your business.

In summary:

- The ability to conduct effective keyword research is a fundamental skill that any serious Internet marketer or business owner must acquire.

- Create content based on those long tail phrases that is of value to your niche and your visitors, checking that there isn’t already a tonne of stuff out there on that topic or issue. The aim is to rank your content on the first page of the major search engines.

- Without a profitable keyword list, you will pay dearly for each click in the paid search advertising and there is little chance that you will ever be able to generate targeted, focused leads from free organic traffic.

- Effective keyword research should therefore be the cornerstone of your marketing and your business.

About the Author:

Jay Allyson
Top Master Marketer & Internet Home Business Coach
http://www.jayallyson.com

Just getting started with Internet Marketing?

Follow our professional blueprint for success.
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With the economy continuing to struggle and the unemployment rate continuing to stay high, many people are looking for a way to make money. One tremendous way to make money is an online business.

This article will take a look at the top 3 online business opportunities.

1. One online business that you can run is an article writing business. Many companies are beginning to go to the internet and are in need of content for their new site. As an article writer, you would provide content for their site in order to produce traffic for them.

For instance, a home security company will hire you if they decide to create a website and need content. It will be your job to write articles about home security, using keywords that will produce traffic. The articles are usually anywhere from 200-600 words.

There is plenty of demand for article writers as the web continues to grow and more businesses look to start up a website. You can make anywhere from $5-$60 to write an article, depending on many different factors from length to quality.

2. Another great online business is MLM marketing. If you operate an MLM business, you will get paid to market another person’s product or service. They pay you to get traffic to their site and to essentially sell their product for them.

For instance, a company is selling laptops but wants someone else to market their business. That company will pay you a commission of whatever sales you generate. Commissions tend to be between 2%-10%. So if you generate one sale of a $1,000 laptop, the company will pay you $20-$100.

This is a decent business opportunity if you are able to generate enough sales. You can earn a decent amount of money off commission of sales as an MLM marketer for multiple businesses.

3. The final online business opportunity is one that has been around for awhile now, selling items on the internet. This may seem like a childish business, but there is a lot of money that can be made by selling items on the internet. eBay is the most popular site to do this on.

People who start an eBay business can sell their own items and try to get a decent amount of start-up money, but at some point they will need to expand. The best way to operate this form of business is to purchase items from people at a cheaper price than you know you can get on eBay, essentially becoming a pawn shop.

There is definitely no shortage of people with a surplus of items to get rid of so there can be some good money in this form of business. Start talking around and you can purchase items for cheap and sell them for a profit.

Any of these three business opportunities are great for earning money and could be enough to be your only job. If you are currently unemployed or even if you just want to make some money on the side, these are the top 3 online business opportunities.

About the Author:

Moe Barwick is an online business opportunities expert. He invites you to take a look at his current launch that is helping people make money with their own online business. http://www.unloadoverload.com/

I’ve just been given a heads up on something I believe is really worthwhile. Holly Mann, a well known internet marketer of the highest integrity, is the author of the best selling work Honest Riches. This 277 page eBook has sold something like 40,000 copies and, since I have a copy myself, I can vouch for the extremely high quality of Honest Riches.

However, this not a sales plug; Holly has decided to help a country that has recently suffered terrible devastation- Haiti. Specifically, Holly is raising funds for the Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières organization to assist their relief operations in Haiti, and is offering Honest Riches as a free gift to anyone who donates $20 or more to DWB / MSF through Holly’s special page.

Honest Riches normally sells for something like $37, so this is a great opportunity to both help out a devastated country and get yourself a high quality internet marketing information product. Honest Riches (277 pages remember) is packed full of solid info and contains the following sections:

• Book 1     Affiliate Marketing
• Book 2     Research & Preparations
• Book 3     Profiting Without A Website
• Book 4     Website Creation
• Book 5     Search Engine Optimization
• Book 6     Advertising Methods
• Book 7     Product Creation
• Book 8     Advanced Monetization Methods
• Book 9     IM Toolkit
• Book 10   Holly Mann’s Personal Resources

Just to be clear, I am not promoting this as an affiliate – I’m merely trying to help Holly’s great cause. Your donation will go to DWB / MSF in it’s entirety. Here’s the link again:

HELP HOLLY HELP HAITI

First off I would like to wish you a belated Happy New Year and the greatest success for 2010.

I’ve been offline for a while as we moved house in late December and this brought with it all the usual disruptions. In fact, Etisalat (our local telecommunications provider) has still not shifted our internet connection to the new location (so I’m having to poach a weak WiFi link from a nearby hotel – not good at all).

As usual, with such moves things are slowly getting sorted out thankfully.

I have to say that, as with many folks, 2009 was not a great year in the general sense and I’m relieved it is over and everyone can look forward to a less stressful 2010. Having said that, 2009 was my most successful online year. This is relatively speaking since, for various reasons, I was not able to meet all my targets but at the same time many valuable lessons were learned.

I’m looking forward to 2010 being a great year and have some interesting projects lined up, which I will let you know about as and when they are completed. Likewise, I trust you have set your goals for the year and I wish all the best in achieving them.

Just one thing I want to touch on briefly. Have you noticed the huge increase in the amount of web pages equipped with Exit Splash. Seemingly even giveaway sites done under ad swap are using them – so I’m seeing too many of these for my liking:

Don’t get me wrong, I actually think Exit splash is a good bit of software, and I nearly bought the product myself. However, the pop-up is quite ‘in-your-face’ and, with so many people having purchased the product, the above image is becoming a little too commonplace (IMHO).

I have seen Exit Splash used for discounting a product and this is great (I’ve even bought something myself this way) but seeing it used on a giveaway page (and then linking to the same giveaway) is a bit like grabbing a customer by the shoulder as he tries to leave the shop. A bit too unsubtle for my liking.

One suggestion I have for the developers is allowing purchasers to customise the pop-up with images, just for uniqueness. Anyway, just my 2c worth!

Once again, I wish you well for 2010, both in you online endeavours and all things important to you.

Hey, I was watching the NASA channel this morning and
they were showing that Rover thing and guess what they found?

Rocks! No, not newbies, but since you’re here, read this.

If you are a newbie, it feels like you’re on Mars sometimes.
If you tell your friends and family
that you’re going to make money on the internet from home,
they either laugh like you’re an idiot, or pull you to them like
they just found out that you have a terminal disease. Oh
poor Jimmy has lost his mind I tell ya!
Make money at home in your under drawers! Get the straight jacket Pa!

So, when you’re down and you need a little help, who ya gonna call?
The Honest Work From Home Forum, that’s who!

I can hear it now. You’re thinking, a forum, yeah right.
I tried that once. I asked a question and 6 people laughed cause I was so stupid,
and the two people who did answer my question were so far over my head,
I didnt have a clue what they were talking about. No thanks.

Well listen, It’s hard to start out with no knowledge and no support.
There are plenty of people who will give you the knowledge you
need, just pull out that credit card right now cause you’ll
never see this offer again! Sound familiar?

Seriously, there is a place you can go and feel right at home.
Wouldn’t it be nice to ask a question and get a real answer
you can use? How about some encourgement when you’re down from
people who have been there? Just having friends who
understand makes all the difference.

Come on over and check out our place and introduce yourself to your new Internet family.

Do it now before you forget.

Internet Marketing Mastermind Forum

With thanks to Donn Wright for the “lyrics”!

After a fair amount of deliberation I took the plunge and purchased Dave Nicholson’s new product, Tweet Dynamite, a few days ago. Regular readers will know that, although I post regularly on Twitter, I am something of a cynic a far as Twitter being a money making opportunity is concerned. Hence the deliberation – but I’m pleased I made the purchase.

The product consists of nine tuition videos, each one very well presented, easy to understand and all less than 10 minutes duation or so. Since I already have an established Twitter account, with a particular spin on my posts, I decided to create a new account for Tweet Dynamite. The whole thing, from start to finish, took me about 2 hours to set up, although the process could be done quicker.

The whole idea behind Tweet Dynamite is to set up an account that automatically follows people in your niche and automatically posts Tweets, also in your niche. Your profile will contain a link to your main web site and Dave also explains how to add a money making idea to the whole thing!

The automation works as advertised although, as Dave suggests, I Tweet manual posts on a regular basis to keep everything as *human* as possible. Unless you have plenty of time (and who does) to research and post lots of Tweets manually then Tweet Dynamite is for you.

Although it is early days I have checked my website on Google Analytics and there has been a steady increase in traffic since I implemented Tweet Dynamite. You can check out Tweet Dynamite here.

Hi…it’s been a while since I posted, however today I think I have something you will definitely like.

It’s not often you come across a free step-by-step video course to starting and building a successful online business. One that doesn’t even require an optin! Well, that’s exactly what Chris Farrell is offering. Here’s an introductory video by Chris:

Click the link above and see what Chris Farrell can teach you!

Right – I haven’t had a rant about Twitter for a while now! Today I would like to talk on how not to use Twitter. Now, before anyone harangues me on what I have to say, please remember that my comments are my opinion only. On the other hand there are a lot of social media people who will agree with what I have to say.

So let’s go. Right – when I checked my email a few days ago I had a few new Twitter followers and, as I usually do, I opened up each persons profile to see what they were about before following them. One persons profile appeared like this (and has been unchanged up to today):

Huh!?! Okay, I don’t know about you but this is completely wrong. You can see that Xigum follows me – my mugshot is 4 across and 4 down in Xigum’s following list. But what can we learn about Xigum from his / her (?) profile? Let’s see:

• Name: Okay, so this Tweeter is called Xigum.
• Photo: Nope, no photo. Xigum is using the standard Twitter o_O picture (o_O can be read as oh-Ohhh, so even Twitter frowns on this).
• Location: No location is given. No major drama but it would be nice to know.
• Web: No web page URL is given. No problem really, if Xigum doesn’t have a web page.
• Bio: No bio is given. No photo, an odd name and no bio. Xigum has decided to remain anonymous.
• Updates: No – no updates. Huh?

So what ‘crime’ has Xigum committed you may ask? Well, unless I’ve got it all wrong, Twitter is is a Social Networking site. As such, users are, not surprisingly, expected to be social (i.e. introduce yourself to Twitter world using all the profile tools available) and they are also expected to network with other users (i.e. make regular updates for followers to read).

So Xigum has decided that he / she does not need to follow these basic guidelines, and I can tell you that Xigum is not alone. There are plenty of Twitter users who have done exactly the same thing as Xigum. So, if you are going to use Twitter, take the time to make a complete profile, including photo, and post regular updates.

By the way, you may be unsurprised to learn that I did not follow Xigum back!