An Introduction to Keyword Research.

If you’re reading this article, then you probably already know you want to set up your own online business.  But it can be difficult (and a little overwhelming) to know where to start.  In fact, once you start doing your own research on where to begin, you may come across advice that could seem contradictory.

The fact that there is so much advice out there (some of which is sometimes contradictory) shouldn’t be surprising.  Keyword research is as much an art as it is a science, and the Internet search engines that use keywords have very complicated (and proprietary) processes for determining which web pages show up in search results, and in which orders.

Although some of the inner workings of search engines are not made public (which leads to a number of different “experts” claiming that they have discovered the secrets), it’s generally accepted that one of the immutable truths for search engine success is the importance of keyword research.  And despite the cacophony of viewpoints, keyword research, and the entire keyword optimization process, is a skill (or ability, depending on how you look at it) that anyone can learn.

Key Components of Keyword Research

Keyword research is ultimately designed to help you find highly targeted traffic, position yourself well in search engine results, and find a niche market that you can build your business around.  Key components of keyword research include understanding:

* The definition of keywords and keyword phrases in the context of Internet search engines
* How Internet search engines use keyword phrases to provide the search results to their users
* The concept of “targeted visitors”, and how this is an essential part of your keyword research process
* Finding a niche market to focus your keyword research efforts
* The concept of competition for search engine traffic
* The various tools that you can use to perform quick, accurate, and generally free research
* Promoting your business and website by using the basic keyword concepts

Keyword research means your prospects will be able to find you when they’re searching for your valuable information.  The search engines will position you in the top pages of their results.  Your competition will be sidestepped, and eventually shoved aside, and you’ll be able to build a profitable business from the get go instead of struggling, throwing the metaphorical spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, and losing money along the way.

Keyword research, when conducted with a specific strategy, can lead you to a online business that sells. It doesn’t matter what your business model is, what you’re marketing or who your audience is, you and your business will profit when you integrate keyword research into your business building strategy from day one.


To learn more about the author check out  http://www.whoisdwaynequist.com

How to Attract Targeted Visitors

You began your online business in order to make money, right?  Well, it's probably apparent you’ll have a greater chance of making more money from individuals who are interested in the kinds of products and services you sell.

Let’s use the example that you run a website that promotes a product or service, which helps people lose weight.  So, the types of people you want to find and visit your website are those who are interested in becoming thinner.  Conversely, if a visitor to your website isn’t particularly interested in losing weight (but is instead searching the Internet because they’re interested in video games or gardening), then it’s unlikely that they’re going to convert into a paying customer.

This is the concept of a “targeted visitor” – a person who is already in your website’s topic before they find your website and see the products and services you offer.

It’s not hard to see why the most successful web business are those who get traffic comprised of individuals who are already interested in the products or services offered by that business.  So it’s essential to your success that you build you individual website pages to contain and focus on the individual keywords that relate to your products and services.

In addition, it’s likely that your appearances on a given search results page won’t be limited just to pages on your own website.  The search engine is likely to find and list many “external” resources, too.  These will include marketing-type materials that you may publish through other websites.

Go ahead and type a generic search term or phrase into your favorite search engine.  Chances are that near the top of the natural search results there will be links to external aggregations sites like YouTube and EzineArticles.  This is something that you want to emulate as well.

So in order to make sure you’re driving the greatest number of targeted visitors to your website as possible, you first need to create a site in which each web page is focused on the particular keyword terms and phrases that you’ll identify.  Second, you’ll support this by creating promotional materials (again, using the relevant keyword terms and phrases), and making sure these are properly distributed on the Internet.

Finally, once your website is live, make sure to submit your web address directly to the major search engines.  Each search engine has a page that permits you to do this:

Google’s is at  http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Yahoo’s is at  http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/ssb.php

and Microsoft’s is at  http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

  The search engines would eventually find your pages, of course, but using these quick submission forms helps the process move forward more quickly.

One resource  that I have found to be VERY helpful in getting visitors is:

How To Get Visitors  http://bit.ly/aa8Z9M

Another one is:

Free Traffic Volcano   http://bit.ly/alNesy

To Get More Traffic, You Need More Backlinks

To get traffic from the search engines you need links to your website, lots of links. This is because the search engines give better rank to pages with inbound links than to pages with little or no links.




Here's an easy way to get links from blog comments. Just type the following search query into Google:



wordpress comments "your keywords"



Where you replace "your keywords" with the specific keywords your are targeting with your website.



When you search like that you will find wordpress blogs related to your niche where you can post relevant comments and include a link back to your site.



Make sure to use different variations of your keywords when you link back!



A good strategy when commenting on blogs is to write something that ads value to the discussion. That way some people reading your comment will become interested in what you do and click through to your website to check you our.



Links from blogs in the same niche as your website is a lot more valuable for SEO than links from random unrelated blogs. The search engines considers the theme of the link when deciding how to rank your site.