If you haven't caught on, this type of networking is what the IM Gurus do and is the real secret behind most of their success. They share lists, advice and constantly Joint Venture (JV) with each other giving all of them access to huge numbers of potential customers.
In this light I am going to be posting several promos and links over the next little while for various people I am currently lending a helping hand. These people are not Gurus, just regular people like the rest of us that for the most part are just starting out with an online venture. Some are trying out a new website or blog and some are even attempting to launch products. If you need a hand don't be afraid to ask - I don't ask for anything in return. I will admit that I can be a little slow in getting back to you but I am finally getting caught up with the emails.
If you have a product I will help you with it but I might not endorse it (Promote it) if I don't feel there is sufficient value in it. If I do promote it I won't ask for a cut - if you make a million bucks you can always send me a tip.
Ok... lets mention a few blogs and websites some of you have asked me to check out recently.
First up is this site. GuruFreeZone.com The owner, Kevin sent me an email and after checking it out I think he has a good idea and once he tweaks it a bit, should do alright with it. The site is still being worked on but I thought I would mention it now as he could probably use some input from readers like you. You can email Kevin at prourl@gmail.com with your suggestions or offers of help.
Came across your blog from a link in warriorforum.com
and have to say it is refreshing that you are honest. I cannot stand the crap being sold today. I am trying to put together a site to review such things - GuruFreeZone.com - so users can add urls.. and people could rate and add comments. Any chance you could take a look at it...?
thanks kevin
A few notes - Kevin's home page definitely needs some work. He might want to consider using his second page ( What is GuruFreeZone? ) as the home page for a couple of reasons - first it does a much better job of explaining what the site is all about and it has a lot more spider food for Google to index the site with. ie. This page has all the keywords on it that he will want to be indexed for in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP's). His current home page is for data collection and is dynamic. There is also very little text for Google to chew on. As a result his home page is not likely to rank well if at all. Always keep in mind when you set up a website that your home page will almost always be the highest ranked page ( it's the page others will link to most often and backlinks equal page rank ) and the first page Google will index - if it doesn't get indexed then the rest of your pages aren't likely to be seen by Google either. Getting indexed is where SEO strategy comes in and there are a few key elements you must follow. I won't go into them here - you can read my posts on Blogging for more info - but I will mention the number one rule; you need to use html text and lots of it on your home page.
Javascript and frames and graphics and countless other things might make your page look good and give the reader a pleasant experience but Google doesn't see any of it - it reads text and indexes you based on what is contained in your text. The more text it reads the more keywords it can index you for. I'm not saying that you shouldn't use these other features - you should for your readers sake - but make sure you have plenty of good old fashioned html text - spider food. Some of you may have noticed that blogs rank much better in the SERP's than websites. The reason is simple - blogs have far more spider food on them and they constantly add more. Websites tend to stagnate once they are built and rarely add new content compared to blogs. Google loves content - always remember that.
Next up
Here is an email I received from Kelly who is just starting out with a blog and website in order to promote her work at home business.
I am just starting out with trying to start an online business. I make all natural products, from soaps to candles, to teddy bear fresheners. I need traffic and I have been reading your site regularly now--you have helped me immensely and I thank you for that.
YOu said to leave a link for my site so I am--
BerriGoodScents.com
BerriGoodScents Blog
Kelly forgot to leave her name but I found it on her site. I give her credit for jumping right in and creating both a blog and website at the same time. This is a lot of work and can get a little daunting for a beginner.
I want to point out a few things on Kelly's sites and hope she doesn't mind a little constructive advice.
First the website.
At first glance I can tell that Kelly has done her research. She includes all the things that Google likes you to do. Many of you probably aren't aware that Google will rank sites higher if you include an "About us" section. If your site includes your name, address and phone number then you will be seen as a far more legitimate site than those that don't. Google and your readers will feel the same way - you must be credible if you are exposing yourself to the online world. The more legitimate you are seen to be will also increase your sales - just a little tip.
Kelly may not know it or maybe she does - her site uses the most consumer friendly colour - Blue. The colour scheme she has chosen invokes a pleasant and almost serene feeling when viewing her site. Given her products this is a perfect match.
There are however a few tips I can share with you regarding her website. The page bleeds to the right - the tab section beneath her header graphics is to long and makes you scroll to the right with some screen resolutions. When designing a site remember to always check the final version using both Firefox and IE browsers - there are noticeable differences when viewing sites using different browsers. Also check to see what happens to your site when viewed using different resolutions. You want everyone to be able to see what you see. In Kelly's case the body should stay with in the boundaries set by her Header Graphic.
Put your info tabs at the bottom of your page ( About us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Links Page, Legal Disclaimer ) The tabs up top should stick to the business at hand - don't distract potential customers with non-sales or non-information related pages. I won't get into Marketing 101 here but always keep your customers focused on your products or information - don't let them wander off.
Kelly's website also needs some SEO pointers. Her name is a nice one but doesn't lend well to getting her site indexed for the products she sells. Always try and use your main keyword as part of your site's name. Humans might surmise that BerriGoodScents deals with something scented, berry scented even and maybe even candles but Google won't get it. The page will get indexed for Berries and maybe Scents but not for candles or soaps based solely on its name. She does include these terms in her text and Google will pick up on them but it always indexes sites higher if your keywords are included in your Name, Page Title, Header and Body text and finally, used in the last sentence on the page - the less fluff between Keywords the better.
If I were selling her products I would use a name like homemadecandles.com or candlessoapsetc.com or some derivative that's available.
My page title would be strictly keywords. "Homemade Scented Candles, Soaps, Bears and Unique Gifts"
Kelly's page title (The name displayed by Firefox or IE at the top left corner of your browser) is simply "Home". She should change this as she will only get indexed for "Home". Home is where the heart is but she won't sell any candles.
Kelly is missing a header text line or H1 Tag.
This header is extremely important for getting your page indexed well. Google reads your page from Top Left to Bottom Right. The first thing you want Google to see are your keywords so make sure they are right on top and bold to boot.
Kelly should have a bold title above her graphic and below the page buttons that clearly shouts out her keywords.
ex. All Natural Homemade Scented Candles, Soaps, Bears and Gifts
Your body text should also use your keywords a few times. Remember the 5 - 7% rule though. If your entire page has one hundred words on it then use your keywords 5 to 7 times. If you use them more than this you will be penalized by Google for keyword stuffing. In Kelly's case she has very little text relating to her products on her home page and should concentrate on giving detailed descriptions of everything she sells. The text she uses should be moved to her About us page. Her body text should be full of all her "Long Tail Keywords" ie. "Candles" is her main keyword and "Berry Scented Multi Coloured Candles" is a long tailed keyword. You will always get indexed faster and higher for your Long Tails than your Main Keywords - and these long tails are what will bring in your traffic until you have enough PR to make page 1 on the SERP's for your main keywords.
There is a lot of confusion about keywords so let me clear this up.
If you wanted to buy candles online how would you find them? You might query Google for the term "Candles" which is a main general Keyword and I'm sure this term gets lots of queries. If you do this you will be given a list of the most relevant sites for the term. These sites may or may not sell candles - if they do then great, you find what you are looking for. Of course the top indexed sites might only contain info on "How to Make Candles" or "Types of Candles" or "The Origin of Candles" and not actually "Sell" candles. In this case you will refine your search using more specific keywords which are known as long tails. Because you want to buy a candle you might now search for "where to buy candles" and this should produce a list of sites that actually sell them. From these sites you may find what you want or you might refine your search even more because you really just want a certain coloured candle or one with a particular fragrance. Eventually you will find what you are looking for.
If I was selling candles and wanted your business I would make sure that my site listed every long tail keyword I could think of for my products. Getting high listings for my main keyword "Candle" is secondary to my long tails and this is why; the people who find my site using the main keyword are not necessarily buyers - they might be looking for lessons on making candles and are of no use to me. The people who find my site by searching for "a site that sells pinkish avocado smelling giant twisty looking candles" is a buyer and I will make money off of them. People who use general Keywords when searching are not usually buying - they are browsing. People who type in very specific search terms are looking for something in particular and are ready to buy before they even find you. This is very, very important! You may not get as much traffic from long tails as you will from main keywords but the traffic you do get will make you more money and this is truly the biggest secret to selling online. Target the right people, not the most people.
The Blog you are reading right now is only 6 months old. I get on average 200 to 300 people a day to this blog. That is by no means a lot of traffic but it is pretty darn good for a new blog. Where does my traffic come from - glad you asked.
30 % of it comes from various forums where others have posted a link to my blog about some topic or another. (My posts on Project Payday is by far the biggest draw)
20% comes from return visitors who have bookmarked me. ( I get about 60 returning guests a day )
10% comes from other sites linking in.
40% comes from the search engines (Google sends 10 people for every 1 that Yahoo or MSN sends)
This last stat blows me away because I have been getting search engine traffic since week 2 of this blogs existence and all because I have concentrated on long tail keywords.
My Main Keyword is "Make Money" and one day I want to bump John Chow dot Com out of his number 1 spot in the SERP's for this term. When this happens (OK... if this happens ) I will be getting about half a million visitors a month to my site and I will be pulling in 5 figures monthly, developing a nasty drug habit and of course won't bother talking to all the little people anymore. But until this happens I will still talk to you and work on my long tails.
Here is why long tails are great. I write reviews on this blog for all sorts of products and I try and get them posted as soon as the product becomes known. Internet marketers always look for reviews before they buy something and if you are first out of the gate Google will give you page 1 and usually position 1 - at least for a little while until some jerk with a higher page rank zones in on your keyword.
I have achieved top position for all of the following keyword searches
Project Payday and derivatives (ie. "what is Project payday" "is Project Payday a Scam" "project payday review" etc) In fact I am still number one.
The Ultimate SuperTip and derivatives
Project Black Mask and derivatives - only lasted a few days until all the big guns (High PR sites) jumped in with their own reviews as this became a very popular term. Buggers bounced me out to God knows where now.
Make Money Free - but not on Google.com (what Americans search on) Google.ca, Google.Si, Google dot anywhere else but the States. Did you know that you could rank higher or lower depending on what country you are being queried in? For some reason I rock when it comes to getting indexed on Google Singapore and Google Argentina - I don't have a clue as to why.
Actually I won't bother listing everything I've made the page 1 listings with - basically almost every post has been ranked at the top at one time or another. All of these posts have brought me traffic and sometimes a lot of traffic. The key is in combining my main keywords with my long tails. If you look at all my posts you will usually see titles like "Make Money with Havads" or "Make Money Online Using Adsense" or "Project Black mask - review" and then in the first paragraph I slip in "make money" or "money making" etc to reinforce my main keywords. This gives me the immediate result of getting top placement for a term like "HavAds" which is easy as it has no competition and at the same time I climb the long slow ladder for top placement for the main keyword "Make Money". I have no idea where I currently rank for this main keyword but another main keyword "Make Money for Beginners" is currently number 25 out of 1,720,000 sites on Google and got there without me optimizing for it other than my title. ( It ranks number 9 out of 8,000,000 sites on Yahoo and number 1 out of 892,000 sites on MSN) I'm not bragging - just showing you that you can get high rankings in the search engines within 6 months of start up if you learn how to successfully use long tail keywords combined with your main keywords.
Keep in mind my blog is only a PR 2 and I am competing in one of the most competitive niches online (Internet marketing) - I will own the top spots for my long tails once I get PR4 ranking. PR4 will also put me within spitting distance for all my main keywords too. PR6 will see me lighting cigars on my yacht with hundred dollar bills and it will eventually bring about my long slow demise due to excessive living and rehab clinics but you wont care as I won't be talking to you any more.
Kelly mentions that she needs traffic. I have just told her and you how to get it. Kelly needs to revamp her home page and concentrate on listing all the specific keywords that will bring in buyers for her products. Forget the main keywords like Candles and capture the people looking for " red, white and green Christmas candles for sale". The more long tails you use the more Google will index you for. The more you are indexed the more you will be found and long tails will get you the right kinds of visitors - buyers not browsers.
I should mention that I have been building niche sites like Kelly's for a long time now and own the top spots for all my main keywords. The small niches can be easily conquered within 6 months if you follow my advice ( I also use a backlinking strategy and articles to accomplish this - but proper search engine optimization using keywords is the single biggest factor in ranking well.) I actually have a site that Kelly will be competing with one day if she tweaks things properly.
As usual I have gone and produced an epic post and your eyeballs are probably as tired as my fingers. I do want to make one last comment before I close.
Kelly's site makes no bones about the fact that she is a Christian and proud of it. I have no problem with faiths of every stripe and please don't be offended but I want to make this point. Religion and politics don't mix well with business. If your main concern is spreading your beliefs and selling products to like minded people then Kelly's site will work fine. If, however your main priority is to sell product to as many people as you can then I caution you to keep your faith and politics to yourself as this can alienate a lot of your potential customers. Each person's priority is of course their own and you must make the decision on how broad or narrow your market will be.
One last point using keywords - The last Sentence.
This is one of the least known but effective keyword tricks. End every page with your keywords. For Kelly's page I would simply add the following to the very bottom of her page;
BerriGoodScents;The Home of All Natural Homemade Scented Candles, Soaps, Bears and Gifts.
I wanted to touch on Kelly's blog but perhaps I'll do this another time as this post is starting to encroach on my tee off time. I'll touch on backlinking and articles as well.
until then,
Cheers,
Grizzly.
Helping Others Make Money Online
Did you notice my last sentence - ok it was until I wrote this.
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