Low Budget SEO For Beginners

If you want people to find your website in the search engines
like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, you need to be doing SEO, which
stands for ‘search engine optimization’. SEO is a set of methods
and techniques that that can help your website rank better in the
search engine results pages. A higher ranking means that more
people will see your website when they use the search engines,
which in turn leads to more visitors to your website.

SEO can be a complicated subject, which is why there are so many
freelance consultants and digital marketing agencies offering SEO
services. However, if you are running on a tight budget and can’t
afford to hire a professional, there is a lot of SEO you can do
yourself. Here are five SEO actions for beginners that you should
be using on your website.

1. Choose your keywords wisely. When you are
planning your website’s content, you should do some research
about which keywords to use. Keywords are the search terms that
people use to find websites in search engines. Think carefully
about your target audience and consider what they might type into
a search engine when they are looking for websites like yours.
You can use tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help
you with your research. When you are starting out, aim to have a
list of no more than ten keywords that you will optimize your
website for. Once you are ranking well for these ten, you can add
more keywords to the list.

2. Use your keywords in the title tags of your web
pages.
Most SEO experts agree that a web page’s title
tag is one of the most important factors for how that page will
rank in the search engines. You should always ensure that your
title tag includes at least one of your keywords. The title tag
should also describe the content of the page in a concise and
accurate manner. This helps the search engines to decide how
relevant the page is to a particular search term. The more
relevant a page is, the higher it will rank in the results for
that search term.

3. Use your keywords in the HTML heading tags.
Heading tags (e.g. H1, H2, H3, etc.) also give the search engines
a big clue about how relevant the web page is to certain search
terms. So, as with title tags, you should ensure your heading
tags contain your keywords. As a bare minimum, every web page
should have one H1 tag that includes the same keywords that are
in the title tag.

4. Check the keyword density in your website
text.
The frequency at which your keywords appear in
your website’s body text (known as keyword density) also helps
search engines to match your web pages to relevant search terms.
How often keywords should be used is rather a moot point among
SEO experts. Some believe that stuffing a page with keywords is
beneficial to search engine rankings, while others think that
‘keyword stuffing’ is viewed as a form of spam by the search
engines. As a general rule, for a web page that has about 400-600
words of body content, use the main keyword once in the first
paragraph, once in the last paragraph, and once somewhere in
between.

5. Use your keywords in ‘alt’ tags. Every image
on your website should have an alternate text, or ‘alt’ tag. This
is not only important for accessibility but it also provides you
with another opportunity to let the search engines see your
keywords. Alt tags should describe what the image is. Make sure
you include your keywords in these image descriptions.

If you follow these five SEO actions for beginners, your website
should stand a better chance of ranking well in the search
engines.

If you need any help with SEO or any of your internet marketing needs, please feel free to Contact Me

Internet Marketing Nashua NH – Getting Started Guide 4

Now that you have your product ready and your website set up, it
gets more exciting because it is time to promote your website.
In other words, it is time for traffic generation. There are
literally tons of ways to drive traffic to your website. But
broadly, they can be divided into two main kinds of traffic
generation. You can either pay for it or get it free.

There are pros and cons to both ways. Obviously, the paid
traffic generation methods cost money but on the positive side,
they get you fast and often targeted results. On the other hand,
the free traffic generation methods do not cost money but on the
negative side, they are generally slower and may not produce much
targeted traffic.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to traffic generation.
Every method works to some extent, so you need to choose which
ones suit you the best. But generally, traffic generation is a
numbers game. This means the more you do it, the better results
you get in the long run.

If you can afford it, it’s better to start promoting your website
with paid traffic methods. This includes Google Adwords, Yahoo
Search and Bing Adcenter. These three major search engines work
roughly the same way. You design your advertisement according to
the search engine’s specifications and specify certain parameters
like the countries you want to advertise in and the dollar limit
on advertising you want to spend in one day. Generally, you are
billed for the number of clicks on your advertisement. Each
click brings the searcher to your website where they are
presented with your product. Some will buy and then you profit.

As you can tell, there is a danger of losing a lot of money in
these paid advertising methods when lots of people click but no
one buys. To reduce the possibility of this happening, there are
two things to do. Firstly, put your long tail keywords into your
advertisement. This ensures targeted visitors going to your
website. A targeted visitor is one who has been looking for a
solution to his problem that your product gives. Such a visitor
to your website is much more likely to buy your product than a
less targeted visitor.

Secondly, avoid advertising in certain countries known to have
lots of browsers but not many buyers. Two of such countries are
India and the Philippines. Chances are, you will get lots of
clicks from these countries but few sales.

Besides text ads, you can also make image ads on the paid
advertising networks of the search engines. Image advertisements
consist of banners of certain sizes specified by the search
engines. Image ads are not as popular as text ads so that makes
it generally cheaper. But they work fine and are certainly worth
a try.

The reason it is better to go for paid traffic generation methods
first is because with paid advertising, you can get quick
results. You also can determine which keywords produce good ROI.
Once you have carried out paid advertising for a few weeks, you
can switch to free advertising using the same keywords that have
produced good results for you.

Free traffic generation methods will be the topic for the next
article.

Internet Marketing Nashua NH – Getting Started Guide 3

Now that you have got a product, the next logical step would be to sell it. Here’s where many newbie Internet marketers get it wrong.

The biggest mistake you can make is to set up a website, write about your ebook on the website and expect people to visit your website in droves and buy your ebook. It does not work that way. In other words, if you think you can ‘create it and they will come’, you are mistaken. Even with targeted keywords, great website design and a killer product, hardly anyone will find your website if you do not promote it.

So there are a few more steps to take before you will see your first sale.

Firstly, you need to design your website. In the past, you could get by with a simple two page website – a sales letter and a thank you or download page. As recently as 4 years ago, such simple websites would still get ranked by Google. Actually 4 years is a long time in Internet marketing and a lot has happened since then. The most significant development was the Google Slap.

The Google Slap is the term used to mean that Google now wants your website to contain quality content and not just a sales pitch. These days, if you just put up a 2 page website without good content, Google will not rank it well. In other words, you will find your website in page 1,245 in Google’s search results or something like that.

So when you design your website, you have to make sure that it has more than just a sales page. There are many ways to design a website and each person has his or her own preference. A good practice would be to make your website have at least 8 pages – a home page, a sales page, a blog, a thank you or download page, a privacy policy, a disclaimer (especially if your product is connected with making money), a contact page and an about us page.

Briefly, a home page would contain a welcome message and an introduction to your website. It should also contain an opt-in box where you collect the names and emails of visitors so that you can build your list. To incentivize visitors to give you their names and emails, you need to provide a freebie like a short report, video, audio or a newsletter. Make your freebie connected to your niche topic.

A blog would contain the latest news in your niche, interesting articles or your personal teaching on your niche. Many Internet marketers and webmasters put their blog in a separate directory on their website. That means the blog URL would be http://www.stevedangelo.com/blog. Alternatively, you could purchase another domain with the same domain name but different extension as your blog. Then you could link your blog to your main website. This gives your main website added ‘link juice’ in Google’s eyes.

‘Link juice’ is the term referring to how many links are pointing to your website. The more links you have, the better it is for your website. You need both external and internal links for your website. External links are other websites linking to yours and internal links are internal pages of your website that link to each other.

All the other pages of your website are self-explanatory. Once you have your website up, the next thing you want to do is promote it. That will be covered in the next article.

Internet marketing Nashua NH – Get Started Guide 2

Now that you have identified your target market and gathered your 10 or so long tail keywords, it’s time to create your product. Product creation may take you anywhere from one day to two weeks so during this period, it is wise to put some other steps into action also. Here are 2 things you should do simultaneously with product creation.

First, you should register a domain name. Go to godaddy.com. Choose one with your long tail keyword inside. If the exact long tail keyword has already been taken, try adding another word that makes it attractive, such as ‘best’, ‘tips’, ‘online’, ‘center’ etc. For example ‘organic farming’ can become ‘organicfarmingtips’.

As for the extension to choose, go for a .com if possible. If that has been taken for the domain name you want, take either a .net or .org. The next best option other than these three would be a .biz or .info. These are the common ones considered to be search engine friendly.

The reason why you should register a domain name now is that it takes 24-48 hours to propagate, and you will only be able to upload content into that domain after it has propagated. So by registering a domain name while you work on product creation, you save time.

The second thing you should do while creating your product is join relevant forums in your niche. Every niche has forums where people interested in their niche hang out. To find these forums, type the name of your niche followed by the word ‘forum’ (without quotes) at the end into Google’s search engine. So, for organic farming, it would be ‘organic farming forums’. Join at least 4 forums.

Joining a forum is easy. Just go to the sign up page and fill up the required fields. Every forum allows you to insert a signature. Here’s where you should put your website URL with some catchy statement. If your website has not been set up yet, you can add your signature later.

It’s important to join forums as soon as possible because it takes time to build relationships. So post anything you want into these forums everyday (take 30 minutes a day). If you aren’t very knowledgeable in that niche, just post intelligent questions. The more posts you make, the better your standing in the forum. The relationships you make in these forums will be very valuable to you when your product is ready.

Another important thing to do while at forums is to look for the most frequently asked questions and most common problems faced by the members in the forums. Take note of these because you want to include these into your product.

Now for product creation. The easiest way to create your product is to go to Amazon and type in the main keyword for your niche. Amazon will probably produce a list of books on that topic. Find one you like and look into the contents page. Copy the contents page and re-write the chapter titles the best you can. Also include the questions and problems that you found in the forums into the chapters.

The fastest way to produce your product is to outsource it. Go to elance.com or guru.com and post a job for a researcher to research the list of chapters you have compiled. This person only has to cut and paste information from various sources according to the chapters you give him. It should not take more than 2 or 3 days.

Once you get the research back, look for a writer to re-write the research materials into an ebook of 80 to 100 pages in length. This should take no longer than a week. You can find good writers from the Philippines who work at cheap rates. Be prepared to pay about $100 for the researcher and $200 for the writer.

So in about 10 days you should have your product ready. Now you need a designer to design your ebook cover and website. What to do from here onwards will be covered in the next article.

Reasons to Shop Local Businesses

With the Holidays Upon us I thought I’d reinforce the idea of supporting local Business.

I read a great article that I’ll high light here .

1. Keeps your money in the local economy

2. Created Local Job Creation.

3. More Choice for unique local products and services.

4. Local Owners usually live locally and shop locally.

5. Customer service is personal and should be excellent.

6. Investing in the Community as you shop locally (local businesses are the ones who donate to the local charities)

7. Building Local Businessses helps build the community (retail space occupied, vibrant downtown activity)

8. Shopping local is personal and a great way to meet neighbors and develop relationships with shop owners.

I realize that you may think to yourself that you don’t get the deals locally that you would at a large chain store. That could be true in some cases but when you think of the over all time spent and the gas used to drive round trip to a larger store, your money could be well spent staying local. When you shop local, the experience takes on a more relaxing and less stressful feeling. You’ll find unique products not offered elsewhere and be helping a local entrepreneur who will appreciate you and earn your repeat business.

Small Business Online Marketing

 

A Mentor of mine Jason Drohn just sent me  this Mashable post that I thought
you’d like:
 
 
It’s all about the state of affairs online for small
businesses.
 
Two takeaways…
 
Stats are awesome for talking to clients.  
 
So, the fact that 13% of respondents are planning
on upping their social media marketing budgets is
nice to have in your back pocket…
 
Also, this little post is going to give you a roadmap of
things you can talk to clients about…  
 
Websites.  Direct mail.  Email marketing.  
Social media.
 
All hot button topics for the coming year.
 

Local Search Marketing – Internet marketing Coaching

Learning IM can be challenging and some have time to learn on a tight budget while other have money to spend and  no time to learn. With that in mind I put together a program I feel falls in the middle somewhere to help you to learn internet marketing strategies with some help and eventually you’ll be able to handle all of your campaigns on your own with little consultation.

 Visit my  Internet marketing / Local search marketing Coaching page on my main site. Head over to www.stevedangelo.com/coaching for more info.

Local Search Marketing For Your Business

Local Search is the buzz right now. Yahoo and Bing merging will give many more bang for the buck.
That merger will give google a little bump …maybe …. I really want to focus on the little guy, the local guy,
the mom and pop, the corner store, your auto shop, your dentist, your favorite lunch spot, you get the point
right. It’s the little guy …the small business that has to adapt and learn how to do their local marketing on a small
budget. The big boys ,the larger corporations have much more to work with financially.

If you have read any of my posts you know that I had been the the food industry for many years
and owned my own Catering business for many years. My understanding of local marketing going back a few years was
to basically get out with flyers, newspaper ads, coupon mailers and the dreaded Yellow page ad.

I used to hate dishing out the monthly fee for the yellow page ad I had. At that time going back 4-5 years
I was paying around $300 per month for a realitively small ad about 1/12 page. The funny thing was, as much as I hated
paying for the ad guess what, it worked and the fact of the matter is if you didn’t advertise in the dreaded Yellow Books
you would lose business.

The reason you would lose business is because all your competion was there in the book. If you’re not and they are and someone goes to look for a caterer or what ever…… they get the call and you don’t it’s that simple.

Now today the same thing is happening with search engines. When you go to google and type in what ever your looking for , Google starts giving you the local businesses that match you search criteria. The problem today is most small local businesses don’t have a clue on how to tap in and get their share of the local search results.

If the owner of a small business doesn’t take advantage of local search and all the techniques available the bottom line is that business is missing out on the best and most ready to buy audience. If you own a small business and are spending money monthly on the yellow pages and mailers and ARE NOT utilizing the power of local search ….. Forgive me but you are spending much more than you need to, to get less results… period. I can help you get your local search marketing done right and bring more customers in your door.

Sign up for the free report “Google Places for Local Businesses” on the top of the page and you’ll get a link to download the report.
Also head over to my Free Reports page to pick up a short Local marketing report. Hopefully this information was helpful to you and if you need and help with any of it let me know.

Building Your Own Online Business

Building your own online business can and probably will have all the same trials and tribulations that building any kind of business will have. Before you even start you need to figure out whether you’re going to sell other peoples products (Affiliate Marketing) or sell a product or products that you create. An example would be those of you who make crafts or some kind of physical goods. An example of affiliate marketing would be either digital products such as software to be downloaded or ebooks etc. Also selling for Amazon as an affiliate etc.

Once you decide the direction to go then you need to set up your plan.
In either situation you should get your own:
—– Website/Blogsite
—– Hosting
—– Autoresponder
—– Learn some SEO
—– Learn Link Strategy
—– Learn how to write articles
—– Learn PPC
Affiliate Networks such as Click Bank are great for downloadable products.
There are many products to promote there. Another would be Commision Junction.
If you have your own product you’ll need to set up a site to sell with shopping cart capabilities.

The key to all of this is being able to get traffic to your site once you’re all set up.
Learning some SEO(search engine optimization) will go along way in getting traffic to
your site. Feel free to sign up for “GEEK FREE SEO” if you would like a copy.

All the training you need to Build Your Own Online Business can be found here. It’s an investment in your business.

Head on over to my Business Building Page for a Video Series I will be doing on just that !
I will be updating that page regularly with new videos as soon as I get them done.