• Stay-At-Home Mom Says “I Need To Make Money To Help Support My Family” •
• In Addition, She Thinks Affiliate Marketing Will Be Her Focus  •

I always try my best to offer SEO help to internet newbies. I fully understand how daunting it can be to get your first website up and running and I don’t mean just the technical aspects, either. Choosing a domain name, which host to sign up with and such is very confusing too, to say the least.

Anyway … I received an email the other day from a young stay-at-home-mom asking for some SEO help and affiliate marketing advice. I thought this might be of help to others, so here it is, in an abbreviated version:

QUESTION: I have never had a website or domain name. Does it cost money to have one? I was thinking about appealing to moms and family since I have some experience being a mother and homemaker. I will think of a domain name and find all of the products I want to promote. I haven’t quite pinned a theme down yet though because I haven’t seen anything that just pops out at me.

ANSWER: Yes, ‘moms & families’ would be a great niche to target marketing-wise. There is lots of competition, but with research and such, you should be able to find a less competitive area within the niche of “moms & families” that you could probably do very well in.

My biggest suggestion is this: don’t jump in and register a domain name without doing keyword research into the niche that interests you. Because of the online success I have personally experienced and because professionally I am an SEO consultant, I will tell you that you HAVE to know what you want to target, meaning what niche you want to market to, before you jump in and buy a domain name.

Do you know what “niche” means? Do you understand that you have to find a smaller area of the great big theme of “moms & families” to try to sell to? Have you entered all sorts of different keyword ideas into Google to see what kind of other websites are out there, what they offer and such? These sites might very well be your competition.

Let me steer you to some FREE tools you can use to investigate further.

To research what keywords people are using, here is a free version of the professional tool most of us SEO’s and website owners use: WordtrackerFreeTrial.

In addition, to get a really good idea of why keyword research is so important … from the choice of your new domain name on to how you will structure your website’s theme, here is another FREE tutorial from Wordtracker that will really help you: Keyword Research Guide. Please make a point to read this. You’ll learn from it.

I think this is enough for you now. Please trust what I am sharing with you here. Read it all BEFORE you jump in and buy up a domain name and get hosting, etc. I can help make some suggestions to help you with that, too.

You CAN do this, but let’s make sure you do it RIGHT!!! You’ll never regret taking your time in the beginning.

• Can’t Find Your Web Pages In The Top 20 SERPs? •
• You Can Learn A Lot From Those Top Ranking Competitors •

If your site isn’t doing well in the search engine rankings, have you taken a long hard look and analyzed the top-ranking sites for your keyword phrases? Where do you see them utilizing those keyword phrases?

Where have they placed the keyword in the Title tag? At the very beginning? Third or fourth word? At the end?

How does the keyword (and modifiers if used) get woven into the Description META tag? Is it utilized once? Does it appear at the beginning, towards the middle, or …?

Is the keyword phrase used in the URL’s file name?

Analyze The Competition, Kiddo!

It’s not at all hard to get a quick overview of the top-ten sites for whatever keywords phrase you’re looking up.Using Google, MSN and Yahoo! as an examples, you’ll notice that whatever you entered for the search term, those words will become bolded in the Title and Descriptions. Voila … you will easily see how, where, and how many times and/or variables were used. Let me tell you, that is research gold right there!

I may spend umpteen hours pouring over and analyzing the SEO on the top ranking sites that my client will be competing with,  especially so if they are in a very tough, competitive niche. For many other of my clients in narrower niches, it usually only takes me about 10 minutes to determine if I will have to “worry” about the quality level of search engine optimization on their competitors sites.

I must mention that the ranking criteria differs from search engine to search engine. Where a webpage might be #1 in Google, it might not even be in the top ten in MSN or Yahoo!. For most internet marketers, the best you can do is try to address the on-page factors as I am discussing here and do your best on each page you write. If you want to really dominate the top three search engines, then you very well might have to write three unique pages of optimized content for each keyword phrase you wish to rank highly for.

I’ve said it before here, and you’ll keep reading it throughout my blog… 90% of the sites out there are NOT optimized. So for those of us doing the best we can to apply solid SEO techniques to each and every page or blog post we have created, we will be miles ahead of our competition in most instances.

These Statistics Might Make Your Knees Weak

In a very interesting 8/2006 article found on guardian.co.uk, it states “…the top result on any search engine gets 42.1% of the clickthroughs; the second, 11.2%. That’s more than half of all clickthroughs in just two results. It’s rapidly downhill from there, apart from the 10th result (before you click onto the next page)…” Please take a minute to read the article. Though there is much talk in this article about Wikipedia and I realize the results came from analyzing AOL users, the point I am making is that it DOES matter where you rank.

I don’t care if they tested senior citizens using MSN, or 22 years olds only using Yahoo! I’ll bet you the results would be very much the same. The gist of what I’m trying to get across to you is this: if you can’t be found in the top-10 results of any search engine, but more so Google, it is time to go back to the SEO drawing board. It is time to start tweaking.

Take good long hard looks at the sites that hold the top-ten positions for whatever keyword phrase you’d like to rank highly for.  What can you learn?

Take a FREE spin and research the search terms people are really typing into the search engines: Wordtracker Free Research Tool

• Don’t Say “Click Here” … Utilize Those Precious Keywords •
• Your Visitors & The Search Engine Spiders Will Appreciate You •

There is a lot of neglect given to hyperlinks not only by newbies, but by lots of established internet marketers. I see it all the time. Most notably is the awful use of “Click Here” for the hyperlink’s content.

Why is “click here” wrong? Well, if you have the option of inserting some commentary if you will, whichs helps let your visitor know a little more about WHY they are clicking on the hyperlink, that just helps increase the interaction with your visitor.

Next, you want to insert your targeted keyword phrase into the hyperlink because you give the search engine spiders a good idea about what your page’s content is all about. Hyperlinks with keywords in them are great stuff to help with getting higher rankings.

Remember that it’s a lot of different components of SEO that ultimately adds up to the overall keyword ranking positions. Hyperlinks are just one part of the SERP’s puzzle.

Why You Need To Insert Your Keywords

When your visitors see a hyperlink that contains your targeted keywords (and maybe some additional descriptive text) more than likely they’ll feel compelled to click on it. I am assuming that your site is of an informational type, so your visitors have come to your site searching for answers, solutions, or information. So, stick it clearly under their nose! Write content rich hyperlinks to encourage them to click on them.

If a hyperlink happens to be one that leads to an affiliate product or website, can you see how important a well written, keyword rich hyperlink can be to help encourage your visitor to click … rather than the “click here” alternative?   

Short & Sweet or Very Descriptive

It’s up to you, but you can use just a few words, or your hyperlink can be quite descriptive. I know that the “norm” on most sites are rather short hyperlinks … but there is no rule to this, so get creative if you wish. Hey … if it might compell a potential customer to click on an affiliate product link (meaning you have the opportunity to make some $$ if they decide to buy), then what is wrong with getting very obvious and just a touch pushy that you want them to CLICK on your great hyperlinked text?

The typical way most folks utilize hyperlinks is something like this:
For more information, click here to learn about our New Orleans Getaway.

Getting a little more bold, yet creative, you could try something like hyperlinking an entire sentence, as example:
Sign up for my free Homemade Chocolate Candy Lovers newsletter and receive a valuable Hershey’s chocolate coupon.
Contact one of our Dental Sedation Consultants and we’ll direct you to a qualified Dentist in your area.

Can you see how using a hyperlink in a very descriptive way does have its benefits?? If you’ll notice, I’ve worked in a primary keyword phrase along with a modifier in each sentence. That’s good stuff for the spiders! In addition, you’ve really gotten across to your visitor exactly what will happen when they click the hyperlink. There’s certainly no confusion … you’ve helped push them into the action you desire