• 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.

• Have You Done A Great Job Writing Compelling Tags? •
• Title & Description Tags Need To Grab A Searcher’s Attention •

If I’ve tried to drum anything through my readers or clients heads about search engine optimization techniques, it’s how very effective optimizing each page’s title and description tags can be. Many times this basic SEO attention to each page can make a huge difference in the keyword rankings.

How about taking a look today at your most important keyword phrases and their ranking positions in Google. How are those keywords doing? Are they in the top ten?

Even if your keywords rank #1 … I strongly suggest you still keep an eye on the wording and keyword placement your competitors are applying to their titles and descriptions. Always keep a couple steps ahead of them. Never assume once you’ve achieved a top-ten ranking that you’re there for good!

Compared to your competitors’ titles and descriptions, how do yours compare?

Make darn sure you’ve written your titles and descriptions to be more compelling and interesting. You want to GRAB the searcher’s’ attention immediately while they’re skimming over the results.

A good thing to do is to ask a friend or two’s opinion on your writing skills. Let some other “eyes” read over your tags and see if what you’ve written really is compelling or not. They might even have a better way of saying what you need to say! And their constructive criticism will be well worth it. After all, you DO want higher rankings, don’t you?

Bottom line … if all you’ve done is merely stick your keywords within a sentence in your titles and descriptions, versus really providing the searcher with a compelling title and description, well hop to it! Rewrite your tags immediately before you add any new pages of content to your site. Put a lot of thought and consideration into your efforts this time. It’ll pay off many times over.

• What Will It Take For You To Succeed On The Web?  •
• Almost Every Client I’ve Worked With Had The Wrong Expectations •

Today I want to write about the “best of intentions” when it comes to having a website to promote your services or products. By this I mean do you have high hopes that once you have a well-designed, pleasing to the eye website, and you’ve placed some decent content on it, that you can sort of kick back and wait for visitors to start flocking to your website’s door?

Probably so. From my professional perspective and experience, I have found this mindset to be more the norm, than the exception.

I hate to say it, but the “build a website and they will come” attitude is quite prevalent. As a matter of fact I have to keep reminding myself that very intelligent business men and women, who can do a great job out in the real world selling their services and products, usually haven’t a clue as to what makes a money making website tick!

I guess I still kind of take it for granted that since there is so much information on the internet nowadays about how to have a “successful website” … well I figure people just Google and educate themselves on what they need to do to make their websites WORK for them.

This assumption is wrong! And I am not putting down my clients in regard to this matter. After all, I haven’t a clue about what it takes to be a successful realtor; or how to be a successful producer of a holistic healing exposition. So why would most people who have a website really know what it will take to make it a lean, mean marketing machine?

And quite honestly, my client’s “best of intentions” attitude really works in my favor. It means that they need my website optimization firm’s help even more than for SEO attention. They need our marketing success strategies, too

For a full listing of all the professional services my partner and I offer, please visit SEO-Innovation.com

What Does It Take to Have A Successful Website?

In my professional capacity, I really and truly try to arm every client with the core internet marketing knowledge they need along with solid basic SEO knowledge. Each client will have a slightly different blend of tactics and techniques that will get them to their end result. But for each website owner that end result is the same … the need to attract targeted visitors to their site, and to make sales of one sort of another.

To this end, these are the basic concepts I discuss with them:

1. That building a website is only one small aspect of a successful web presence.
2. That to be successful, they need a website marketing plan.
3. That they must be prepared to invest time and/or money in SEO implementation and techniques.
4. That the more actively involved they are in the website marketing process, the greater the results they will achieve.
5. That they must keep their site up-to-date (i.e. content is added on a regular basis; links are up-to-date, etc.).
6. They ought to think about starting a blog (only if they can handle the demands of adding lots of quality content in addition to their website).
7. They should participate in forums that are relevant to their niche.
8. They need to seek links from suppliers, and other related sites to their niche that will bring value of one sort or another to their visitors.
9. They need to always keep an eye on the competition.
10. They’ve got to remain flexible and keep adjusting to trends in their industry.
11. They should keep an eye open for new marketing angles.
12. And the list goes on …

Patience Is A Virtue

As my dear Grandma Sadie used to say “Patience is a virtue”. A successful website normally takes a bit of time to evolve! A swarm of visitor traffic isn’t going to come running through the gates the moment the site is launched. However hard work and persistence combined with ethical and expert SEO advice and marketing assistance will usually pay off.

The bottom line is this … if you see yourself as a web owner with the “best of intentions” but with a site that is underperforming, the reason is normally laying right under your nose. Lack of search engine optimization, usually combined with one or more technical issues adversely affecting your site are working together to put the kibosh on high rankings and of course, more visitors and more sales.

In addition, are you putting into practice any or all of the above to-dos I’ve mentioned?