Advantage of SEO - How Can it Help My Online Business?

By; Bryan Keller

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing one's website to improve the position in which the website will appear within the search results obtained from a search engine based on specific keyword phrases. The exact formula for achieving this result is a much talked about and debated issue. However, there is at least consensus on the basic approach to improving position and for anyone who owns an online business it is just about imperative to follow these basics for there to be any hope of appearing somewhere on the first or second page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

First and foremost and most importantly is the basic design and structure of the actual website itself. A carefully planned out, user friendly, logical, and straightforward landing page or home page is essential. It is very useful to actually layout the design of the website on paper before any computer design work even begins. Using a graphical flowchart also greatly helps keep things organized and makes the design much easier to understand for everyone who will eventually be involved in the design, coding or implementation of the final project. A flowchart is basically just a simple graphical representation utilizing directional lines, graphical symbols and arrows that is utilized to depict the design characteristics of a websites menu-flow, page-order, and logic path.

In designing the website keep in mind that as much useful, high quality, informative, data about the business or industry the website is focused on should be included throughout the site itself. A glossary of terms that relate to the industry the website specializes in would be a good place to start. Another very useful inclusion could be a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page that describes in detail the most common questions relating to the website's area of business, with descriptive answers. When it comes to SEO, there can never be too much information included in a website as long as it is all completely original (unless references are duly noted) unique content.

Original content means copying pages of data from the Wikipedia or using content pages from other websites simply will not work. This is one place where Google in particular, is very good at detecting copied content and will give no SEO advancement for such material included in one's website. If a business owner is not able to author original content themselves it would be advisable to hire someone to write original content for the website as original content is as important if not more important than any other aspect of achieving good SEO results.

Additionally, there are many so called 'article submission' websites that are available to host uploaded content articles written about almost any subject. As a matter of fact it is very possible that you may be reading this article on an article submission site at this very moment. The purpose, in SEO, to upload and submit articles to these types of websites is twofold: first, these websites have thousands of guests each day which is a huge potential market for readers of the submitted articles and second, as an author one is allowed to create a signature that can include a link that directs traffic back to the website of the author's choice.

This brings us to the topic of links, and more specifically 'backlinks'. The term backlink refers to a hypertext link, which is located on an external website that links or points back to one's own website. In addition to the link there is also a phrase, which is referred to as a 'keyword phrase', that is associated with the link. When used in this way the keyword phrase is referred to as the 'anchor text' of the link (more about this later).

In the early days of the Internet backlinking was the holy grail of SEO. One merely needed to acquire many, many links pointing back to one's website to achieve a very high position within the result set of a search engine. At that time it was mainly just the quantity of backlinks that determined a websites PR and not the quality of the incoming links. Those days, I'm afraid, are long, long, gone. The search engines are much 'smarter' today and the number of backlinks is not nearly as important as the 'quality' of the backlink in determining whether or not the backlink will provide a benefit to SEO at all.

To prevent the misuse of linking farming and other types of link manipulation the use of the 'no follow' attribute has been implemented. When the use of the 'no follow' attribute is applied to a link it directs the search engine to award no benefit to the landing site no matter how high the page rank of the referring site may be. This has been successful in helping to reduce the amount of spamming and 'spamdexing'.

Other methods that were once popular but are no longer effective include: keyword stuffing, hidden or invisible text, unrelated hidden content, and meta tag stuffing. If someone mentions any of these techniques as a means to improve your SEO be sure NOT to do business with them! None of these methods work at all anymore.

At this point it becomes necessary to discuss PR or PageRank. PageRank is the method of grading a websites 'authority' or importance on the web and the process was developed primarily by researcher Larry Page (hence the name 'Page' Rank) at Stanford University as part of a research project. Page and another researcher named Brin later founded Google and took the technology with them and it is still the basis of the Google search engine and search tools to this day.

A website's PageRank is a numerical weight ranging from 0 to 10 that is assigned to a website based upon, among other things, the number and the PageRank of the external websites that link in or have inbound links to the target site. A website that has many inbound links from websites that have high PageRank themselves will in turn be given a high PageRank as well. According to Google's website the PageRank is calculated by 'considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms.'

Needless to say trying to understand an algorithm this complex exactly will never be possible but there are still many things that can be done to boost a sites PR and help improve its placement in search engine results.

We have discussed the importance of a high quality website design, the need for very informative original content, article submissions, backlinking and PageRank. This would be a good time to begin discussing the process of determining keywords and keyword phrases.

Selecting the correct keywords and keyword phrases to focus the SEO efforts on can determine whether or not it will be possible to successfully achieve the intended result. It is very important to take the time to do some research on competition and keyword popularity. In general the most common terms that describe a business would be the best place to start. For instance if you own a business that provides roofing contracting services keywords that you might consider focusing on might be 'Roofing Contracting' or 'Roofing Contractor'.

Google provides a tool that displays the average number of searches for selected keyword phrases. You can find this tool by searching Google for 'keyword tool'. After entering the keyword or keyword phrase and pressing the 'search' button a page of results will be displayed that indicate the number of times the particular keyword(s) has been searched for on average each month.

Also displayed are many other similar phrases that most closely match the keywords that were searched for. Take the time to scroll through this list and many good alternative phrases can be found in this way. Choosing the phrase that has the most searches and most closely matches the website's line of business is a solid practical approach.

RSS Feeds - A Website Owner's Friend in Disguise

We've all heard about it-it seems like all the buzz right now in the search engine marketing industry is RSS. If you're a website owner, than there are two ways your website can benefit from using RSS on your website-you can provide anRSS feed or, for the not-so-technically-inclined folks like me, you can use anRSS feed to keep your site's content fresh.

RSS is a way to syndicate website content. According to Wikipedia, "RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by (amongst other things) news websites and weblogs...the RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data." Wikipedia goes on to say that "A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled web pages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on major web sites, as well as many smaller ones."

If you're a website owner, you can use RSS to your advantage in two ways: use someone else's RSS feed or produce your own RSS feed. 1. Install a script on your website-whenever a web page on your website is loaded the script automatically loads data from an RSS feed. If the RSS feed you choose to use is the latest news, then the latest news will appear on your website. This is fairly easy to set up and is good for search engine optimization purposes. I'll discuss installing an RSS feed script on your website later on in this article.

2. Provide an RSS feed of your website's content so others can use it. By providing an RSS feed of your website's content, you're essentially allowing people to use the content on their website or through their feed reader. In either case, you're also providing links back to your website, which is good for search engine optimization purposes-it will also get visitors to visit your website. Providing an RSS feed of your site's content can be tricky to set up-or it may not be appropriate if you don't have a lot of content on your website. I'll discuss your options later on in this article.

If you're a website owner, then chances are you want to keep your website's content fresh. By updating the content on a regular basis, the search engine spiders will take notice-they'll visit your website more often and index the new content and new web pages-which can ultimately bring more visitors to your website. 

For example, if your website is about real estate, you might consider including the latest real estate news on your website. Users typically search for topics that are related to items in the news, so if those topics and keywords are included on your website you can typically be found in the search engines for those terms. It's like having your own real estate news staff on hand, 24 hours a day, adding the latest news on your website.

Residual Income Online Business Ideas

By; Cynthia Minnaar

There is an extremely important factor that determines success or failure as an affiliate marketer and that is whether or not the company pays you once or pays you residual income for a single sale. This is a major factor you need to consider before you join any affiliate program.

As an affiliate, you need to work with companies that put you first. You are, after all, the one driving the traffic to their site and they do not have a lot at risk since they only pay you when you generate a sale. Many affiliate programs do not understand that. In fact, many programs out there are paying 5-15% commission on products they should be paying you a lot more for.

If you are promoting products from affiliate programs that only paid you one time for a sale, you would still need a job somewhere else to cover your basic living expenses. You need to work exclusively with programs that pay you residual income.

Residual income, on the internet, is basically selling a subscription service. When someone buys the product you get paid up-front one time and then each month when that person's subscription renews with the company, you get paid again, every month for as long as that person continues using the service.

It is a fact that 90% of the people fail at generating any significant residual income online from affiliate programs because they are promoting products that do not pay a substantial residual income. You need to exclude any program that does not pay you residual income.

Affiliate programs that pay only one-time for a single sale are not good for your financial health. Think about it. It takes the same energy on your part to promote something that pays you only one time as it does to promote something that pays you every month forever. So would you rather spend a day to make a sale that you get paid for that day and that day only or would you rather spend a day and make a sale that pays you for the rest of your life?

There is only one right answer to that question. You should only focus on programs and products that pay you residual income.

Examples of products and affiliate programs that pay residual income online:

1) Internet Membership Sites

There are many sites on the internet that charge people a monthly membership fee to gain access to their services. As an affiliate you earn up-front when one of your prospects joins the program and per month for the life of their membership.

2) Web Hosting Services

For those who want to have their own website on the Internet a good web host is required. The great part about promoting hosting services is that when people get a website host, they usually stick with it for a long time. Promoting website hosting services is a great way to generate residual income online.

3) Online Business Opportunities

Online business opportunities offer another great way to get paid residual income online. The reason for this is simple. Millions of people are flocking to the Internet every day looking for a reliable way to earn extra income, so online business opportunities have become a huge industry.

The great thing about online business opportunities is that they are much easier than offline business opportunities. All you really need to do for these is find out where the people are searching for these online business opportunities and position yourself in front of them. You do not even have to sell the opportunity. People are going to join these opportunities anyway so all you do is setup your marketing in such a way that people find the opportunity through your link instead of someone else's.

The key is choosing the right programs.

If you are promoting the wrong program, one of the following things will happen:

You will find that people will not join. Some will join and then quit and you won't make anything. You will get lots of people to join and then not get paid fairly for your efforts. You will get lots of people to join, get paid well for a few months and then the company will go out of business. Sometimes you will get people to join and never get paid.

To ensure that you have the best possible chance to succeed as an affiliate marketer take heed of this online business idea. Focus on promoting five or six affiliate programs that pay residual income online. This is often the biggest difference between success and failure for most affiliates.