The Importance of Keyword Research
We’ve all heard it, we’ve all tried it and we’ve all ignored it… keyword research. When I first decided to jump into Internet marketing to earn money on the Internet, I had no idea what a “keyword” was and struggled to make a sense out of it. After I was beginning to understand the keyword, the word “research” was kicking my heels. After I began to understand the process of research, I was absolutely horrified. The process involved with the keyword research is so tedious! Why on earth should I go through all that!
And like most of the newbies I tried to ignore it.
Keyword Research Makes a Huge Difference
It took me a year of fruitless struggle in Internet marketing before I came to understand the importance of keywords in Internet marketing. Now I am fully aware that keyword research is the key to earn money on the Internet or failure to earn money on Internet.
A keyword is simply a word phrase. It is used to get specific information about any specific issue from search engines. If I want to know about Polar penguin behavior, I would open any search engine home page and type “polar penguin behavior” in the search box. Now we can say the phrase “polar penguin behavior” is a keyword.
In Internet marketing the only thing a marketer can market is his content. The content might be his product or he can market other product through his content. He can prepare a good article and upload to a website or a blog, but how on earth will he ensure that the people who are searching are getting the exact information they wanted? How he will ensure that his content is viewed by people and his product is bought as a result?
If nobody reads his content there is no chance of a purchase and no chance to earn money on the Internet.
Search Engines Control the Virtual World
The search engines forward the content to the viewers depending on the search term and relevancy. That is why keywords are so important. Without keywords, you are merely throwing together content for only those who know your domain to see. You’re minimizing your reach and deterring the opportunity to have any financial gain via your website.
Prime object of keyword research is to determine a profitable search phrase. A profitable search phrase is the phrase people use over and over again for finding certain products, services or information. A profitable keyword is that search term which is not only highly searched but also less competitive.
Determining What Keyword Will Work
This is a process that has taken some people years to learn. How to find the perfect keyword. It does vary with each niche market. Some keyword phrases are easy to do while others are so competitive it becomes a keyword war. People will do anything to rank at the top of the SERPs for that word and you’ll find yourself struggling. This is why it is recommended to turn to words that are less competitive.
Many use long tail keywords to do this. Sure, the traffic is less but if you rank in the top 5 for 50 long tail keywords versus ranking in top 5 for 1 highly competitive keyword you’ll still receive quality traffic.
Using the Google tools to find good keywords is great. They show you the competitiveness of the keywords, they offer you information on the amount searched and it also shows you where you can wiggle in and take over the “world”. This is why it is important to do your research. Take the time!
If your main goal on the Internet is to make money, you will need to make an effort to do so. Put in the leg work from the beginning and you’ll be on the path to virtual financial success, even if it is a little slower than you may expect.
- Published in Internet Marketing, SEO
Importance of Managing Your Virtual Reputation
Judgement and controversary are things that we all experience throughout our lives. Sometimes it’s good & other times it’s bad. Whether you’re an avid Internet marketer; a small town blogger or a huge brand there is something you’ll always want to consider, your virtual reputation.
People Will Google You!
We’ve all done it, Googled ourselves. Don’t say you haven’t because you have. Since the introduction of search engines people began trying to find ways to stump them, whether by searching for the most random thing of existence or individual people. At first, no one thought they’d find anything for their own name but a decade later it is merely impossible to stump the SERPs.
Even though you may not see the importance of how you look virtually, others will. You don’t have to have any affiliation with marketing or other Internet practices to have people looking you up either. Job interviews lead to the classic Google search & in many cases the social media creep. People everywhere use the Internet to find out everything they can about anything, especially people they encounter.
Don’t Give Them Something to Judge
Did you ever think you’d have control over what people see when they search your name, business name or brand? You’d be amazed at how many people do not look at this information ever. Taking the time to know what is coming up when people are searching you is important. Who really wants that photo from 10 years ago of you & your then young friends being dingbats out having some fun? I know I wouldn’t.
Taking control of how people see you instantly can be easy with a little effort. Give them something you want them to see, whether it’s a feature about how amazing you are wrote by someone else or having all your social media appear right away.
Manipulating the Search Engines
There are steps you can take to put the good things at the top and the bad things no where in sight when it comes to reputation management. If the bad outweighs the good, I think it’s time you reconsider your processes and attempt being a nicer person/business.
This isn’t really manipulating versus encouraging higher placement of the quality, want people to see stuff. Some ways you can increase your rankings for reputation management include:
- Link building
- Social media shares
- Content updates
- Get updated cache dates
You want to do these things on the lower ranked items to give them a push closer to the top.
For example, when you search WOOTMarketing in Google, you’ll instantly see our social media profiles. Usually this happens very easily but as your popularity builds this could change drastically.
Now, do a search for WOOT Marketing Scam. You’ll be pleasantly surprised that the results showing are quality results. The first 5 results relate to us including a previous article we wrote, Avoiding the Internet Marketing Scam.
Businesses should continuously monitor their reputation on the Internet, just as much as individuals. People can post anything on the Internet to destroy another individual or business, so monitor it. Don’t let yourself give a bad impression right away and manage how you look online.
Are you in need of reputation management or learning how to manage your own reputation online? Simply contact us for more information on how we can help you with your virtual reputation today.
- Published in Internet Marketing
Minimizing Website Costs – Becoming Your Own Content Developer
Virtual employees, both a blessing and a headache all in itself. Have you recently noticed that your ghostwriter is beginning to slack massively and you can’t seem to find another ghostwriter that can do nearly the same amount of work or is right out of your price range? This seems to be happening a lot and many people are finding themselves stuck with not knowing what to do.
Becoming Your Own Content Developer
This may sound completely ridiculous, but if you think of the money you would save and the time you would save having to explains things to someone else it will be worth the time you take to become a ghostwriter yourself. There are some things you’ll want to learn right away especially if you have done very minimal amounts of writing but mainly if you can put all those inventive thoughts into ideas you are bound to become an amazing ghostwriter and do all your ghostwriting, web content writing, and article writing all on your own.
As a content developer for your own business, you become in complete control of what’s being seen on your domain. One suggestion we always recommend is keep your editor/proofreader. These employees are very beneficial when you’re developing the content yourself. They are more likely to see your errors and pinpoint sentence drags then you, the writer. Editors can be costly, but in a business stand point worth every penny.
Content Development Done Right
Content is the key to your virtual success. Without content, your domain would rarely update which would in turn have the search engines rarely caching your domain. Content development isn’t something that only happens once either. It is a continuous process including rewriting previous content to keep it up to date and current.
When your website seems to be completely filled of that useless junk you should right away get on rewriting the information. Some information becomes out of date over time so updating it on a regular basis can let you have useful content that everyone will want to read. This also helps bring back repeat readers as they’ll trust your content and your domain, as you take the time to be up to date.
With the amount of websites out there that already have bad content the last thing you want to do is become apart of them. Take the time to go through your website and look for information that may be out of date or just no longer useful. There is bound to be something somewhere so look closely.
Continuing Quality Content
Writing web content can be a huge stress on anyone if they don’t know how to do it correctly. By learning how to take control of your content you are bound to see some beneficial results in no time. When you are first starting out remember to do a few of the following things to start your way to having great quality content:
- Have descriptive titles
- Address your topic directly
- Break your content up
- Put a summary of the article
Quality content is necessary if you expect to be successful. A website can’t be of quality without starting right at the roots. Websites are about more then just high res images and offers. The content is the bones of your body and a body needs strong bones to survive.
It can be hard for anyone to become a ghostwriter but it is something anyone can do if they just try. With the amount of content available online you are bound to find something where your ghostwriting is going to be needed. Get your content seen, but become the ghost behind the superb work without having to pay the costly fees for someone else to be doing it for you.
- Published in Content Development
Facebook Page Analytics – Knowing the Markets You’re Reaching
Facebook and many other social media avenues are taking the world by storm. They’re becoming one of the top used applications on smart phone devices, computers and tablets. It is rare to meet someone who isn’t apart of a social media platform and even more rare to not find businesses on them too.
As the popularity of Facebook continues to grow, businesses and website owners are becoming even more sucked in to the Facebook pages realms. Many create these Facebook “pages” in hopes to get likes from all over the world and have thousands upon thousands of fans. When you’re starting to grow and seeing more people on your Facebook page, you’ll also notice more data is appearing in the Facebook Insights, which is Facebook pages analytics for your specific fan page.
Many don’t really look over these analytics excessively like we do with Google Analytics and Bing Analytics, but should we be?
Facebook Pages Insights Information
You’d be amazed at the data recorded by Facebook within the Insights area. Many are just trying to get a large amount of likes and comments on specific posts, but did you know you could cater your page even more to specific countries & regions by simply checking out your Insights?
Facebook Insights provides a wide array of information including:
- Gender & Age
- Country Location
- Top Cities
- Top Languages
- Unique Users by Frequency
- Like Sources
- Page Views
- Tab views
When you’re attempting to increase the number of fans you have on your Facebook Page, this is an area you will want to review. Having the ability to know where you’re being accessed from can play a major role on your overall fan like success.
By doing relevant posts to popular regions, you’re more likely to grab attention of your readers. You are providing relevant information & posts to their region, meaning they’ll like the post and their friends could also see it & like it too.
The following is an example of a Facebook Pages Insights screen. As you can see, it is displaying a good amount of information all specific to your own Facebook Page.
*Information blacked out for privacy purposes and varies for each individual Facebook Insights screen.
Increasing Your Insights Reach
Another thing you’ll be able to benefit from with the Facebook Insights is determining countries and cities you want to reach that are lower. You may have a small handful of people in these regions but want to increase it. The insights allows you to see where your fans are located and gives you the opportunity to increase the numbers by providing these regions information they want.
You can view your insights information for quite a few months allowing you to see the increase and decrease of data being pulled. This allows you to gauge if your processes are working or not, giving you the necessary testing information to continue successfully.
Knowing the markets you’re reaching can play a major role in your success as a Facebook Page owner. This information gives you a lot of knowledge for who is liking you and where they are from. You can cater to your popular regions as well as introduce smaller regions to you by simply posting relevant information on your Facebook Page regularly.
- Published in Social Media
The Difficulties of Affiliate Marketing
There is one method of website monetization that has attracted attention from thousands throughout the United States, UK and Canada, affiliate marketing. Many are led to believe it is a quick and easy way to start making money online, but little do they know this is not actually the truth. There is much more to affiliate marketing then just throwing up a few banners and promotions.
The Hidden Secrets
With the vast amount of secrets behind affiliate marketing, it is hard to know if you’ll be successful or not with it. Affiliate marketing is one of the more complicated and stressful methods of website monetization. You have probably seen the ads, make money quick now. We’ve all seen those ads. The companies claiming if you put their stuff on your website you’ll be making money over night.
Sadly, this is completely false. It is rare for someone to make money over night, unless they’ve already optimized their websites and already ranking, and now decide to put the affiliate marketing side of things up. Most people find it can actually take months before they see a penny from this method. It can of course be very frustrating and a big cause of many not following through with it.
Affiliate marketing takes time. It takes lots of work hours and lots of patience. Without dedicating yourself to either, you will not get anywhere.
Biggest Lies of the Internet
Some of the biggest lies on the Internet appear when you’re being told about affiliate marketing. Many are led to believe you’ll make millions, you won’t have to do much work. Sorry ladies and gents, this is far from the truth. Making junk loads of money will depend on you and the amount of effort & time you’re willing to commit. It will also depend on the companies you decide to work with. Some will not have high ratio sales while others will. This is where doing some company research will be beneficial.
As for the not having to work much. This is completely untrue. Sure, after you’ve developed yourself and have everything streamlined the work load may seem like less, but you will never have the ability to stop for good. Affiliate marketing takes a lot of updating and a lot of effort. If you decide to stop working then you may find yourself slowly depreciating.
It is disappointing that there are so many lies on the Internet when discussing affiliate marketing. It however is common because it is a part of the Internet marketing world that is highly competitive and something many are hoping to be successful at.
Top Difficulty of Affiliate Marketing
The biggest issue experienced in affiliate marketing is the money making aspect. The only way you are going to make decent amounts of money is if you have decent rankings. To get decent rankings you will be doing endless amounts of work, tons of SEO and tons of headaches.
Making money online is said to be easy, but in reality it is not. There are some people who have been working online for over 10 years and still struggle. Everything depends on the quality of website you have and the amount of time you are willing to dedicate.
- Published in Internet Marketing
Understanding Your Website to the Minute
Understanding your websites traffic is something that in many cases can be very hard to translate. There is so much information all sitting in front of you, but determining how to use it to benefit your business/website can be confusing. In this post we are going to discuss how to determine when your site is actually getting traffic. Knowing when your readers are reading is important, and also a great way to distribute those posts during peak hours.
Posting Windows of Opportunity
Many wouldn’t consider times when it comes to the actual time their blog posts go live, but did you know this could actually play a major role in the popularity of your posts?
The time you post your content will vary with every single site you own. If you’re like us, you got several different websites, in several different niche markets that attract various groups of people. Some websites may have increased traffic at night, while others may be during the day. Every website is different, so don’t expect the time to be the same for each website you create.
During your peak hours, this is your posting window. This is when the opportunity to get seen by your readers is increased and they are more likely to take action. Your posting window can play a big role on your overall success. If you’re not providing your readers with something during these hours, what are they going to do? Go to a different website of course.
The Window is Larger Than It Appears
One thing you shouldn’t feel is that you have to post at the extra same time each and every day. This is one thing that has been very misleading to website owners and bloggers for years. You don’t need to have a new post up every day. Yes, it can be great to have a new post up daily, but is this benefiting you any?
Providing your readers with quality content several times a week versus mediocre content daily, in some cases multiple times a day, could be beneficial for you. Keeping your website content at a quality level will increase your chances at success compared to the people who post about everything under the sun.
The timeframe that you should post in isn’t actually going to be one specific hour. Throughout your day, there will be various jumps. Spread your posts out and don’t stick to the same time everyday.
What Time is Your Site Getting Traffic?
Alright, now to the holy grail question; how do I know what time my traffic is higher than others? Well ladies and gents, this is where your analytics will come in handy. Most people look at their analytics by the day, week or month. When you’re trying to determine hours of popularity, change this to hourly.
The hourly view will show you the various points throughout your days that are slow, medium and high. It is easily seen in the graphs and with a little hovering you will soon know what time your website is getting the most traffic.
Not all analytics will provide this information, but Google Analytics does and allows you to see for more than just a few days. You can see a month of traffic in a graph down to each hour of the day.
The graph will look something like this:
Google Analytics by the Minute
Now, everyone’s graph will look different as we stated already. The amount of traffic your website receives will be different for every website, even if they are in the exact same niche market and similar topics. It all plays on your social media referrals and the traffic you receive from the search engines.
It’s time to take control of your website and understand it by the minute. Your analytics provides more then just the popular content and keywords. Put it to work and learn all you need to know about your website and when people are actually hanging around!
- Published in SEO
Blog Layouts – Will Your Layout Effect You?
When you are a website owner, you are instantly confronted with a lot of things to do. Between developing content, designing headers and all the in between you are now confronted with how your blog is actually laid out. It isn’t something many of us think of when we first start up. Our only thought is, do we want 2 columns, 3 columns and do I want them on the right or the left or both. Beyond that, we don’t think heavily about our layouts.
Of course, blogs are becoming very fancy and inputting a lot of different widgets. Headers seem to be getting bigger and bigger, but is this actually helping us or hurting us?
Does Your Layout Really Matter?
Yes ladies and gents it does!
When you’re creating a blog you first off don’t want one of those gigantic headers that may look pretty but not really do much for your readers. This is quality space that can be used to help get more content above the fold of your page and take away from the quality of your website.
Another thing we are seeing often is navigations that are jam packed full. Whatever happened to having the important things. These are the most important pages you want to appear on your navigation bar:
- About
- Contact
- Main Topic #1
- Main Topic #2
- Main Topic #3
If you are a website plus a blog, take out a main topic and put your blog onto that navigation. Having a smaller navigation allows people to know what they can find instantly on your blog and get them exactly where they want. This can also help you avoid having 200 different categories. You don’t need a category for cookies, cakes & chocolate. Summarize it down to food or recipes, unless you are a foodie blog that is and then having the separate categories for food types is beneficial for you.
Example of Quality Layout
Your layout is the first thing people see. If it is all cluttered and too much going on, this could deter readers and in many instances advertising opportunities. People don’t want to advertise on a website that is jam packed full. It’s merely impossible to stand out when there are 50 other things around you. Simple designs, simple layouts.
The above layout is very simple, easy to navigate and you know exactly what you can do instantly. You are introduced to the first blog post and also have the navigation right away in front of you. It is a simple theme, yet very creative at the same time.
How Many Sidebars is Good?
This is a question we hear a lot.
How many sidebars should I have?
Personally, one. If you’re a blog you technically only need one. The right side is the most common side to have the sidebar on. This is an area you can place your recent posts feed, social media buttons and a few advertisements. Don’t go over board. It won’t benefit you any. You want people reading your content don’t you? Why put all the focus elsewhere then?
There are sites that do have two sidebars and it is fine. It is just important to keep them clean. Mainly, double sidebars are used on blogs that have a static homepage that doesn’t have your recent blog posts appearing. The double sidebar is utilized to highlight various areas of your website and allow increased advertising. Generally, double sidebars are used on business websites as they do require more space.
What is Above the Fold?
Above the fold is what people see without touching their mouse to scroll. Everything they see is all they see above the fold. This is the area of opportunity to get people to continue down your page. If it is nothing but header and cluttered navigations, you aren’t setting an awesome impression right away. Keep the headers to an acceptable size and tone down those navigations. We don’t need to see all 20 categories right then. If you want to have your categories in your navigation, consider implementing a drop down on your categories label on the navigation. This looks cleaner and much more organized.
Your above the fold is the most important area of your blog. This is what gets people continuing through your site. Make them want to continue and attract their attention right away or you could miss out on readers navigating through your blog.
The best way to think of your blog is this is your store front. It is the first thing people see when they walk into your store and you want to impress them. Keep your layout clean and appealing. This will not only benefit you visually but also having a clean design can be beneficial for ranking purposes as well. Put some effort into your blog, this is what people see instantly and develop their opinions on you right away.
- Published in Web Development
Avoiding the Internet Marketing Scam
There a hundreds of people online “teaching” Internet marketing to help website owners and web masters develop a better understanding of marketing on the Internet. Sadly, it is hard to determine who is providing the right information, and who is just trying to make a few extra bucks off of those new to the online business world. It can be hard at first to determine who the “scammers” are and who the real people are.
WOOT Marketing thought we’d take the time to explain to you how to pick out the scammers from the real guys, hopefully saving you hundreds of dollars on information that you can actually find for free.
How to Spot a Scammer
Scams are literally everywhere on the Internet. Millions of people are taking advantage of others want to learn, and making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of those buying in.
When you do a search online for ‘internet marketing strategies’ you are right away going to be presented with multiple websites trying to offer you the best information out of everyone. Sadly, a lot of these “marketers” are only at the top because they’ve really pushed their pages to rank for ‘internet marketing strategies’ and a lot of the pages have useless information.
Key Signs of a Scam
The following are the top signs that you are entering into a scam. Over the years of learning things ourselves, and seeing what others are trying to teach, it is amazing how many people will not notice the scam at first, until they are scammed.
- Instantly wants you to buy their eBook/product/services
- Doesn’t show email address/phone number anywhere on website
- States you can earn over 6 figures in a year
- Have to sign up to receive the secrets
- Site doesn’t include a privacy policy/terms of service/disclaimer
- Sounds too good to be true
Okay, sure. These signs are pretty basic, but you’d be amazed how easy it is to point these out if you know what to be looking for. When you have zero ability to contact a company or even find their information to contact them, you can’t pull out, meaning you could find yourself in a bind for revoking a paid subscription if you’ve paid to join in.
When a company states that they can help you earn over 6 figures in less then a year, walk away. No person in their right mind will guarantee you that you’ll earn that much. That is just a law suit waiting to happen. Sure, it could happen but it isn’t something anyone can guarantee but yourself.
Another thing you should ALWAYS look for is the privacy policy, terms of service and disclaimer. If there isn’t one, you could find yourself having your information sold to other companies online and soon be receiving a lot of unwanted things in your inbox, and some instances in the mail. A legitimate company always takes the time to legalize things, especially when they are selling information online.
This is also true with websites requesting you to register to receive free information in your email. If you can’t find any of the above items, do not give them your information. They are probably selling it to other companies, making money off of you.
Protect Yourself from the Scams
Best way to protect yourself from any scam, is to avoid all things that sound too good to be true. There are a lot of ways to make money on a website, but the ways that sound absolutely fake and unrealistic, guaranteed are.
If you are worried something might be a scam, but don’t know how to tell, do not hesitate to contact us and ask us. There is a lot of things out there that are scams, and we want to help protect you from them. Internet marketing is something everyone is wanting to learn, and there are many scammers out there taking advantage of those wanting to learn. Most of the information you need is available online, for free. Stop paying into the scams and start protecting yourself.
- Published in Internet Marketing
What Is SEO?
We thought we’d start our SEO section off with a bang. Many of you who are new to the online world will hear the term “SEO” a lot if you are starting an online business or a website dedicated to a certain niche market. It is something many are confused about and hunt for days to get all the information they can to understand it fully. WOOT Marketing thought, instead of allowing you to hunt for endless hours, we’d provide you some information on what SEO is.
What is SEO?
SEO, also known as search engine optimization. When you search in Wikipedia SEO you will be provided one of the shortest and to the point descriptions of what SEO is… the process of improving rankings in search engine results.
Very simple, very forward and very correct. SEO is a process utilized by website owners to improve their website rankings in the many search engines out there. Now, this doesn’t really give you much to work with however. If you are trying to learn about SEO, you are of course trying to learn how to use SEO to benefit you. Anyone could easily figure out that SEO is based around search engines, since it is search engine optimization if you are actually typing out the whole term.
Where Do You See SEO?
You’d be amazed at where you are actually seeing a websites SEO if you are new to the online world. Most people don’t realize that when they are searching online, they are searching things websites actually optimize their websites for so you can find them. Here is an example of what one might search for online…
Example
In Google, a person searches for “How to Change a Baby’s Diaper”… and they are then shown the first ten results that Google has discovered, that are most relevant to what you want.
As you can see by the results provided, the wording you used brings up pages that have used a lot of the words you have. When you search “How to Change a Baby’s Diaper”, this is known as a keyword phrase or key phrase. Website owners optimize their websites/webpages for a wide variety of things so that people can find their pages. By using specific keywords and phrases in titles and page descriptions that people would use to find them, they are optimizing their websites to be found.
SEO is seen in search results and on websites using internal link building, and also throughout the Internet on other websites linking to other websites. When you do a comment from another website and have it linking back to your website, you are usually using anchor text (Name), the website URL, and your email. The anchor text becomes your SEO, as it is what the search engines will see, and also what others will see if they read through that websites comments.
SEO is however most commonly seen in the search engines. The title of a page and the description of the page are the most commonly used areas for search engine optimization, as this is what the search engines pull to allow others to find your websites.
Do You Need to Use SEO?
Yes, yes you do. If you own a website that you want people to see and be able to find in the search engines, you do need to use SEO. Don’t waste your time hiring a mister know it all though to do it for you. SEO is one of the easiest things to learn when it comes to website development, and as you begin doing it, you’ll find yourself getting more comfortable with it.
SEO is a highly recommended item to know, whether you are a website owner, a content developer or a website developer. It is used everywhere on the Internet, everyone practices it and if it is a piece of knowledge you have, you are ahead of the game compared to many. Even though it is fairly simple to learn, it is something that is commonly ignored and not used because of its simplicity.
If you want to keep learning more about SEO, feel free to contact WOOT Marketing or watch this website for further information. It is something we will continually write about so you can get all the knowledge you need to utilize SEO at its utmost potential.
- Published in SEO
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