by Simon Whincop
Starting a home-based business online is not difficult, and websites these days are easy to set up. What is more difficult is getting what you have started to grow. And for that, you need one thing: traffic. Here are some tips on how to build and maintain it:
Step #1: Optimize Your Site
Imagine if your prospective customers found your website near the top of search results whenever they typed in keywords relating to your home-based online business! You profits would sky rocket! Could you make this happen to your website? The answer is yes! Using SEO.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. Using these same keywords throughout the body of your pages’ content will help search engines pick up your site.
Major search engines such as Google provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization. There are many keyword tools available, one of the best being Google’s own: www.goodkeywords.com. (And it’s free, too!) Avoid single words, as these are too broad. Choose phrases relevant to your online home business - the more specific, the better.
Don’t overdo it though you could get penalized for trying to spam the search engines! The most efficient way is actually to group ‘like/related’ keywords together and target these phrases across one optimized page.
In addition to keywords optimization, SEO can also involve tweaking a site’s coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that can prevent ’spidering’ from search engine indexing programs.
Step # 2: Back-Link Your Website
Another great way to increase your search engine ranking is to build up your link popularity. Essentially this means establishing as many inbound links as possible, preferably from from well well respected websites and directories related to your niche.
Reciprocal linking involves asking other webmasters if they are willing to link to your site in return for a link to their site. However, Google and other search engines give less weighting to reciprocal links in comparison to the one way links that you can receive through article and directory submission.
Step # 3: Become an Article Marketer
Search engines favour sites with relevant content and rich information relating to targeted keywords. An excellentway of adding content to your website to include an article section. You could write your own articles, or post those written by others. You could even add an article directory to your site - you will have to maintain it of course. Linking your site to your own blog is another way to add content (Google’s Blogger is excellent and easy to set up and use).
Becoming an article marketer is one of the best ways of getting traffic to your website, provide you with literally hundreds of backlinks . If you don’t fancy writing your own articles, you can always pay someone else to do it for you. Most writers charge between $5 - $10 dollars per article.
Next, submit your article to a selection of high quality article directories. Most article directories allow you to include HTML in your resource box, so you want to take advantage of this and include some anchor text with your keywords in the resource box, as well as at least one URL to your site.
Remember quality articles will drive the curious to find out more at your website.
Step # 4: Start an Email Campaign
One way of expanding your home-based online business is with Opt-in email campaign, a vital element of any online home business.
Opt-in email involves setting up an landing page where customers sign their name and email address in a prescribed box in exchange for information about a product or service they are interested in. This is done through the use squeeze page designed expressly for the purpose of harvesting email addresses of interested prospects.
You will need an autoresponder, a program designed to send emails out automatically to your customers. You create a series of follow up emails, which are then sent out at pre-programmed intervals. Your list is your lifeline to referrals and future sales since your ongoing relationship with your customers builds TRUST.
To succeeed, all home-based online businesses need one thing: traffic. And that comes with hard work, coupled with expertise. Entrepreneurship and owning your own home based online business is not for the faint-hearted. However,if you are willing to use these techniques, preferrably focussing one at a time, you really can make your dreams come true.
Posted: July 23rd, 2008 under Online Marketing.
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