Online Marketing Success Basics

In order to start a successful online business you need to learn how to find a profitable niche, do keyword research so you can find good long tail keywords, optimize your pages for the search engines, Google in particular, and get lots of keyword targeted backlinks. Now, detailed information about all these tasks is waaaaaay beyond the scope of a single post, but here's an overview.

What the Heck is a Niche?

A niche is a subset of a larger market. If you try to sell "digital cameras" you'll be in competition with a HUGE market with big, established players, and it will take you a lot of work to land on the front page of Google for such a generic term. It would be much easier to target "Canon digital cameras," and even easier to go after "Canon PowerShot Digital ELPH Camera." The traffic is lower on these long tail keyword phrases, but they are very profitable. They're much easier rank well for, and you can't make money unless you rank well in Google. It's as simple as that. Go for the long tail while you build keyword authority for shorter terms.

Getting Keyword Authority

Keyword authority is what one site gets when another site links to them with a specific keyword phrase. If I link to Bill's site marketing cameras with the link text "Bill's site," Bill will get keyword authority for the term "Bill's site," which will do him absolutely no good whatsoever. However, if I link to Bill's site with the link text "Canon PowerShot Digital ELPH Camera," the page I link to will get a little keyword authority for that term. Rather than link to the front page of Bill's site, I would ideally link to the page on Bill's site that he has optimized for the term "Canon PowerShot Digital ELPH Camera." Now all Bill has to do is get a LOT more keyword targeted backlinks.

Optimizing Your Pages

An optimized page is built around specific keyword phrases. You put the keywords in your page title, in your post title, in your headings and subheadings, and throughout your post. BUT DON'T BE SPAMMY. Keyword stuffing will be quickly caught by Google and your site will be de-indexed, meaning you won't even appear in the search results. Long gone are the days when you could just stick a lot of repeated keywords on a page and rank well.

Getting Backlinks

Getting lots of keyword specific targeted backlinks is the most important thing you can do for your online business. How many? As many as you can. Links from articles, links from Squidoo lenses, links from HubPages, links from other blogs, links from forums. You can never have too many links. Believe me, if you and I are both targeting a certain keyword phrase and you get a hundred links while I get ten thousand, I'll come out on top in the SERPs. This is where tools like Article Submitter and Bookmarking Demon are so important.

Keyword Research

Now, for keyword research you can use free tools like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, the Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from Wordtracker, Digitalpoint's Free Keyword Suggestion Tool. If cash is really tight, you can do pretty well with those. You'll do better buying a short term trial from Wordze, but that can get expensive real quick. I prefer the one time cost of Keyword Elite. It ain't cheap, but it is THE tool professional marketers use for keyword research for a reason. It works brilliantly.