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5 Mistakes You Must Avoid When Starting A Home Based Internet Business

September 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

f_11310582945_womanworkingathome.jpg2 years ago I left my job as a sales manager to start a home based Internet business. I had already bought a lot of books promising substantial incomes within days or at least a month.

Nothing could stop me now — I had several project up and running in no time.

First mistake to avoid is rushing into a home-based business that program that you know little or nothing about. Many people on the Internet want to make money from selling you the perfect home based business. In many cases they haven’t even tested the program themselves.

Second mistake to avoid is thinking you can go from zero to a successful Internet business in 30 days or less. I am not saying it is impossible, but most end up with a giant information overflow and no money in the pocket. You must plan for a modest income the first 3-5 months.

Produce a list of alternatives and try to identify the critical success factors and skills needed. Be realistic — you have to have some of the key skills needed it you are going to succeed.

Third mistake is quitting a program to soon. What I did and you should not repeat is thinking that it is something wrong with the program when the money doesn’t start pouring in. Often it is a question of making minor changes, measuring the effects of the changes and wait for things to start happen.

Forth mistake is starting cheating when you get desperate and low on self-esteem There are a lot of scrupulous people out there making money from guys like you who has been knocked in the first round

A lot of communities is exchanging clicks for Google AdSense. Did you really think you could get away with it? You end up getting banned from the program and excluded from one of the best home based Internet businesses you can find. Again be patient — you will succeed if you really try.

Fifth mistake to avoid is not learning the basic stuff. The basic skills for succeeding with a home-based business is to create content, attract visitors and make money from you visitors. You can buy some product and services that helps you on the way, but you must understand and be able to handle the basic stuff if you want to establish your home business and survive.

Starting a home based Internet business is like a boxing match. Be patient — work hard and smart and you will become the champ of home-based Internet marketing.

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How To Make Your Backlinks Count I

September 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

f_2money.jpgI think that we all know now how important backlinks are for the search engine ranking success of our web site. I also think that we all know now that one way to get these backlinks is by doing link exchanges with other sites. (For the uninitiated, backlinks are links on other web sites that point to ours.)

But do we know that there are various things we need to check before agreeing to exchanging links with another web site? After all, the whole point of exchanging links with others is to benefit from the ranking of their web sites. It is therefore imperative that we investigate ahead of time as to whether exchanging links with another site is to our advantage or not.

I have thought about this whole idea of link exchange preparation and came up with a 3-step process that involves an analysis of 3 pages of the web site we want to exchange links with. The 3 pages are:

- the home page where we will need to check 7 things about that page,

- the directory page: this is the page that contains a list of categories that the site has put together in a bid to organize its link exchanges. We need to check 7 things here,

- the backlink page: this is the page that will contain our backlink. We also need to check 7 things here.

Note that in some cases, the ‘target’ web site will not have a directory page. In that case, our analysis will be a 2-step one rather than a 3-step one.

In this first article, of may be 2 or 3, we shall look at the 7 things (organized in 2 groups) we should check about the home page of the target web site.

1. We need to check what Google thinks of the site. This is done by looking at some things that Google is happy to report about a site. The idea here is to see if there are any problems with the site, from Google’s point of view, that would cause us to decide not to exchange links with them.

I suggest that we look at:

a) how many pages does the site have indexed? This can be done by using ‘site:www.site.com’ in the Google search box,

b) how many backlinks does Google report for the site? This can be done by using ‘links:www.site.com’ in the Google search box,

c) is the site listed in Google’s index? This can be done by using ‘http://www.site.com’ in the Google search box,

d) what is the Page Rank of the site/home page? There are several ways of doing this. One way is to get the Google toolbar and visit the web site to see its PR. Another way is to use one of the many web sites on the Internet that enables us to find the PR of any web site. And still another way is to look for software that will tell you the PR of any web sites.

Although we will generally need to look at these 4 things together in a sort of table in order to decide whether the target site passes the first step or not, there are definite results that would cause me to decide straight away not to exchange links with a site:

- if the PR of the site is zero,

- if the site is not listed in the Google index,

- if the site does not have any pages indexed by Google.

You will note here that I am using Google as the first step in the preparation. In fact, we can use any search engine if we want to but given that Google is more fussy than others when it comes to backlinks, I would suggest using Google in the above first step.

2. I would then suggest that we look at 3 tags of the home page of the target site, in a bid to determine if the site has a theme compatible with ours:

a) its title tag,

b) its description tag,

c) its keywords tag.

There are several ways of checking the contents of a web page’s tags. If your browser, such as MSIE, allows you to view the contents of a web page, then you will need to visit the home page and click on the right menu command to view the contents of the page. Then you will need to scroll to the top of the page to view the contents of its tags. The alternative is to look for web sites on the Internet that enable you to view the contents of the tags of any web pages. There are many such web sites on the net.

The reason for this step is that Google takes into account the theme of web sites when looking at backlinks. This means that backlinks from a site that has a theme compatible with ours will be of higher value than one that comes from a site that has nothing to do with what our site is about.

As mentioned above, this preparation is on the home page of the target web site and is only the first step. There are 2 more steps: one on the directory page and one on the backlink page.

It is only when the target web site passes the 3 steps that we should feel confident about exchanging links with them in that the link exchange will be to our advantage. Needless to say that the target web site will also need to conduct a similar 3-step analysis of our site prior to wanting to exchange links with us.

Serge M Botans

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Are You a Multilingual Marketer?

September 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

f_0money2.jpgAre you marketing in just one language? If so, you are missing out on 64.8% of your marketing potential. This is because 64.8% of the world is surfing the internet in a language other than English. By becoming a multilingual marketer, you immediately open up a stream of new markets. Google alone crawls web pages in 35 different languages.

One of the best ways to attract worldwide traffic is to translate your site and register it with both English and foreign-language search engines and directories. Not to mention, the competition in foreign search engines is much less competitive than the search engines of the United States.

Foreign language markets online are currently growing at a much faster rate than English speaking markets. You have the opportunity to tap into this market while it is in an exponential growth phase.

Below is a complete plan to getting your web site translated and into the foreign search engines and directories.

First, you must make a list of all of your keywords in English. These are the phrases that people use to find you in the search engines. You can extract these keywords by going to your web site’s statistics program.

To optimize your web site for foreign search engines, you must identify equivalent and related terms in that language. Many of the English keywords may have multiple translations in another language. For example, if you are optimizing your web page around the keyword “socks-. You will most likely end up with twice as many search terms in French because there are two common words for socks in the French language: “bas- and “chaussettes-.

After you create a list of targeted keywords, you will need to find out which of these search terms are worth pursuing. You can do this by doing some research with Overture and Miva. Both of these pay-per-click search engines offer search suggestion tools in a variety of languages.

Finally, you will need to group the search terms together into similar terms and assign each group to a specific page on your web site.

Step two is to place these translated keywords on your site. There are two ways of doing this.

You can translate each page into a specific language. Once you have all of these pages translated, you will then need to link them all together from your home page. Each of these pages will need to be optimized for your targeted keywords. You do this the same way that you would for an English site. Place your keywords in the title tag, meta keywords tag, and the meta description tag. You’ll also want to plug these translated phrases into the body of the text and headlines of your pages, especially the first 200 words.

However, the best way to translate your site is by creating a completely new site for each translation.

Doing this offers a variety of benefit, one of these being the ability to register a country-specific domain for each of your web site translations.

For example, if you currently own www.companyname.com and you are translating into French, it would be appropriate to use www.companyname.fr. This country-specific domain lets the search engines know that you are a French web site.

By setting up a new web site for each language, you will also be entitled to additional directory listings in the country specific Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ, and other high–profile web site directories in that language.

Creating multiple sites is also beneficial for your linking campaign. People will be more likely to link to you if your web site is entirely in their language. Because link popularity is such a crucial ranking factor, creating separate web sites would be best for your business.

Step three in our multilingual strategy is to submit your newly translated site to the foreign search engines. Many of the major search engines have regional versions of their web site so that they appeal to visitors in various countries of the world. They include AOL Search, Alta Vista, Excite, FAST Search, Go/Infoseek, Google, HotBot, Lycos, MSN Search, Northern Light, Open Directory, Snap, WebCrawler, and Yahoo.

You can find a complete list of the top foreign language search engines at http://www.allsearchengines.com/foreign.html

Another opportunity that has been opened up by multilingual markets is that of pay-per click search engines.

Using pay-per-click search engines is one of the fastest ways to start funneling targeted traffic to your website. While most of the pay-per-click engines in the United States have been flooded with competition, many of the foreign pay-per-click search engines have untapped opportunities.

English language search terms can often be five-times the cost of Spanish language bids. For example, the keyword phrase “internet marketing- cost $2.09 for the number one position in the English version of Overture. However, if you place an ad in the Spanish version, it would only cost you 50 cents for the very same position.

Keep in mind that when you translate your web site into a different language, you must be able to offer customer support in that language. If you are not fluent in the language yourself, this will be something you need to outsource.

Many web surfers located in countries other than the United States and Canada do not trust web sites as much as Americans and Canadians do. This is largely because the internet was first introduced in English.

Because of this, visitors from other countries will want your online business to have a personal touch. You can do this by providing local contact information and an address in the footer of each of your pages. Your visitors need to know that you are a real person that can be trusted.

If you decide to translate your web site, do not take this task lightly. There are many considerations that must be taken into account. It is important to steer clear from automated tools to translate your site. Instead, use local translators who fully understand how business works in their country and make sure you have local sales staff to support each of your customers.

Your online presence is just as important as that of an offline business. You need a customer support staff that will be available to your customers at all times. You are not just translating your business, you are establishing an online business in that language and a local presence in the country you are targeting.

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