Do you want to start an online business? Maybe a Home Business?

Is your goal to make money online?

If you have a great new idea or a brilliant new concept for making money online, then I can help you avoid the pitfalls that await newcomers to e-commerce. You can pick my brains - for free - and get a free copy of my 73 page ebook: Websites That Work - The Secrets of Successful Websites. Between the consultation and the ebook, you will have all the information you need to make money online - and pots of it!

 

I have helped hundreds of people to achieve their dreams of online success and I can do the same for you. Just give me a call on 0274 777753 or contact me here for a free consultation. We'll talk over your ecommerce idea and I can lay out a pathway for you to start making money. And I'll tell you exactly what it will cost you.

That will avoid you going down the path of wasting a heap of money on a website that doesn't work. I have had people come to me having spent 30k on a website that is returning nothing on their investment.

The way to avoid that is to have a Business Plan for your online business and that is where I come in. I will use my extensive experience as a website consultant to make sure you have a money making business in the shortest possible time.

But I will also be straight up with you, if I don't think your concept is commercially viable. I have told a few people that their idea won't fly online and hopefully saved them thousands of dollars. If you want an honest appraisal of your idea for an Internet business, I will do that for you - and for free!
Just call me or contact me here.

What are you going to sell?

Unless you have something unique, your product will be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of products available online. You need to start with a good product or service that has an existing market. Many Internet gurus insist that selling information, not a product, is the way to make real money from the ‘net.

A good example is Corey Rudl who was the President (and Founder) of The Internet Marketing Center and author of the best-selling course, Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet. Rudl led the way when it came to developing practical, cost-effective internet marketing strategies for the home-based Internet entrepreneur. He claimed to have made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling his e-booklet How to save money buying a car.

Rudl’s formula for success is to use the ease of changing a website to continually change the wording, price or style of the offered product to see what works best. Special offers can be made for a limited time and the results of that campaign assessed so that the most successful offers can be repeated.

This is all part of producing a website that has a good conversion rate. That is the whole secret to Internet success. It is not all about attracting visitors or achieving a high Google ranking. The way to make real money is to have a high conversion rate.

There are several distinct stages in an e-business transaction:

1. Attracting the customer

This is done by establishing a presence on the Internet by putting up a website. The more attractive (or higher ranking) the website, the more potential customers it will draw. The aim is to generate enquiries for your product or service.

2. Making a sale

The easier you can make the web transaction, the more likely the customer will complete the purchasing process. If they get halfway through and find it all too difficult, they will abort the process and head off into the ether. You want to maximise your conversion of a website visitor into a sale. The average e-business website worldwide has a conversion rate of 2-3%. If you can improve that conversion percentage, your profits will surge. As Matt Coutts of Google said "I'm not sure I would say ranking is dead but it's not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart website owners are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion. It's great if you're ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn't help you very much. The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking. Pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content.”

3. Retaining your customer

Best achieved by analysing the web transaction and extracting information about the customer’s preferences so you can sell them similar products/services in the future. For example, if you are selling wine on your website and you discover the customer buys mainly Chardonnay, then you can target them in the future with ‘Chardonnay Specials’.

Certainly the costs of setting up an e-business can be much less than a business requiring offices or retail space or a factory. And yes, some entrepreneurs are making a fortune out of selling online. But it is not as easy as just setting up a website and sitting back to watch the orders roll in.

Your website should be considered an online business rather than simply a site consisting of a few brochure pages. Many websites stand alone with no bricks and mortar businesses to back them up and are hugely successful, although they can also be combined very effectively with high street organisations and enterprises. Every penny you spend on your site, therefore, should be geared towards generating a good return on investment.

If you don't feel that you're able to do your website justice or you don't have the time to write good content regularly then employ the services of professional website content writers. Use a professional service and it will generate a good website ROI.

More on Conversion Rates
The secret to a successful website is the conversion rate. The amount of money a business generates is directly determined by:

• The number of enquiries or leads that the business receives
• The rate at which it converts those enquiries (the conversion rate) to sales
• The amount of money the customer spends each time they buy from the organisation (the average sale)

Below are two different types of website where the key success metrics can be examined to determine their success:

Sales Focused Website

The performance of a ‘sales’ focused website is governed by the following formula.
Website Visits X Conversion Rate = Number of Sales X Average Sale = Revenue

As you can see from this formula, there are three key success metrics that determine how successful a website focused on ‘sales’ will be – those three things are:
• The number of visits that the website receives

• The rate at which it converts those visits (the conversion rate) into sales.

• The amount of money the buyer spends each time they buy from the website (the average sale)

Enquiries Focused Website

The performance of an enquiries focused website is governed by an even simpler formula.
Website Visits X Conversion Rate = Number of Enquiries

As you can see from this formula, there are only two key success metrics that determine how successful a website focused on enquiries will be – those two things are:
• The number of visits that the website receives

• The rate at which it converts those visits (the conversion rate) into enquiries.

Improving Success Metrics

Here is a summary of some of the ways to improve success metrics on a website (supplied courtesy of Zeald.com):
Attracting Visitors
Email signatures (automatic footer/sign-off)
Search engine optimisation
Promotion of website on business cards, brochures, letterheads, etc
Promotion of website on physical advertising & promotions
Email marketing
Online banner advertising
Website Directory listings
Search engine advertising (pay per click)
Affiliate marketing.

Improving Conversion Rates

Factors that affect website conversion rates include:
Fast-loading website
User-friendly website layout
Professional, personalised website design
Strong sales proposition
Compelling sales copy
Attention-grabbing Headlines
Strong Calls to Action
Clear Conversion Pathways
Simple Sales Process
Convincing testimonials & references
Riveting Case Studies
Solid Guarantee
Clear terms and conditions
Privacy policy
Website Security Assurance.

Other Issues to Improve Your Return

Average Sale
Cross-sells
Up-sells
Specials and Promotions
Wish-lists
Volume pricing
Gift vouchers
Best sellers
New items
2-for-1 packages.

If sufficient attention is paid to the above factors, then a successful website is assured.

An example is a Zeald.com client, Meat Cuisine, that is owned by Terry Lillis, a butcher with 30 years’ experience. Meat Cuisine’s shop in Panmure supplies the hotel and restaurant industry as well as the company’s retail clients. The company approached Zeald.com, when its first website failed to meet expectations.
In its brief to Zeald.com, Meat Cuisine identified several key objectives for the website as well as barriers that might dissuade people from ordering. The website was required to:
1. Ensure that Meat Cuisine product, (restaurant-quality meat at supermarket prices delivered direct to the home), became more widely available.
2. Be visually appealing and show attractive and appetising images of cooked product.
3. Be fast to download.

Customers had to be reassured that it was safe and practical to have a perishable product delivered to their home and that the meat they were receiving was fresh. Plus, they needed to appreciate that it was not cost-effective for Meat Cuisine if their customers ordered very small quantities. To overcome these barriers, a measured campaign was conducted for the first two months after the site went live. This was structured so that:
• During the first month, no delivery fee was charged. This was to encourage people to order and to gain their confidence (the delivery fee is usually $10).
• In the second month, purchases of more than $50 (the average value per sale during the first month) were delivered free, and customers who bought more than three items were given a bacon pack.
The website ploy of offering free shipping for all orders over $50 saw his average sale catapult from $43 to $74. Why so much more than the $50 threshold? Who knows – maybe the customers just decided while they were over the free delivery cutoff, they may as well have a kilo of fillet steak as well.


Terry is happy to reveal that his online meat sales are over six figures pa. Such is the success of Terry’s online marketing that it raises the question - does he needs an actual physical shop? Amazon does not need one so maybe Terry can do the same. The Meat Cuisine website has met all the budgeted objectives and has encouraged people to disregard any barriers they may have had to purchasing meat online.

The greatest advantage of Internet marketing is that you can try something different at no cost and see how it works. Try a lower price for a week and see if sales improve. Try a higher price for a week and see whether you were too cheap before and the customer thought you were selling junk. Try a ‘two for one’offer. Test whether free delivery pulls in the punters. It is simply a matter of a quick change to your compelling sales offer and then checking to see if it worked. When you get a successful result, you can focus on that price or offer and reap the benefits.

It is even now possible with software from companies like Zeald.com to have an A/B split offer. Half your visitors will be directed to a page that offers your product for, say, $19.95 and the other half will be directed to a page that offers the product at $29.95. After a week or so, you can easily see which pricing worked best and make that your permanent offer. As was stated at the beginning of this section: Test, measure, tune is the gospel according to Internet gurus like Corey Rudl and David Kelly.

Establishing a website

Once you have a domain name, you have an IP (Internet Protocol) address that is referenced to your domain name. This is stored in DNS (Domain Name Servers). The address of your website is called the URL (Uniform Resource Locator). This will appear in the address box of your Internet browser when it connects to a DNS and then works out the address of the server. The browser is a software program that converts the text file into the visual display that you see on your screen. The browser finds the file from the instructions in the URL, for example:
http:/www.babyboomersguide.com/index.html
This tells the browser to find a file:
• called index.html
• on a server with a unique IP address
• with the domain name www.babyboomersguide.com
The index.html is your home page and the browser will automatically open this page by default. Other pages in the website will have separate filenames such as: www.babyboomersguide.com/financialplanning.html

The two most common browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox. It pays to check your web pages using both of these browsers, as a web page can look different depending on the browser used. You should also check the loading speed of your website using a 56k dial up connection as not everyone has a fast broadband connection (50% of NZ residences were on dial up in 2009).

If it takes longer than 8 seconds for your website to appear onscreen, you will need to redesign your site to get a quicker result. Web surfers are very impatient and studies have shown that 8 seconds is the maximum time that they will wait for a website to load. Even if the surfer is on broadband, the expectations are higher. They might only be prepared 2 seconds.

With modern website editor software, like Dreamweaver, you can design your own website, once you spend some time getting to grips with the program. And it can take a long time to get familiar with such software programs. You could use Microsoft Word and WYSIWYG converters to HTML. But the disadvantage is that such programs always produce some code errors as word processing software programs do not always convert your text accurately into HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). This can result in mistakes in your web pages.

There can also be errors when the website is viewed on a different size monitor, as these will vary greatly in size these days of one metre plus wide TVs that double as monitors. If you understand HTML source code, you can correct these errors; otherwise you will have to rely on the accuracy of your text editor. There are no real benefits in learning HTML; it is a time-consuming process. And it does not guarantee the website will be successful. In fact very few people that build their own website produce a commercially-successful website. How do I know that? Because I have been asked by hundreds (no exaggeration) of such website owners to do an audit of their website because their website was not successful.

The better option is to use the services of a website developer to develop and maintain your website. You should choose a website company that offers a Content Management System (CMS) for your website. That software enables you to make changes to your website yourself. You don’t want to get into the situation where you have to pay your Webmaster $100 every time you want to make a minor change to your website.

A Content Management System is just that - it helps you manage your content. Essentially, a CMS allows you to create/edit/delete your web pages without having to learn HTML code. For larger sites, CMS also makes organising the content and web pages much easier. The content is largely stored in a site database, which is stored on a web server, alleviating the need to back up hundreds of HTML files.

It is a good idea to choose a website developer that has several employees. There is nothing more frustrating than to be told by your one-man-band Webmaster that he can no longer maintain your website as he is off to the UK to chase the big bucks. The costs of using a website development company can be as low as $100 for a basic one page website and as high as $50,000 for a highly-customised large site with an on-line shop and automated payment options. Putting together and publishing a website is not easy. It will consume a lot of your time so it is essential to do it right. Using a professional website services provider will usually prove much cheaper in the long run and the more professional-looking website will be likely to be more of a commercial success.

Planning your web site

You need to take some time to consider who your target market is as you must tailor your website to that target audience:
• how old are they?
• where are they located – in one particular country or worldwide?
• will they be equipped with the latest browsing software?
• how experienced will they be with on-line purchasing?
• are there language factors to consider?
• what are their likely connection speeds?

The reasons for considering these matters are crucial – you cannot have a complicated website with streaming video and huge graphical files if your potential customer only has a slow 56k dial up connection. There is no point writing copy in a conservative, measured style when your product will be bought by teenagers. There will not be much business coming your way if your website is in English and you want to sell to the Chinese market.


For the same reasons, it is also important that the design of your website fits your brand or product and projects it appropriately on the ‘net. You need to consider the complexity of your website, the style of it and language used in it. It needs to be quick to download, attractive, well structured, have interesting content and rank high on the major search engines.

Once you have established the overall ‘look’, you need to think about the individual pages. The website needs to be be structured so that people can quickly find the information they are seeking. Nothing turns off a surfer faster than getting imbedded in a morass of information. Each page should have a distinct purpose and a focus to the information being presented.

Too many graphics or large photos will make your website too slow to download. If your site cannot be downloaded in less than 8 seconds on a 56k dialup, it needs work. For example, you can use thumbnails instead of the full photo to improve download speeds. Around 30,000 bytes is reckoned to be about the right size for a page to load in under 8 seconds. If you have pages larger than this, consider reducing them to around this level. The larger the website, the more important it becomes to have distinct pages with quick ways to access the individual pages – easy navigation, as it is termed. What it means is to do everything you can to have a user-friendly website.

Website design pitfalls

Some commonly-used website features are not favoured by search engines and these should be avoided if you want your site to rate highly.

Frames - although frames can contribute a lot to the look of a website, they are a definite no-no in terms of search engine optimisation. The problem is that many search engines cannot read frames and cannot follow frame links. This means they skip over most of the website and do not index any of the content. Frames can also cause the text content to appear lower down in the html code. This means the Search Engines will concentrate more on the irrelevant text found near the top of the code. Frames also increase the size of your page and so dilute the impact of your keywords. A larger page will also be slower loading.

Splash pages – a splash page is an entry page with a large graphic image or a link instructing visitors to enter the website. Splash pages are bad news for Search Engine rankings as they contain very little visible body text and also contain a redirect. Search Engines only want to rank pages that contain the information surfers are searching for and so splash pages are not rated by most Search Engines.

Graphics - these also increase the size of your page with the same result; it dilutes the impact of your keywords and will hinder fast loading of your website.

Java Script – this is a design device that controls functions such as mouseovers where information is displayed when the mouse is positioned over a link. They also make the text appear lower on the page and reduce its importance in the eye of the Search Engine robot.

Tables – these adversely affect rankings in some search engines.

Achieving a high Search Engine ranking

How do I get a good ranking on Google?

The answer is not straightforward. Why? Because Google uses a complex algorithm to rank web pages. This ranking formula is extremely important to website owners because knowing which factors Google uses to rank websites is critical to optimisation of your website.
The trouble is Google rarely tell you what the current ranking formula is!!

Google's ranking factors affect how and where you are listed in their search engine results. Since obtaining top positions for your targeted keywords often spells success for your site, knowing Google's ranking factors can be very beneficial.
Everyone knows that Google is the biggest search engine – for example, they account for 64% of visitors to my website. Getting on the first page of Google is essential to the success of any website that is relying on Search Engine ranking.
I have listed below some of the main factors that affect the ranking of your website. You should be optimising your web pages with these factors in mind. Webmasters who concentrate their SEO efforts on optimising for Google will give their site an edge over the opposition.

The main ranking factors to consider are:
1. Keywords in your Website Title and on your pages
Put your keyword (or keyword phrase) in the title of each page and also in your content. Many webmasters use variations of their keywords on a particular page and also include it in the main headline.
2. Keywords in your URL
It is important to keep your page relevant to the website. It is useful to have your keyword in your URL. A good example is www.website-consultant.co.nz where the targeted keyword is website consultant. You should also use your keyword in the secondary headlines. And make sure you place it in the description and your other meta tags. But, whatever you do, keep your content readable and useful. Be aware of the text surrounding your keywords as search engines may become more semantic in future years, so context is important.
3. Create high quality, relevant content
Content is King! You must have high quality, relevant content on your pages to get a good ranking in Google. Your content should be related to the subject of your site and updated regularly. I try to add a new article every second day. I believe it is the quality of my content that saw my babyboomers website indexed in two days and ranked #1 after only four weeks.
4. Internal onsite linking
Internal linking is important to your overall ranking. Make sure your linking structure is easy for the robots/spiders to crawl. A simple automated sitemap with links no more than three clicks away from your home/index page is vital.
5. Only get links from high quality related websites
It is important to only link from high quality (ones with a good Page Rank) sites. Being linked to by high quality sites shows the search engines that your website is very useful to your visitors. Build relationships within communities on the subject of your site. Be extremely careful with your outgoing links – if they are not high quality and relevant to your website, don’t add them. I even am a bit harsher – if the outgoing link is not producing revenue for my website, I don’t add it. Just ask yourself the question – what’s in it for me if I add this link.
6. Global Linking Popularity
One of the major ranking factors is the Global Linking Popularity of your site. You should try to build large numbers of inbound links from quality sites. One simple and effective way to do this is through writing articles and submitting them to the online article directories. Only related websites will pick up and display your articles with your links back to your site. These are usually one-way-links which are more highly-rated by Google. Articles with quality content that will help the reader first and the links will come naturally.
7. Anchor text is very important
Anchor text is an important factor as these inbound links should be related or relevant to your site's topic. This will play an important role in your rankings. Don't ignore the text surrounding your links and use different anchor text links to avoid keyword spamming.
Keep in mind, as search engines become more semantic, the whole text of your article will probably be considered your anchor text, thus making articles even more important to your rankings.
8. Topicality of your incoming links
Your inbound links should also come from related websites that are regarded as an authority in your field. The more links you have from these popular (related) sites, the higher rankings you will get. Many SEO experts suggest you should have a steady stream of new sites (inbound links) added each month to keep your rankings growing. These links will age and íncrease your rankings after 4 or 5 months. Both quality and topicality is important.
9. Reliable server and service
Like any business, Google is just supplying a product to its customers, so this service must be continuous and available at all times. Make sure you have a good reliable server because any extended downtime, when your site is inaccessible to the Google robots (spiders), may be detrimental to your rankings. If it is down for over 48 hours, you could be dropped from the index!
10. Duplicate content is a no-no!
Make certain you don't place duplicate content on your site. This may affect your rankings and get your pages sent to the supplemental index. Be careful not to use duplicate title or mega tags on your pages as this will lower and disburse your internal page rankings, resulting in poor optimisation.

For the best search engine optimisation, every item of content on your website should be original; not previously published elsewhere on the Internet. The reason for that is that copying content from other websites and republishing it on your site will harm your search engine ranking because search engines like to present searchers with unique content from the original source.

The result:

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If you want to load some information on your website from another web source, you need to change it from the original. You can use content from another site and republish it if you add additional text to that content - then your rankings won't suffer. Just make sure you are crediting the original source - most commonly done in the form of quoting. Search engines do understand what you are doing here, and won't penalise you for it if you're not maliciously copying content.

What about duplicating content from within your own site, on different pages on one domain? As a general rule, duplicate content, while not preferable for SEO, will not be frowned upon unless the content intends to be deceptive or manipulative of search engine results. Search engines do a good job of choosing a version of your content to show in their search results, and will not fault you for having a little repetitive content within the pages in your website.

You might also be worrying about continually linking to the same URL within one page, as there is often talk around the web that search engines see repetitive linking within a single page to one destination to be link stuffing. This talk is not a myth, but there are ways around it.

Search engines are determined to provide users with a level of variety; they try to filter pages with duplicate URL linking so that users experience less redundancy when searching - so the search engines will select what they think the 'best' version of that link is in their results. However, a search engine's idea of the best link and your idea of the most important one within your page might be different. To get around this, you can simply let search engines know which URL is most important to add weight to in your Sitemap. Alternatively, use 'no follow' links, which don't hold any search engine weight, but will still be useful for your users to get them to the URLs you want to repetitively link them to.

Duplicated linking, if for no other reason, will deter search engines from effectively crawling your actual content. If their robots are spending a lot of time crawling multiple URL links within your page, eventually determining that they lead to the same place, they will have less time to get to the rest of your content.

Duplicate content can affect your site's SEO in several ways, but as long as you are not publishing identical content, it's unlikely that you'll see your web pages penalised in their search engine rankings.

More on Incoming Links
How Important are Incoming Links for Google Rankings?
Many website owners and webmasters are not sure how to go about gaining incoming links so that their sites rank well in the search engine results. Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing all calculate link popularity as one part of their search algorithms. So building link popularity is an important part of getting recognition and strong placement in the search engine result pages (SERPs). In my experience, this factor is more important in the first three months of a website ‘going live’. After that, content becomes more important.

Link popularity is a count of how many web pages point to one of your web pages.

Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Factors

Search Engine Optimisation is what you need to do to get a high ranking in the main search engines - Google, Yahoo & Bing. Here are some of the most important factors:

1. Having the main Keyword in the Title Tag

Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page's HTML header has consistently been the most important on-page SEO factor for the many years.

2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link

This is very important as the Anchor text of the inbound link is one of the most concise assessments another person can make about what your site/page is 'about'. But it can be hard to influence that tag.

3. Link Popularity of Website

The overall global link popularity/authority as measured by links from other quality websites - a site’s overall link popularity will drastically effect rankings.

4. Age of Website

This is defined by the date of the launch of website when indexable content is seen by the Search Engines. Aging has taken on more significance in the ranking factors and it is very difficult for a new website to gain a first page ranking in Google. There has been some speculation that many websites fall over in the first few months. Google does not waste space ranking those websites, until they prove they are survivors.

5. Link Popularity within the Website

This refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to a certain target page - without the proper linking structure, the target page may not get enough emphasis.

6. Relevance of Inbound Links

The relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword must be relevant. Such relevant incoming links are important and will help with rankings.

7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community

The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world - a niche site may not have a high quantity of links but a few links from the 'authorities' in the web community is often enough to rank the site above the authorities for niche-related keywords.

8. Keyword Use in Body Text

Using the targeted search term in the content of the page - it is important to use the keyword/phrase throughout the page. This is called keyword density and there are several free tools to check this aspect.

9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Website

The link popularity of the linking page and website is probably the most important factor when deciding on a link.

10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page

Evidence of page contents from a linking page affecting rankings of page being linked to has been important for a long time.


So what are the best practices that you should be looking at in optimising your landing pages?
You should consider these questions:

1. Do you have a clear headline stating clearly and succinctly the website's purpose?

2. Is the product title and image prominent and visible immediately, without scrolling?

3. Is the purchasing process obvious and understandable – primate-proof even?

4. Are there complicated options, buttons or links that could confuse or distract the user?

5. Will the user immediately know how to use your site and what they need to do to achieve
their goal?

6. Have you checked that all of the links and buttons work? Here is not much point in having
a ‘Buy Now’ button that has a broken link and goes nowhere.

Using optimised landing pages is a very important part of a Website Plan. Optimising your landing pages will not only increase sales but it can also free up advertising revenue to increase traffic from other sources. There are many factors to consider, but the focus has to be on the visitors' needs. You must provide the easiest and best possible website visitor experience.

Search Engine Rankings

For most search engines, ranking is based on a complex algorithm (formula) that is different for each search engine. It would be a huge investment in time if you tried to optimise your website to suit all of these various algorithms and then you will find that usually a page that ranks well on one search engine will not rank so well on other engines. You would need to write separate doorway pages optimised for each search engine to achieve this. Good luck with that.

Keywords

Most search engines rank the relevance, prominence, positioning and frequency of the keywords so it is vital to research your keywords carefully. You need to establish what words a websurfer would use to seek information about the topic of interest. In my case those keywords were: trout, fishing, new, zealand. It should be noted that search engines are case-insensitive and over 80% of queries are entered in lower case. So someone searching for information about trout fishing in New Zealand would be likely to enter those exact words. Many major search engines rank websites higher if they have the keywords in their domain name. If you can work out the key words for your website, you can consider buying those words as a domain name, like www.trout-fishing-new-zealand.com. Even if that is not your main website, you can use that site to rate higher on those search engines and then point that website to your main website. I do that with www.new-zealand-trout-fishing.com and traffic reaching that website address is diverted to my main website.

There are two main tools for finding out which words/phrases are being searched. The first is www.wordtracker.com – the only downside for New Zealand is that is only reports USA searches. So it has USA spellings and American expressions. That can cause some problems. Like when I was searching for keywords for the lifestyle block section of goodground.com. It turned out that ‘lifestyle’ equated to ‘swinging’ (as in swapping partners) in USA. Not the market that goodground.com was targeting!

A more recent alternative is Google Adwords. You can log in from your Google Account and see what words/phrases are being searched for in New Zealand. That is a lot more relevant and informative. But there is no use in just targeting the most common search. If Zeald.com targeted the keyword ‘website’, they would be one of millions of websites doing so. The most effective ploy is to try and find a niche in the market.

You do need to know the basics of how keywords work. Keywords and keyword phrases are the exact words someone types into a search engine to find something they are looking for online. If you have a site about "website consultants" then your goal is to get a top 10 ranking for the keywords "website consultants".

But if no one searches for "website consultants", it would be a useless keyword as you would get no traffíc - no matter how perfectly your site is optimised for that keyword.
You can do some research and find a set of keywords that are commonly used by web searchers but a set that sees few competing websites. For example, my website www.website-consultant.co.nz is #1 for the search words ‘website examples’. So if you then concentrate on such a set of keywords, or key phrase, your website will be visited by all those surfers searching for those keywords. As long as your website then has some information, products or services to interest that market niche, you are in business. You can then test that market niche exists by trialling a ‘pay per click’ program such as Google Adwords. That will quickly confirm if your target client is using those keywords. Don’t use more than 20 keywords or you will be penalised by the search engines that will characterise you as a spammer.

So how do you find out if a Keyword is any good? The best method is to go to www.wordtracker.com and enter the keyword there. They have a tool that will tell you how many people are searching for that keyword and how many competing websites there are trying to come up in Google when that keyword search is made. You can also use the keyword suggestion tools supplied by Google Adwords or Overture.

If you have a very-much-searched-for keyword like "website design", you will find it receives many, many thousands of searches each day. That's a lot of potential traffíc but you must understand that thousands of competing websites want to rank highly for that keyword so it may be too competitive, especially if you have a new website. You simply will not be able to compete for or be ranked highly for extremely competitive keywords. Only well-established sites and businesses with very deep pockets have the resources to completely dominate those keywords. You will have better success if you target low to medium competitive keywords.

Online marketers have discovered that longer keyword phrases are usually the most lucrative. These phrases deliver better targeted traffic that is more likely to convert into a sale. An example is "trout fishing New Zealand" which will be more targeted than the general term "trout fishing" or even worse "New Zealand". If you have a site devoted to New Zealand trout fishing, then this keyword phrase will drive more targeted traffic and improve your conversion ratio. This is often called a "Long Tail" keyword strategy.

Here are Ten Great Tips on Keywords:

1. Make A Master Keyword Líst

Obviously these keywords should be closely related to the theme of your site. Check the keyword competition by seeing how many sites are listed in Google for that keyword. Check on WordTracker the popularity of those keywords - if they are very common, it may be hard to get ranked high for your keywords. If you are only targeting the NZ market, use the Google Adwords keyword tool.

2. Choose Related Keywords

Once you have your master líst of keywords, find long tail related keywords to target. Again, check out the competition and daily searches made for each chosen keyword.

3. Use Quality Content For Your Keywords

Creating quality content should always be your main goal. Write for actual visitors who will see and read your content. You must have good useful content that your visitors will use themselves and recommend to their friends or colleagues. Tie this quality content in with your chosen keywords. (See the section on content)

4. Keyword In Domain Name, Title and URLs

Having your keyword in your domain name will score big points from search engines, as we discussed earlier with www.trout-fishing-new-zealand.co.nz. Then each page of content should contain your keywords in the title and meta tags for that page. Ben Kemp suggests that if you have your keyword in the URL and use hyphens to separate your keywords, you will always rank highly as Search Engines recognise a hyphen as a space between words.

5. Page Optimisation

Keyword ratio is a much discussed topic by SEO experts and many suggest you should have your keyword in the headline title (H1) of your page. Sprinkle your keyword and variations of it throughout your page. Don't get carried away with this tactic but make sure the Search Engine robots discover what your page is about. Many webmasters make sure they include their main keyword in the first and last 25 words on their pages.

6. Use Traffíc Modules

One technique that works very well in Google is clustering a closely-related topic or subject into a distinct separate section on your site. For example, the Articles section on my website www.website-consultant.co.nz has 50 to 100 keyworded pages all relating to the subject of websites. Place a keyword linked menu on each page to connect all your pages together. Keep in mind, your main objective is to supply quality information to your visitors. One reason Google favours this type of structure is because they want quality content returned in their responses to any Search Engine Question.

7. Try Article Marketing

Article marketing is writing short informative articles on keyword topics related to your sites. You then submit these helpful keyworded articles to ezine directories on the web. When your articles are picked up by related sites, you receive quality incoming links. The higher the quality of your article, the more links you will receive.
Google now only rate incoming quality links as they believe those show how worthwhile a website is (who would bother linking to a rubbish website??!!).

In this way, you also take advantage of the higher PageRank of the major ezine directories. Your keyworded articles on these high PageRank sites will get picked up by Google and displayed in the top 10 rankings. Now the displayed URL will be the article directory site but the links in the resource box will be pointing back to your site. Over time this article marketing technique will raise your own site's rankings for those keywords. It does take some work in preparing the articles but the effort is effective and it is simple.

8. Anchor Text And One Way Links

Off page optimisation can help in obtaining high rankings in Google. Getting quality incoming links is very important. Anchor Text simply refers to "the underlined clicked on words" in your links. Most webmasters include their keywords in their anchor text as this tells the search engines exactly what the links are about.

9. Tags, Blogging And Web 2.0

Take advantage of Web 2.0 by using blogs, RSS feeds and the social bookmarking sites like Bebo, Facebook, Linkd, Reddit and Digg. Try AddThis.com for a simple social bookmarking system. At the very least your site should have a blog and RSS feed attached to it as this is an effective way of boosting your keyword rankings.

Tags have become very important for getting higher rankings. Keep in mind, in free blogging software such as WordPress, categories will automatically be seen as tags. Blogger, which is owned by Google, now has a form where you put your keywords (tags) for each post you make.

10. PPC vs Organic Search

Of course, one of the fastest ways to get your links displayed on Google is to pay for them by using Google Adwords. Your ad and links will sit side by side with the organic link results. In Pay Per Clíck advertising you bid or pay so much per clíck for your keywords and you only pay when someone clicks your links.

However, most webmasters would say that organic links (SERPS) will return better traffíc than paid links or advertising. In most cases, this is probably true because Google's organic rankings are becoming more respected and more trusted by users. They simply carry more weight with surfers than do PPC's.

This makes it even more beneficial to obtain top 10 rankings for your keywords in Google. Depending on the competitiveness of your chosen keywords reaching the first page listing or even the favoured number one spot is well within any webmaster's reach. It is not easy but the rewards are well worth the effort.

Yahoo is a bit different. A high ranking on Yahoo is more dependent on the quality and content of your website. But now that Yahoo will use search results from Bing, it is not yet clear whether that will be be the same in the future.

So, despite what they claim, automated ranking software will not guarantee that you automatically get a high ranking position. Some search engines now penalise you if you use automated listing software.

Website Content

Probably the best method of ensuring a high ranking across all the Search Engines is to have good quality content. Search Engines want real information – websites that answer the questions of surfers and provide the information they are seeking. If you concentrate on providing quality content and ensure the technical aspects of your website are Search Engine friendly, you are virtually assured of a high ranking.
What makes an effective Home Page?
The home page is the most important page of your website. It is the one page that all your visitors will view. A poor home page can destroy any chance of achieving your website objectives as a visitor will bail out within a few seconds. A good home page is the blueprint for every successful website.


Your homepage should establish the key elements necessary to close a sale or to generate an enquiry.

If your website is focused on a single product/service, then you should launch straight into your main sales copy on the home page.

But if your website contains a number of products or services, then you need to write some copy for your home page that encourages your visitors to click into the pages that contain more details of those products or services.

Writing for a website is very different to other print media writing. Copy on the Home Page should be short, sharp with attention-grabbing headlines and clear conversion pathways. We would normally suggest three or four primary calls to action. Here is the Home Page layout from a recent Website Plan.