Copyright © Liane
http://www.HonestMoneyMaking.com

When building a new website, it's really not enough to just whip up a site and let it be, hoping for hoards of traffic to arrive and purchase your products and services. In order to get indexed by the search engines, and in order for people to find our websites, we must generate good keywords. Once we create a list of keywords that people might use to find our sites, there are a few more important steps to consider.

It's not just about generating a list of keywords and using those keywords on your site. We have to find the right keywords, and by that, I mean keywords that are closely related to your site's content. If you own a website about how to make a good residual income online, then use specific keywords such as "residual income" that people are likely to search. Once you've found keywords like this that are likely to be searched though, you have to do your research, and look for terms that are not the most highly searched and popular, but that people might still search. You can do this using one of the many keyword search tools available on the net today. This will tell you how popular or not your search term is. If you choose keywords say above 2000 searches per month and less than 30000 searches per month, you are probably choosing a decent keyword that can get you the results you seek. Make sure you don't just choose keywords once and leave them alone forever. Every month or so, check your keywords and their popularity, and make modifications as required.

Next, you want to include those keywords in various parts of your website so that the search engines can find them when they spider your site. The first place to consider using your keywords is right in the title tag headline of your site. Do this for all of your website pages, not just the main page. You can also place your keywords in your header, alt, anchor tags, bold and italic tags, body, URLs, file names, and meta tags. Be careful not to plug up your site with these keywords though, or you will get penalized by the search engines and get the opposite result of what you want. It's more important to have solid, quality content on your site than it is to pack your site with keywords. It's good to repeat your keywords, but not too much. You only have to use your keywords once in each tag, and especially near the top of your pages. You can actually use the words repeatedly with the body text, as long as you're not over-doing it, and the words are highly relevant.

One way that you can get ahead of your competitors and the similar keywords they use for their sites is by using two or three word phrases rather than single keywords that are searched more often. Look at your competitor's source code when you view their sites and notice what keyword phrases they are using or not using, and what tags they have that contain or do not contain important keywords. If their sites are lacking in some way, you can gain an edge on them by doing what they have not. You should also keep tabs on your own website statistics by finding out what keywords your website visitors are using to find your site. That way you will know which keywords generate the most hits and which you should be using more or less of. If you follow these tips and ensure your site has quality content on all of its pages, you will have competitors trying to get ahead of you!

Liane Bate owns a Plugin Profit Site web business, is a member of Success University, and the IAHBE.
Visit: http://www.HonestMoneyMaking.com, Plugin Profit Site, and Success University

Copyright © Liane Bate
http://www.HonestMoneyMaking.com

Sometimes the only the thing that determines whether or not you make the sale is how well you communicate with your prospects and customers. Communication really is an art that needs to be practiced and refined. You may think you know exactly what to say, but it doesn't take much to turn a person right off. I've never been a big talker, and I never want to say anything stupid, so I mostly just keep my mouth shut! Good thing for me that listening is an effective communication technique, but it would also help if I practiced small talk to break the ice when it comes to gathering new prospects or talking to new people. But listening and small talk are not the only things you need to do when communicating effectively. You must also exude confidence, you need to know your stuff, and you need to communicate it to your customers in such a way that they trust you and what you have to offer.

One way that you can establish yourself and your trust with others you want to do business with is to find something you have in common. When you can talk about something you have in common, such as common goals, dreams, personality characteristics, or experiences, people will connect more with you. When there is a connection, people will come to trust the person they like and have some common ground with. When you find these things out about your clients, and emphasize the commonalities, you build rapport that can lead to trust and sales either right away or sometime down the road.

Another way to communicate effectively is to show care, concern, and compassion for the people you deal with. When your customers can see that you feel their pain and that you care enough to help them, they will know your products and services are not just being pushed on them for your own benefit. You must show good intentions and be able to cooperate when the customer needs your assistance. This means listening carefully to what they want, and what their concerns are. If you do this genuinely and sincerely you will earn your prospect's trust.

Being confident is an excellent way to build trust as well. You may just be starting out in your business, but the way to get confident is to learn everything you can about your business, your company, your products, your services, and your compensation plan. If you know your stuff, and you are consistent about doing it repeatedly, you will become competent. People who see you as experienced and knowledgeable will trust you because they will see and feel that you can win the game and do what you claim you will do.

Persuading your customers to buy something from you is a part of communication that is obviously a little tricky at times. When you are trying to persuade someone, the thing to do is keep in mind human emotions and what drives people to buy. What will buying your product or service do for the person? What lifestyle or status will it help lead them to? What does your customer fear and avoid? What will they gain by trusting you and your services? Find out what emotions you can tap, and then discuss the incentives and rewards for joining you. You can also talk about the facts, statistics, or explain who else has jumped in. Use positive words, encourage positive actions, have a sense of humor, a great attitude, and state your message often in a variety of ways.

If you make a commitment to practice these things over time, then you've got it made! You will become an effective and confident communicator in no time and you will start to see the business rolling in!

Liane Bate owns a Plugin Profit Site web business, is a member of Success University, and the IAHBE.
Visit: http://www.HonestMoneyMaking.com, Plugin Profit Site, and Success University

Copyright © Tabitha Naylor

Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful equation, you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will ever find regarding building a successful business will touch on the importance of generating website traffic. Traffic will form the backbone of your business. Always remember that. The day you stop generating traffic to your site is the day your business stops being profitable, and starts being a money pit.

Yes, having a great product is important. And yes, having your company's internal organization well taken care of is important. But, these are just starting points. Generating high quality traffic, prospects who are interested in your products, information, and/or services, will ultimately determine your business's success or failure.

If you already have a site, and think that you're getting all the traffic that you need, then it's time to reconsider. You are dead wrong, and are cheating your business. The internet sales arena is competitive. Only the strong survive. As a general rule of thumb, you should always be striving to be a step ahead of your competition. Increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday. Not later today, not tomorrow, not next week.

Timing is essential, that's an old adage known to everyone. But with generating website traffic, you should always be on your toes. Be a day ahead of everyone else. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To assist you in generating more traffic for your site, here are some surefire methods you can utilize today to increase your websites traffic flow.

1) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site...
Submit articles to sites that contain the same subject topics as your website. If you sell car parts, write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your websites description and services, as well as your websites link. Don't get too wordy, however. Make it as short and sweet as possible. Just don't leave out any of the major highlights of your site.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites...
Link exchanging is probably one of the easiest methods of increasing traffic to your website, since each webmaster will benefit from the efforts of the other. When one site features another sites link, this site potentially fuels traffic to the reciprocating website. And vice versa. The efforts are typically doubly beneficial; since it would go without saying that both website owners are trying to generate more traffic to his/her own website. The more links traded with more sites, the more traffic should be expected.

3) Invest in proper advertising with search engines...
Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Overture both provide advertising programs that are very popular and assure website traffic. The downside? This surefire way to increase visitors to your website will cost some money. The upside is that you can control your advertising budget. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative to do so, since pay per click is a proven method to generate high quality website traffic. Remember, you have to spend money to make money. Trust me, I know how hard it can be to fully embrace this concept. I hate spending money on things that I don't necessarily know will bring me the outcome I am seeking. But, the sooner you take the plunge, the better off you and your business will be.

Lots of webmasters are turning to pay per click advertising system and are enjoying the benefits of increased sales. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it, provided you are intelligent in setting up and monitoring your campaign.

4) Use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content...
Search engines look for certain keywords that will show up in search results. By having the right keyword and/or keyword phrases on your site, you increase your chances of ranking high in search engine results, which in turn, will maximize your websites exposure. You can easily write your own content. Or, if you lacking the time, and have the money, you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Join forums and online communities...
Capture a market by showing your expertise and credibility. When you build a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site. In turn, these people will pass your information on to many other people. Traffic will certainly increase because you are establishing credibility in your particular area of expertise.

The idea behind forums is simple: answer, comment, and ask. With forums, you can leave a link at the bottom of your messages. Don't post a blatant ad when you post on forums, however. It will just be deleted, and you will most certainly tarnish your reputation and the reputation of your website.

Forums are wonderful, in my opinion, since you can always find quality information. People don't tend to give away secrets, but if you have a specific question about a program, software, etc, you can often get a good answer. Not to mention, you can get some exposure for yourself and your site out of it.

6) Offer newsletters...
If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

Newsletters can be a tremendous amount of work, but, they can also be a valuable resource for you. Not to mention, if it's a solid newsletter, you can even make a few bucks by allowing others to advertise in it.

7) Use Viral Marketing...
Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs (or very low costs, if there are any). This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company's name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article, basically anything you can think of. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

I personally use this method with short free e-books that I write, then give away. I also send daily motivational emails to my lists (for those who opt in, of course). These little messages are just a little inspirational message sent out every morning. There are no sales pitches associated with these email messages. Simple methods like this can mean big results.

Tabitha Naylor is a master mentor/business consultant. Please visit http://www.yourbusinesstraining.com or http://www.bigdreamsrealplan.com for more information on building your business.