Are you just starting in the internet business world and just going to start your first website or blog?

You have already decided your niche, market and audience and now you need to research keywords for topics to include in your website?

Sounds familiar?

If the answer of the above question is YES, then you must be in the confusion about choosing keywords for starting your new web project.

Most Common Mistakes an IM Newbie Makes:

The most common mistakes which the beginners make while starting their very first project is choosing a highly competitive niche, whose main keywords are very hard to rank. Let’s move forward in the discussion of choosing niches and keywords and what to consider while doing research.

While choosing a niche you should keep the below points in mind

1. Are there good affiliate programs in the niche? the more the better
2. Average payout of the affiliate programs
3. Are there good number of paid results in Google Search ( there must be good number of AdWords advertiser, you can also check Yahoo and Bing Results also)
4. Use Google Trends to analyze about the trends of the main keywords of the niche, Is it stable (is it getting almost similar number of searches for whole year, or is it seasonal)

If you get positive result for all of the above points, it confirms the niche has potential for making good money.

Do not get afraid about the competitiveness of the niche at this point of time. We will discuss about that after a short while.

While doing niche research, the only aim in you mind should be about the profitability of the niche and not about competition, because if any niche is highly profitable, then it will surely have a lot of micro niches, where the competition will not be much higher and can be easily dominated.

For an example “Weight loss” is a very competitive niche and highly profitable too. Now as we know this niche is very profitable (using all the four points we discussed above), we will try to find out smaller niches in this broad niche. If we do a little research there are several smaller niches, like

Weight loss using exercises
Weight loss using yoga
Weight loss using green tea
Weight loss using hypnosis
Weight loss with walking
Weight loss with dieting

And lots more…..

Now find a smaller niche for you and start to delve deeper in it.

Use keyword tools to find more keywords related to your main keyword.

Now visit different forums (you can find them easily by using Google typing “your keyword” forums), Yahoo Answers, AnswerBag etc and try to find out different topics people are discussion.

Now do some more brain storming and try to find out some more relevant keywords.

Hope you got the point

A simple trick to gather more keywords for you niche:

Visit ArticlesBase, for those who are new in internet marketing, it is one of the best article directory which receives a lot of traffic and there are millions of publisher who submit and publish their content daily.

Now search for articles related to the main keyword you decided for your new website and open articles and see the author’s bio box where you will find links which will lead you to the author’s website for which they are doing promotion.

Try to find out which type of promotion they are doing on their website, affiliate marketing, Adsense or something else.

Now come back to the article and see the article tags section and you will find numerous keywords related to that article. Repeat this step for 10 to 15 articles and you will get a bunch of keywords to start with.

After gathering keywords, again use keyword tool to find more.

The key here is, if the person is promoting any affiliate product, they must have done a lot of keyword research in the niche and we can use it for our advantage.

For some persons this trick would seem wrong and unethical, but one point to remember is that we are not stealing anything and these article tags are publicly visible.

So now you got the way to find out some micro niches in highly competitive and profitable niches.

So how many keywords we need to start:

In my opinion you should start with around 50 keywords and further add 30 more in the period of every six months.

As the time will pass, you will have ample content on your website and with proper off page promotion you will gain authority status on the micro niche and completely dominate it.

So start finding your niche keywords today. If you have any question or comment, then please post it here.

Popularity: 7% [?]

In a quest to become the world leader in internet and online computing space, Google is leaping one step ahead by launching its new operating system chrome. If we talk about internet and eCommerce Google is trying to move a step ahead in every field related to online world.

Sometimes it gives a feeling that Google has become the metaphor for internet.

Previously the company has launched a lot of products for search engine business, online advertisement, browsing, ecommerce search, picasa and the list goes on.

Now with its new operating system, Google want to mark a remarkable turning point in computing, which it is going to release for developers next week. The full fledge version is expected to be released by the end of this year.

Google promises to provide the computing power, as LINUX with its new operating system. The chrome operating system will rely on internet for nearly everything. It will be provide functionality for netbook, mobile and desktop.

There are many doubts among developers and enthusiasts who are eagerly waiting for the release. Some of the questions are:

Questions about the limitation and computing power of the Operating System are popping up like what tasks will it do and what won’t?

Will it use internet to run third party applications or will run it from the hardware where it would be installed?

Will it need special applications written for it or can run the general applications?

Is it a step of Google to establish its monopoly in internet and computing world and whether it will only run application made by Google?

Will the chrome operating system use a small silicon drive and even it use a hard disk drive or not.

Google is promising and end to all security concerns over internet like malware, Trojan, viruses etc. the question is how can it do it?

Google promised to change the way we think about operating systems.

Let us wait and see how it proves right on its promises.

Popularity: 3% [?]

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing as the name suggest is to sell a product of a vendor as an affiliate and receive a percentage of the profit as commission. In a simpler sense you as an affiliate, sell products of others (commonly known as vendor) and receive a commission on every sale. The percentage of the commission varies, depending on the type of goods or services the vendor is selling.

If you are selling any digital product like software, ebooks then the commission will be high ranging from 45% to 75%. The reason of such a generous commission is the digital natural of the product. The seller does not need to ship any product and the buyer can download it to their computer as soon as they make the purchase. As the product does not need any maintenance, it further reduces the overall cost for the seller and they can offer good commissions to their affiliates.

On the other hand in case of physical goods, the commissions are low ranging from 2% to 10%, because of the maintenance, insurance and shipping cost of the product raises the overall price

What is Pay Per Click advertisement?

Do not misunderstand PPC advertising as denoted here to, advertising in search engines.( As people commonly refer advertising in Google AdWords, Yahoo or MSN as PPC) Here we refer it to the advertisement you can put on your website, from any third party for which you are paid per click basis.

For an example we can take the case of Google Adsense, where they allow publishers to add a snippet of code on their website through which they show ads related to the content and theme of the website. The publisher is paid for the number of legitimate clicks on the ads.

In this form of advertising the publisher needs not to worry about the sales or any other specific conditions (like in case of affiliate and CPA marketing).

Which one is more profitable?

These both types of marketing approach is profitable and depends on number of factors like niche, your website traffic, your web content etc.

If you have a very desperate niche and getting a decent amount of traffic you can chose affiliate marketing, because in desperate niches where visitors are in need of solution of a specific problem, the conversion rate is always higher. So in this case affiliate marketing would be the best option.

If you have a general theme website with lot of content pages and traffic you can try various pay per click advertising from Google, Yahoo, Adbrite, BidVertiser etc. but this does not mean you can not do affiliate marketing here, you can try both at the same time.

Special Requirement for Affiliate Marketing:

There are some general and legal factors which you should always keep in mind in case of affiliate marketing which we will discuss in coming posts.

Liked this post? Please post your comments here and let us know.

Popularity: 32% [?]

What is Google Commerce Search?

Google Commerce Search is a hosted search solution for online retail sites. Powered by Google.com’s indexing, Google Commerce Search is a fast, flexible, and familiar alternative for online retailers. This product allows administrators to customize their search engines in various ways, with features including synonyms, advanced spelling, and targeted promotions within search.

How Google Commerce Search different from Google’s other enterprise search offerings?

Google Commerce Search is designed specifically for online retail websites. While it shares common features with Google Site Search and Custom Search, only Google Commerce Search is able to provide e-commerce specific features such as product promotions, product boost, and parametric search by product category, price, price range, brand, or any other product attribute you choose.

What is the difference between Google Commerce Search and Google Search Appliances?

Google Search Appliances are on-premise products that customers can deploy in their own data centers, and are primarily used for secured behind-the-firewall search inside the enterprise. Google Commerce Search is a hosted product that is completely focused on e-commerce/retailer sites. Google Commerce Search has several features specific to the e-commerce vertical.

What is the difference between Google Commerce Search and Google Site Search?

Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search are both hosted products that leverage Google’s core search and data center platforms. Google Site Search is a broad product designed to provide keyword search across different types of websites and suitable for any industry. Google Commerce Search is a hosted product that is completely focused on e-commerce/retailer sites. Google Commerce Search has several features specific to the e-commerce vertical.

Improve your shopping experience with fast, intuitive Google search technology.

• Enable visitors to find the right products faster
• Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
• Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
• Increase website conversions and sales
• Boost or promote chosen products within search results
• Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
• Customize, track, and optimize performance

Features

With Google Commerce Search, you can power your online retail experience with fast, trusted Google search technology. Key features include:
Google-quality search for your site

Like google.com, automatic spellcheck, stemming, and advanced synonym options mean shoppers will find what they’re looking for with fewer unnecessary clicks and no frustrating navigation mazes. Google speed, search quality, and ranking capability help users find the most relevant product match.

Scalability

As a hosted solution, Google Commerce Search will insure that increased seasonal query volume won’t erode the quality of your product search experience, so you can spend less time and money on capacity planning around these peaks.

Parametric Search

Enable search refinement by product category, price, price range, brand, or any other product attribute you choose. Automatically generate groupings based on the user’s query and matching items.

Product Promotions

Easy to manage product promotions give marketers and site administrators complete control with guaranteed top search result promotions for custom search keywords you choose. With Product Boost, you can promote specific products, vendors, or product categories at the top of your search results.

Customization Options

Multiple refinements allow you to choose whether to display product images, descriptions, etc. If you choose to, it’s simple to adjust the look and feel of your search engine by adding or removing the Google branding, uploading your company logo, and changing text colors on your search results pages.
You can customize search results further, and integrate results into other applications, by using the XML API. The XML API enables you to access the raw search results for your query in XML format, including the URL and description text.

Simple deployment and maintenance

Google Commerce Search is a hosted platform, which means that your company will be able to leverage innovations and advancements as soon as they are developed, with no administrative overhead. Deployment is fast and easy, and you’ll have access to Google Commerce Search support experts for specialized assistance with set-up, customization, and analysis.

Advanced Reporting and Analytics

View custom reports including result sets, top queries, product promotion clicks, special feature usage and more. Use integrated Google Analytics to understand how visitors are using your online store, and improve the effectiveness of your search results.

How it Works

Once you’ve signed up for Google Commerce Search, your site administrator will follow these simple steps.

Step 1: Submit your product data to the Google Merchant Center and Google Product Search. Visit www.google.com/merchants to upload your items via data feeds, direct uploads, or use our API.

Step 2: Customize the look and feel of your on-site search engine. Log into the administrative console to manage product promotions, upload synonym dictionaries, and control parametric search options.

Step 3: Analyze your site’s traffic and search effectiveness. View custom reports on top queries, special feature usage and more.

Benefits

Search is a critical part of the shopping experience; in fact, 71% of online shoppers use keyword searches to find products (eTailing Group). Google Commerce Search addresses this need by offering an easy-to-deploy solution with Google speed and relevancy.

Increase your website conversions and sales

The average conversion rate of retail sites is barely 3% (Forrester). Yet, with effective tactics, retailers can achieve a much higher conversion rate. For instance, the top 10 visitor-to-buyer conversion rates ranged from 16% to 45% (Nielsen Online). Effective search can bridge this gap considerably: customers who use the search box on e-commerce sites convert at nearly three times the rate of general browsers (MarketingSherpa).

Increase customer lifetime value

Forrester projects that 47% of online retailer revenue comes from repeat shoppers. By enhancing shopper experience, Google Commerce Search can improve customer loyalty, and ultimately increase customer lifetime value.

Deploy within days

Google Commerce Search is an entirely hosted, software-as-a-service offering. You simply upload your product information to Google Merchant Center, and Google Commerce Search intelligently leverages the product feed and provides your website with search capabilities.

Easy to scale

With Google Commerce Search, you are leveraging the powerful Google platform: the speed, relevance, reliability, and certainly scalability. As your customer base grows, you can scale your search solution effortlessly – without adding any servers or other infrastructure.

Add features without upgrading

By deploying a Software-as-a-Service solution, you’ll be able to enjoy the ever-growing number of Google features and updates automatically, without any sort of deployment or upgrade on your end.

Measure and streamline

Retailers who excel at understanding and responding to usage metrics are able to improve conversion rates by as much as 24%, while less responsive companies’ conversions tend to stay flat (Jupiter Research). Google Commerce Search provides you advanced reporting tools to measure and streamline – so you can maximize the effectiveness of your website.

Pricing

The pricing model for Google Commerce Search is based on the number of products/items (SKUs) in your data feed and the number of search queries entered on your site each year. Pricing starts at $50,000 per year.

If you want to discuss your specific search requirements with a Google representative, please contact a sales representative directly.

For More information visit: http://www.google.com/commercesearch/

And Download Data Sheet Here: http://www.google.com/commercesearch/gcs_datasheet.pdf

Popularity: 4% [?]

Building a good, professional looking and user friendly website is a tough task and attracting visitors to it is tougher. This is a common thinking in the community engaged in web design, development and promotion. But if some simple core points regarding re usability and presentation are kept in mind you can make the work very simple. We have discussed some points in our previous posts; today we will look into press release distribution, its benefits and some simple techniques to make it effective.

What is a press release?

Generally a press release or news release is a written or recorded statement aimed for news media, announcing some news from a company. The statement has some “news value” like launch of a new product, changes in policy, appointment of a renowned person in key position, merger and acquisition etc. This is an official statement to be published in news media online and offline.

Arranging press conference by companies or government departments is a very good offline example of press release distribution. In these events the company announces some statement which has a value to become news; later those statements are published in news papers or magazines for common person.

Large companies have their own news letters which they print and distribute on monthly or quarterly basis to their customers.

Big companies also have a press release or news section on their corporate websites. They do not distribute their news release through offline media and other press release distribution websites because they have a large user base that can access it easily.

But if we talk about small businesses, distributing press release through different PR directories can be a very good tool for traffic, SEO and brand building.

In a nutshell if you are an owner of a small business and website, press release submission can prove to be very effective for your online campaigns.

How to write an effective press release?

The profit of a press release distribution depends on the value of the news posted and the way it’s being presented. Always keep in mind; people do not take interest in bogus news and offers. So creating a buzz is necessary for proper exposure of your news release.

While writing a press release pick up a long tail, low competition keyword and write an interesting title around it. In this way you will also get SEO value, as the press release is likely to be picked by news search engines, thus giving you lot of traffic.

In addition press release websites themselves attract a lot of traffic and can refer a lot of visitors to your website.

If you are announcing any product or special offer clearly specify the timeline for it. Clearly state the time period for which the offer will remain valid.

Clearly write your contact information, the contact person, phone, mobile and fax number, email and website. Provide as many ways as you can, so that the prospective users can contact you easily.

Frequency of press release submission:

The frequency on which the press release should be distributed depends on your industry and market. Suppose you are in travel industry, you can distribute one or two press release per week in off season days and 4 to 5 press releases in holiday season. If you are in jewelry or gift related industry, you can increase you press release frequency during festive days (like Christmas, thanks giving, valentine’s day etc.)

List of Press release submission websites:

There are millions of press release distribution websites both free and paid. Below is a list of few of them. Use them in your press release distribution and reap the benefits.

betanews

directionsmag

prleap

news.thomasnet

nanotech-now

npr.org

prlog.org

bizeurope

free-press-release

clickpress

downloadjunction

newswiretoday

openpr

pressbox

filecluster

digitalmediaonlineinc

sbwire

1888pressrelease

afreego

sanepr

theopenpress

free-press-release-center

prfree

ukprwire

pressreleasespider

Popularity: 5% [?]