Keyword Case Study for WordPress

Keyword strategies are so important to the success of your website business that they just cannot be overlooked. Although word of mouth adverstising is golden and frankly much easier than doing keyword research, using a good keyword strategy is mandatory. This article will go over some keyword strategy insights gained from a case study done over a four month time frame.

My previous article on keyword strategies for WordPress covered blogging tips and the question of where exactly in your posts do you want to see your keywords. While that strategy is the number one strategy you should use, you also should consider what happens to your website as a whole when you start adding good content on a regular basis.

The excel chart below (please click on it to enlarge it and read it well) explains an interesting thing that happened to www.coolchecks.net as a result of posting content to the blog a regular basis.

Many hosting companies provide website owners with a way to measure their traffic through a program called the Cpanel. Cpanel lets the webmaster control a lot of things on a website, but the thing I like best is the daily reports it can give you about your website traffic.

For my four-month case study, using the Cpanel web stats, I charted the results of the traffic I received from the keyword phrase “cheap checks.” This phrase is important to the site because the site sells bank checks.

When I charted the results I could see a dramatic increase in hits during the month of October, for the keyword phrase “cheap checks.” I had only changed a few words on the home page of this site to try to boost the rankings for “cheap checks" and I posted to the web blog on a regular basis.

My monthly hits to the site with that keyword increased by 1273! So how did that translate into real progress financially? There was an increase in revenue from the site of $601.38.

Examining the results from the chart above brought me to wonder about another statistic that I could easily pull from the Cpanel. I wanted to know how many search phrases were used during each month.

The chart below will show you the total number of keyword phrases used to bring people to my site over a four-month period of time.

You will notice a steady increase in keyword phrases. During October, there were 1299 keyword phrases people used to get to get to my site, while in July there were only 685. It appears that the number of keyword phrases almost doubled over four months.

There are several blogging tips you can learn from this keyword case study.

• Adding content on a regular basis can dramatically improve website traffic.
• The increase in traffic improves your keyword search results so you are ranked higher for the keyword you optimized for.
• More traffic means more revenue.
• Cpanel statistics are awesome and should be watched carefully.
• One keyword phrase that you rank well for can affect the other keyword phrases and bootstrap them to higher search result positions.

When you are developing your website business, don’t overlook the importance of a good keyword strategy and the power that it has to improve your financial condition.

Passionate Blogging Works

John Chow

Have you ever wondered why some blogs become wildly successful while other blogs become ghost towns that no one visits?

In a recent interview on Breakfast Television, expert blogger John Chow was asked what is the biggest mistake that new bloggers make when they start blogging. His response was that it is a big mistake to start blogging just for the money. He recommends doing a blog just for fun.

When people start blogging just for the money, they neglect the passionate side of themselves. People like to read good content from others who are passionate about their topic. Choosing something to write about that you feel a lot of passion for basically makes the job, well, not a job. John said, “If you are passionate about it, it’s not really work, is it?”

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Blogging experts reveal their blogging tips

Learning To Blog Class Sessions

One of the fun things about going to BlogWorld Expo 2008 was listening to expert bloggers reveal their personal blogging tips and tell us how they make money with blogging.  Jim Krukal lead a question answer session with four very successful bloggers, Brian Clark, Zac Johnson , Darren Rowse  and for a brief time Jeremy Shoemaker.

Each guest was asked questions about what made their blog successful and what they recommended to others who are starting out a new blog.  They discussed issues such as which programs were making them the most money, whether Google Adsense was really Webmaster Welfare, and what topics are the best to blog about. They talked about how long it takes to establish a good blog and what to expect from your blog at the beginning.  All of them agreed that you need to have a passion for the topic you are going to be blogging about to avoid the dreaded "abandoned blog."
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Blogging News From BlogWorld Expo 2008

Blog World Expo 2008

BlogWorld Expo 2008 was held last weekend, Sept. 19-21, 2008, in Las Vegas, U.S.A. More than 200 expert presenters in the field of blogging and internet businesses spoke at the 2nd annual Blogging Convention.

With so many great presentations, the hardest thing about attending the conference was being able to decide which speakers to listen to.

The conference started off with Richard Jalichandra of Technorati presenting the State of the Blogosphere.  Technorati.com allows users to submit their blogs and provides people with a system of tracking their blog popularity. Technorati has a list of the top 100 blogs according to user voting and community interaction. You can read the best blogs on a variety of topics.
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Blogging Tips Plugin for WordPress

Blogging has become a popular way of building a website and many times that website can become a lucrative business.  Getting ideas to write about becomes difficult for some people and after they have written their first ten posts, they don't know what to write about. They need blogging tips.

One of the first plugins to be written for Word Press was a plugin called, "Hello, Dolly."  Similar to the Hello Dolly format, which puts a line of lyrics in the upper right hand space in the Word Press Administration screen, the blogging tips plugin displays random blogging tips and suggestions. The tips are just some ideas of what you can do to improve the popularity of your blog and improve the content.  All of the tips are designed to inspire you to be a better blogger.

It is easy to install plugins to your blog.  You just download the zipped file and then open the folder on your computer.  You read the installation instructions and then just upload one file to your blog.  You will put it in the folder called plugins which is under the folder called wp-content.  Then you look for the file in your plugins directory within your Word Press back office and find the plugin called "Blogging Tips." You click on activate. Be sure you deactivate the Hello Dolly plugin if you are currently using that. Enjoy the plugin. 

Add a little fun to your Word Press blog and download this plugin for blogging tips.

What does it cost?

I am releasing this WordPress Plugin with Blogging Tips into the blogging community as “donation-ware“.

However, these plugins do take time to write, update, and provide support … so if you find it useful then please consider making a donation. You just click the button below and it will direct you to PayPal. You can donate any amount you wish.

Resources

When you are trying to build an Internet business to improve your personal finances, there will be a lot of questions that come to your mind.  What product or products do I want to offer?  Do I want to promote my unique product or do I want to just advertise other people's products?

Your business plans should always start with keyword research to see if there is a demand for the products you have chosen to sell.

WordTracker.com is an extremely reputable company that provides statistics for the number of searches done for any keyword.  It also will give you back some other phrases that are relevant to your keywords.  This helps you when you are choosing which keywords you want your web page or post to be focused on.

Keyword Elite  is a software program that will take your research to a higher lever.  It will create lists of relevant keywords and it will tell you what Google adsense is paying for those keywords.  I have owned this software for years and Brad Callen is always updating it to add new features and functions. There is a great support forum to help answer any questions you have about running the software. 

No matter what business plan you end up deciding upon, here are some internet tips for you to make your website business succeed.

Website Development Tools

The tools listed below are essential to anyone who owns a website. Often people will start their businesses by buying a domain name through www.godaddy.com and then securing a good hosting company.  It is essential that you have a good hosting company and it is not advised to get the cheapest company you can. You basically get what you pay for so I like to recommend to people to invest in a hosting company that will give you CPanel access.

This will allow you access to enough free software to run hundreds of websites. ImarktetHosting.com is a great hosting company that gives you CPanel access.  Matt Demsley gives great customer service and will treat you well.  Just tell him Sherry Tingley sent you.

Customer Retention Tools

You will want to keep in contact with the people who visit your website for a variety of reasons.  

Aweber is the email manager that a lot of the internet marketing gurus suggest you use.  One of the fun things it will do for you is to create a newsletter for you out of your most recent posts in your blog.  A very good feature for people who are struggling with content for a newsletter. 

Tracking your Progress

When you own a website, it is important to track the number of visitors to your website and how they got to your site. You can easily do that with some of the tools listed below.   

Google analytics - Signing up for this service will help you visualize and learn what is going on with the visitors that come to your site.  It's good for all webmasters to sign up for this incredible program that is now a free service.

Google webmaster tools - Every website owner should use this service.  Sign up for the service for free and it will gather statistics about your website. It is one way to trigger Google to come out to your website and index it.  Your site will take a while to index, but this speeds up the process and when the site is indexed, you are notified.

Create a sitemap - Google likes sitemaps and so we create sitemaps.  Don't under estimate the importance of doing this. Sitemaps tell Google how to crawl your pages in an organized fashion. Spiders are dumb and they need all the help they can get from you.

There are many places on the web that will help you create a sitemap for your website. This service is free and you just input your URL and it will create a sitemap for you.  You can then upload your sitemap and in your Google Webmaster Tools, you can let Google know where your sitemap is. This will help you get indexed by Google quickly.

See how Google sees your website. Sometime it helps people to see what a search bot sees instead of what human eyes see. 

Search Engine Optimization

Learning how search engines rank your pages is a critical component for a successful internet business. The algorythms used in determing a where a page shows up for any given keyword are proprietary however people have learned by experience what works well and what doesn't. 

SEO Mindset - This is an ebook that is written very well and teaches you basic fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization. I like it because it taught me some good principles and theories of SEO.

SEO Elite - This little software program helps you build links back to your site and helps you find out who is linking to you.  One feature I like about this is that you can give it a list of keywords that you are tracking for your website and it will crawl through hundreds of search results to find out if your page ranks for those words.  It's easy to track the progress of your keyword successes.

Developing Wordpress and Joomla websties

Wordpress is open source blogging software. It has made blogging so simple that anyone can do it. Wordpress can easily be downloaded and there are hundreds of free themes available that can make your site look great.  If you like the look and feel of this Wordpress site, it uses themes from RevolutionTwo.

Joomla and WordPress Templates - Make your website stand out from everyone else's sites by getting a professionally designed template.  The tech support with these templates is fabulous.  They respond quickly to questions you have about tweaking and customizing your particular site.

Affiliate Resources

There are some great affiliate programs you can sign up with. Commission Junction, LinkShare and Shareasale are the places I recommend you begin.  PopShops.com makes it easy to sell affiliate products right from your website. They have a software program that will allow you access to your affiliate accounts at Commission Junction, LinkShare, Google Affiliate Network, ShareASale, LinkConnector, Pepperjam...over 40,000,000 items for your store! They have a very simple way to add products to your website.

Affiliate Elite - This little gem is a program that will filter all the offerings of Clickbank and let you know which programs are actually selling the best in each category you choose.

Making Money with Ebay

According to www.alexa.com, a website that tracks traffic to your website, Ebay is the 18th most visited website in the world.  People who shop at Ebay are eager to purchase and have their credit cards ready for action.  They know what they want and they don't have to receive a sales pitch to buy.

If you want to make money with Ebay you will need to follow these steps.

Sign Up With Ebay - It takes about 2 minutes to sign up for an account at Ebay.  The registration process is free and the hardest thing you'll have to do is come up with a userid that fits your purpose.

Find products to sell on Ebay

Doba. - I have used Doba's services and found them to be very reliable.  I have been in their office in Orem, Utah and spoken with their representatives.  They were very nice to me and gave me good service.  I like the fact that they have so many different products to resell.  They even have a feature that lets you click a button to send the product to ebay for listing purposes.

HammerTap - HammerTap is a cool software program that will let you research up to the last 90 days worth of selling information from ebay.  This information will help you choose hot products to sell. You put your product name in a search box and it brings up all the sales of that item over the last 90 days.  You can see what day and time the listings closed that brought the best prices.  This is extremely helpful for ebay sellers.

Terapeak - This ebay research tool will give you similar information about items that have sold on ebay.

PHPbay - If you know how to use Wordpress plugines, this plugin allows you to show ebay products right from your Wordpress posts.  You first sign up to be an affiliate with Ebay and then you just upload this plugin like you would any other plugin.  You add your affiliate information to the configuration requests and put a simple line of coding in your WordPress post and that's really all there is to it. Some people are making enough money to live on from their PHPbay Wordpress sites.

Hopefully I have provided you with enough resources to get started with an internet business.