About a year and a half ago, a family friend started a business selling women’s active wear. She had no website — and no plans to create one.

She sold her goods by driving door to door, visiting every gym she could find. She was doing okay. But the time and effort — not to mention gas — she was putting into it was crazy.

Her products were great, and the people who purchased them were always happy to buy from her again. But her only follow-up with them was by phone. She worked out of her tiny two-bedroom house. And because she couldn’t afford to have someone else handle order fulfillment, there were so many boxes piled up that you could hardly walk through the house without tripping over one.

(more…)

“I’ve read that a website or blog needs original content to get ranked higher by the search engines. If I use content from ETR’s newsletters/website on my blog, will that hurt my Google ranking and keep me from getting traffic?”

Anita Funkhouser

Keyser, WV

Dear Anita,

Using third-party content DOES NOT hurt your rankings. The reason Web marketers make such an issue about duplicate content is that only the original creator of the content gets the full SEO (search engine optimization) value from it. In other words, if you use articles from Early to Rise, you won’t rank as well for the content as we at ETR would.

Let’s say you republish one of our articles about satellite sites. (more…)

Early to Rise is always giving subscribers helpful advice on Web marketing and how to generate business online. But one thing we haven’t said much about is Web hosting and how it can affect your sales.

A Web host is a company that provides server (computer) space for your website – for a “modest” monthly fee. Think of it as the landlord of the building where your website lives.

And you don’t want to take this service for granted. One of the things you need to consider when you are developing your marketing initiatives is the Web hosting provider for your company’s portal. Choosing the wrong one can give you a major headache.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean… (more…)

With 200 million and 125 million users respectively, Facebook and MySpace have got marketers everywhere frothing at the mouth. “Look at all those potential customers!” they say. “How can we harness the overwhelming popularity of these sites to our benefit?”

Alexis Siemon has written before about marketing your business via social networking websites like these. Usually, that means interacting with members of the network, answering questions, leaving comments, and branding yourself as an expert in your field.

And now, (more…)

You may have noticed that ETR’s email newsletter looks a little different these days…

Some might even say it looks “boring.”

But we say “Boring is better!”

Some of the more “exciting” features of our e-mails were preventing them from reaching our subscribers. (Maybe even you!) So we’ve made a few changes to ETR – to make sure you get it in your inbox every morning.

And by making your own e-mails more “boring,” you could see more subscribers receiving and opening them. Which, in the end, should result in more sales.

You see, the most important thing about an e-mail newsletter is not how “pretty” it looks or how “flashy” the design is. The most important thing is the content. The innovative ideas and useful techniques that made readers subscribe in the first place. (more…)

Every year, millions of new websites are formed – and people are constantly figuring out new ways to make money with them.

If you don’t have a product or product idea, you may become discouraged about the whole idea of starting an Internet business. But the truth is, you CAN make a bundle online… without having a single product of your own.

I’m talking about joining an affiliate program and linking their offers to your website.

At Early to Rise, we sell our own products. But we also sell products for others – through affiliate and joint-venture partnerships – and we have been very successful doing both. (more…)

The world of search engine optimization (SEO) is in an uproar these days. If you have an Internet-based business, you need to know what’s going on – and how you can take advantage of it.

As you know, SEO is all about getting your site listed in the search engines’ top results. The higher up in the results you rank, the better chance you have of capturing your prospective customer’s attention. Get them to click on your link, and you are on your way to making a sale.

So knowing how to get those coveted high rankings is critical to the success of your Internet business.

The way that search engines currently spider, rate, and index a website depend on various factors, including link popularity, content, site structure, and a mixture of other variables. All of these can be manipulated by most webmasters and SEO specialists.

But this could be changing very soon!

The word on the Net is that search engines are changing the way they spider and index websites to help them serve better results to their search audience. They are incorporating new ranking algorithms that will take into consideration input that is submitted by “real people” (as opposed to primarily software calculations).

Google (and others) will give higher priority to sites that Web surfers vote for. The way a Web surfer “votes” for a website will be completely transparent. It will not be something that can be easily manipulated by webmasters and SEO specialists.

If this happens, we will see an entirely different pattern emerge – and it will affect thousands of websites across the Net. Many that were once showing up in the top 10 results will no longer be there. New sites (rated using the latest algorithms) will take their place.

Google currently asks Web surfers (normally users that are logged into their Google account) to move their search results around, based on the surfer’s own idea of how important each one is. If they like a certain page in the search results, they can move it higher on the list so that anytime they search for the same keyword(s) they will be presented with their own personalized set of results.

Google claims that this data is not currently calculated in their existing algorithms, but I seriously doubt that. Search engines are constantly looking to improve their search results. By using actual feedback provided by their users, they can get a better understanding of what Web surfers consider relevant.

So that’s the main thing that I think will make a difference in the way results are ranked in the future: Web users will have more influence. In addition, I believe the search engines will be spidering online videos, article comments, and social media.

Having videos on your website helps your SEO now. (Webmasters love to link to good videos.) But if a search engine can actually read the contents of a video, you might have to give more serious consideration to the content of the videos on your site than you have in the past.

According to many SEO analysts, search engines will be looking at criteria like these when scoring your Web pages:

• How often have Web surfers moved (voted) your listing to the top of the results?

• What type of searches have those users performed in the past?

• How many times has your page been bookmarked (voted for) on a major social networking site (i.e., Digg.com, LinkedIn.com, and StumbleUpon.com)?

• How many other sites are talking about your site?

• Does your Web page have video? If so, how long do people watch it?

• How often do website visitors return to your page?

• How many comments does your page have on it? (More people posting comments on your page means more popularity, as far as search engines are concerned.)

What YOU Can Do About the “New” Ranking Rules

The new search engine ranking methods are sure to bring a lot of changes to the world of search engine optimization. But don’t worry. You won’t have to learn a bunch of new SEO tactics. One thing will always hold true: CONTENT IS KING.

Plain and simple, if you have good Web content, surfers will bookmark it, comment on it, and talk about it on other websites. Whether you are offering useful videos or informative articles, people appreciate high-quality content. And search engines will take notice. This will continue to boost your SEO efforts more than anything else.

With that said, keep in mind that no one knows for sure what the search engines are going to do. They guard their secrets like the CIA guards theirs. We can only make an educated guess as to what the future of SEO holds, and try to keep on top of the latest changes.

One more thing. Keep in mind that even a top ranking on Google won’t mean a thing for your business unless you can turn the resulting traffic into paying customers. Read Alexis Siemon’s article “What’s More Important Than Your Search Engine Ranking?” to find out exactly how to measure the efficacy of your search engine optimization efforts.

[Ed. Note: Running a successful online business takes more than just throwing up a website - but it doesn't have to be complicated or confusing. Get a step-by-step guide to search engine optimization, link building, and more as a member of ETR's Internet Money Club. Spaces are limited, so find out now if there are any spots left for the "Class" of 2009.]

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You already know how powerful links can be when it comes to your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. As Alexis Siemon pointed out in her article “Become a Killer Link Builder“: “A link is a shortcut to quickly get you from one website to another. If you can harness the power of the link, you can make your website a force to be reckoned with. That means higher search engine rankings, more traffic to your site, and, eventually, more customers and more money in your pocket.”

But though more and more online marketers are learning about SEO and how it can help deliver lots of quality traffic to their sites, the powerful little link is still a mystery to many. One question I frequently get is about “link juice.”

What is link juice? It is the key to your popularity with the search engines. The more you have, the higher you can rank in the search engines’ results.

To understand link juice, you first need to understand another SEO term: Link Popularity.

Link Popularity is a metric that most search engines use to gauge the “popularity” of a Web page based on how many other Web pages link to it. You could think of it this way: Each link to a Web page that a search engine finds on the Internet counts as a vote for the page it’s linking to. The more links that are pointing to one of your Web pages, the more “popular” a search engine will consider that page to be.

Search engines consider popular pages to be highly relevant. Since they are interested in presenting the most relevant search results to their users, they’ll give popular pages a high ranking. And this will improve your SEO, put your website in front of more search engine users, and ultimately result in more traffic and more potential sales.

But that doesn’t mean you should ask all your friends to link to your site. You don’t want a link from just anybody. You want links from sites with lots of link juice.

Link juice is a way to describe the “weight” a specific link might carry. A link with more weight is going to be more important to the search engines.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s say you’re trying to get a job. Your potential employer is going to be more impressed by recommendations from your boss at your previous company than she will by recommendations from your mailman or your dentist. You could have 100 letters of recommendation from your college buddies, but one powerful letter from the CEO of a business you used to work for will do a lot more to convince her to hire you.

It’s the same with the search engines. Each Web page has a certain amount of clout – or link juice – that it can pass to another page. How much is not really something you can accurately measure, but you can get an idea of how good a link is (how much link juice it has) by looking at a few variables:

1. How many links are pointing to the page? If a page has hundreds or thousands of links pointing to it, chances are the links on that page have good link juice that can be passed on to outside pages (like your page).

Let’s say MortgageBroker.com has a ton of link juice. If you are in the mortgage brokerage business and get this site to link to you, it could pass on a lot of link juice. (It’s like getting a job recommendation from the top dog in your industry.)

2. How many outgoing links does that page have? Pages with too many outgoing links (20 or more) usually have less link juice than pages with 10 or fewer outgoing links. That’s because sites with too many links to outside sites aren’t as choosy.

Think about it this way: If a food critic rates every restaurant she visits as “5-star,” you might not believe she’s got a very discerning palate. But if she gives her top recommendation only to a few restaurants, you would be more inclined to try them out. After all, they are the only restaurants she likes out of thousands.

If a page has lots of links pointing to it and a small number of links pointing out, it’s probably a good page with plenty of link juice. A link on that site pointing to your site would be beneficial to you.

3. Is the page that links to you in a similar niche? It’s important to build up links to your site, but you must make sure those links come from sites that complement yours. In other words, don’t request links from sites that are about mortgages if your business is about sporting goods.

4. How much real content does the page have? Pages that have very little content and are mostly made up of outgoing links have less link juice to offer. The best links are usually from pages that have lots of “real” content and a small number of incoming links.

Once you’ve found a site that has a lot of link juice, request a link from it. You can learn more about how to get a site to link to your site by re-reading Alexis’s article on becoming a killer link builder.

Remember, the more link juice you can get, the higher you will rank with the search engines.

[Ed. Note: Running a successful online business takes more than just throwing up a website - but it doesn't have to be complicated or confusing. Get a step-by-step guide to link building, search engine optimization, and more as a member of ETR's Internet Money Club. Spaces are limited, so find out now if there are any spots left for the "Class" of 2009.

If you feel that your website is in the same category as ETR's, we may want to exchange links with you. Contact us via http://www.earlytorise.com/resources/ with your link exchange request. If your site qualifies as a good link partner, we would be happy to link to your page from our website in exchange for a link-back from your website.]

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The more traffic your website gets, the greater your chances of making sales. It’s a simple precept of Internet marketing. Today, I’m going to show you how setting up “satellite sites” can skyrocket your traffic… and boost your sales in the process.

These additional traffic-building sites aren’t as complex as your primary website. In fact, they are often very simple – targeting one specific aspect of your business.

Think of your primary website as a storefront on the Net. If you have multiple storefronts (i.e., satellite sites) – each with unique content – you’re likely to get more “eyeballs” in front of your products or services. And, as you know, the more eyeballs that read through your sales copy, the more sales you’ll make.

One reason that satellite sites help draw more traffic is that you can submit them to the search engines separately. This means that more of your pages will show up on the search results pages when Web users type in your keywords. Just think – if one of your satellite sites AND your primary website rank highly for the same keyword, you could dominate that search engine results page!

I’ve been setting up satellite sites for ETR’s website. Right now, we have eight of them. Each of these sites is averaging about 30-40 new visitors per day. As time goes on, this traffic will increase. My goal is to have 100+ new satellite sites finished by the end of next year.

Imagine if you had 100 satellite sites, each bringing in highly targeted traffic. Even if each site brought in only 20 or 30 visits per day, that would be an extra 60,000 to 80,000 visits per month!

Now before you start throwing up satellite websites, you need to know that there’s a methodology to setting up good ones. In fact, doing it the wrong way can hurt you more than help.

Satellite Site Set-Up Guideline #1: Make sure each satellite site has unique content.

Search engines are smart. And they do not like sites that have identical content. They consider websites like these “cookie cutters.” If you have cookie-cutter satellite sites, the search engines may punish you by not giving those sites any priority. Even worse, you could be blacklisted and not show up in their results at all.

To avoid this, you have to make sure that each and every satellite site has unique, distinctive content.

At ETR, for instance, we sell a program that teaches people how to make money by importing goods from China. So I created one satellite that was optimized for “China importing secrets” – and I filled the site with content relating only to that aspect of the program.

When you do a Google search for “China importing secrets,” this satellite site will usually be within the top 10 positions. It is bringing in 20 to 30 new visits per day, and each visit comes in via a targeted keyword search performed on a major search engine.

Satellite Site Set-Up Guideline #2: Make sure your site is “big” enough for the search engines to find it.

It’s easy to toss up a single-page satellite site – but don’t expect it to attract any traffic. Search engines (especially Google) love sites that have plenty of pages – and content – for them to index. How many pages will depend on your business – but sites with 100+ pages tend to do better than those with fewer pages.

If you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of pages!” don’t worry. You will begin to see additional traffic with 10 or 20 pages (sometimes even less). And then, as you add more pages with new content, you will see more traffic.

To get that content, I like to hire freelance writers to create articles for me. I ask them to base those articles on information that has been posted by respected publications. For instance, if I need content relating to the medical industry, I might ask them to visit medical journals and government sites to find studies or news releases that they can comment on or summarize.

Satellite Site Set-Up Guideline #3: Each site should have a unique IP address.

A website’s IP address is a numerical identification (like a telephone number) that allows people (and search engines) to connect to it. Most hosting companies provide shared hosting accounts that use the same IP for all satellite sites. This is bad for your traffic-attracting efforts, because the search engines will recognize those sites as being related to one another.

If the content on each site is completely different, you won’t get flagged – but it’s much better to have unique IP addresses for them. That tells the search engines that they are separate websites. Contact your hosting provider to find out how you can do this.

Satellite Site Set-Up Guideline #4: Optimize each satellite site properly.

One of the best – and easiest – ways to optimize your satellite sites is to make each one focus on only one aspect of your business. Let’s say you have a primary website about pets. You could make a separate satellite site for each category of products that you offer: pet food, pet medication, grooming, training, etc. That way, each site stands a chance of getting more targeted traffic.

If you plan on putting up multiple satellite websites, follow the rules. Make sure that each one has its own individual IP address and at least 10 pages of unique content… for starters.

You can also link to your primary site from each satellite site for extra “link juice,” but that’s an entirely different subject. For now, just get at least one satellite site up and running using the guidelines above… and watch the traffic begin to flow in.

[Ed. Note: Attracting more traffic should be one of your top goals as an Internet marketer. For more secrets to doing this, plus step-by-step instructions for everything from setting up your website to writing sales copy and more, sign up for ETR's Internet Money Club. You could find yourself the proud owner of an Internet business that generates $100,000 to $25 million a year. Space is limited, so find out now if you can still enroll in the "Class" of 2009. Learn more here.]

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Keywords are the most basic components of search engine optimization (SEO). Once you know how to use them, you can drive your site to the top of the search engines… get more targeted traffic to your website… more sign-ups… and, eventually, make more sales.

Keywords describe your content – what your website is about. They should be embedded in each and every one of your Web pages to allow search engines to find your site. For example, ETR’s website keywords might include business tips, business advice, home business, and so on.

Now picking keywords to help optimize your site involves a little more than just thumping out a list. You have to do a little research. But it’s not very time-consuming. And it can have huge returns.

In my experience, researching words that are suited to your product prior to beginning your SEO work will give you a better perspective for performing your SEO tasks. And you don’t have to optimize your site for the broadest, most popular keywords around.

Popular Is Not Always Best

I would NEVER begin my SEO process before carefully researching the absolute best keywords to use. After all, what good is it to optimize your website if your potential customers hardly ever search for the words you’ve chosen? Some website owners optimize for words THEY think are important. But the simple fact is that YOUR words might have a low search volume… or may never be searched at all.

I started optimizing websites over 10 years ago (before most people knew what search engine optimization was), and it always drove me crazy when a client would want to rank for a “single” keyword and nothing else. If, for instance, you have a website that sells hiking equipment and you try to rank only for “hiking equipment,” you’ll miss out on a lot of targeted visitors. There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of keyword combinations you could use to develop a good keyword list – like “snow shoes,” “hiking boots,” “walking sticks,” “lightweight tents,” and so on.

Limiting yourself to single keywords is not the way to go. Those keywords are likely to be highly competitive – so, by using them, you’ll have a hard time getting your website within the top 10 results of a search engine. As a result, they’ll get you almost no traffic. Instead, generate a broader range of keywords and spread them throughout your site’s Web pages.

When researching and developing a good keyword list, you can make your job much easier by taking the following into account:

• The competition you will face for a particular keyword. Don’t be afraid to use keywords that are not searched for as often as the more popular ones.

Let’s use the keyword “mortgages” as an example. If you type “mortgages” into Google, you’ll get around 86 million results. So sites optimized for this single keyword are competing with over 86 million other websites for the same traffic. But sites targeting “New York mortgages” instead are competing with only 5 million other websites. And sites targeting even narrower sets of keywords have an even better chance of ranking higher in the search engines… and getting more targeted traffic.

• The specificity of the search term. When people search for a single keyword, they usually get too many results – and not always the results they are looking for. So most, fine-tune their searches by including more words.

Let’s say you own a bakery that specializes in cupcakes. If a potential customer for your cupcakes searches the word “bakery” on Google, they will be presented with nearly 40 million results. If they fine-tune their search to “cupcake bakery,” Google will return less than two million results (which makes the searcher’s job a lot easier). At the same time, by being more specific with your keywords (”cupcake bakery” instead of “bakery”), you get less competition from other bakeries. That means your chances of attaining a good search engine position will be higher… and you’ll be more likely to attract a customer who will buy from you.

How to Pick the Best Keywords for Your Site

There are many free online resources you can use to find the right keywords for your site. Just do a search for “keyword tool” on any search engine and you’ll have plenty of options. I like Word Tracker (wordtracker.com), but you might prefer one of the following:

• adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• keywordspy.com
• keyworddiscovery.com
• tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
• selfseo.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.php
• submitexpress.com/keytracker.php

I once took on a client who was trying his hardest to get his site to the top of the search engines. He manufactured prefabricated steel structures, and had been hoping to achieve high search engine ranking with a few variations of the keyword “steel buildings.”

By doing my research, I found that many people were searching for relevant keywords that he had never even considered. For instance, more people searched for “metal buildings” than “steel buildings.” And there were thousands who searched for “steel pole barns,” “metal garages,” and “metal carports.”

We reworked his SEO efforts, focusing on the alternatives I had found. And in less than two months, his site was getting lots of new traffic and leads from people looking up those keywords. For one of them – “metal carport”- he ranked in the top 5 spots on most major search engines. And that, alone, brought in about 500 new visitors per day.

Remember… there are probably thousands of keyword combinations you can use for your website. Even if the keywords you choose aren’t the most popular… or don’t get millions of searches every day… they can still help drive thousands of targeted visitors directly to your site.

So take your time and do it right. Compiling the perfect combination of keywords for your website will help you immensely with your SEO efforts.

[Ed. Note: Search engine optimization may sound complicated... but it's a fairly simple way to increase your traffic and, eventually, your sales. For more SEO strategies - plus dozens of other money-making marketing techniques you can put to work right away - order your copy of ETR's 2008 Info Marketing Bootcamp "Home Edition" DVD set. You can get $100,000 ideas from some of the top experts in Internet marketing. But order now - the price goes up $200 after today.

Send your SEO questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your name and hometown, and one of ETR's SEO experts just may answer your question in an upcoming issue.]

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One way to attract traffic to your website is with “widget bait” – offering useful WordPress add-ons. But that’s not the only way to make your site more appealing to potential customers.

You see, when you create your own widget, you can submit it to WordPress.org. Once WordPress approves it, thousands of webmasters around the globe have the chance to download your widget to their sites.

Here’s where the traffic aspect comes into play. Every time a webmaster downloads your widget, your link will be displayed on his site. This puts your link – and a sample of your useful offering – in front of new potential customers. Plus, the link helps increase your “link popularity” – which means that you’ll rank higher in the search engines’ results.

At ETR, we created a Learning Vocabulary Words widget. In the first three weeks we offered it, it was downloaded more than 200 times. And it’s been attracting lots of new visitors to the ETR website.

So get yourself a PHP coder and build a widget! If you’re not able to do it yourself, you can hire someone to develop a widget for you at a fairly cheap rate. There are plenty of coders available at places like elance.com, guru.com, getafreelancer.com, and many other online freelancer portals.

[Ed. Note: You don't need to create your own widget to attract visitors with "widget bait." Download our Learning Vocabulary Words widget, add it to your site, and you could see a nice bump in your site's traffic.]

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How can you make your website more appealing to potential customers? One way is to install a “widget” on it.

Technically, a widget is a small add-on created for the popular WordPress website software. Many online marketers (including ETR) use WordPress to build out their blogs and websites. In fact, millions of people download WordPress every year. If yours is a WordPress site, you can host all sorts of widgets.

A WordPress widget can be a mortgage-rate calculator, a news article feed-box, a “quote of the day” – or anything else your webmaster can install to make your site more useful to your visitors.

Let’s say you run a real estate business. If you add a mortgage-rate calculator widget to your site, you automatically make it more useful to your potential clients. Offering tools like this is a good way to show your prospects that they can trust you to provide them with helpful information. And they will often take the time to see what else you have to offer.

You can find widgets at WordPress.org/extend/. This section of the WordPress site offers many links to tools that could increase the value of your site to your visitors.

[Ed. Note: Look for relevant, useful widgets. One that you might consider is ETR's own Learning Vocabulary Words widget. Our daily "Word to the Wise" is one of our most popular columns, and your site visitors will likely love it as much as you and your fellow ETR readers do. It's absolutely free - and you can add it to your site right here.]

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Learning new vocabulary words can greatly improve your chances of success. Become a more persuasive writer and speaker … build your self-confidence and intellect … increase your attractiveness to others … just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR’s new vocabulary resource – Words to the Wise

With this plugin your web site can display ETR’s new word of the day to your visitors quickly and easily! This is an excellent vocabulary building resource for your site!

This WordPress widget is available for download free of charge and is licensed under the GPL open source license.