Finding your niche is one thing and of course it’s important but without the right words, known as keywords, for your site and that takes research to find the ones you can get traffic using. This is where the vast majority of new marketers make their biggest and most costly mistake and skip the keyword research phase of their work from home business.

I made the same mistake, more than once but eventually clued into why I wasn’t getting the traffic or the money I expected. That’s when I started learning more about the keywords I use in my blogs.

It’s not just about finding the keywords that are used in your niche to draw target traffic it’s also about whether you can compete for those words. The reason being your competition who has been using those same keywords for years.

Do the right keyword research and you could find your blog being listed at the top of Google’s search results for those phrases but it starts with the right keywords, ones you really can rank with. This means they also have to be money words as not all keywords are money words.

You hear a lot of dog training examples when it comes to learning about keywords as it’s a very popular niche with a lot of competition. You need to know the exact phrase to use as even pluralizing a word can make a difference. Knowing things like this can help you work in better phrases to start earning.

Top keywords are great if you have been using them for years but for new sites keyword research needs to go another step forward by finding the long tail keywords which are keywords with more words in front or at the end.

Dog training without quotes has 48 million results. Dog training with quotes, meaning people are being very specific and are using an exact phrase, has  28 million results. Both are way too competitive for any newbie to start with.

Use Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are keywords that have a suffix or prefix attached like a tail on a cat. You can do so much better when you find and use long tail keywords.

One of the little tricks I use to make long tail keywords from competitive ones is to use my location. Doing this helps me get target traffic that is localized which has far less competition. If you are in a huge city like Toronto, LA, New York, Vancouver, etc you will need to do more than just localize, but it’s a good start.

Your goal is to select keywords that will garner you the most searches per words. What you’re looking for is something with little competition but a lot of searches. You can shell out money to pay for fancy keyword tools like Market Samurai to help you in your quest, but there are free alternative tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tool where you still get the information you need to get the traffic you want.

I read about people using typos to get traffic but I don’t care to use typos on my pages, not on purpose anyways. It looks unprofessional and even though you might get more traffic you may also lose traffic because you can’t spell right.

Start Your Business With A Keyworded Domain

Once you have your keywords which includes your long tail keywords your next step should be to purchase a keyworded domain from GoDaddy.com or similar site. You also want to have it hosted where you can get lots of traffic without any technical problems, for me that HostGator.com.

Having a keyworded domain just looks to have more authority than a non keyworded domain. I have proven this to myself on a number of occasions and today I won’t buy a domain unless it’s keyworded.

Use Your Keywords Wisely

You have your keywords and now you need to be sure you use them wisely, without spamming. This means in your page or blog post title as close to the beginning as possible.

Keyword Density Is Important

If your keyword is ‘dog training in Mount Albert’ then be sure you have it in your title but also peppered throughout your article or post, again without spamming the search engines. I like to have a keyword density between 2 and 5 percent. So for every one hundred words I like to include my keywords 2 to 5 times.

Keyword Location Is Important

Where you place your keywords is important. I see some who try to get their keyword in immediately and then it doesn’t seem like they care to use it at all after that. You need to let the search engines know your focus and that means your keyword should be spread across your article.

I like the first paragraph, within the first couple of hundred words. I also like to have my key phrase used at the end in the call to action. Then I sprinkle my phrase through the rest of the article until I have the keyword density I want.

I didn’t mention it at the beginning but knowing how your competition is using your keyword phrases will give you an idea of what you will have to do to compete so you get your share of the traffic. For this purpose I use Keyword Elite which saves me hours of research time and time is money.

There is a lot of competition for eyeballs in today’s niches as so many people today want to work from home to make extra money and most of them are trying blogging.

Everything you can do to to make your blog better than the next is only going to help your work at home business.

The kind of traffic you get to your blog is important, even vital. The wrong traffic will arrive and wonder why they are there. It’s seldom a non targeted visitor will stay on your blog and even less often they would ever click and make money for you. It takes targeted traffic to make a living online today.

There are millions upon millions of web pages, which of course include blog pages, that don’t get any target traffic at all. The only good thing about these blogs is the fact they are no competition to you.

Getting The Right Keywords First

Blogging success takes proper keyword research and takes time. Using paid tools like Keyword Elite is how I get the task of keyword research done faster and more efficiently but it still takes time to find the best keywords for right now, not 2 years down the road.

Know that you are looking for your best keywords, not the top keywords that top marketers have been using for 10 years. It’s going to take a long time to out rank them if you’re only starting now.

Get the keywords right and then be sure to give your readers what they are looking for and that’s usually helpful and informative blog posts. But it doesn’t stop there. You also have to keep your readers on your site long enough for them to click through so you make money or get a new subscriber, something positive.

What does matter however if that you know how to SEO or optimize your articles (posts) for search engines in order to get as much targeted traffic as it takes to meet your goal. For me, as a I work from home and blog for profit it’s about making money.

Keep Your Reader Long Enough To Get The Click

1. Oh Many My Eyes Are Burning

I’ve seen a lot of pages, not just blogs, that are not designed for human readers. I am not sure what would posses someone to choose a colour scheme that makes it next to impossible to read their page. Well I don’t I just put on my sunglasses and click the back button or close the  window.

The first thing you need to do, other than the proper research of course, is to make your site visually appealing to your visitor.

2. Get To The Point Before I Just Leave

I don’t mind a story or some humour, actually I like that but only to a point. If I am visiting your blog for a specific reason, like learning something new, like when I am on a fact finding mission, I don’t usually want to waste my time getting through content to find that info.

Two things help me. One, break your article into sections using headings. It makes it easier for me to locate that info I’m looking for. Second, don’t use a lot of filler, just get to the point and you’re likely to get me to the click. Plus I’m likely to return again.

3. Keyword Density Shouldn’t Become Spamming

Search engine optimization or SEO is important and that include how you use your keywords. Don’t go wild and put your keyword in every sentence thinking it will get you more traffic. It might just backfire and be seen as spam by search engines, which can result in your page going in the opposite direction.

You may see your page go deeper in the search rankings and you get less targeted traffic, which costs you money.

Personally I like to have a keyword density of between 2 and 6 percent meaning for every one hundred words you would use your keyword 2 to 6 times.

People that get overly spammy with their keywords usually aren’t writing for humans and tend to use article spinner to help them get quantity of content over quality. Don’t get me wrong, I use The Best Spinner and love it however I write each article for my human visitors.

When I land on a page that is written for the search engines specifically I usually see words and phrases that don’t fit the context because the blogger didn’t’ bother to proof read the results. Most often I leave those pages and never return as I am not a search engine.

Blogging for profit is not that tough, but it does take a keyword focus and avoid writing for search engines, keeping your human target visitors in mind at all times as they are your bread and butter if you’re a work from home blogger, blogging for profit like I do.

It doesn’t really matter what you call it, work at home jobs, work at home opportunities or even jobs I can work at home it’s tough finding one through all the scams out there today.

Yes it can be very frustrating and stressful, especially if you’re currently unemployed. You are not alone either as work at home jobs are so in demand in our current economy.

How NOT To Start A Work At Home Job

I quit my day job but I took my skills with me and started my own work from home job as a computer instructor, web designer and hobby blogger. It’s a great way to make money but not something you should quit your day job to do. So I would suggest you skip work from home blogging as a career.

If I were able to go back in time I would have kept my day job, started a work from home business in my spare time and waited until I was earning enough to make it a smart move. I wasn’t the smartest, admittedly but hung in there long enough to start making money. Sadly my wife had to support us, that’s not always an option.

Are There Real Work At Home Jobs?

Trying to find a legit work at home job can be most frustrating and confusing mostly due to there being so many listing that show up when searching work at home jobs and listings.

Then there are those ads that appear on the pages you find. It’s hard to tell which are legit and which might just be scams.

Work At Home Job Listings

I would suggest you start with legit sites and for me that would be WAHM.com work at home job listings. Here you will be able to do a search for your location, if you’re in the U.S.

Local Work At Home Jobs

I live in Canada but my home is in New Brunswick and more specifically Moncton, so I can narrow searches from global to local by adding my province and/or city. It took a search showing millions of results down to thousands, which is not so overwhelming.

If I were to be looking for a work from home job I would use the search as follows:

• work at home jobs Moncton
• work from home jobs Moncton
• “work at home jobs” +Moncton
• “work from home jobs” +Moncton

Using quotes helps to focus on a specific term rather than each word and using the plus sign along with your location make it specific to your location. It can certainly make it easier and more focused.

To take things a step further you could even add the type of work at home job you are interested in, just by including the job type, such as typing or data entry, in the local search.

Example: “work at home typing jobs” Moncton or “work at home data entry jobs” Moncton

Immediately my 130,000 previous search results dropped to 440 results and they are more specific to your search. The data entry search drop the results to less than 2,000.

Next, when using Google for your searches you can type in your phrase, such as work at home without hitting enter and Google will show you a drop down list of choices. This can give you ideas of things you may not have thought of.

Work at Home Jobs Part Two Coming Soon

As a work from home marketer I started my business with static websites but once blogs came on the scene I gave blogging a try. I loved the idea of a blog and found it so easy to update which wasn’t the case with my static sites.

Before long I was converting my static sites into blog and the rest is history. I also found that search engines, like Google, love blogs, probably because they are updated so frequently. Just a couple of months I had better ranking than any of my non-blog sites.

Since then blogging has seen more and more attention and quickly grew into a great way to communicate with your visitors. I’m into affiliate marketing as a work from home marketer but not every one has a blog for profit.

Whatever your reason for blogging you can always benefit from a few blogging tips that will help you get more visitors. After all it’s a real pain to write content that no one sees, right. It’s kind of a blow to the ego and self esteem. Might as well get it right if you’re going to blog.

1. It’s All About The Blog Post Title

When people are using search engines to find what they are looking for they will be shown sites based on their search criteria in the search results page. It’s your blog post page title that is shown and needs to be keyword focused as well as catchy enough to attract the click.

I pass right over many sites listed in search results because the title doesn’t match my search criteria, even though they were listed. It’s so worth your time to come up with a title that will grab me by the eyes and make me click it.

Example: I am looking for some helpful tips about bass fishing and search Google for the phrase ‘bass fishing tips’. When I look at the listings I look for titles that match my search text. If the first site listed says ‘Bass Fishing Boat Tips’ I might just ignore it and move down the listing until I see something closer, such as, ‘The Bass Fishing Tips That Netted Me My First Trophy’.

If you can’t get people to click your listing you need to work on your blog post titles.

2. Add A Description And Tags

All my self hosted blogs are WordPress blogs. I like them because I can have so many great themes, a different one for every blog if I want. But I also focus on SEO by using my favourite plugin called All-In-One SEO.

I make sure I add a keyworded description and keywords. Next I add relevant tags under the tag section.

The combination of your keywords and tags make it easier for search engines to determine your real focus.

3. Use Headings To Break Up Text

As a work from home blogger I put in a lot of time reading and learning from other blogs. I, like so many others, tend to be in a hurry most of the time and I can’t stand looking at an entire page of text with no breaks.

I don’t care to read through too much fluff and want to get to the meat of the post or article. For this reason I like to see heading that not only break up a page of text but also indicate what’s in the following text.

Keyword your headings and you will find search engines love your blog even more. Add in our next tip and you have real power in your blogging.

4. A Picture Says A Thousand Words

That’s me on the right. I didn’t have time to comb my hair so please excuse me. Okay it’s a picture from our last Halloween. It was fun watching the expressions on kids faces when they saw this open the door.

Yes headings are important and great for quickly scanning an article or post for the info you need.

You can also add images to your post. An image can say a lot but using the ALT tag with images allows you to say more by adding a keyworded phrase, which the search engines can read.

A picture is also a great way to break up your post and adds value to your post as it can keep your reader reading longer. The longer you can keep your visitor on a page the more likely they are to click a link or banner ad and you make money.

5. Get Your Reader Involved In Your Post

I love it when my readers take an interest in my blog post and take the time to leave a blog comment. When I am writing blog posts I want to get my readers taking part so I try to word my content so that they will want to make a comment and get involved.

I also do my best to offer content my readers like enough to return in the future for more. As a work from home affiliate marketer this is part of how I make my living. If I can’t get return visitors it’s unlikely I will make money as people don’t usually buy on the first visit, sometimes not even until they have returned 5 or 6 times.

This is part of why it’s important to keep your niche focus and don’t go off topic much. I have left many blogs because they strayed too far from their niche and I lost interest.

Now it’s time for you to get involved in my blog which can result in visitors to your own blog.

What’s a blogging tip you can add that would help others be better bloggers?

Today I work from home as a blogger. I used to have many websites that I found hard to make a real living with and slowly started converting them to niche blogs and started making more money on a regular basis. Now there are countless numbers of blogs.

So would you be just wasting your time if you started a bog today? I sounds like it would hard to get any eyes on your blog posts, doesn’t it. Well I felt that way for a while but didn’t it anyways and I not only get traffic, I get target traffic that keeps increasing and I make money. It does take work and planning but it works.

1. Just Want To Say What Is On My Mind

Because I love fishing so much I started a fly fishing blog to share my fly fishing adventures. I wasn’t looking to make money. I just wanted to share what I know about fishing that keeps me so addicted. It didn’t’ take long before it was far more than just a fly fishing blog.

Before I knew it I had people asking if I would take them fishing and made a few new fishing buddies. Next I added some affiliate links for products I use and people started buying them and I was making money. But I started with the desire to just share what I know.

2. Long Distance Communicating Online

I like sharing ideas with like minded people and do just that with my blogs. I communicate with people all around the world, making new friends I may never actually meet. When you deal with like minded people it’s great to share ideas long distance.

I find a lot of blogs through niche related forums. It’s a great way to make new friends and get more targeted traffic to your own blog.

3. Finding Support For Your Cause

Blogs are ideal for those with a cause they want support for. What a great way to get the word out and it doesn’t have to be just your blog. Very quickly one blog post can pretty much become viral as your readers share with other bloggers.

After having a heart attack I started blogging about my condition and before I knew it I had more helpful info than I could ever read. I learned more in a few days of blogging than I had from my own doctor in months of visits.

4. Blogging Can Expand Minds

Blogs are great for sharing but I find blogging great for learning things and keeping my mind active with thoughts of hobbies and interest, like my acoustic guitar blog. I share what I learn which leads other like minded people to respond.

Many time their response, in the comment, leads me to other blogs where they share what they know and I learn more about playing guitar or fishing or gardening, what ever it is I am sharing and learning.

5. Use Your Blog To Really Help Others

I realized a long time ago that I don’t have to be an expert in a niche to help others through my blogs. I just need to share what I know and others who know less than I do kind of look at me as an expert. So really being an expert is subjective.

For twenty years I was a computer instructor. I taught courses at 3 levels, beginner, intermediate and advanced. Even those taking my beginner courses saw me as an expert and I was able to help hundreds and hundreds of people become more efficient with their software and computers.

This is why how to blogs can do so well. People want to know and blogs tend to get indexed pretty fast on search engines. The fact that blogs are usually updated by their owners far more often than the static type websites.

Today I have blogs in a variety of niches such as home gardening, how to play acoustic guitar, fly tying for fly fishing and even work from home blogs.

I’m a work from home marketer and webmaster and have been for sometime. I need access to quality webmaster resources so I can make money from home and have found InDigitalWorks.com meets all my needs.

I no long have to pay $47, $67 or $97 for digital products with resell rights any more. I now get my ebooks, software, videos, private label rights products as well as turnkey websites.

Instead I use my InDigitalWorks monthly membership fee, which is extremely affordable and well within more people’s budget, with 1000s of great products to earn money with. Go get a coffee and then checkout the video below to see for yourself.

At the time I became a member at InDigitalWorks there were far less products with resell rights than the5087+ products today. Not going to run out of products to promote any time soon.

Goran Zinic, InDigitalWorks founder, just keeps the products coming and I make more income. Even though the list of products is always growing and the numbers keep increasing here’s an example of products.

• 4000+ ebooks or digital information products
• 500+ scripts and software programs
• 500+ IM related videos
• 150 graphic packages

Learn how to make money on autopilot using digital products with resell rights while your at the site. You aren’t going to find another affordable site with so much to offer with prices that fit most marketer’s budgets.

I have to say that I much prefer selling other people’s products. I have tried creating my own products and there just isn’t enough time and maybe not quite enough information in my head to make it worth my time.

You can use the helpful tutorials to learn how you can get started faster and easier so you can start earning an income now, not next month. I love the fact that so many products come with sales pages, meaning I don’t have to create them myself. I don’t really need many skills of my own now.

Once I have the sales pages upload, although I also use my blogs to promote products, I can just leave it. I don’t set it and forget like so many people say is autopilot but it’s close. I don’t need to return to the pages. I just send traffic instead.

Worried about getting ripped off? I hear you and had the same concerns when I first found InDigitalWorks but their 100% money back guarantee put my mind at ease, plus they give you a full 60 days to see if you’re happy with them. If you’re not happy for any reason just ask for a refund. I never thought about asking after my first day.

FREE Access to 100′s of Master Resell and Private Label Products!

Maybe you’re thinking about starting a work at home online business or perhaps you have already made your start but nothing much is happen. Either way it’s time to learn what you should be doing to make money.

If you’re just now thinking about starting your business and looking for direction you’re smarter than I am because I took way too long trying to figure it out on my own. The key is to learn and I eventually did and now would like to point you in the direction that saved my work from home business.

Affiliate Marketing Is The Way To Go

Affiliate marketing is a powerful method of marketing using other people’s products to make money and was exactly what I needed to make money as I have no products of my own to sell.

I went through a number of ebooks on the subject of affiliate marketing but they mostly just confused me and some even had info that was not right making it tough to believe anything else. I lost some money I didn’t need to lose but most had money back guarantees which I requested quickly.

THE Affiliate Marketing Ebook

So after fumbling through cheap and free ebooks and getting more frustrated I heard about Rosalind Gardner and her Super Affiliate Handbook which was still only $27. I bought it read it and my business life changed, dramatically.

The Super Affiliate Handbook was written with the beginner in mind which was exactly where I started as I had made such a mess of my sites and wasn’t earning what I expected. Her ebook starts with the beginner but goes far beyond the beginner level.

Rosalind’s ebook showed me so many things I didn’t have right. No wonder I was so frustrated. Just seeing the things I messed up previously had me quite excited. I knew I had found the right affiliate marketing training and all I had to do was follow her detailed instructions.

180 Degree Turn With Affiliate Marketing

What a huge difference the Super Affiliate Handbook made to my work from home business. I went from making erratic sales, every now and again and being completely frustrated to seeing affiliate marketing working and making me money.

What I learned and applied was now drawing target traffic to my pages and I was making sales. The big difference was the amount of traffic. I was actually getting far less traffic but  because it’s target traffic I am making so much more money.

I learned that affiliate marketing is far more that putting an affiliate product on my page and sending any and all traffic I could get to it. The things the Super Affiliate Handbook takes you by the hand step by step to your success.

Invest In The Super Affiliate Handbook

Like I said  I purchased the Super Affiliate Handbook or maybe better said, I invested only $27 in my work from home future. The first two sales from my new keyword focused website paid for Rosalind’s great ebook. Are you ready to invest in your future?

I work from home in Moncton and as a work from home marketer making money through niche marketing the best piece of advice I can give anyone thinking about trying online marketing today is to go into a niche they like.

Now that I’ve said that I should add that you might not want to go into a niche just because you like that niche. That cleared things up, right? That’s alright, keep reading and you’ll see what I mean.

If A Niche Isn’t Competitive Is There Money In It

Really, when you think about it, online niche marketing has been going on for more than 10 years and is only going to become even more competitive. Competition can be fierce because marketers have been pounding the virtual sidewalk for years promoting using their niche related keywords.

If you happen to be new at marketing or stepping into a new niche this means you need to do some good keyword research before you begin. Finding the keywords you can rank for gives you a chance to break into a niche and over time you can even rank for top keywords, like I do.

YOUR Best Keywords Will Take Niche Research

I don’t start a website in any niche today before conducting the proper keyword research. The first goal should be to find the right keywords for your new niche focused domain name.

Let’s say you’re looking for gardening information and have ‘home gardening tips’ search results listed in Google. Which of the following domains would give you better vibes and more likely to be clicked?

1. backyardgardeningtips.com
2. homegardeningtips.com
3. hbb2obm.com

For me personally I would choose either #1 or #2 as they say gardening. The third looks like it was a domain used for something else. I always feel more like I’m on an authority site when the domain name is keyword focused toward the niche.

My advice would be to always research a domain name that is keyworded to your niche. Before you take off and buy that domain that’s been on your mind, there’s a bit more to go here.

People Tend To Think DOT COM Today

Most people today will have DOT COM pop into their head over any other extension used. It’s tough not to think DOT COM these days because we hear it day in and day out. I tell all my clients and friends to go for DOT COM domain about all others.

Because there are so many keyworded domains that are DOT COM it can be harder to find keywords to use in your domain and still have a DOT COM, so let me give you some ideas to help.

Add a suffix to the end of your keyword phrase.
Add a prefix to the beginning of your keyword phrase.
Suffix or prefix didn’t seem to work. It happens so now I would suggest you try a hyphen between two words.
Using your city or town is a great way to get keyworded domains using a suffix.

In closing the real key to online success using your own domain is the research you are willing to put in up front. I use a couple of paid tools for this which help me every day. They are Keyword Elite 2 to find MY BEST keywords and Micro Niche Finder to help me find the best keyworded domain names, and so much more.

Now that you’ve learned a bit about choose the best domain name you may always need to learn more about affiliate marketing profits.

I started my online business back in early 2001 and was making money rather quickly. Not over night mind you but within a few weeks. Back then I sold ebooks with reseller rights and did pretty good.

Then my heart exploded and life as I knew it was over. Long story short it took 4 years before I was able to get back into life as there was no fixing the heart damage. I slowly walked my way back to the point I could function. Oh yeah way too many meds too.

When I was finally back in the game as they say things had changed and I couldn’t seem to make anything through eBay any more and started looking at other avenues for earning income.

Then Affiliate Marketing Found Me

I saw the potential in affiliate marketing and started joining all kinds of affiliate programs and promoting affiliate products but I still wasn’t making money like I did when I started in 2001. What the heck was I doing wrong now?

That was the meds talking by the way.

I began looking for some training materials on affiliate marketing. I went through a couple of ebooks on the subject but was left confused and frustrated. Even requested my money back a few times. I didn’t have much patience with the meds I was taking and almost just called it quits.

After a bit of struggling I found a site promoting Rosalind Gardner’s ebook the Super Affiliate Handbook and read the review. Of course I had read reviews on the other affiliate marketing ebooks I didn’t get anything out of but at this point I was desperate and bought it anyways.

One of the best things I did since quitting smoking, although that took a heart attack to get through to me.

Just in case you aren’t the slightest bit familiar with affiliate marketing, like I was at the beginning here is a list of benefits Rosalind has listed in her ebook, Super Affiliate Handbook. I only used the numbered points so as not to be giving away her great content but it’s a start.

1. 1. Affiliate Products Don’t Cost Me Anything
2. 2. Setup Costs Are Extremely Low
3. 3. I’m Not Required To Pay Fees or Hold Licenses
4. 4. I Can Sell Pretty Much Anything I Want
5. 5. I Didn’t Need Experience In Sales
6. 6. I Don’t Have To Hire Any Employees
7. 7. Merchant Accounts Aren’t Required Either
8. 8. No Stocking of Any Inventory, At All
9. 9. I Don’t Do Any Order Processing
10. 10. No Need To Ship Products

As it turns out the review was right on as she’s the queen of affiliate marketing knowledge and so glad she has shared that with us.

Here is a video that I am sure will help you understand better than I can explain it. Enjoy.

A Short Review of The Super Affiliate Handbook

Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook which is known today as ‘THE BIBLE’ of Affiliate Marketing,  and is definitely a MUST-READ for anyone who wants to become an affiliate marketer who actually makes money.

Rosalind’s writing style is a bit humorous and definitely friendly. Her Super Affiliate Handbook is sprinkled with examples of what she really did to become one of the most recognized super affiliates around the globe today.

Rosalind isn’t just writing about what she did that was correct she’s not afraid to share the negative experiences and I like that as it helps me avoid those same pitfalls and obstacles to my own affiliate success.

I have to say that Rosalind has produced an extremely well written ebook, one I can even understand. Her Super Affiliate Handbook covers all the things one really must know to be a successful affiliate marketer, meaning you make money.

I personally and HIGHLY Recommended her ebook and you can hold me to that.

Get Your Copy of the Super Affiliate Handbook today!