If you are just starting a work from home business, or have owned a home business for some time, you will have to write content for your website. The search engines are looking for unique, informative content. But, many Internet marketers do not take the time to make sure it is written properly.

A good article should provide the reader great information and leave them wanting to know more, however many articles I see are likely to leave you with exactly the opposite impression – ie. that the author did not understand what they were writing about.

Here are some common problems I see in many articles written today:

Information

Many articles appear to ramble on and on, while forgetting what the purpose of the article was in the first place. Stay on track and focus on one specific element of your subject in each article. Do not try to cover 10 different elements in a 400 word article.

Incorrect or Out of Date Information

It is vital that you do in-depth content research and find the most recent data on the topic that you are writing on. This will make you appear to be an authority source on the topic.

Take the time to gain knowledge of your subject well and use many sources of information before you even start writing your article. Never underestimate the knowledge of your reader – it is highly likely that they know just as much or perhaps more than you do on the topic.

Spelling and Grammatical Errors

I’m not saying that you need to be word perfect, however your article does need to flow and demonstrate a reasonable grasp of the English language. I see many articles where the writing style is simply poor, it is nearly impossible to tell what the person was really intending to say.

Use the proper terms, as examples:

• the use of words like – there, their, and they’re
• and words like – affect and effect
• also the words – its and it’s

People want to extract information from your article quickly, therefore make sure you keep your paragraphs short and to the point. Make use of bullet points to highlight your key points and consider using sub- headings to break things up.

Article Length

There are many views on this, by many different Internet marketing gurus. They run the gambit from 400 words to over 1,000 words.

My view on this, is to make sure to cover the information you want to cover. I like to stay in the 500 word range. That way it is not too long, because most people have short attention spans. But, that does not mean I do not write 1,000+ word articles, because I do that also.

If you are writing an article for an article directory, be sure to check their rules for article length.

Internal Linking

This is a relatively new strategy, however the search engines seem to be looking for this in their ranking algorithms.

This is the internal linking to other pages on your website, or even other articles on your website. As an example, I might link this article to my page on Content and/or Search Engine Optimization, or my article on “A Beginners Guide to Improving Your Content.”

These are just a few of the common mistakes I see today. Whether you are just starting a work from home business, or have been an Internet marketer for years, writing great content poses many problems. So, take your time and write your content correctly, the search engines could penalize your website for having poor quality. And, you will loose traffic to your website, if people cannot understand what you are writing about.

In the last article, Building a Website for Your Work from Home Business, I covered finding the right web-hosting service, using the WordPress blogging platform to build your website, and the use of a premium WordPress theme.In this article I am going to move on to a few strategies you can use to boost your results of your website pages.

One of the most important, and yet most overlooked strategies, is creating web pages that convert well. You might get all the traffic in the world to your website, but if nobody buys anything, or takes the action you want them to, then those are “wasted” visitors.

I am going to start by covering some of the essential ingredients of highly-converting web page.

Write relevant and engaging headlines for articles or page titles

The headline or title of your page is what visitors are going to see first. Therefore, it is important that it is relevant and enticing to the visitor.

Your headline needs to be on topic, meaning it matches what the visitor expects when they clicked through to your site. The easiest way to do this is to base your headline around the primary keyword the page is targeting.

Headlines for your pages also need to be eye-catching and entice the visitor to read further. A very useful resource you might be interested in is Brian Clark’s guide to writing headlines that work.

The next step is to follow through by making sure that your article has quality content.

If your page has…

• Little information of use for the visitor or customer.
• Poor grammar.
• Poor spelling.
• Or, fails to fulfill the promises of the headline.

…then you are in trouble.

Poor grammar and spelling can be easily avoided by running your content through a spell checker.

Providing useful information to the visitor is a bit more difficult, but as a general rule you should make sure you actually tell people what you promised to tell them in the headline of the page.

Content is key to not only attracting visitors in the first place, but in getting them to trust you, come back, recommend others to your page, and getting rankings in the search engines.

Write for humans first

It’s easy to get carried away when optimizing for search engines, and forget that the people who read your content are actually real humans! Pages should be built for human visitors first of all, and not just for search engine robots.

This means avoiding:

• Too many distractions from the main aim of converting visitors into buyers.
• Numerous different colors and fonts that confuse the visitor.
• Poorly formatted text.
• Images and pages that take too long to load.

As you compile your pages, think about what human eyes would want to see!

Effective use of images on your pages is proven to boost conversion rates. With a relevant image your visitor immediately knows they are in the right place, before even reading a word.

Whenever possible, try to place an image (with a link to your offer – or wherever else you want to send your visitor to) “above the fold.” This makes it easy for a visitor who is just skimming to see and click without having to scroll down the page first.

If your not familiar with the phrase “above the fold”, it’s the amount of space you see on a website, before having to scroll down the page.

It is also important that your image is clear and has a strong call to action.

Don’t try to “sell”

Avoiding an overly-promotional tone when writing your content can actually help boost your conversion rate more than if you try too hard to sell to visitors.

We are all bombarded by hundreds of advertising messages every day, and our brains become very good at switching off when presented with a “hard sell” message.

For example, talk about the benefits of the product and introduce a call to action.

Let’s quickly go back over the key points of creating pages that convert:

• Make sure your headlines are relevant to the topic of the page, and are eye-catching.
• Use relevant images.
• Fulfill the promise made by your headline with with quality content.
• Write for humans first. Search engines second.
• Don’t try too hard to ‘sell’. It puts most people off.

Building a website for your work from home business is not really that hard. If you are just starting a work from home business, employing these strategies will help your website get more visitors. If you currently own a home business but are not getting the results you are looking for, re-work your website using the above strategies. This should help get your website jump started. In the next article, I will cover some more strategies, like the use of keywords and promotion. So check back soon.

In the first two articles on building a website for your home business, I covered web hosting, premium themes, and content. In this part, I will cover other elements to incorporate into the website.

Home Page Layout

You will need to figure out what layout works best in your niche. They could range from no columns, two column, or three column. Some websites can utilize a magazine style layout.

Balance the graphics and text on a page. It’s easy to get carried away with lots of images and animations, but they can make a page very hard to read.

Web pages are made up of five essential parts: headlines, content, images, navigation, and ads. Most Web pages contain at least three of these elements and many contain all five.

Headlines

Headlines or titles are one of the most prominent elements on your Web pages. They must grab the attention of your visitors and make them want to read more of your website.

Content

Body content is the text that makes up the majority of your Web page. Content is why people come to your web page and the layout of that content can help them read it more effectively.

Content is probably the most important element of the website. The home page should be mostly content, not just a bunch of ads and images. Google and the other major search engines are looking for content to rank websites.

For the home page, I suggest that you write 500 words minimum, up to 1,000 words maximum. You don’t want it too short or too long, you want it long enough to cover what your website is all about and what you have to offer.

That is why most of the second article covered content. It’s that important!

Images

Images are the visual elements of almost every Web page. They draw the eye and help direct readers to specific parts of the page. In fact, most high quality Web pages have several high quality images to both decorate and inform the page.

When you’re considering your layout, remember that images are a major part of the design, not just afterthoughts.

Navigation

Navigation plays a crucial role for most Web pages to keep customers on the site and reading other pages. But Web pages can also have internal navigation, especially long pages with lots of content. Navigation helps your readers stay oriented and make it possible for them to find their way around the page and the site as a whole.

Ads (Banners)

Right now Google is penalizing websites that have too many ads (banners) above the fold. So try to limit them to one or two ads above the fold. You can place more below the fold, just don’t over do it. I wouldn’t have more than 6 ads total for the page.

DO NOT over use your keywords or keyword phrases in the content of your website. I suggest using them only about 3-5% of the time. Also, DO Not just throw them into the content randomly. They must be incorporated in such a way as to look natural and flow with the topic.

Most search engines will penalize a website if they over-stuff the content with keywords.

Use a different keyword for each page of your website. Write the content of that page around that specific keyword.

Website Pages

As it stands today, subject to change at any time, your website should have multiple web pages. Google has penalized one-page websites, and I’m sure the other major search engines will follow suite.

You should have made a list of keywords or keyword phrase that you were going to use on your website. Build a page around each of those keywords.

I would suggest between 3-6 pages for your website.

Banners

Again, don’t over use banners. The search engines will penalize your website for being “spammy.” Also, keep them up to date. Companies will change them a few times a year. So you want to keep current.

Google Analytics

You will want to keep track of the information about your website visitors. You will want to know what keywords are being used by people to get to your website. You will want to know how many visitors return to your website. You can get all this information by using Google analytics.

Plugins

When using WordPress to build your website, don’t use many plugins for your website. There are literally thousands of plugins that can be downloaded. But, the fewer used the better. I would say no more than 10-12 plugins. Again, this is up to you.

Website Promotion

This use to be easy, but today it is getting harder and harder to get quality promotion for your website. Today, probably the best two ways to promote your website are writing content and social media. Like I said, there are many, many ways to promote your website, so you need to find what works best for you.

I hope that this series on building a website for your work from home business has been helpful. I know it seems like a lot of information, but it really isn’t. Each part is important to the overall success of your home business. The more websites you build, the easier all of this will get.

If you are thinking of starting a work from home business, or already own a home business, one of the hardest tasks that you will encounter at the very start will be building your website. If you don’t know how to build websites, you will have to have someone build it for you. This can be very costly. Plus, you may have to learn HTML coding to make changes to the website as your business grows.

But, really it’s very easy to build websites using the WordPress Blogging platform. And, the only costs will be for buying your domain name (usually less than $10 per year) and setting up your web hosting (usually around $10 per month).

I have built 6 websites using WordPress in the last 6 months, and plan on building many more in the next couple of months. And I’m not the only work from home business owner using WordPress. As of this posting, more than 66 million websites have been built, by affiliate marketers, using this platform. In 2011, more than 100,000 websites are built per day.

So, as you can see, the affiliate marketing community is embracing the use of WordPress. Also, Google loves sites that use WordPress, which makes it easier to get recognized quickly on the search engine.

Here are some reasons that I chose to use WordPress for my websites:

Easy to Use and FREE

The best thing about WordPress is that it is totally free to use. You can build as many websites as you like. Second, most web hosting companies already have a system in place to install WordPress with just a few clicks of your mouse. All you will need to do is login to your CPanel (or your web hosts equivalent) to start the process.

Search Engine Optimization

The most important reason to use WordPress is, because it is search engine optimization (SEO) friendly. WordPress websites do very well with getting rankings in the search engines. The WordPress platform is set up in a way that’s easy for the search engines to figure out what your website is about. The search engine spiders can quickly scan your site’s content and functionality, and quickly give rankings to any new content.

Plus, there are many plugins to help with SEO. The two most popular plugins are – the All-in-One SEO and the WordPress SEO. There are also plugins to help with social media, website navigation, and just about any related Internet marketing issue.

Customizing

There are many, many FREE WordPress themes available to customize your website with. But, some are limited as to just how much you can customize your site. I highly suggest using a premium theme like the Socrates theme for WordPress. This website was built using the Socrates theme, so take a look around.

Like the themes, WordPress has approximately 10,000 plugins available for use. These plugins can be used to enhance the functionality of your site. Some of the most popular plugins will help improve the search engine optimization (SEO), integrate social media, add analytics, and set up the navigation of your site.

Caution:

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just using WordPress is all that you have to do to get rankings. It will still require plenty of work to make your home business successful. WordPress just makes it a whole lot easier for the search engines to find your website and check for any new content that is added.

If you already own a home business, try building your next website on the WordPress platform. You might be pleasantly surprised with the outcome. My last website (which is only a couple of month old) is already ranked on the first page of Yahoo, and starting to climb on Google, in a very highly competitive niche.

Even if your are just starting a work from home business, and have never built a website before, you will find that it’s really not that hard. Plus, you will be able to make changes to your website at any time. Also, you will not have to learn any kind of coding (HTML or CSS). This website is built with the WordPress platform, so take a look around.

Now that you have – chosen your keywords, found some products to promote, and have your website built – the hard work begins. Starting a work from home business takes more than just doing those things.

When you put up your first website, you have to admit that it feels pretty good, but you will be a novice – a newbie – to the ways of Internet Marketing. There is still a lot to learn – a learning curve – if you will.

IT TAKES A LOT OF TIME AND EFFORT on your part to become a successful home business owner.

Once you have your website up and running, you should be now be asking yourself – where do I begin?, or, what do I do now? If you are short of cash, which most people are in the beginning – you can start by:

• Optimizing your site for the search engines
• Writing articles (content)
• Start building as many backlinks as you can

These are FREE ways to start building your website rankings. It may take as long as 6 months to a year, depending on how much time and effort you spend working on your website, before you will start getting good rankings and earn any income.

Another reason is, you are still learning Internet marketing. Internet marketing is something most people have never done before. So there will always be questions on how to do it. There are millions of Internet marketers already on the Internet, so you are behind those people – as far as experience and rankings. Plus, those just like you, building their home business.

If you have some money and want to use it on your work from home business, be very careful who you do business with. There are many unscrupulous people out there take will try to take it. Making all kinds of promises and then not doing what they say they will do. An in most cases, you will not get it back. So do your research on anyone, or any business, that you are thinking of dealing with.

BEWARE OF SCAMS!!!

Depending on your niche and the competition in your niche, it will take some time, to be recognized as a reliable website. Search engines like sites that are active, so writing content and build backlinks on a daily basis, shows that activity.

Once your site makes the top 100 websites (top 10 pages), your rankings should move higher more quickly.

You may see your website jump high in the rankings and then disappear. This may happen. It’s called the Google Dance. It’s nothing to worry about, it’s a natural thing that happens. So expect a long lull before your website sticks there.

It is during this lull that most people get discouraged, and throw in the towel, because they are not getting ranked and not making any money. You have to fight through this to be successful. Keep learning the trade and apply what you learn to your business.

You still need to learn more about search engine optimization (SEO), Internet marketing strategies, how to promote your website within your niche, more about Affiliate marketing, and many, many more things.

There is a reason why 95-98% of new online business fail within the first six months of operations.

I would highly suggest that you join a forum within your niche, you can go there to get answers to your questions, get information about Internet marketing. I would also suggest that you join Warrior Forum, there are many fine marketers there that are willing to help a newbie.

There is no set time limit on how big your learning curve will be. Each person learns at a different rate. Each person will devote a different amount of time to their business. Each person will put forth a different amount of effort on their business.

Important: you must apply all that you learn to your business. Otherwise, you are just wasting you time. Doing nothing…earns you nothing.

To become a successful Affiliate marketer you must be persistent, hard working, and determined.

Conclusion:

Affiliate marketing is NOT for everyone. I repeat…Affiliate marketing is NOT for everyone. Starting a work from home business requires a lot of time, effort, and determination. You have to be willing to learning about a lot of different areas of Internet marketing. And apply what you learn to your home business.

If you are just starting a work from home business, or are relatively new to the Internet home business industry, choosing the right keywords for your website is one of the most important things that has to be done. These keywords will be used for search engine optimization (SEO) for your website, which makes your site more visible on the search engines results page (SERP).

As work from home business owners, we must strive to be on the first page of these results pages on the major search engines. This is how we get free traffic to our websites. And, traffic is the lifeblood of our home business.

Here are some ideas on how to choose your keywords:

Make your keywords very specific. By this I mean, don’t use a broad term like “coffee mugs”. Use something like “ceramic coffee mugs” or “unique coffee mugs”.

Make a list of words and phrases that you think people might type into the search boxes when looking for a site in your niche. Don’t worry about being perfect: just be creative.

You will want to think about the niche you will be in, and what the primary focus of your website will be. Then start breaking down all the different sub-niches are contained within that niche.

Remember – your keywords will be used throughout your website – which includes your home page – as well as in your website name (title tag), meta tags, and articles (copy).

Depending on the number of pages on your website, try to get at least 3-5 related keywords for each page, that are site specific.

If you see that the keywords are not getting the results that you for your website, don’t be afraid to change them. Take out the ones that are not working and add new ones.

It will take a while to get the hang of choosing the right keywords that work, but once you’ve learned this skill, you will really see how this can benefit your site.

Additional Tips:

1. Try not to choose keywords or keyword phrases that are too competitive.

2. If there are unusual words associated with your content that you think people might search for, or misspellings, don’t use them. You will not get much traffic from them, if any.

There are many FREE keyword finder tools on the Internet. I would suggest you use Google Keyword Tool, Traffic Travis, and Market Samurai. Use these free tools to check out the competition for the keywords you want to use for your site.

Traffic Travis and Market Samurai do have paid versions that will give you more information, but you can use the free versions for just keyword research.

If you are just starting a work from home business, spend the time on researching your keywords. They can make or break the success of your work from home business. It is also a way to get free traffic to your website. Which is always good.

If you are just starting a work from home business, or have recently started a home business, the one thing that you must learn is how to build backlinks to your website. This is something you will have to do for as long as you own your work from home business.

What backlinks are, for those of you that have never done Internet marketing before, is linking your site with other websites. You do this by leaving an “anchor text link” or your website link somewhere on the website you want to link to.

The reason why backlinking is important, is because the more backlinks you have – the better your site will rank in the search engines. Plus, once you get great ranking, other websites ranked below you won’t be able to pass you in the rankings.

This is the most time consuming part of affiliate marketing. But, luckily it’s not that hard to do.

Here are some of the most common ways to build backlinks:

Internal Linking

There are a couple of ways to do internal linking. First, when building your website, link all the pages of your website together. The best ways is to make a website map (usually an xml map).

The second way is to add links within any content that you write for you website. With these links, you can link to any page on your website or other content that you have written for your website.

In addition, you’re telling the search engine spiders of the new content on your site and helping them find it, so it can be included on search engine results pages. It’s as simple as creating a link to another page.

Quality Links

Whenever you build backlinks, make sure that most of them are from quality websites. The best ways to evaluate that quality is to:

• Look at the page rank of the website you want to look to. The higher the page rank, the more authority the website has. Which give the backlinks more “link juice”, which help you get better rankings.
• .edu and .gov links are great to have also. These are usually a little harder to find. Try to get links from other websites or forums within your niche. These will pass more value to your website.

Blog Commenting

This is a very easy way to get backlinks. Basically, you read an article and leave a comment about that article. Just be sure that the comment is relevant to the article. Don’t leave a comment like – “great article” or “I agree”. Otherwise, they may delete your comment.

Blog commenting builds your website’s authority in your niche, while while capitalizing on the popularity of someone else’s blog.

Again, try to find blogs with high page rankings.

Forum Commenting

Forum commenting is a lot like blog commenting. You can respond to the article or on a comment made by someone else. Again, make sure it is relevant to the subject matter of the thread.

Try to find forums within your niche, if possible, or use any other forum that you have joined. Also, look at the page rank for the forum, for greater value for rankings.

By using all of these techniques, you will be able to garner higher rankings in the search engine result pages. As you get more familiar with Internet marketing, you will find other ways to build backlinks, these are just a great way to get started.

If you have just started your home business, or just thinking of starting a work a work from home business, learning how to build backlinks correctly will greatly enhance the success of your work from home business. Just be sure to use these techniques correctly, otherwise they just look like spam, and will be deleted. Which would be a waste of your time and effort.

Welcome to Starting a Work from Home Business Ideas.

My name is Alper Dama, I work from home full time on the Internet. I review home business opportunities for people looking to start a work from home business, and those who currently have home businesses and want to expand it.

First off, I need to expel a common myth. Internet marketing is NOT a get rich quick proposition, it will require a lot of TIME and EFFORT on your part.

Secondly, BEWARE of SCAMS. There are many, many offers on the Internet promising a way to make large sums of money in a very short period of time, and without much work involved. This is simply NOT true.

It is true you don’t need to have any experience to start a work from home business, nor do you need to have large amounts of money, you do need to have some basic computer skills. You will also need to be able to devote a few hours a week to run your business.

If you are completely new to Internet marketing, I suggest that you invest some time to learn what it is and how to do it – before you start your home business. Then, take action on what you have learned.

Most of the programs offered here are Global opportunities, meaning that anywhere there is Internet service, you can use these programs. All are legitimate and proven home businesses, used by thousands of people every day.

Please check out the Articles section. Here I will have articles on Internet marketing techniques, reviews of the programs offered on this web site, and other topics to help you start and maintain your work from home business.

Please check back often, as I will continue reviewing new work from home business ideas and opportunities, and Internet marketing techniques.

Featured Work from Home Business Opportunity:

Work from Home Business Opportunities:

While some Internet marketers say you do not need a website to make money, I have to disagree. While you can make some money without a website, you will make very little compared to having a website where you can promote physical products, digital products, Internet services, and affiliate programs.

Work from Home Ideas

PlugInProfitSite

Offers a complete money making website, with multiple streams of income, for FREE. Has free installation, usually with 24 hours. Also included, is their 30 day to success training course, which is one of the best I have seen. The Help Desk for customers, is also very good.

The only cost will be for a domain, which you can get for less than $10 (USD) per year and web hosting for around $10 per month (USD).

The website is built on the WordPress platform, so it is easy for beginners to make changes. So, you will not need to know HTML or CSS coding to use.

Affiliate Power Group

This is a program for those people who are serious about starting a work from home business. It has all the bells and whistles.

Affiliate Marketing involves promoting other peoples’ products and receiving a commission per sale. The commission is typically around 50% for digital products and it is a hassle free way to start online as you don’t need to stock products, process payments or ship anything.

If this sounds like your type of business and you need help getting started I recommend joining the Affiliate Power Group an online coaching and training website for new and intermediate affiliate marketers.

The Affiliate Power Group staff can help you to choose a niche, install your website for you (using WordPress, which requires no HTML knowledge), provide you with an action plan and step by step guides to making a profit from your website. Most importantly you will get daily access to 4 experienced Internet marketing coaches who have over 20 years experience between them and all make a full time income online. You will never have to struggle with making money online ever again!

You can try the Affiliate Power groups for 10 days for just $1, no obligation to stay for any length of time. After that $39.95 per month, with discounts for quarterly or yearly subscriptions. Can cancel at any time.
The running costs for your website include  – domain name registration (around $10 per year) and website hosting (around $10 per month).

Potential Earnings: the earning potential is huge, especially with so many companies offering 50-75% commissions.

The Affiliate Power Group also has a selection of Ready Made Niche Affiliate WordPress Sites.

MyWorldPlus

My World Plus is the a powerful discount savings and cashback rewards system. It allows you to create an online income AND save money at the same time. With MyWorldPlus you get access to a wide range of discounts on shopping, dining, movie tickets, vacations, sporting events and much much more. You’ll also get a complete business with multiple web pages embedded with your MyWorldPlus affiliate ID, an automated follow up system to follow up with all your prospects and weekly training calls.

Offers a free to tour, and full membership is $69.95 (which I highly recommend) for the first month and $19.95 a month thereafter.

Potential Earnings – $25 when someone joins through your link. Plus, 5 levels of residual income each month and bonuses.

It may sound a little steep cost-wise, but you just about make up the cost with your first two affiliate enrolees.

1 and 1 Internet

Is the whole package for Internet marketing. They have a big television ad campaign running right now. They offer everything from domain names and registration, My Website, website hosting, to dedicated server and Virtual server. What more can I say?

HostGator

Offers competitive pricing on web hosting, starting as low as $4.95 per month. Has a profitable affiliate program, outstanding Customer Service, and very little downtime. I highly recommend this web hosting service.

Thanks again for visiting my website. I hope that you have found the information that you were looking for. Please check back regularly for new opportunities and information on Internet marketing techniques.