The web is the central hub for all things routine in life now. From twitter triggering revolutions to real time reporting of news, the web is increasingly becoming a social necessity rather than a luxury which it used to be a decade back. The quintessential connections to our daily life cannot be ruled out.

With this in perspective, its easy to figure out the vast avenues in generating income from your website. Here’s a few ways you too can!

Content is King

With the proliferation of identical matter and duplicates, its critical that your site targets a niche area. Focus on the area and offer a unique experience to your visitors. You will definitely get the hits, and they’ll come back! Couple your posts with Google/Chitika Ads and you are on your way to generate some serious revenue with virtually no investment.

Search Engine Optimization

Popularly referred to as SEO, it is the ability of a website to appear amongst the first results by search engines like Google, Yahoo, Blekko, etc. A site needs to be optimized for certain keywords so that it can be found easily by users via search engines. For example, if you are selling Cool T-shirts for youth via your site, your site should be SEO optimized for these keywords. A lot of other factors like visits, page rank and original content also contribute to SEO ranking of your page. With these in place, you can surely zoom ahead in keeping cash registers ringing.

Infolinks

Infolinks is a relatively new method to lead users to click more ads on your site, apart from the static ads. The infolinks plugin automatically searches for the most appropriate keywords in your site and underlines them. While reading, the user the tempted to point at the highlighted text and thereby leads to more hits. Infolinks pays a large share of the revenue to the user.

The scopes of generating revenue via your site are cognitive and cannot be possibly bound by thumb rules. By following a few fundamentals, a gold mine is waiting to be explored on the web where money can generated, in addition to having loads of fun! Be genuine, do not spam, be unique and the avenues are unconstrained.

Once the decision has been made to hire an SEO company, the next and most important step is to ensure that you’re hiring the right one. Once the search for an SEO company begins, it becomes quickly apparent that the general message from each company is very similar on three points:

1. Getting to page one on the search engines
2. How fast its going to happen
3. The cost of making it happen

To ensure that you are going to be working with an SEO company that can deliver the goods, its important to dive deeper into each companys level of experience, how their process works, and whether their process has been successful for other clients. The following questions, divided into Part 1 and next weeks Part 2, should provide some answers to help you clarify which company will be the best to suit your needs, drive targeted traffic to your site, and improve the conversion rates from your sites visitors.On experience and the process:

• How long have you been in business” Hiring a new company always carries its share of risks ranging from how well funded they are to their in-house skill sets. Don’t let a discounted price distract you from these key issues. Insist on multiple years in business with a broad client list.
• Tell me about your SEO process If the process doesn’t start with extensive research on keywords and the competitive environment, run away. A process that doesnt define its starting point through thorough research is not going to reach its objectives. A company that bases its SEO work on initial research will be able to define the fastest and most cost effective path to success.
• Can you show me some of your successes” Front page success with targeted traffic and conversions is what youre looking for and if the company has done it with others you’re on the right track. Take it one step further and see if you can talk to the companies which have had successful campaigns run for them.
• How many employees do you have” Avoid one or two man shops whenever possible. Regardless of the talent level, the risk here is that, should they get more work than they can handle or a larger client, your project will end up being outsourced or put on the back burner.
• Have you done search engine optimization for anyone else in my industry” Industry specific experience may not be critical as most SEO work follows similar paths. If they are working with other businesses in the same industry, determine whether there will be any conflict issues, especially if both businesses are competing in the same local area.

There are two old clichs which apply directly to SEO; You get what you pay for, and Actions speak louder than words. To be sure youre working with an SEO that will deliver, don’t be fooled by discounted prices and make sure that each companys actions have yielded success.

The promise of instant first page results on Google by some SEO companies may work for nine word, long-tail keyphrases but the reality for long term success in search engine optimization is something quite different. What works with SEO is when it becomes a habit, an ongoing process which starts with exhaustive research and then requires constant testing, man-hours, and analysis in order to provide the best results possible.

The countless moving parts of SEO also require monitoring on an ongoing basis. These changes may include algorithm changes at the search engines, changes in the competitive landscape, the introduction of a new product from your own company, or the addition of a new search engine such as Microsoft’s “Bing”. Whatever the circumstances may be, turning the following activities into habits will improve your SEO results and increase the numbers of targeted traffic to your site, which in turn can lead to higher conversion numbers:

• Research - Any SEO effort, in order to be successful, must begin with a deep dive into keyword and keyphrase research. This advance research can determine the keywords and phrases which are highly competitive versus those which may drive targeted traffic but are being ignored or utilized minimally by competitors. This allows for resources to be directed at winnable searches versus highly competitive ones, which typically proves to be more cost effective and result in a much higher return on investment. High rankings on search engine results pages, as a benefit of going after less competitive keywords, will also occur much faster.
• Analysis - Analyzing what is happening on your site must become a habit as well, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Google provides a ton of free data and tools which provide information on several areas including what keywords you are ranking for, which keywords are driving traffic to your site and which ones aren’t, which pages have been indexed, where inbound links are coming from, and where the problems are on your site. The information allows for constant insight into what is working and what isn’t both on the site and for off-site efforts.
• Upgrading your site - Habitual site analysis will lead the ability to fix and improve the weak points on the website. For example, if a large percentage of visitors is leaving after visiting a specific page, it’s likely that there is some sort of issue there whether it’s a broken link, bad content, confusing navigation, or something else. Constantly looking for weaknesses, making adjustments, and making sure your site is maintained can make a huge difference in keeping visitors on your site, which in turn improves the chances for conversion.
• Testing and retesting - Test everything you do in your search engine optimization efforts. If changes are made, test those too. Keyword trends can change, content can get stale, and that new shopping cart may be confusing potential purchasers but you won’t know it unless you’re constantly testing and measuring the performance of your site.

Search engine optimization requires constant attention on multiple fronts to provide consistently superior results. Only by making SEO a habitual practice can a website owner maximize efforts, resources, and outcomes to keep traffic and conversions growing quarter to quarter. In many cases, the work required for habitual SEO can be too prohibitive to be done properly in-house. GMR Web Team specializes in all the areas of habitual search engine optimization, generating superior results on a consistent basis. For more information on running a successful SEO campaign visit www.gmrwebteam.com or call (714) 731 9000.

Google does a googly and keeps changing its search parameters; SEO is no longer as predictable as before.

But, an online business is a survival business and to survive the fundamentals must be strong.

I was analyzing a few sites yesterday for the keyword “custom frames”. From the onset it was clear that the good old sites were at the top. But Surprise! Deeper analysis showed that the traffic to the ones at the lowly #5 and #7 were more than those at #2 and #3. How could this be possible? I did some research, could they be on #1 for dome other keywords?

No they were not.

So the logical deduction was that they were getting better referral traffic- either through some other site, WOM publicity or social media sites. What made others refer those sites?

The on-site analysis showed that the sites were well constructed and one could navigate them instinctively. This means that they were friendly. The first step in Great Customer Service! Their feedback section was easy. And it seemed that they were really incorporating those feedbacks.

There were no broken links, no ads popping up. No unnecessary pages and the checkout was easy.

To me it was a back to basics lesson. Search engine optimization has moved focus from customer experience to search engine experience. The only thing that this website did was to maintain their website very well. The rest followed.