Sarah Knights Blog

Having spent the last few days browsing through other peoples blogs, I feel more and more confident about moving forward, it’s obvious everyone started somewhere and we all have a path to follow, each at our own pace!!..

Last week on “ Learn With Sally” we were taken deeper into the need for Social Media as a launching platform for our efforts and how to tie them all up, so as to make everything more automated when letting people know what we are doing.

Here are a few things I have learned over the last week, I hope they help.

Content is king.

Heard that before?  I know I have.  The thing I never knew was how to use content to my advantage.  Content is useless unless it is optimized for the search engines.  It must also be optimized for your reader.  You have two, customers- readers and search engines.  You must satisfy both with the same exact content.

Search engine spiders do not like to fish around for all of your pages and links.  This is why many sites offer a “site map”.  A site map is one page that contains links to all of the content pages.  This is a fine route to take; however most people agree that pages with a lot of links on it are valued less than content pages that casually link to other content pages.

Using three tiers allows you to go from topic to sub-topic to sub-sub-topic all by natural in-content links.  For example, tier 1 is the homepage on a Diet site.  Tier 2 is a page all about Diet Foods and their benefits.  A tier three page off of that tier 2 page is about different Diets and Products.  Do you see how the site visitor would like this structure?  They click on “Foods” and are given links to more specific pages about Diet Foods and related topics.  Search engine spiders like the three tier structure too.  It means they do not have to dig through layers and levels of useless links.

There is even more to content than finding profitable keywords and structuring your site into easy-to-navigate tiers.  You must optimize each and every page on your website to perform well and rank high at search engines.  Many people devote their working life to optimization secrets.  A full length article just on optimizing is possible.  Heck, a full length book is possible.  My recommendation is to use a hosting company that automatically teaches you how to optimize web pages for the engines.  Doing that will cause less headache and frustration and it will keep you focused on building content.

A quick education in optimization: place your specific keyword in the file name, title, description and keyword section of your page.  Then sprinkle the keyword throughout the content.  Also provide a link using your specific keyword in the link text.  If all of this has you spinning your head, I recommend going the hosting company I use.  They literally teach you to build a website using blocks.  It’s all simple and easier than you think.

There is one last piece to content.  It must effectively pre-sell your product or service and position you as the expert in your field.  When your website has 50-175 optimized pages for your visitors to read through it will start to position you as the expert.  Your site will become known as the place for information about Dieting, for example.

When visitors find your site through search engines they are seeking information about a problem or question they have.  If they land on your site and you try to sell them something right away one thing is sure- they click the back button and find another site that will give them information.  This is why pre-selling your product or service is paramount.  Give your visitors what they want.  Answer their question and in the process let them know about your services and products.

All of the information develops rapport and trust with your site visitor.  It positions you as an expert.  It keeps your visitor on your site longer since they are actually reading content.  Search engines notice this and rank you better.  How well your site can keep visitors is known as “stickiness.”  Your site must attract and keep visitors for as long as possible.

Provide content that pre-sells your products, positions you as the expert and focuses on highly profitable keywords.  You cannot go wrong with your web business if you do those things.  The secret to content is to satisfy both your visitor and search engines.  Lose one or both and you are doomed.  As I mentioned earlier, it is best to work smarter and not harder.  Your hosting company should be providing most of these services to you free of charge.  There are a small few that do this, but it is well worth the investigation.  Contact me for further resources and information.  Having a successful web business starts with effective content.

Hope you enjoyed this quick report. Next report ” Keywords”…….

Quote of the day

Stay true to yourself…..

During this learning curve there are many things to know, what to do and what not to do, is probably the hardest. The first thing you will notice is how EVERYBODY has the next miracle to make money online, but you will quickly learn to see through the Glam and Glitter of the next hype!!! You will learn how to take action on the right thing and how to let the other 99.9% pass by, I have to admit it is not easy and believe me when I say that, because if you are unsure about what it is you would like to do, you will be attracted to so many offers its frightening, so before you go chasing the gold at the end of the rainbow take a look at what interests you or something that you are passionate about and be focused until you feel more experienced and comfortable about branching out onto the next project.

BABY STEPS

Try not to spend to much time on forums, they are really confusing when first starting out, there are just too many options there and your head will spin. I’m not saying Don’t give them a go, just be very weary about what you are willing to get invoved in, or you will just end up like me with your computer full of information you have know idea how to put into action…!!! BEWARE.. they are addictive.

Alot of how you approach the internet is also dependant on your knowledge of how things operate, if you are quite technically savvy you do have an advantage over a complete beginner like me, it really is worth looking around at some of the blogs that are out there, they can teach an aweful lot about what is trending and how to apply it, some very clever people out there….!!

If you are starting out with your very own Blog thats GREAT, but there are a few things you will need to do to make it super duper, it’s not just setting up a new blog, it’s about how you set up that new blog.

LEARNING WITH SALLY

I have recently started a course called Learning With Sally, about how to set up a blog from scratch, every week I am going to blog about what we (there is a really super group of us) have learned and hopefully will pass on a few things you might not have known. Hopefully as I learn you will also be able to notice the changes in my blog as I progress with the course. At the moment it’s still “really” bad but I am going to succeed. Just got to find out how to add natty images…lol   I’m not worried though Sally will teach me!!!

Have a great day and come back for those soooper lessons…..

Quote of the day

“Life is like a box of chocolates”

Don’t laugh when I tell you that this post is the hardest one to do, where do I start to tell you about ME and my Internet Journey?

I suppose letting you know what it is that I hope to achieve with my Blog is as good a place as any!!  I hope to help you learn about what Internet  Marketing is all about and how to go about it, there are so MANY  challenges and fears that you will face and facing them all and succeeding  is going to be your greatest reward, seeing your hard work out there on the internet is just such a great thrill and we can do it together. Everything I learn whether it is through trial and error or what I have personally been taught I will pass on to you, so you will not have to learn the hard way. Don’t get me wrong everything takes time and effort but if you really want to succeed in the internet world YOU WILL, afterall just take me as an example, a month ago all I could do was play games, answer emails and make friends on FaceBook and now I have my very own blog that I have started from  scratch myself….woooooohooooo!!

I was the most fortunate person to win a prize to have my very own mentor, someone who is just the most amazing person and who knows all there is to know about Internet Marketing and Blogging….How cool is that!! My mentor and teacher is Sally Neill and I am on her course called “Learn With Sally”, we are on week 3 of 12 and already I have my own blog…I am going to take you through the weeks and show you all the things that I learn and ultimately how to go on from there, cos once we finish the course we can then grow our businesses as we will have the foundations for our Internet marketing careers and all that it is involved.

I do hope you would like to take this journey with me and hope to see you again….