Of course, this isn't a sure way of making money, because it heavily relies on driving traffic to your site, and to do so, your site will need 100% attention and updating, it's still the best way to earn money online without investing any money, in my opinion.
So you wanna get started? First you need some requirements:
- Time, dedication, and determination
- A talent for producing original content that interests visitors
- A blog or website
Sounds easy? Not quite. First, it's not that easy to provide content that can really captivate readers, and second, this method is a very slow process, rewarding yes, but a time investment is required. Third, and I believe the most important and deciding factor for your success, is traffic. A valuable commodity, traffic. And by reading on, you'll find out some techniques on managing a website in order to drive traffic.
Search Engine Optimization
Now that you have your website up and running, we're gonna focus on SEO, which means search engine optimization. Think of it as a way to advertise your website, for free. Yes, free. According to Wikipedia, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization)
Now that you know what is this, let's actually apply it to our website. We're gonna be applying SEO for Google, because this is the best way of getting exposure. Yes there are other search engines that you can submit your site to, but we'll save that for later.
Guide to Search Engine Optimization
Before you can even think about properly optimizing your site, you have to identify 2 things:
1. What are the keywords that my visitors will search for when searching for my site?
Example, Bob owns a website that sells gaming related t-shirts. When visitors search for his site, they would probably type these keywords: "gaming, "gaming related", "gaming inspired", "t-shirts", "tees".
2. Once you've identified those keywords, try searching them in Google. Identify your competition. Your aim is get at least into the first page to have any decent exposure.
Once you've identified these two things, it's time to optimize your site. Just a warning though, the following guide will require some basic HTML knowledge.
1. Your page title should accurately describe what your site is all about.
The <title> tag is the most important, because that's the link that users see when searching for your site. It should accurately describe what your website is all about. I suggest to have different <title> tags for your webpages, but make sure they stay true to your website's keywords, so that the search engine spiders(the stuff that searches your site to determine page rank). But also, make sure your title is not too long though, it looks unprofessional, and may shy away visitors.
2. "Description" meta tags
Your site's description will be the second thing users will see when searching for your site, it is right below your title and should summarize your website's content and purpose. It's length can range from a sentence to 2 paragraphs. Your site's keywords are also a requirement in your description because Google also matches your keywords to the keywords that users search for.
Just like the <title> tag, it is helpful to have different description meta tags for different web pages, since it can be a helpful boost to increase your search engine rank.
3. Choose your website name carefully
Misleading URLs will only serve to annoy users. Don't make a website called http://freebaseballcards.com if you don't provide free baseball cards, or if your site doesn't even have anything to do with baseball cards. Trust me, you'll get a bad reputation this way, and will definitely give you a low search engine rank. The best website name is that one brief phrase that can accurately describe your website perfectly, but good luck getting that domain. Remember, with domains, short is good, long is good. Short URLs have a higher chance of being remembered by visitors, especially if it's relevant to your content.
This will end part 1 of my SEO guide, but remember, even if you have poor SEO, as long as you provide quality and original content, I'm sure visitors will come.
Some additional reading:
http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Search-Engine-Ranking
http://getpaidforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=337914
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/01/15/dyi-search-engine-optimization/
http://www.scopeformoney.com/fresh-content-and-contextual-link-building-as-best-seo-strategy
Hope you guys found my guide informative, and please, if you can, spread the word.
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