SEO, Network and Learn With The Donzos Online Community

Donzos.com is a community for the small or medium sized business owner that understands that the web is much more than just a bunch of pages linked together.

This group understands that by giving, and contributing first, their their business profits will soar.

Specifically, this group is interested in the following:

* -Drive online traffic
* -Build long-term loyalty to your brands
* -Using Blogs or Blogization to Build Long Term Client Lists
* -Joint Ventures
* -Using PPC or Google Adwords to Build Your Business
* -Social Networking
* -SEO (search engine optimization)

Before you lay out a single dollar, you need to do the following.

You need to research who is your target market. Because if you cannot define them, you can't find them.

Next, you need to research some keywords. What I mean is that once you have your keywords, you can then tailor your "content" within your site for your target market.

For the best keyword research tool on the planet, check out wordtracker.

This is critical, because in essence, it will confirm and undoubtedly tell you where your market is and what they are looking for and, most importantly, what keywords they are using.

Example: If you are selling widgets, then wordtracker will tell you how many search terms the market is searching for that exact keyphrase.

1. Get a domain name. and take your time with and think exit strategy. If you want to sell your store years down the road, then using your own name (its brandable to you but not to me) may not be the best option. If you are selling your family's patented salsa, then perhaps using your name may be the best option. (I think you see my point)

Remember, the domain is like title to your house. You want control of it, because it is the title. Do not ever give away without control.

2 Hosting is like your electricity. and don't get wrapped around hosting and stay away from godaddy. (IMO)

Hostgator has decent support and some very affordable shared plans. I have many sites with them and never had any issues. You don't need a dedicated until you've proven to yourself and your market that you can afford one. In other words, don't spend the money. You can always upgrade.

Again, depending on the amount of products, I would budget anywhere between 7$ to $20 per month for a decent shared plan.

Finally, the content and the foundation of the house.
Regarding a shopping cart, again, I'll echo what others are saying and say it depends.

If its info. products you are selling then 1automationwiz.com will suffice. and very affordable. If its physical products, then I recommend xcart or Yahoo Shopping Cart. Both have their inherent advantages. I do not like zen cart and would not advise anyone to go there.

I would consider a budget of about $2,500 for development/programming your cart. (that doesn't include xcart software or mods) Mods and additional cart software is about $750. Xcart can be funky out of the package so make sure you have the proper modules to make it seamless once you launch.

Blogging solution is easy.
Self Hosted. Period.

I tell all my clients to go with wordpress with a semiologic pro theme (cost about $200) and they absolutely love it.

I also have friends/clients on movable type. The key (as many have said here) is that its self hosted. That is for SEO purposes.

A Blog Post a Day keeps Bankruptcy away.

How to Start Your Own Blog.

Blogs get picked up quickly by the major search engines for two main reasons

1. Fresh content. The Search Engines Love content..

2. Links to Your Blog. Once you enter the blogosphere, there is links galore.

1. Content - Google and other search engines love 'em because it's fresh, unique content uploaded on a frequent basis.

2. Links - If you are providing some valuable, good content, you'll get nonreciprocal inbound links from other bloggers, and Google will continue to love your blog in a way that's oh, so nice. Picking the Right Blog Software or Platform is critical if you want any success with blogging. Generally, you have several options to choose from, but for discussion of this post, I'll limit our discussion to the three platforms below.

1. Blogger In early 2003 Google acquired blogger as their own blogging platform/software. While the platform is extremely easy to use, the major problem from an SEO perspective is that all of the blogs are hosted on Google's host. So, even if you were to implement the latest SEO strategies on your blog %u2026..www.whatever.blogspot.com%u2026.it won't be the optimal platform for your business. In other words, essentially, you'll be helping Google's Blogger program. Sure, you can sprinkle your blog with links to your "money sites" or business links, but again, its like fighting with one hand behind your back.

2. Wordpress (two versions) Wordpress is a great platform and has two versions and both are free. The first version is when you go to: www.wordpress.org and sign up with an account. There you'll setup a free account and choose your domain name and set up your blog. The problem is similar to blogger. Your domain name will look like this: http://whatever.wordpress.com/ The key here is to use wordpress software and place it on your own server so the domain looks this. http://www.whatever.com This is the best deal of all because it gives you all the benefits of the wordpress software, and drives traffic to your site. Wordpress also has a tremendous development support with free widgets which allow you to enhance your site with free features and plugins. You can also completely customize your site to your needs.

3. Movable Type This is a paid software that you install on your own domain name. It works just like the self-hosted option of wordpress above. I have friends who love the program and the ease of software. Our team recommends using the self-hosted wordpress with a customized theme. Watch for more videos on how to setup your own self-hosted wordpress blog.

When anyone talks about SEO, there are a couple of things you will need to clarify.

There are two separate categories of SEO.

1. On page
2. Off page

1. When folks (esp. many web developers) speak of SEO, they generally are talking on-page factors.

2. The keys to off-page SEO is this.

1. Content is King.
2. Links Are Queen.

Now, please realize that this is a very, very basic explanation of SEO, but what you need to know from this thread is that with all other considerations being equal, content is king.

The King of SEO
Let's define content for a minute. When folks refer to content, they generally are referring to text within the site. For example, when the NY Times runs an article, they are providing content and the search engines eat it up and will give "more weight" to that particuliar site. (again, this is a basic explanation..)

Since the video age, many folks are tending to "class" videos or other media as content as well.

In the context of this community, when folks within this community refer to the words content, they generally mean...articles, blogs, press releases...anything you can do to provide more content on your site.

Depending on how competitive your niche is, this one strategy will drastically improve your search results.

2. The Queen of SEO.
The queen of links are links. Now, when people refer to the words, "links" they generally are referring to links pointing to your site. Now, a few years ago, google used to place weight on reciprocal links, meaning, if I linked to your site and you linked to mseine, google (G) would be ok with that. A recent G update, has been proved, that reciprocal links are NOT ok, and one-way links to your sites are what drive you up the search engines.

So, in summary, without optimizing anything else, you can simply add some content, get some links and you will see a drastic improvement with your sites.

There are only three ways to make money online.

1. Advertising.
2. Information (or content)
3. Physical Products

Every time you search Google, you see ads displayed (Paid advertisements are displayed along the right hand side, while free traffic is displayed along the left side of google's search engine results page)

Those ads on the right are never "mixed in" with the organic results - there is no "pay to play" on Google%u2026 which is one of the reasons Google became the most popular search engine in the first place.

But the sponsored text-link ads above and to the right of the results generate a great deal of money for Google.

search engine. From there, it wasn't much of a leap

Other advertising examples include:
1. Banner Ads
2. Private Text Links
3. Pay Per Play Content. The Yellow Pages are an example of this. In order to get listed in their publication, the uses will have to pay.

2. Selling Information
Information can come in many forms. Information can also be educational CDs, ebooks, consulting services and seminars.

By displaying rich, valuable "content" the publisher of the website controls the price of his information.

Below are some subsets of "information", but information nonetheless.

1. Leads. Many businesses don't want to get into the marketing arena and would rather "outsource" their services to professional internet marketers or part-time webmasters. This becomes a lucrative proposal for both parties. As professionals increase the quality and amount of leads, the professional will pay for the leads that are sold.

2 Packaged Information. Information can be packaged in so many ways, it is difficult to count. But, in essence, the website owner would sell his information via the following ways.

3. Membership clubs
4. Ebooks or Reports
5. Consultative Services
6. Educational Products like CDs/Seminars/DVDs, home study courses.

3. Physical Products
Its one of the most lucrative ways to make money online and one of my favorites.

By selling products online, you reach border- less customers and your overhead is low.

Don't have any products to sell?
That's ok too, because you can sell other people's products as an affiliate, or you can order products from a wholesaler and "dropship" the products to your customers doors.

To learn more about affiliate marketing, click on the link provided.