The premise of successfully running any online business profitably is by first understanding how much you are willing to invest in it, in terms of effort, time, and money. Next is to be familiar with your existing skills, so that you can use them in a profitable manner. Having said that, the top 3 most profitable online businesses are:

Writing – If you have a way with words, then writing can be an excellent business over the Internet. You can start with a blog and then move on to writing several blogs and thus have a blog empire! You can also offer your writing services for websites, article directories, search engine optimization, and lots more. From article to blog writing, from ad writing to script writing, you have many choices, though some can be more lucrative than the others.

However, whichever option you choose, make sure that you consistently give your best.

Information Products – One of the most profitable of all online businesses, information products business is about creating products that give information to people. You can create ebooks, online videos, or even, physical products to sell professionally collected and represented information to the end user.

Selling Products –If you have a knack for sales, then selling products online is an excellent and profitable online business for you. You can sell products online from just about anywhere, be it your home or a small warehouse or a garage. From selling stuff on eBay to having your own products site, there is plenty of scope.

That being said, choosing the right online business for you can be confusing and stressful. With many different online business options available, the problem is to identity the good from the bad, the legitimate from the illegitimate. That’s why it’s important to learn how to choose the right online business for you and to help you do this, here are some pointers.

Work out your own personal situation. How many hours a day can you spend working, how will you manage other things, if you have children can you manage work and them, etc. Will you be able to convert a part of your home into a working office space?

Having answered all these questions regarding your personal situation, it’s time to find out the various online business opportunities available and that interest you. Since you can take advantage of only one or two opportunities, you’ll need to evaluate them to come with the best choices.

Now that you have narrowed down the scope, it’s time to choose the right online business opportunities for you. You should choose based on the time required, the profit you can make, and the investment, if any, required to start the business. Of course, your interest, experience, and expertise also count towards making the right decision.

Remember even if you are working from home, or want to have a proper online business, you will need to devote a few specific number of hours every day to make it successful and profitable. That way, online businesses are just like regular businesses and require the same amount of time and effort.

What Is Google’s AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool?

The Google keyword suggestion tool is a service provided by the Search giant to those people who have a PPC ad account with them. The tool is a program that helps people get the most relevant keywords for their PPC ad campaigns.

Nevertheless, this AdWords tool can be used by even those who wish to find relevant keywords for their articles, websites, and blogs etc.

How to Use Google’s AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool

The AdWords tool can be used in two ways.

1. Using seed keywords 2. Using the URL of an existing website (could be yours or your competitors).

1. Using Seed Keywords – When you enter seed keywords, which is a keyword related to your business, the tool will generate list of most relevant keyword for you. So you can choose the ones you think can drive traffic to your website the best way.
2. Using URL – When you enter a URL, the tool will analyse that website and generate keywords that are most relevant.

The Google Keyword Suggestion Tool is excellent for assessing competition as it generates keywords that get searched for most frequently. So, when you get to see the keywords/phrases that are most popular, using them is most likely to bring traffic to your website.

TIP: Never use the keywords with the most number of searches, and you have a lot of competition for those.

1. Write with passion – when you are passionate about a subject, you will find it a lot easier to write about it in an interesting way. Since blogs are all about expressing yourself, the more you blog about something you love, the more chance of the blog becoming popular.
2. Write in a friendly tone – Blog visitors are attracted to blogs that are authentically written and have a friendly tone. To make your blog personal, throw in personal anecdotes from time to time. You can also write stories, use metaphors, share jokes, photos etc through your posts.
3. Write as if having a conversation – when you write using a friendly tone that denotes you are having a conversation. Visitors will feel good as your blog posts will convey warmth and care. Blogging is all about letting your personality shine through your blog posts while cutting down on the jargons.
4. Know your readers – half the fun of learning to write a successful blog is based on knowing what your readers want. So, before you start typing your blog, think aloud if what you are about to write will be interesting and informative to your end users. Let there be a system, a process to your writing. This is especially true if you are writing a post to earn some money and drive traffic. Short, funny, crisp, and intelligent content is what attracts visitors the most.
5. Focus on the purpose – if you have started blogging for a purpose, you must stay focused on it. Whether it is sharing information, marketing your product/service, or to demonstrate your expertise and experience in a domain, staying true to the subject is very important.

As the technology spread gets deeper, the online presence of businesses in the local communities also increases and this is one of the most important reasons why small businesses are turning towards local search for marketing their websites.

By increasing your website’s rank in local search results, you also increase the number of visitors who see your offering online. Moreover, your site’s ranking on local search result pages is directly proportional to the amount of profit you make. Local search results are typically shown with a map alongside other small businesses offering similar products or services. Therefore, locating a particular small business becomes relatively easier for search engine users. Local search engine results can also be seen when a visitor searches for something specific.

Local results are displayed in relation to the location of the person making the search.

Local search is especially effective for businesses that are considered small as it helps them gain exposure. Moreover, small businesses also profit by experiencing a significant increase in the traffic to their website. Local search optimisation is part of organic SEO and is effective in helping these local businesses reach their niche and targeted niche market.

Organic SEO plays an important role in ensuring local search optimisation yields the expected results. However, as a company you should only retain the services of an SEO expert that is experienced in Organic SEO and local search optimisation so that you get the most returns on your investment.

Google, Bing, Yahoo! All offer local search and small businesses can really benefit from this SEO tactic to expand their business locally and gain local exposure all at the click of a mouse.

Lead Generation

If you already have a list of individuals, companies and titles that you wish to contact for lead generation purposes, then you can do that by searching on LinkedIn based on fields like industry, previous or current companies, postal code etc. Once you have your information, you can simply connect to them through, what is called, a first degree connection. You can even ask for a referral and get a “leg-in” that company.

Tapping Into The Influencers

Whenever you talk to a large corporation, it’s important to remember that you need to try and talk to those who make the decisions or are the influencers in helping you make the sale. There is no point talking to someone who is not in such a position. When you join LinkedIn, you’ll soon realise that you can connect with the decision-makers and reach out to them. However, beware of incorrect information.

Build Your Reputation With Referrals

When you get referred by other people on LinkedIn, you tend to enjoy credibility and build a positive reputation. Moreover, all the people on your LinkedIn list will be able to see this info and this could lead to building more contacts and thus expanding your network.

Position Yourself As An Expert

In order to leverage the potential of LinkedIn, you should try and position yourself as an expert of a particular domain (your small business) and develop your contact list. Not only are you likely to increase your chances of getting more inquires, but you will also generate interest and this could lead to growth of business and revenue.

Let’s assume your website URL is www.mywebsite.com. Let us show you how you can submit your website to each of these three search engines so that your website can get improved search rankings.

Submitting website URL to Google:

1. Click the following link: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
2. Enter in your website URL, ex: http://www.mywebsite.com
3. Type in the relevant information about your website (This step is optional.) You can also make do by entering the category of the website.
4. Next type in the ‘captcha’ text shown for verification.
5. Now click on “Add URL”

Submitting website URL to Yahoo:

You need to be an existing Yahoo account holder. If you don’t have an existing account, create one, it’s free.

1. Click the following link: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
2. Login, using your yahoo ID and Password
3. Choose “Submit a Website or Webpage”
4. Enter in your website URL, ex: http://www.mywebsite.com
5. Click “Submit URL”

Submitting website URL to Bing:

1. Click the following link: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
2. Next type in the ‘captcha’ text shown for verification
3. Enter in your website URL, ex: http://www.mywebsite.com
4. Click “Submit URL”

Congrats, you have just submitted your website to Google, Yahoo and Bing. Now, sit back and relax. Once you submit your URL to these search engines, these may take many days, weeks or even months to index your website pages. Bing takes a couple of days to index the homepage, while Google can take up to 2 weeks. Yahoo takes even longer to index you website and it could mean more than a couple of weeks waiting. However, these results can wary as they depend on many other factors. Avoid submitting more than one website at a time as Google considers it as spamming.

With more and more webmasters trying their level best to build “meaningful” links for their website, in an attempt to top pageranks, there has been an utter state of chaos. Link building is not just linking with any page, whether related to your site’s theme or not. It is a lot more than that, because Google sees every extra link on your site to understand its popularity quotient and thus, its index worthiness.

Google has some very specific ways to measure your link exchanges and that’s why SEO experts have come up with another way of link exchange, called three-way link exchange. Categorised as a White Hat SEO technique, this involves exchange of links between 3 websites. As per this theory, Google will not be able to find out if the 3 sites share a similar theme or not and hence, will accept the links.

While three way link exchange seems like a good method to build your links; the problem with it is that more often than not, website owners create dummy websites in an attempt to retain links received as a result of these exchanges. Since this is not a safe method of building links, it could lead to damaging your website’s reputation over the Internet, which could lead to long term problems.

Link building methods like three way link exchange is fundamentally incorrect. That’s because it mocks the tradition link building method and can also be detrimental for your site’s visitors. It is also possible that pretty soon; Google may start ignoring a large number of link exchanges or, go a step further, and do away with the pagerank system or then launch it in a new design to counter this practice.

Let’s explain with an example. Take two pages, page X and page Y. Now according to Google, when X links to Y, it is counted as a vote of approval by page X for page Y. However, there’s more. Google doesn’t limit pageranking to just the volume of votes (links) a webpage receives. The search engine also analyses the webpage that voted for the other webpage. So, if a heavyweight webpage casts a vote for your webpage, then it counts more and makes your webpage “important”

Now that you’ve understood what pageranking really is, let’s understand how a website is scored on Google and how Pagerank was introduced.

Developed by Larry Page (hence the name Pagerank), while studying at the Stanford University, Sergey Brin also chipped in while developing the possibility of a new type of search engine. This was the year 1988 and soon after that both, Page and Brin left college to start Google Inc. and till date Pagerank is the backbone of all of Google’s web search methodologies.

Every webpage is assigned a numeric value from 0 to 10 by Google and this number/page is what denotes that page’s importance for Google. Therefore the Pagerank of a specific webpage is approximately based on the quality and quantity of inbound links a page gets as well as numeric value (Pagerank) of these links. Some of the other factors that influence the pageranking of a webpage on Google include relevant keywords on the pages, and real-time visits to the webpage as reported by Google’s toolbar.

Google doesn’t provide any other details about the other factors that influence a webpage pagerank in order to prevent spoofing, manipulation, and “Spamdexing.”