What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a practice used by search engine optimization professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search.

As Joshua Wexelbaum of Keywordresearching.com explains,

“If you are marketing on the internet, you need to know what words people are using in their searches. Without knowing the most popular words in your industry, you cannot effectively target the people who are searching for what you sell.

Once you find the keywords that are relevant to your industry or niche, you can use these keywords on your website to attract natural search engine traffic. You can also use these keywords in your pay per click advertising campaigns on Google, Yahoo, or MSN.”

There are many great tools that will allow you to do some basic keyword research for free.

First Book Mark this- the Google Keyword Toolbox:  www.googlekeywordtool.com
This page includes the Google keyword tool and the top 50 Google Tools

I would also suggest you download the Google Official SEO Starter Guide here

Here is a quick list of free tools I have used and found helpful.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
recommends keywords based on a keyword you enter or a URL

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook
Free tool based on wordtracker.com API

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
free keyword suggestions from Wordtracker

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
free keyword tool from Trellian

http://wordze.com
one of the better “classic” keyword research tools on the market.
They offer a free limited access membership.

http://www.wordstream.com/keywords
allows you to export a list of thousands of keywords for free

http://labs.google.com/sets
creates a set of keywords based on a keyword you enter

http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions
shows questions people searched for that contain the root keyword you type in

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com
Has a free trial

Trend related:

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
shows keywords that are recently hot. Also archives older hot keywords

http://www.google.com/trends
shows seasonal search trends for most popular keywords.

http://www.google.com/insights/search

shows keyword trends, hot keywords by category, and top geographic regions for a keyword

SEOBook.com offers many more free seo tools including competitive research tools and link analysis tools.

Their SEO Basics Knol will help you get the basics of SEO down in about an hour, for free.

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Free Keyword Research Tools

If you’re looking for a simple but clean looking solution to create your popups then I recommend you check out GreyBox. It’s easy to use and install and it doesn’t conflict with popup blockers. It’s lightweight and you can easily modify the styles in css.

You may be familiar with the popular ‘lightbox’ script and Greybox is similar but it allows you to display more then just images.

I now use Greybox just about anytime I need to create a popup plus I’m always finding other uses for it. As it says on their website… Greybox is a popup window that doesn’t suck.

Click here to download Greybox for free.

Let me know how you like it.

Enjoy!

~Rhonda

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Simple and Clean Popup Windows with Greybox

Here are a few tips and suggestions to get you started organizing your home office, improve your time management skills and increase your overall productivity.

Update: I wrote this post at the beginning of the new year but there are many tips and tools shared here that you will surely benefit from even now so read on…

We all tend to start each New Year with a few resolutions. As we ring in the New Year its a time to reflect on the previous year and to look ahead to the coming year with renewed hope and commitment.

Aside from the common resolutions we have all made one year or another such as, spending more time with family or getting fit, in this article I want to get specific to home business related resolutions.

For those just starting their online business, one of those resolutions may look something like this:

New Years Resolutions:

Actually make some money in my business this year!

or…

This is the year I finally Fire My Boss
and Go Full Time Online!

With the right planning, commitment and tools you CAN do it. It starts with organization and knowing how to manage your time.

Here are a few tips and suggestions to get you started organizing your home office, improve your time management skills and increase your overall productivity.

Home Office Design and Organization

We tend to spend as much time in our office sometimes as we do the rest of our home- and there are days when it seems we actually live in our office. Since so much time is spent here it just makes sense that it should be setup and organized right.

• If you’re just setting up your home office, you’ll want to put thought into the right location. Number one it should be in a quiet area. If you have a spare bedroom this is typically ideal but if not, you just need to get a little creative in finding the right area of your home to work. Think outside the box- something completely unconventional may be the perfect solution such as an area under the stairs, using a screened in porch etc. Your home office location may change too over the years as your family changes.
  

• Make it comfortable and set the mood. From your desk, to your chair, to the paint color on the wall…make this space you. Hang pictures, add candles, plants. Do you work better with a little music in the background or do you need complete quiet?

• Make sure you have everything you need in a convenient location. If you find yourself constantly moving around hunting for things, this is a good sign that you need to rethink your organization and where you keep things. The first step to organizing is to make sure you have plenty of storage space. There are three ways of getting more space. You can increase the amount of storage space ( move your office to a larger room), use the space you have more efficiently (by adding a bookshelf, file cabinet or overhead cabinets) or reduce the amount of things you store in your office.

• The best organization and time management investment you can make for your business is a good desk. This doesn’t necessarily mean an expensive desk. Just one that is comfortable and offers plenty of built in storage space. When I first started my business, I was using a make shift desk- an old dining table in fact. It had absolutely no storage space and things were all over the place. Several years ago, I purchased a complete set of office furniture- desk with built in drawers and shelves, matching bookshelf and hutch…the transformation in productivity was amazing. It’s also a little subliminal in that you just ‘feel’ more like an entrepreneur with the right office furniture and setup.

• I also find that by taking an extra few minutes to straighten my desk at the end of the day or at the very least at the end of the week, I start each morning off better and tend to be more productive throughout the day.

Time Management

We all have one thing in common- we only have 24 hours in every day. By the time you deduct sleeping, eating, taking care of your family, working out, and your day J.O.B if you have one, we can only carve out so much of this 24 hours for actually accomplishing something in our business. The portion of the time you have set aside for work should be spent on income producing activities. You have to learn to identify the time stealers and eliminate them as much as possible.

• Focus on the current project- Don’t let all those great new ideas distract you

Stop trying to juggle 10 projects at once. So you’ve got this great new idea or strategy and you can’t wait to implement it. Now may not be the right time. Instead keep all these great ideas written down in a notebook. Once you’ve written it down it’s now out of your head but not forgotten. Now get back to the current task or project- complete it. You always have your notebook of new ideas to refer back to when you have the time to tackle them.

• Set a schedule and time limits and stick to it

Map out a Daily Method of Operation. Organize your week just as you would your office space. For example: You’re going to spend Monday going over numbers, stats, and planning. Tuesday is for writing articles and blog posts. Wednesday you work on product development…. You set a limit on reading email, your social media responsibilities…even phone calls. You can break each day, or each month down. Take some time and draft out a tentative schedule. You may have to adjust as time goes by but the important thing is to get something down in writing now.

Important: Repeat after me… NO. Learn to say no more often.

• Get Inspired

I also recommend scheduling in some time for some inspiration- whether its a few minutes at the beginning of every day or some time during your week. We all need a little kick now and then to stay focused and motivated. Read a good book on personal development, listen to a motivational podcast, or watch a video on YouTube from a great coach or leader in your industry.

• Use our Time Analysis worksheet

Analyze your time and energy busters. Are your truly productive or just busy? Download this free Time analysis worksheet and find out. Complete one sheet per day for one full week. After doing so you will get a better understanding of where you are wasting your time, what you struggle with, what you hate doing and what you enjoy doing, what makes you money and what doesn’t.

There’s no need to be a one man show these days with all the great and affordable outsourcing resources. Learn to delegate more and stop wasting time on things you struggle with or just hate doing.

Productivity Tools

• Brainstorming and mind maps. bubbl.us is a free service that lets you create mind maps online. You can share them with your colleagues, print them and embed them in your blog or websites.

• Pick up a copy of “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. You’ll learn a lot about how to get your life organized. You may also want to check out, Propelr.com which is a web based productivity application based on David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ (GTD) methodology.

• RescueTime is a free time management software application that you download to your computer. It tracks your activity and gives you a birds eye view of how you spend your time.

• Time Driver is a free appointment invitation system. It makes it easy for clients and customers to connect with you and no more phone or email tag. We’ve been using this in our business for a couple months now and love it. You can check out how we use this tool here.

• Remember The Milk takes the To-Do list to a whole new level. With this free task management application you’ll never go back to sticky notes again. Also available as an iPhone app, Blackberry, Gmail and Twitter.

• Google Docs -create, store and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations and online forms You can work on your own or collaboratively. You can also import docs from MS Office and Open Office. This is a tool I use daily.
  

• Social Media Status Updater: With Ping.fm you can update Twitter and a plethora of other social sites such as Facebook, Friendfeed, MySpace and Pownce all at the same time. This is a great time saver and it’s free!

• With Mobile Apps like Twittelator for your iPhone (download from the Apps store) or Twitterberry for your Blackberry you can keep up with your Twitter peeps even while you’re on the go.

• By far the very best online Project Management and Collaboration tool is Basecamp HQ. We’ve been using this in our business for the past 2 years and it has been an invaluable communication and organization tool for us and our clients. Its simply brilliant!

• Billing and Invoicing is a drag but a necessary task. Freshbooks takes some of the sting out. Allows you to create and send invoices, track time and expenses and more. Several plans to choose from and range in price from Free on up to $149 per month.

• Need a new contract or legal document? Try Docstoc.com, a community for people to find and share professional documents. Find free legal documents and free business documents.

• WP Contact Manager. Rather than being a WordPress theme to help create a small business website, this is a theme that can help create a more productive workplace, by providing a common area to keep everybody’s business contacts up-to-date. You just install the theme, and then start posting your clients’ contact details to keep them in a central repository. (Free)

• Inspired by Twitter and made for WordPress, Prologue is a group blog theme designed for short update messages. Small teams collaborating on a particular project could use Prologue to effectively communicate about who is doing what and when. (Free)

What has worked well for you?

Any tips to share?

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Top Time Management and Productivity Tools

free christmas icons for social bookmarking

Christmas comes alive with the beautiful Christmas Icons for Feeds and Social bookmarks, designed by Dirceu Veiga from Fast Icon Studio.

The “Christmas Social Bookmark Icons”, a collection of 17 freeware icons in iPhone-like style, includes icons for Blinklist, BlogMarks, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Feeds, Flickr, Furl, Magnolia, Mister-Wong, Netvibes, Newsvine, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Ta-Da List, Technorati and You Tube.

Did I mention they were FREE ? You can download them here.

Want to add a Santa hat to your logo? Although it’s not free, you’ll find a nice looking Santa hat here too.

Beyond the holiday season, they have a large collection of icons- some free- others priced very reasonably.

Happy Holidays,

Rhonda

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Free Icons To Add Some Christmas Bling To Your Blog or Website

‘eBusiness Profit Secrets’ , the 6 part mini course I have offered for many years now is no longer available. I’ve done my best to keep it updated but the internet and opportunities change so rapidly. So rather then do yet another update, I decided to write a brand new book with fresh information and strategies.

The new book is titled, ” Escaping Your 9 to 5″. It’s a comprehensive yet simple to understand guide to help online beginners get started on a part-time basis- with the goal to break away from their day job, fire their boss and go full time with their online business in no time.

This is not another book of useless free articles and websites. Full of unique content, tips and strategies that you can apply immediately. Over 90 pages!

I’ll be revealing business startup ideas most have never considered- but in my experience are the fastest ways to make money online as a beginner.

I give you 90 incredible pages filled with step-by-step “how-to” guidelines as well as secrets and tips.

I’ll explain the online jargon so you understand the basics I’ll expose my ‘Earn While You Learn’ strategy How to choose the online business model that’s right for you. How to immediately monetize skills you already bring to the table The 4 hour plan to fire your boss How To setup your sales funnel Fast Action Plan to your first website 12 of the most effective ways to get customers and much more If you can ‘walk and chew gum’ then you can follow the steps in this course! Get your copy now while it’s still FREE here: www.EscapingYour9to5.com

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How To Create An Online Business: Escaping Your 9 to 5 Guide

If you’re having productivity challenges you’ll want to check it out: http://www.rescuetime.com

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Cool productivity and time management tool

Here are a few to get you started:

• Wordtracker

This is the one I use most often. Identify keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business and most likely to be used as queries by search engine visitors.

• GoodKeywords

Good Keywords is free and easy to use. It uses tools provided by other search engines to do keyword research automatically. It is much faster than searching by hand and will save you time and money.

• Google’s keyword tool

This is another popular one and it is meant to help clients find the right keywords for pay per click ads. This tool also allows you to search for multiple keywords and phrases at the same time.

• DigitalPoint

has a free keyword suggestion tool that compares results from Overture and Wordtracker

• Ebay keywords

This shows what people have been searching for on Ebay.

• Google zeitgeist

shows what people have been searching for on Google. also great for researching the hot and current trends.

• SEOBook

This site has a number of tools for search engine optimization, including a keyword research tool

• NicheBot

returns ten clickable keyword links in a chart which shows their popularity and their potential effectiveness.

Enjoy!

Rhonda

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Free keyword research tools