Free Niche Research: Ireland

Posted by: Adriana Post date: April 4th, 2011

I’ve had the great opportunity to visit Ireland this spring, and while I managed (it was an organized trip traveling with a school choir), there were many things I wish I knew ahead of time. So, today, I’ll do some research for this excellent niche: I’ll be looking for key phrases related to traveling to Ireland. As you’ll see, if you get in some sub-niches, AdSense is HUGE!

Top 10 Highest Paying Keywords (from the Google keyword tool) car rentals in Ireland $7.48  car hire in Ireland $7.28 Ireland car rental $7.06 wireless broadband Ireland $6.65 travel insurance Ireland $4.97 Ireland ferry $4.97 hotels in Ireland $3.62 vacation in Ireland $3.42 rent a car in Ireland $3.34 hotels Dublin Ireland $3.32

Top 10 Most Searched Keywords (all phrases are exact matches in Google) Ireland weather 8,100 Ireland vacations 6,600 Ireland tours 4,400 Ireland travel 3,600 flights to Ireland 3,600 Ireland vacation packages 2,900 pictures of Ireland 2,900 Ireland currency 2,400 cheap flights to Ireland 1,900 castles in Ireland 1,900

Resources

The best resource is someone who’s been there. Or, you go on a trip, have some fun and research everything. You can also do some research by talking to travel agents, reading some books, etc.

Possible Affiliate Programs

You can promote books and DVDs from Amazon, vacation packages, place tickets, hotel stays, etc. There are several affiliate programs for these in CJ.

Monetization Suggestions

AdSense pays really well for many of the keywords: create an info site and you’ll do really well.

But, don’t stop with information: review some of the available vacation packages and link to your merchants with an affiliate link.

Here are some .com domains available for this niche now:

irelandvacationspackages.com

Here are some .org domains available:

picturesofIreland.org

factsaboutireland.org

irelandculture.org

And some .net ones:

factsaboutireland.net

historyofireland.net

irelandculture.net

thingstodoinireland.net

tripstoireland.net

P.S. Check out these guides to learn how to create lots of traffic for your new site/s:

Article Marketing 365

Non Stop Viral Traffic

Quick Site Indexer (free)

Free and Cheap Traffic

Traffic and Leverage

FREE Quality Traffic

How to Keep Your Online Business Secure?

Posted by: Adriana Post date: April 3rd, 2011

Consumers and businesses agree that security remains a primary concern in the development of e-commerce. Identity theft, stolen credit card information, credit card fraud, hackers are among the most common threats. The dangers are real. As your online business matures, you have to make a real effort to secure your web presence.

Failure to secure your web presence can result in a variety of complications such as financial loss, loss of customers, damage to your credibility, and data loss. Worst of all, it can potentially cost you your business. You have many options to build a secure online business. In the past few years, the number of security related services have grown exponentially. Arming your business with hardware and software is less expensive than you think. The challenge is to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.

Hackers, frauds, and other criminals are constantly searching for the weakest link. Keep in mind that you are not only protecting your business, but your customers. It is common for customers to arrive to websites with their computers already compromised. Your job is to ensure that the shopping experience is safe.

Fortune 500 corporations are frequently reporting security breaches. While it is alarming to read about security violations, many security breaches are never reported. The larger your business the more someone has to gain from breaking into your system. Small companies are just as vulnerable to break in, denial of service attacks, social engineering, and more.

As a business owner you should concentrate on preventative measures as opposed to reactive measures. It may take you days or months to realize your system has been compromised. The resulting damage could have devastating effects on you and your customers. Damaging, sharing, selling user information is a real security threat.

Equally important to providing a secure shopping experience is communicating it to your customers. If your customers don’t trust your site, all the security in the world won’t close the sale for you. Explain it loud and clear throughout your website the measures you took to create a secure environment. Explain what industry standards you use to help keep their information secure.

And make sure you keep your site away form hackers. For a short time, you can get WP Lockdown for only $17.

Cyber Security Tips

Posted by: Adriana Post date: April 1st, 2011

Many people are put off with the term cyber security. They think it involves highly technological processes and elaborate computer knowledge. Not at all. Cyber security is foremost about identifying threats and taking measures as simple as creating an indecipherable password. There is nothing too technical about that. In fact, cyber security measures are all too simple to follow. Check out the following cyber security tips.

1.) Use strong passwords. Avoid using names, birthdays, addresses, and other personal information as password. Do not use a word found in the dictionary as well, since hackers have found a way to decipher dictionary-generated passwords using certain tools. In general, a good password is at least eight-characters long and should be hard to crack. You can combine upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. One good practice is to form a password from a phrase. For example, you can create t1$!C4gtMpSd from “This is so I can’t forget my password.” You can use other methods with which you can form unique and cryptic passwords.

2.) Change your password periodically. This is important especially if, at some point, you have to disclose your password. Remember not to write it down, or if you should, discard the paper immediately. You never know the danger negligence can impose on your security.

3.) Be scrupulous with emails. Unsolicited emails are sometimes the onset of cyber attacks. Remember not to open attached files from unknown senders, as they may contain malware that can open backdoors for hackers. Clicking on the links can also direct you to some compromising websites, so be cautious. If a link looks suspicious, look it up on the web and do a quick research. Avoid giving information to unknown senders as well. The rule of thumb is to ignore seemingly malicious mails. Do not reply to and forward them.

4.) Install security programs on your computer and keep them updated. It is very important to have anti-virus and anti-spyware software and to keep your firewall on. Poorly secured systems are open doors for attackers and intruders, but these software programs keep viruses and spyware from penetrating and crippling your system. The firewall, on the other hand, guards your system from unauthorized access to your computer. Some operating systems allow automatic security updates. Check if yours have this option.

5.) Avoid opening files sent through Instant Messenger. These files do not undergo scanning and might carry security threats to your computer.

6.) Ignore the links on pop-up windows. Block pop-up ads and windows to close an entryway for malware and other forms of attack.

7.) Avoid downloading files, programs, applications, or tools from unknown websites. More often than not, these free downloadable stuffs are loaded with threats. Before you download, make sure the website is a credible source.

8.) Make sure to keep your system clean. Remove any tool, application, or program that is not used. Check also unused default programs installed on your operating system. It’s better to have few programs than have many but unused ones, which can only slow down your computer and be an opening for malicious attacks.

A poorly secured computer runs the risk of being hijacked and left as a zombie machine. Secretly, the hacker uses this computer to gain access to personal and confidential accounts and information. Next thing you know, your credit card has been used for unauthorized purchases, your savings account has been ransacked, your competitor has spied on your company, and the list can go on and on.

But some simple and easy-to-follow cyber security tips can eliminate the possibility of falling prey to any of these cyber crimes.

Now, if you want to keep your WordPress sites safe form hackers, make sure you check out the WP Lockdown.

April Mixed Bag Challenge

Posted by: Adriana Post date: March 31st, 2011

WOW! I haven’t done a public challenge in over 8 months, and it’s definitely time for one. I want to accomplish a lot of things, so this challenge will be a mixture of working towards getting traffic and increasing revenues for 2 sites: this one, and a niche site whose best traffic months are the spring and summer months.

In February 2010  I challenged myself to increase traffic for this site by 75% and fell short by just a little bit. But, for the second part of last year I was majorly distracted, and was very inconsistent with adding content, stopped guest posting, and even got sloppy with one of the main attractions to my blog: the free niche research.

So, in April I am planning to increase traffic by 25%. Here is a screen-shot of the the traffic as of today, March 31, 2011:

So, in April I need to come up with 948 more unique visitors, for a total of 4740. Now, in order to achieve this, I’ll do the following:

- go back to weekly free niche research

- guest post at least twice, and find at least 2 people to guest post for me

-create 2 how-to articles (these seem to attract traffic). Do you have suggestions? I’m all ears: please post below in the comments and I’ll either write it myself, or find someone qualified to we rite it for me.

Now the other site in this challenge is a niche site I challenged myself on last year as well (it was actually my April challenge for last year).

Here is a screen shot of my stats from that post last year:

And here is a screen shot from the first 3 months this year:

 

 

 

Big difference, right? My plan is to double traffic to this site in April, as well as double income (which is pitiful right now, at $122.60 for this month). It’s an ambitious plan, but I think I can do it. Here is what I am planning to do for this site:

- add content every day for the month of April (luckily, I already have all the content needed, so I just need to take a few hours to add images, links, etc., and upload them to the site

- guest post at least once (last year I wasn’t able to find a place to guest post, but this year I’ll try harder)

- build some links. Not exactly sure which route I’ll take for this. I may submit a couple of articles to article directories, send a press release, tweet, bookmark, etc.

- I’ll create and distribute at least 2 videos. I’ve tried creating videos myself in the past, but I am not cut out for it, so this will be outsourced.

- I’ll create a FaceBook page for this site (probably I’ll outsource this as well)

- create a list for the site, so I don’t have to always rely on just the search engines to bring in traffic. I already have my give-away for it (had it for more than a year and never took the time to create a list: shame on me!)

- pick 2 products, create detailed reviews, and work on ranking those 2 pages: shooting for top 5, but will be content if I reach page 1

- monetize the site better: I am using AdSense and Amazon for now, but I need to tweak it for better performance.

What are YOUR plans for the month of April? Wouldn’t you love some more traffic? Please join me in this challenge to increase traffic: just comment below.

Link Building Strategies That Work

Posted by: Adriana Post date: March 18th, 2011

Getting links back to your site is the number one most important factor to getting ranked well in the search engines. What are some link-building strategies that really work?

Twitter and Facebook!

Though many of these links are no-follow links, the exposure will often get you in front of other people who will create permanent links to your site.

Have a Facebook group or fan page. Also make sure the like button and the retweet button are both on all the pages that you want people to link to.

Link Bait

Create content designed to spread virally on sites like Reddit and Digg. What tends to do well on these sites?

* Infographics tend to get a lot of attention. Put a bunch of little-known statistics into one infographic.

* Slightly sarcastic content.

* Funny content.

* Content relevant to a news topic that these groups support. They tend to be more liberal than conservative and also more technologically oriented.

Guest Articles

There are many sites in your industry that depend on outside articles for their success.

Do a Google search for terms like:

* Keyword + “Submit an Article”
* Keyword + “Guest writer”
* Keyword + “Guest article”

And so on. Try to find websites that regularly host other people and try to get an article on their sites.

Directories

Directories are one easy way to build a bunch of backlinks quickly. You can submit them by hand or hire out the process very affordably in internet marketing forums.

Submit Press Releases

Send press releases to news services like PRWeb, PR Newswire and PR Leap. Some offer free press release services, though typically you’ll have to pay a small amount of money.

These releases will almost definitely generate a handful of backlinks to your website. If your story is especially good, you may even get picked up by news media or a prominent blogger and get a high profile link.

Chamber of Commerce

One easy, high quality link is to get a link from your chamber of commerce.

All you need to do is show up at your local chamber and register as a business. They’ll then put a link to your website from their high authority, high PR site back to your site.

Forums & Blog Comments

Forums and blogs are two easy places to get links. The most important thing to keep in mind with these link sources it that every post you make should be a high quality post, not a junk post designed just to get a link back.

Write high quality responses in forums and blogs and include a link back to your website. You’ll build both your backlinks and your credibility in the field as you get more well know.

There are many link-building techniques out there. While some work more than others, they all work to some degree. The most important thing is that you get out there, take action and start building links today.