Children in the Home Business Environment

Operating a home business is seldom easy and interruptions come
in all shapes, sizes and forms.

Between the family, friends and neighbors who call or come by,
and the telemarketers who insist on ringing your number off the
hook, getting through the workday can be a real challenge.

When you introduce children into the home office environment,
your productivity and patience can be seriously tested.

For example, right now my three-year old daughter is pulling on
my shirt and begging me to read her a story. Clearly, Im in the
middle of something important here, but how can I say no to
those eyes? Ill be right back...

Ok, that wasnt so bad was it? Shes happy, Im happy (having
bonded with my daughter) and now Im back to continue my
conversation with you :-) Whats the lesson here? Flexibility
is a major key to balancing your home business priorities with
your familys needs.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that maintaining a
deep level of concentration on work in a home business for long
periods of time is next to impossible. Naptime does offer some
reprieve, but any break from the kids is usually short lived.

Even with older children, summertime introduces new challenges
with kids running in and out of the house all throughout the day.

I would like to share with you some of the tips I have
discovered to help manage your home office with children in your
midst. Since children of different ages pose different
challenges, I will present my tips in terms of age groups.

OLDER CHILDREN AND TEENS

We will look at older children first since they pose the least
challenge to our work productivity.

Children, who are old enough to understand the idea of schedules
and chores, are old enough to understand the needs of your home
business. Explain to your children that you do your work at home
so that you can be near them when they need you. But also be
sure they understand that you must do your work so that you will
have the money necessary to keep your house, feed the family and
to provide them with money for entertainment.

Once your children understand the necessity of your work, then
outline a work schedule and explain it to them. Do make sure
they understand that emergencies are definitely an acceptable
reason to interrupt your work. Then make sure they understand
that between hours x and y, you will be doing work --- and then
hold them to respecting your schedule.

INFANTS

Infants will never understand your needs for work. But
fortunately, babies do well under a schedule or routine. Instead
of expecting your child to work around your schedule, schedule
your work around the needs of your baby.

It is simple. Babies eat, sleep and poop. Sometimes they play.
Fortunately, babies sleep more than they do anything else.

Naptime offers the best advantage for getting your work done.
Get your baby into a routine of eat, sleep and play, and you
will experience unexpected levels of productivity.

TODDLERS

If you have a toddler running around the house while you are
operating your home business, then you may find that your hair
turning gray or disappearing altogether. But, gray hair is a
sign of character, right. ;-)

I am venturing to guess that the person who devised the door
lock for the inside of the house did so because he had toddlers
in his own home. Inside door locks should only be utilized when
you are making that important phone call and your toddler is
screaming for your attention. At all other times, your door
should remain unlocked with your door open.

Develop a routine with your children for meal times, naptimes,
and play times. Work these times into your work schedule and
adhere to them. If you fail to keep appointments with your
children, your children will have less respect for your work and
do more to prevent you from the completion of your work.

Don`t be afraid to let your children sit in your lap while you
are working. It helps them to feel wanted and it helps them to
be a part of your daily life. There are times when it is okay
for them to be sitting in your lap while you work, and at other
times you need them out of your lap. Don`t be afraid to tell
them to get down and go play or read a book so that you can
resume your work.

Permit your children to have their toys in your office. Often
they will sit contently and play while you work. Just knowing
you are near is enough to keep them happy.

Be prepared to take an hourly break to deal with your toddler.
Try to do potty breaks at your hourly break and to do drink
refills. This can help your child grow into a routine that will
work well with your home business. At each break, spend a few
minutes with your child giving hugs and kisses and talking with
your child about what he or she wants to talk about.

Toddlers don`t always do well with the routine, so be prepared
to take a few minutes when needed to give the attention that
your child so desperately needs in the moment.

IN CONCLUSION

I hope these tips serve to help you in the challenge of
operating a successful home business.

My home business permits me to fulfill my financial obligations
*AND* see my children grow up. I would never contemplate trading
my home business for another kind of business. Even with the
added challenges of dealing with toddlers in my home office, the
upsides far outweigh the downsides.

Growing my own home business with children around has definitely
given me a new respect for all people who successfully run a
home business with kids in the work environment. I tip my hat to
you... You deserve it!

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Networking Your Home Business within Circles of Influence

When you need an auto mechanic or an air conditioning repairman,
where do you turn for help? Sure, some people turn to the yellow
pages. But most will turn to friends and family and ask if they
know of anyone who can do the work.

The best place for your business to be positioned is to be the
business on the tips of the tongues of the people asked to make
the referral.

THE 300 RULE

Preachers, funeral directors and people in a few other
professions have learned "the 300 rule" through their own
personal experience.

"The 300 rule" states that the average person knows 300 people
on a friendly level. Wedding planners tend to make reservations
for 300 guests. Funeral directors tend to need to make room for
300 mourners. You get the idea.

DOODLING WITH CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE

Imagine your circle of friends, family and acquaintances, a.k.a.
your circle of influence. Now, draw your circle of influence as
a circle on a blank piece of paper.

Next, contemplate the people in your parents` circle of
influence. Some people who know your parents also know you.
Therefore, you will share some influence with the people your
folks know. Now draw your parents` circle of influence on your
piece of paper.

Your circle and your parents` circle will intersect in one area,
although the larger majority of the two circles will not
intersect. If you are like most people, the two circles on your
page at this point looks very similar to the MasterCard logo.

Now imagine drawing a page full of intersecting circles, each
circle representing the circle of influence of the people who
are within your own circle of influence. Imagine trying to
encapsulate an accurate rendering of where your circle and the
circle of your friends will actually intersect.

Some circles will share a large area of space, while others will
barely cover one another.

Actually, you can only imagine at this point what your piece of
paper will look like. The actual layout of the circles imagined
in this analogy is simply too overwhelming for the mind to
comprehend.

THE BIG PICTURE

300 multiplied by 300 equals 90,000. By using the analogy of
doodles in the previous section, the average person can actually
network with up to 90,000 people! Even factoring in the overlap,
one can still probably network with 50,000 people through their
own circle of influence!

Simply amazing, isn`t it?

HERE IS THE SECRET TO YOUR SUCCESS

There are 300 people on this planet whom you have a reasonable
amount of influence. Take advantage of this fact. Make darn sure
that every person within your own circle of influence KNOWS that
you are in business for yourself, and make sure they understand
what your business offers.

When your friend is asked to make a referral, they will
recommend you.

PASSIVE VERSUS ACTIVE REFERRAL NETWORKING

When people ask your friends for a referral and your friend
mentions your business, that is passive referral networking.

Active referral networking is when you can get your friends go
directly to their friends and say "Hey, I have a friend who just
started a business. If you are in need of what he offers or you
know someone who will need his services, would you please give
my friend a call or make the referral to his business?"

If you can get even a portion of the people in your own circle
of influence to actively refer your business, then you have
built the foundation to build an advertising campaign even more
effective than the average local television advertising campaign.

Think about that for a moment.

Most people only dream of reaching 50,000 potential customers
with their television advertising dollars. You now have the
knowledge to reach 50,000 people without spending a single penny.

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Making Changes

Now that you have this information, take a few minutes to consider where your current website stands. Do you need to take some changes into consideration?

Here are some tips to help you to improve your website even if you have a full website up and do not have the type of content and keywords described here.

1. Invest in new content if your content is not rich with value
There are some websites that will need more pages of content-rich material. This will greatly improve the respectability of your website's content and will greatly increase your long-term results in search rankings too. Natural keyword usage is important.

2. If you have quality content, go back and check the density
If any one page has a keyword density of five percent or more, work on it to remove some of the keywords. This does not necessarily mean dumping it all and starting over. Rather, just work through it and improve it.

3. Are you using enough unique keywords that are not just top-tier keywords?
Make a master list of your targeted keywords used on your website. Then, use one of the search tools for keywords to find out which keywords your website should be focusing on. Make changes as necessary to accommodate the missing keywords. For example, add a few more blog posts or pages of content that focus on keywords you are missing.

4. Check out your HTML, page descriptions, your tags, and your page titles
If you are missing keywords in these locations, change them to include them. Also, if you list product descriptions, be sure that keywords are accurately helping you on these pages.

5. Have someone in your niche read through your website
This outsider can tell you the real value of it. What is missing? What is not factual? Make changes as necessary to improve these factors.


Finally, take the time to stay up-to-date on the changes that search engine companies make to their methods. This will ultimately enable your website to grow and stretch as the times change. It is very rare that you have to redo the entire site. Plus, if you do not want to do the work of all this "fixing," you can hire someone to do it for you.

The bottom line is that content is still king, but keywords are sitting right next to content as an equal heir to the throne.

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Top Mistakes you''ll be making

Content is number one followed by great keywords. What else is there to know? There are actually a number of mistakes many Internet marketers make when it comes to keywords and quality content. If you want to grow your online empire, focus on quality content and the use of quality keywords.

The following are some of the most common mistakes individuals make when it comes to keyword usage.

#1: NOT ENOUGH KEYWORDS

Did we not just say that you do not have to worry too much about density and that low numbers were good? Yes, this is true, but many individuals do not take the time to do the research to include the right keywords in their documents.

In our example, if you were to just write really great articles on tables and did not go through the steps of researching keywords, chances are good that the website will never rank well. The problem is, you do not know what people are typing into the search box to find what they need. People are looking for pedestal tables.

By placing those keywords into your pages in the appropriate amount, you will see improvement. For each of the top keywords related to your website (including those who may not be the top tier), look for a goal of 2 percent over your entire website.

#2: TOO HEAVY

We have talked about this a good amount. Keep in mind that many people do not realize that they are going too heavy with the keywords. For example, the average blog post is about 300 words. If you get started talking about the number of unique pedestals out there, you could easily surpass the number of times you include the words "pedestal tables" in that small article. Using the phrase “pedestal tables” six times is already 2 percent of a 300-word blog post!

It is helpful to use keyword density software to help you avoid these problems. Or just be mindful of what you are writing.

#3: NOT USING SYNONYMS

What is another name for the topic that you are using? People not only type in the word you are most commonly using, but also their own version. Consider just how many variations of the same word the English language has!

What's more, most of the time, even the best keyword research tools do not always include synonyms in their results. Therefore, it is really up to you to remember these.

For example, perhaps you are writing on the keyword "pedestal table" and you use just that version. Another term could be a "bistro table." Chances are good that both will not show up in the same keyword tool (unless you are using one of the best online keyword tools).

Take the time to look through all of your keywords and determine what synonyms are out there. At the same time, look for unique spellings too. For example, you may be writing about "Mountain Pointe," but most people who are searching for information may type in "Mountain Point" or even "Mt. Pointe." These variations can help you to boost your keyword usage.

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Best strategies keywords and Content

Now that you have the basics about keyword usage and the importance of content, how do you bring the two things together so that your website will prosper?

There is no direct formula for doing so, but you can find some real results if you implement a number of known methods to help you. Google itself often provides a great deal of suggestions in terms of keyword usage. In your balancing act for quality content and keyword ranking, keep the following strategies in mind.

GO WITH QUALITY CONTENT FIRST

First things first, write quality content for your website. Nothing else will be as important to the success of your business has having quality content on it. There are several ways you can do this successfully.

1. Use factual information
You want individuals to come to your website knowing that what you have to say is real and valuable to them. Therefore, each page should contain factual information. Before you post a blog post or an article, verify the information you are going to present. For example, going back to the example about the table search, be sure that you are providing factual information on the wood type, size, history or other topic.

2. Make it interesting
Coming to a website filled with lines and lines of information that is boring is going to be so dull people will leave. Without spending too much time in the process, add some statistics. Use descriptive language that paints the picture for the reader, "these mahogany tables are designed in the style used by Ancient Romans…."

3. Become a resource
One of the best ways to ensure you have quality information on your website is to make your website the one-stop shop for all information on that niche. For the reader, a website that contains all of the information they need is going to be highly valuable. You may provide information about the history of tables, how to use tables…tips for staining them…and so on, for example. These items help you to become the resource these individuals need to have.

4. Be the expert
For those who play a role in your website (and this is a very good thing) be sure that people who visit your website know that you are the expert in the field. You should stand out as being the authority. You do this when you provide valuable content to them. Do the hard research and find those interesting subjects to talk about. Answer questions. Relate to your customer base.


When you put these items together, the end result is very simple. You have a website that is packed with great content that people can naturally benefit from reading.

Chances are also good that you also have a website that is filled with quality keywords. After all, if you are writing about your topic and exploring all areas of it, you likely are using the most important words related to it. Still, you should still do some research and get better quality keywords into your work.

USING KEYWORDS PROPERLY

There is no better way to rank your quality content in the search engines than to use keywords properly. It is often the case that website owners see this as a step they can skip. Instead of doing the research to find the right keywords for their websites, they think they already know what they are. This is often not the case.

FINDING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

Finding the right keywords is a process that often involves researching using any of the free keyword search tools available. You can also use Google's service to help you to do this.

Once you use these services, you are likely to get a list of keywords associated with your primarily keyword. In our case, the keyword we plugged in is the word "tables." As you are creating your table website, you have likely used a number of words that describe this product. But, did you include all of the most important words?

The top keywords, those used most often by users who are searching for the topic you have, should be included on your website. They do not have to be the only words that you use, though. These first words are heavily used and should be used at least somewhat in your website's content where it is appropriate to do so.

For example, with the word "table," the top five keywords used included:

• Tables
• Pub Table
• Pedestal Table
• Dining Table
• Glass Table


These words are going to be mentioned on your website because they are commonly used words for your niche. What about those other keywords in the list?

If you look down the list, you will see other words that could relate to your website. They look good, but fewer people are using them to find information online. Often, it is best to include some of these too. The reason for doing so is very simple. Most other website owners who are targeting keywords for their websites are using those top-tier words as well. There is a lot of competition out there for those words. Therefore, even with a great website, there are likely others fighting right along with you. Since the other words have less competition, you are more likely to rank well in the search page results for those keywords.

In the table example, the words "pedestal dining table," "modern dining table," Glass coffee table," and "square tables" got far fewer hits than those top-tier keywords. The lower competition still makes them valuable.

Use a combination of those top-tier words and those that are far more specific if they relate to your website. This unique combination will ultimately give you better results in the long term.

WHERE TO USE KEYWORDS

Now that you know which keywords you should have on your website, the next step is to consider the placement of keywords on your website. As mentioned earlier, there are various locations on your website that you can use keywords. Use all of these locations for keywords.

Within each of those documents, you need to place keywords in the right locations. There are several things to keep in mind in the case of blogs and articles/web content. The following guidelines can help you to place keywords into these mediums appropriately.

1. Place keywords in the title of each page or article
The best way to place keywords in the title is in the following format. "KEYWORD GOES HERE: Interesting Content Goes Here." An example for the table website might be, "Pedestal Dining Table: 3 Tips for Buying the Right Dining Table." This shows the search engines the importance of this word.

2. Within the first 90 characters of the first paragraph, be sure your keyword appears again
Also, it is important to note that you can use a mixture of keywords, but do consider having one or two primary keywords per article. Primary keywords should be located in these locations. Again, this early positioning helps to show the importance of the keyword to that page.

3. Use keywords in each of the paragraphs that you write on each page
Do not overdo it, though. For example, you do not want your primary keyword to show up more than one or two times in each paragraph, depending on their length.

4. Break up text using subheadings
Use secondary keywords in your subheadings. These will be positioned between paragraphs. Not every paragraph needs them, but sections of the article can be divided this way for easy reading benefits and keyword boosts.

5. Use keywords in the HTML for your website too
This includes using them in each individual blog post/article that you post. This also helps with page ranking.


Use a combination of keywords in each of your articles, but do not put too many into them. If that sounds confusing, it is because there is no hard and fast rule. What you want to do is to divide up the pages on your website or in your blog posts so that over the course of all of the pages, you use all the keywords you would like to use.

Do not try to put all of your keywords for your website into every article you write. It won't work and will deflate the quality of each page considerably. For example, one blog post may include the keyword "dining table”; in that article, words like "dining room table" and "square table" may be included, but not many more than that.


KEYWORD DENSITY

Keyword density is the amount of keywords on any one page in comparison to the number of words on this page. A few years back, it was common for the "less than expert" Internet marketers to try and work in high keyword density numbers. More keywords sounded horrible, but many thought that this would boost their search engine results pages significantly.

The problem is that this does not work. It hurts your page ranking and causes you to have awkward sounding content on your website. Content is king, though, remember, and therefore, you need to make changes to this significantly.

The question is, then, how much density should you go for? This is really up to you to decide since each page will be different, but most experts agree that you want a density that is under 5 percent. In most cases, only 2 to 3 percent keyword density is best.

To compute keyword density, you simply need to take the number of times that the keyword appears in the page's text and divide that by the number of words on the page.

For example, if the word "dining table" appears 8 times in our 400-word blog post, you would divide 8 by 400 words and get 0.02 or 2 percent. Do take the time to do this for your articles. You do want to ensure that there are plenty of keywords but not too many.

If you would rather not waste your time on calculating density, there are free and paid software programs available online that will calculate the density for you. These are helpful when they are accurate. You do not have to be 100 percent accurate here.

KEEP IN MIND

• Quality content is vitally important to the success of your website. Write your content to be quality content first.

• Go back and insert keywords as they fit into the content you have written.

• Do base topics and blog posts around keywords that are important. For example, choose a top ten list of tips for repairing dining room tables…this makes keyword usage easier and more effective. Plus, the reader gets it.

• Do no obsess about keywords. You do not have to have a lot of them on the website to see results. Choose a good mix and include them in each article, but only as they fit with your topic appropriately.

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Content is King

One of the earliest phrases used still stands true. "Content is king" when it comes to Internet marketing. If you are putting up a page on your website, you want the person who visits your website to say, "Wow, this is great. I'm bookmarking this page to come back here often."

The best way to do this is to include quality information on each of the pages of content you provide to your readers. In a few minutes, we will go through the process of providing quality content. Before doing so, consider what would happen if you did not have good information on your website.

1. You use keywords on your pages, but fill them with fluff content. Your reader gets to your page and thinks, "this does not help me," and moves on.

2. The reader gets to your website and finds errors. You can no longer be trusted and they leave your site.

3. The affiliate programs you are working to earn money from visit your website. They find it poorly designed with little information. They decide that you are not a good fit for their company. They no longer offer you membership in the affiliate program.

4. You get no inbound links to your website. Inbound links are those which are pointing to your website. Google finds these to be valuable when ranking websites. If another website (or several of them) find your website to be a good resource, they definitely will rank your website higher. But, other websites will not do this if your content is poor in quality.

5. You make little to no money at your website since it is poorly ranked and is not attracting any repeat visitors.


Content for your website needs to be well-written and organized. It needs to be informative and useful to anyone who will visit and read it.

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Keywords and Content

There is no denying the importance of keywords used in any content that is placed on the Web. Keywords allow you and everyone else who uses the Web the ability to find what you are looking for. If you need just one bit of information, you likely would spend countless hours in research trying to find it if it was not for keywords.

As an Internet marketing professional, how do keywords relate to your own business? Usually, if you are using the Web as a marketing tool in any way, keywords are an important component.

In this book, we will examine the importance of keywords. We also compare it to the importance of quality content. Is it possible to have great content and still have great keywords in your final copy? It is possible, and in fact, it is necessary to do this if you wish to have a successful website or blog. Before getting into these details, let's start at the beginning.

WHAT ARE THEY AND WHERE TO USE THEM

What are keywords? These are words individuals will type into a search box when they are looking for something online. For example, let us say you are looking to purchase a table. You get online, go to the search box, and type in the word "table" into the search box. The search engines start looking for websites that relate to your search. Within seconds, there is a long list or results in front of you (called the search engine results page) that you can choose from.

Now, on the flip side of the coin, if you owned a website selling tables, you would want to attract this person to your website. To do so, you need to have your website displayed on the search engine results page. To do this, you need to have the most appropriate keywords on your website. So, for example, you need to have the world "table" used properly on your website for the search engine results to actually see your website as valuable to this search.

Using keywords will help you prove your value to the search engines. The key is to know what helps you to rank well and what may not help you. Less than a decade ago, people took advantage of the keywords. Pages and pages of websites had virtually nothing but keywords on them. The problem is, when a website is packed with just keywords, it is likely not to be packed with information.

Here is an example to consider: John designs a website to attract visitors who he hopes will visit the affiliate pages he is linking to. So, he plans to put lots of keywords on his page. That way, his website will rank well, right?

There are two problems with this process. First, there is little chance that anyone who comes to such a page will feel it valuable enough to stick around and click onto affiliate links.

Second, Google and other search engines have made significant changes to their complex algorithms. Websites that have too many keywords on them will be ranked lower in the search engine results pages.

The key is to know what the actual best percentages are. Of course, Google is not going to tell you just how many keywords to use. They do offer a lot of in-depth information that you can use, though. It is this information that you want to rely on to get the results you are looking for. Google is not the bad guy: They want to provide individuals who use their search engines with the best websites online to solve their inquiries.

In the following pages, we will go over some of the best strategies for getting keywords into your documents readily and appropriately for the best overall strategy.

WHERE TO USE KEYWORDS

Where should you use keywords? Keywords should be found in virtually anything you place online. Here are some places to use them.

• Place them into each article on your website.
• Place them on your home page and sales pages.
• Place keywords in your blog posts.
• Use keywords in your product descriptions.
• Use keywords on your website and in your blog tags and headings.
• Use them on contact pages, FAQ pages, and just about any page on your website.


Doing this is essential to getting a high page ranking in the search engine result pages. Yet, you do not have to make this a complex process. In fact, it is often best to put keywords in the back of your mind while writing content for your website. Write what really matters and then come back to keywords later.

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