Working at Home on the Internet » Keywords

Top 10 Search Terms for Working at Home

Joe Hauckes — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:27:47 +0000

This is a list of the top 10 search terms that people have used recently to find Working at Home on the Internet through the major Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc). They are listed from the most hits per related terms to the fewest and include my thoughts relating to the “why” they landed here.

WordPress Post Preview – This is a term that seems to show at the top of the list every time WordPress does another upgrade. It seems people like their Post Preview without having to go to another page.
Working at Home (everything) – This is no big surprise although people have some very unique ways of searching for work at home opportunities (eg. should my back face the window in home office and can a lien be put on my home if I’m incorporate).
Scams & Legit – This is another that comes as no big surprise. Searches increase every time some of these scam artists do a big e-mail push on people who have expressed a desire to Work at Home by taking surveys or some other “make tons of money online” scams.
Meta Data – This is a little bit unexpected. Although I have written some posts on Keyword usage in posts, titles and tags, I am far from an expert. This is something I feel more serious minded future internet entrepreneurs are looking to get as much information as possible about to succeed online.
Print Business Cards – Let’s face it. When small business people are just starting out, they are trying to save a little bit of money. If they can do something themselves with their own equipment instead of paying someone else to do it, they’ll take that option.
Blog vs Website – This is something I get asked by potential customers all of the time. There seems to be quite a few people seeking the best option for their business and looking to get ways to attract new customers by using the appropriate platform.
WordPress Plugins – This seems to coincide with #1. Every time WordPress upgrades and breaks something or takes it away altogether, WP users need new plugins to solve a problem they didn’t have before.
Navigation Tweaks – Things like Next/Previous posts, Alphabetizing and Post count in Categories or Site Search are not always included in templates and bloggers want to offer the best way to present as much information to their visitors as possible.
Page Views – It is no surprise that any business that has an internet presence wants as many eyes reading as much of the information presented as possible. Things like Inseries, comments and polls were included in this as part of the search results because they were some of the major keywords used in these searches.
WampServer – I’m not too sure why this term showed up so much, maybe there aren’t too many posts about the program. I did a minor review of my experience using it (I am quite happy with it). These are probably from searches looking for useful offline tools for web designers and problem solvers.

Just for the halibut I thought I would include #11 Skype (only wrote about it once) and #12 Verizon Wireless Router (over 2 years ago) to show that it just depends on what people need information about and how much information is out there.

These search terms don’t necessarily translate into the most popular posts that appear on WAHI, but they do give me an idea of what people are looking for and how they are finding what I write related to their needs. So, the plan at this point is to focus on finding answers to some of the questions people seem to be asking through their searches.

Some queries, like Blog vs Website or Scam & Legit and Work at Home, will be addressed here with updated details as they become available. The more technical and program related solutions would probably be better handled on My Computer Back in Service (not to worry, I’ll link to the answers).

What about you, can you hear the questions people are asking you through their searches? Got any examples?

What Statistics Do You Look At First for Your Site?

Joe Hauckes — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:54:11 +0000

The Basics?

Ok, After the Summary… We all want to know how many people visit, how may pages they view and how many return visitors we have. Even after the Visitor Paths, there you have to keep scrolling to see who went where and how many times they have returned and it’s really difficult to see Keywords with any real feel for what people are looking for.

Speaking of Keywords…

You should notice that a full 16% of the keywords used to find the Blog are Work from (at) Home and another 15% with variations of Work, Home, Business, Internet, Computer. All of which are in my MetaData Keyword list. I must have done something right. One suprise was how many times that variations of WordPress show up in searches, but it is nice. And this is only one page of 4, all of which give further information on how people are finding the Blog.

This leads us to Landing Pages…

I think the take away from the results of the Landing Pages stats show the importance of Keywords, not only in the URL of the Site, but in Titles of individual posts as well as the content within the posts themselves. The term Work at Home leads to the Main Page as well as numerous individual posts containing the term in the Title, sub-titles and text. It further indicates that Search Engines will pick up a Keyword if it is well placed within Title and text if it is currently important to readers searches (WordPress 2.2).

Just for the Halibut…

I show this because I want you to realize that you aren’t playing to a single country. I am from the U.S but only 50% of my readers are from the country in which I reside. The other 50% are from Everywhere Else. This is the main reason I put the Google Translate right above the Sidebar, I want to make it as easy as possible for people to read what I write.

Granted, this is only a snapshot of one day, but checking what Keywords are working and where people are landing is a good indicator of the audience I am reaching. And isn’t that the point, to reach the right readers? To give them what they are looking for?

What statictics give you the best indication of the health of your Blog?

The Value of Old Posts

Joe Hauckes — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:00:56 +0000

Way back in January, when I first installed the Verizon DSL using the Actiontec GT704WG Wirless Router I wrote about the problems I was having with the installation.

I also wrote of the solution I came up with after all the trials and tribulations I had dealing with the incompetent help line. That was actually 11 (eleven) months ago.

As things work out, someone sent me an E-mail to the Old Address that was still linked in the post on the New Blog asking if I could help them. It seems they were going through the same problem. They couldn’t come up with the Drivers for the equipment and couldn’t get any satisfaction from Verizon (same problem I was having way back when).

I uploaded the files for the fix to http://workingathomeinternet.com/actiontech they can be copied (downloaded) to a hard-drive. Restarting the computer should allow the system to find the proper Drivers.

Sorry, Verizon and Actiontec, but if it’s proprietary, then you should make if easier for your customers to access the Drivers.

The Moral:

The value for me is, someone found an Old Post related to their problem through a Google Search.

The value for them is they found the information they were looking for on an Old Post of mine through a Google Search.

The Old Posts Involved:

My Dilemma

It’s Finally Over

Google AdWords Dissing Canadians?

Joe Hauckes — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:05:58 +0000

It seems so.

I just read an article over on the JenSense blog that a Canadian company can not become a qualified Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) company.Â Your company can only qualify if it is based in the US, Europe, Middle East or Africa.

That would exclude any company in the Western Hemisphere that is not US Based.Â So, not only is Canada being dissed, but Mexico and All of South America.

I’m not sure but it seems to me that the exclusion would also include the Far East.Â That would include Japan, India, and China not to mention Australia and New Zealand.Â That is an awful lot of the World to ignore.

So, Canada, you are not alone in being dissed by Google.Â I guess they like to pick who’s money they want to accept.

Has your company or one you know of been declined acceptance for this reason?Â How do you feel about it?

Technorati, AdSense and Me

Joe Hauckes — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:22:00 +0000

For the last few weeks I hadn’t been getting indexed by Technorati*. I talked to Liz from Successful-Blog** since she has a working relationship with Dave Sifry at T-rati.

She suggested I leave a comment on her Blog in the Technorati Put Your 2 Cents In post. This I did and Dave answered in a timely manner. He told me that my Blog was on hold for review due to the unusual advertising mechanisms and copious SEO.

That day, he made sure everything was indexed properly and I thought my problems were over. Everything is fine with T-rati now, but in subsequent comments HART brought another (related) problem to my attention.

Although I have used AdSense since the beginning, I found out that there could be a bigger problem brewing. I had set up the ads as I have seen on many blogs, and (I thought) according to the TOS of AdSense.

Upon looking at the Source Code for the Blog, it seems there are multiple occurrences of the AdSense code. You are allowed 3 instances of ads on a page. Since I had only 2 Ad codes, a Google search and an affiliate link everything would be OK.

I sent an E-mail to AdSense right away, and found out they counted all of the occurrences, which came to 8. How I got that many, when the most I should have had was 4, I don’t know. It most likely is that they don’t count a Post or Enrty as a Page as I did.

Needless to say, I am worried I could lose my AdSense account. I have rearranged and deleted some code and sent another E-mail to them to re-review my Blog.

At present, I am awaiting a response from them, and hopefully things will be resolved with an outcome that is in my favor.

Check out my source code, and if you have any suggestions on how to put an Ad at the end of ONLY the First or Second post, Please let me know.

Referenced:
* Technorati
** Successful Blog