You can learn how to make it to the top of Google.

I’ve repeatedly written articles and produced videos that inform Intuit users that there are seven things that must be done correctly and three that should never be done within the Sitebuilder.

The video below shows how I am able to get great results with the Homestead search engine optimization techniques that are taught in the SEO Extreme Video series. They are available at the Homestead Users website. It is in this series where the secrets to succeeding with search engine traffic are revealed in great detail.

Get the series and you, too, will get higher placements with Google.

Below are a few pointers that can help you right now. There are then still seven more things that you must do correctly inside the Sitebuilder after implementing these three very important pointers I am sharing with you now.

Write plenty of content!
I always recommend that you should have NO LESS than five hundred words to a page. If you visit the business sites we featured in the video, you will discover that the pages have plenty of content on them. Search engines understand what your niche is about by the words that are on your pages. If you want to be found for a phrase, the words of that phrase MUST be on your page!

Selecting a Domain Name:
It’s vitally important that your domain name be related to the niche you will be publishing content about. If you noticed on the video, we found domain names that were very specific to the keyword phrases that people would most likely be using to find their business.

Link Your Pages Correctly:
Always use “anchor” text links on the internal structure of your website. By visiting the sites featured in the clip, you will discover that we linked keyword phrases throughout the Sitebuilder pages.

New websites very rarely start out getting top results with the search engines. Google has something that is called the “sandbox”. When you first publish your site, it takes a little while for the search engines to sift through your details in order to deem you as a legitimate site. If you present site has been up for a while and is hardly showing up with search engines, then you have probably not configured things properly.

Google has certain things that they look at when the Spiders visit a website. If you have these things in proper order, then your chances are much better for getting a higher ranking in the SERPS (search engine results pages). If you do not know what you are doing and just make a website using the pre-made templates, your chances are really slim at getting any search engine traffic at all. That’s just the plain truth!

The SEO Extreme Video Series is not just another product to sell. It was created to help people like you be more successful with your site. It contains the very techniques that I use to get great search engine placements using the Sitebuilder program by Intuit/Homestead. Both of the local businesses we featured in the video that are getting clients from their websites made sales within two weeks. For a minimal investment, you can increase your chances tremendously for ranking of your website niche with Google, Yahoo and Bing.

The truth is that you cannot have a REAL blog in the Homestead Sitebuilder program.

Even the new feature that the Intuit company added in recent months does not allow for search engines to read the content in the posts.

This is an issue I’ve previously addressed in videos and several articles. The RSS features in the web builder are coded using Java Script. Search engines DO NOT read Java Script.

Therefore, all of the content that you write will not be visible to Google, Yahoo and Bing. With this in mind, it becomes a waste of time, content publishing and effort to use the built-in features- unless search engine appeal is not necessarily an important part of your goals.

The visitors to your website will benefit from your content once they find your site, but they will never find you through a content post that you published using the built-in blog feature in the Sitebuilder. Not through the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

How do you get a blog, then?

You will have to go elsewhere to a different company to get hosting.

I use Godaddy www.GoDaddy.com for all of mine. Hosting costs less than seven dollars ($7) per month. It doesn’t cost extra to get a domain name set up with a WordPress blog.

Follow These Steps to Set-Up A WordPress Blog (WP):

• Sign-up for hosting with Godaddy www.GoDaddy.com
• Purchase a domain name
• Call tech support at Godaddy
• Request that they help you set up WordPress with your domain

They will kindly walk you through configuring the new site.
Wait a few hours and go to http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin
Once inside your blog-administration panel, start learning how it works.

I’d recommend interacting with Godaddy mostly on the phone. Their website is set up to keep trying to sell you more and more stuff. It gets a little frustrating trying to wade through cluttered pages. If you get a tech-support person on the phone, they can get your account set up, your domain name purchased and configure your WordPress blog in the hosting control center with much less aggravation.

There are hundreds of pre-made templates to choose from in WP. If you stick with the standard designs- everything will go fine. It’s when you try to customize themes that things get a little difficult…  that is unless you are good at CSS, PHP and HTML codes.

You will be introduced to two terms: “Widgets” and “Plugins”.

• Widgets get added to the sidebar area of the page
• Plugins customize your blogs functions

You will find many tutorials on the Internet to help you learn how to get the new WP site going. YouTube has hundreds of tutorials on using WP.

One site that has helped me tremendously is Website Babble. This is an interactive forum community where there are several people who know the WP blog program very well.

The intuit web builder is all “point, click, drag and drop”. Learning how to design using a blog will be different than using a Homestead Sitebuilder set-up. With a little patience and time, you will be able to successfully achieve your goals.

Search engines tend to like the inner workings of blogs much better than normal static websites. What you will find is that your pages will get indexed in Google’s results pages within seconds. With an Intuit/Homestead site it can take days to weeks for a page to get put in the search engine results pages.

Although, I love building sites using the Sitebuilder, I’ve started using WordPress for most of my content publishing on the Internet.

One of the top three best sellers on Amazon is the Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes. In fact, its sales are beaten only by the Kindal and the new Ipad. I bought one about three months ago specifically to use for making “how to”- videos for my cabinet repair website. I can see why it’s presently the number one selling camcorder on Amazon. The recording quality is outstanding and the price for the digital recorder is right!

I have a customer who gets top ratings with YouTube videos wherein he advertises his Intuit/Homestead website that we built for his guitar lessons business. As we were building the site, I encouraged him to use my small video recorder to make a few YouTube videos. He used it a couple of times and not long afterward found a Filp video recorder on sale for an amazing price and bought it.

Presently, there are over seven-hundred and ninety reviews for this digital camcorder on the Amazon website.

Specifications:
*Easy-to-use, pocket-sized HD camcorder featuring one-touch recording and digital zoom

*Simple-user interface lets you start capturing video just seconds after powering on

*Captures 120 minutes of HD video on 8 GB of built-in memory; no tapes or additional memory cards required

*Convenient flip-out USB arm plugs directly into your PC or Mac to launch FlipShare software

*Built-in FlipShare software lets you easily email videos, edit individual clips, make custom movies, capture “still” photos from video and even upload video to sharing sites like YouTube and MySpace

Using Windows XP Movie Maker with the Camcorder:

I was personally a little disappointed that Windows XP did not allow me to import my flip recordings into the video-editing program. I found a great FREEWARE program called “All Video Converter” that I use to convert the clips to AVI. That’s an acceptable format for importing into the Windows Movie Maker. It only takes a couple of minutes to convert a ten minute video.
Flip Ultra Camcorder 2nd Generation, 120 Minutes (Black)

Here’s one of seven-hundred and ninety (790) reviews found on Amazon:

This review is from: Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black) (Electronics)
I previously owned the Flip MinoHD so this review is based on a comparison between the Flip MinoHD and the new Flip UltraHD.

“After reading about the Flip UltraHD’s addition of an HDMI output, larger screen, and longer battery life, I decided to sell my 4 month old Flip MinoHD and purchase the Flip UltraHD. Since the MinoHD is very sleek and small in size, my first reaction to the UltraHD was that it was quite a bit larger and bulkier to hold and has taken some time to get used to. However, unless you’ve used a MinoHD- the larger size of the UlraHD will probably be less noticeable. I found the camera controls on the UltraHD to be slightly easier to operate… vs. the touch-sensitive buttons on the MinoHD. As far as video-quality between the two, I compared two different videos and both are about the same. However, the colors appear to be slightly more vibrant with the UltraHD.

When trying to decide which one to purchase… if maximum portability is important to you, then the MinoHD is the better choice. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a compact camcorder with more features (HDMI output, replaceable batteries, longer record time), then you can’t go wrong with the UltraHD.

My ultimate wish is for Pure Digital/Cisco to introduce a MinoHD with all the same functionality as the UltraHD. Until then, the UltraHD is the all-around better choice.”

If you are looking for a wonderful, small, video recorder that is easy to work with, I highly recommend getting this electronic device. Within a few minutes of pushing a couple of buttons, you will understand how simple this digital movie-maker really is to operate.

The sound quality is superb on the videos. There are a limited amount of buttons and functions. It’s not a complicated piece of electronics equipment to figure out. It’s really as simple as pushing the big red button to record and to stop recording.

Like I said before… you will “flip over the Flip camcorder”!

I have been extracting images from the movies I’ve taken to use in many of the blog posts I make. This feature is easy to work with. The editing software displays twenty images form the area you select on the video. All you have to do is to click on the photo and then save it. You can then export it to a location on your computer in a JPG format.

Selecting the correct domain name for your website is very important. This is why extensive research should precede choosing the name. Concentrate on the main keyword phrases in your niche of choice when researching different ideas. You want to keep the name short and easy to remember.

Stay away from using numbers or hyphens in the URL- if at all possible. URL’s like that just tend to confuse people.

Always try to find a good “.com” name. Most people type them into the address box first when looking for a website. In certain cases, however, if you’re a non-profit organization, consider purchasing the “.org” format.

If you want to protect the name, you should buy the “.com”, “.net” and “.org” versions of your domain name.

Choosing the right domain name is one of the most important aspects of SEO for an Intuit website. The means by which you select one can have a huge effect on your placement in the results pages of the major search engines.

Though most websites today rank well because of the amount of back-links they have pointing to their site, placing the main search phrase in your domain name may help you have an even better chance at competing on the first page of Google.

Three Ways to Get Ideas for a Website or Blog Domain Name

Here are the first three things I do when looking for ideas for a website or blog domain name (and all of these research tools are free for you to use):

1) Use the Google “Adwords” Keyword Selector.
This tool is totally free and will help you greatly when looking for a niche name.

Sign-up for a Google account.
Login into Adwords.
Click on “opportunities” at the top of the page.
Look for the “tools” title on the left.
Click on “keyword tool.”

Type your main phrase into the research box and click on “search.”
The results will return hundreds of variations of your keyword phrase.
Look for the most popular combinations and gather ideas from those phrases.

2) Find a Domain Name Generator

There are several free versions out there that are very good.
There’s one that I use called “Name Boy”.
Just type your ideas for your name into the search box and it will yield several
different suggestions.

3) Use Back-link Watch

This is another free tool that allows you to type in a domain name which is already
making top placements in your niche. When the results are displayed, pay close
attention to the “anchor text” phrases that they are building back-links with. Usually
these anchor-links will reveal what your competition considers to be important
phrases in your niche. Extend the research by using these ideas for names in the
Google “Adwords” tool and also use the “domain name generator” tool.

Once you have several ideas for a domain name selected, go to www.GoDaddy.com and
search to see if your domain name is available. If not, continue brainstorming while
using “Godaddy’s” tool.

There are many factors that go into producing good results with your website traffic.
Don’t rush into gathering ideas for a domain name. Try to get some of your main
keyword phrase in it and this will help you be a greater success on the Internet.

Taking advantage of the Google Webmaster Tools can improve your site’s user- friendliness on the Internet. Create an account with Google and then learn how to add an Intuit/Homestead website-connection so that you can see how they view your web pages.

Don’t use the HTML authentication method described in the video.
Follow the steps in the video below to incorporate your site into your account. Don’t use the HTML method of authentication as described in the video.

Verify your site with the meta tag method.
Use the “meta tag” method. I have included an image from inside the Sitebuilder Program describing where you should add the “Meta Tag” when verifying and authenticating your Homestead website as being yours.

How to use Google Webmaster Tools to your Advantage

Using the webmaster tools to monitor how Google is seeing our websites is a wise thing to do. Taking advantage of this free program can greatly help us achieve higher placements within the search engines. Inside the program you will find useful information as to how they see your Intuit/Homestead website.

Here are a few things I pay close attention to:

Links
There is a listing inside of your account that will show the internal and external links related to your website.

Crawl Errors
This statistic should be taken with a grain of salt at times because it is not accurate. On one occasion the Google Bot reported that it could not find my index page and therefore stated that there were a hundred pages that they could not crawl. This was not the case. When the site was crawled soon afterward, all of the website’s pages were found by the Google crawler.

Where Pages are Ranked in the Index
Google names this report “Top Search Queries”. This is valuable information that you can use to see which of your URLs are getting the highest placements and the most click-through activity. By monitoring this vitally important report, you can target specific pages of your Intuit site for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes.

Keywords
Pay close attention to the keywords that Google references your website’s content by. When writing your content, notice if any of the keywords tend to fit in with the subject matter of your article and if so, then incorporate them into and throughout your text. This is one of the many factors that can improve the number of pages which make it into the top search engine results.

Making a Homestead Website Connection with Google

It is in the Webmaster Tools area where you make the connection between the sitemap on your Intuit site and Google. This is something that is manually done by you. Click the link to get a tutorial on how to add a sitemap to an Intuit website. This is not automatically updated. You will periodically need to update it as you add more pages to your site.

If you are serious about increasing the exposure of your Intuit website, then you are going to need to use all possible avenues that are available to you. Since Google is the largest supplier of search engine traffic on the Internet, it’s wise to use the free Web-Master Tools available as leverage. I am convinced that the information provided through their free services has been beneficial in the development process of my Intuit websites. In fact when I first made a successful Homestead website connection, within two months I was able to push three of my SiteBuilder pages higher in the search engine results pages.

Here’s how I started to untangle the mystery. The first thing I did was to check the amount of back-links that his competitor had coming into their website. The results showed that they had NO back-links pointing to their website. This was a huge discovery in realizing that the listing had nothing to do with the quality or even the amount of links. Their website had ZERO. That was easy enough!

Still puzzled, I checked out the competitor’s website to see if they had used the main keyword phrase we were trying to rank for in any particular way that might give them favor in the Google Local Business Listing’s results. I discovered nothing that seemed to indicate that they had optimized their site better than we had ours. In fact the optimization on our pages was ten times better than theirs.

Next, I began to study the actual Google business registrations that each of the companies did. I began to notice some things that our competitor had done differently than my client had. There was one particular thing I noticed. They had written a review and my client had not.

So, I clicked on “write a review” for my client’s website and began writing an “Optimized” review. When I finished with it, I then closed out the window and refreshed my browser. Next, I entered our keyword phrase in the Google search box and hit “search.” Bata-Bing! I had unlocked the door and we were now stepping on the competitors’ heads. Within minutes I had turned the table upside down and we were once again number one on Google.

One thing I noticed right away when I looked at the review after doing the search is that the caches for the keywords were in “bold”. This was a huge indicator that the placement of the business in the results ranking was directly affected by the richness of the keywords on the review page.

Since discovering these tips, I have notified several friends and clients of mine and encouraged them to get their customers to write a review in the Google local Business Listings. These are the types of things we must continually do with “optimization” to improve our personal rankings and the positions of our clients’ web locations in the search results pages.

On this blog you will find Intuit website tutorials that can be watched by simply scrolling through the video’s category located on the menu bar. Link building, adding Adsense, embedding a Google calendar and advanced keyword research are just a small portion of the lessons we have provided on this blog. This particular site is just one location where we provide information, tools and tips for working with the Site Builder.

The largest collection of tutorials for a Homestead website owner to learn from are the ones we provide in the Marketing Center. In the collection of lessons- there are blog posts, videos, audios, e-books and links to top sites on the Internet that you can learn from quickly. A wealth of knowledge can be instantly available to you that will greatly increase the speed at which you learn and also decrease the time you have to invest in mastering the Site Builder.

Videos are the best tutorials for learning the Intuit Sitebuilder content. That’s why we continue to publish new tutorials regularly. They are much easier to follow and understand than any other method of learning. The reasons are obvious. You get audio and visual- which make learning easier than trying to sift through understanding what someone is trying to explain in a text document. Even if an e-book or article has image graphics, it’s much quicker and easier to comprehend by learning from a tutorial video lesson.

All of our Homestead Sitebuilder tutorials give accurate, detailed information. In fact, we have never had anyone ever demand that a refund be issued due to receiving poor information. The tools, tips or techniques we provide in the tutorial lessons are beneficial in many ways.

Here are a few Youtube tutorials offering Intuit/Homestead website help.

1) Beginners link building
* Fast way of promoting your website
*Advanced keyword research
*Adding Adsense
*Deleting a website in Sitebuilder
*What is the Alt Text feature?
*Adding a favicon
*How to set up Google Analytics
*Easy way to create a banner
*Blurry images
*Creating a PDF e-book
*How to add Kontera
*Adding Youtube videos
*Deleting or eliminating web pages
*Working with multiple elements

There are many other tutorials for learning about building a Homestead website located on our Sitebuilder Expert Youtube channel. Of all the tutorials we have created for you, the most important place for you to begin is in learning how to do SEO on a Intuit website. Optimization techniques are vitally important for you to learn first before you even think about creating web pages. If you don’t learn how to optimize your pages properly- your site will not be a success.

No longer is getting traffic from Google, Yahoo and Bing to one website the main focus of the experts. As search results providers change and the social media explosion continues, traffic-getters are utilizing an uncounted number of sources for driving people to their sites. If we want to market our Homestead websites effectively we are going to have to learn some new strategies.

It may not be your website that gets top rankings in the results pages, but if you can use Twitter, Ezine Articles or Youtube to get a top listing and then have a link directed to your site, you have expanded your web-site’s search engine optimization.

In other words, search engine optimization techniques are changing. In order to be a success online, we have to leverage the many different power sites that are freely available to us.

What is a power site? I would define it as a high Google page rank authority site that continually gets top listings with Google. Youtube videos consistently dress the front pages of the results pages. Many article websites such as Ezine Artticles and Go Articles get top listings. These are power websites because they dominate the search engine results pages. An Ezine article can get a top listing within minutes of being published and stay in the first position for months to even years.

Success in getting traffic to your Intuit website is now dependent on building a “niche” community around your site. By leveraging the use of many websites search engine optimization is being redefined.

It’s no longer just about your site getting a top listing. If you are going to compete, you will need to drive traffic to your Intuit website from many different directions by leveraging many of the free blogs, article directories and video membership websites.

Learning how to use other domains in your search engine optimization strategy is going to take a large investment of your time. First you will have to create a membership with each site and then it will be necessary to learn how to use their web page publishing tools. Every site presents a new learning curve. Here’s the thing though, once you begin to write optimized content and start publishing your articles through the use of these power sites, it is possible to own three to five listings on the front-page of Google in a matter of moments. Point all of these articles and videos to your Intuit website through the use of click-able links and your chances of getting more traffic will increase dramatically.

The above strategy will only work though if you understand how to optimize an Intuit website for search engines.

Search engine optimization is most definitely being redefined by all of the rapid changes we are seeing as the evolution of social media, Google, Yahoo and Bing continues.

Did you know that Google is worth more than General Motors, McDondals and Disney combined?

Google’s co-founder, Sergery Brin, states in the Youtube video below that the company’s mission is to take all of the worlds informations and make it accessible to everyone.

When Google first started, the company could hardly afford to purchase the computer hard drives that they needed. At one point Sergey explains in the Youtube video that they build their own enclosures from Lego blocks to house the hard drives once they go them. It sounds as though they did not want to spend money to purchase the proper cases.

Google serves three gourmet meals per day to their employees. They provide an on-site gym and entertainment at the companies location for the people who work there. The idea behind providing these types of extra-benefits that the employees enjoy is to help them to be more productive. The company is the number one place sought after to work in the web industry. I wonder if you combined, Mcdonalds, GM and Disney for that statistic if Google would still be number one.

I find watching videos like this one to be very entertaining, enlightening and worth my time

Internet income streams are how you build your online business. Amazon has an affiliate program that will allow you to make money with your Intuit/ Homestead Site. All you have to do is sign up for the companies associate program  and you will be set to start getting the products on your site.

This particular affiliate program gives you a commission on everything that someone buys from their website if they passed through your affiliate link to get to the products. There are a number of widgets, links and banners that can be placed on your Homestead Sitebuilder pages very easily.

Steps for Creating Product Displays From Amazon.com

1. Choose the style banner, carousel, widget or text link that you want to use

2. Enter into the search box a topic for the items you want to display on your website

3. Choose what products you want to try and sell

4. Copy and paste the final HTML code into the sitebuilder page on your Intuit website

Adding Amazon Products to a Homestead Website

All you have to do is click on the “Add HTML” icon in the sitebuilder and enter the code for the items you selected at Amazon to display on your website in the properties editor to the right.

As an example of one of the optional display items, the carousel above is from the Amazon website. I personally selected what I wanted to be in the display. I will only make money if someone clicks a selection and then purchases something from the Amazon site.

Through the years I have benefited from the Amazon Associates program. I originally learned how to make money using Adsense and then my second income stream was the Amazon Affiliate program. Today I have over twenty different income streams online. The more income streams you can get built and the faster you can drive traffic to your Intuit/Homestead website, the more money you will make online.