The internet and specifically internet marketing can be a very daunting place. Although there are many thousands of people that make a genuine living on the internet, the amount that fail will far out-shadow that number. So what are the elements that must be addressed to determine if you will become a member of the 'swim' (and not 'sink') crowd? Basically, you need to find the correct niche, setup a website and ensure that is it search engine friendly (SEO) and finally you need to perform well in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Finding the correct Niche (from the SEO point for view).

You have probably heard of this rule, "If it's under 2,000,000 results then it's easy to dominate". This may not be entirely accurate because what if it's a highly searched keyword where about 20,000 other webmasters are trying to optimize for it? on the other hand what if the keyword phrase returns over 20,000,000 results, but only 2000 webmasters are trying to optimize for it. In other words, before you succeed in finding the correct niche, more research is required? and this can be easily done with two commands allinanchor: and allintitle:.

If you type into Google - allinanchor:your keyword phrase, it will tell you how many webmasters are linking back to their website with that specific keyword phrases in their anchor text. Anchor text is just a hyperlinked keyword phrase, for example:

The eBook Sale. I simply hyperlinked the phrase "The eBook Sale" with my website url. Normally, the allinanchor command is used once you start getting some backlinks to your website - it shows you how strong your backlinks are using your keyword phrase as anchor text. Knowing this, you can now use this command to research your competition.

If you type into Google - allintitle:your keyword phrase , it will tell you how many webmasters have that specific keyword phrase in their title tags within the meta tags. Therefore, when using the allintitle command, the smaller number of results the better chance of achieving top rankings for that keyword phrase.

Ensuring that you SEO your website.

Once you have found your niche, you need to purchase/create the correct domain name. Try to minimize the use of keywords in your domain name and especially try not to use the 'keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com' format. Also, register your domain name for at least 2 years. In terms of on-site Search Engine Optimization, the following points are important:

- use h1 tags in the page contents and try to minimize the use of h2, h3 and h4 tags

- use titles that include some extra text describing the content of the page

- use meta-tags? author, description, keywords

- in terms of keyword density, just make sure that the page content reads well and makes sense to the customer (include keywords but only if it reads ok). Use lots of links to sub-pages through keyword rich anchor text (i.e. when linking to another page, don't say 'click here'? instead use a keyword that describes the page your linking to

- have a good site infrastructure, i.e. links from sub-pages to the home-page, links from sub-pages to other sub-pages?

- install a wordpress blog and SEO plugins to make it search engine friendly.

Performing well in the SERPs.

Firstly, what exactly is a SERP? A SERP, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page. It should be every webmaster's goal to out-perform his/her competitors and achieve higher rankings i.e. get their website/product on the first page of search engine results. To achieve this you need to also look beyond on-site SEO? to off-site SEO.

Off-site SEO refers to search engine optimization techniques that are not performed on your own website or page. Basically, off-site SEO is all about getting help from other websites in the form of incoming links, commonly referred to as backlinks. You can think of each backlink as a vote for your page. One link from a high quality site is worth ten times that from a poor site - actually linking to bad sites can negatively affect your own website's rankings. One-way links into your website from another are of greater value than reciprocal links from carrying out link exchanges. Links to your sub pages are as important as, or even more important than links to your homepage.

There are many ways to get backlinks, but of course, with anything that is really worthwhile and necessary, few of them are quick and easy. Here are some options:

- build content slowly? submit your homepage on its own first and once its indexed, submit another page/link and when that's indexed, submit another and so on

- submit your website to search engines and directories

- write articles and press releases

- reciprocal linking/link exchanges

- buy links

- making forum postings

- posting comments to theme related blogs

I hope this is not an information overload. It's actually a fairly sequential process from identifying your niche to on-site SEO to off-site SEO. Each step and each element of each step is fundamental if you wish to succeed in internet marketing. The main thing is to take your time, don't panic and don't give up. Good luck!