Search engine optimization (SEO) is a powerful no-cost way to attract potential buyers to your home-study course or other product. However, to get the best results with this marketing method, begin your consideration of SEO not after you have created your product but way earlier – before you’ve even selected the topic. Then keep your SEO efforts going even after you create your sales page. That’s the formula for search engine traffic without spending a fortune!

Step 1 – Make sure your infoproduct idea is commercially viable. Use keyword search tools such as Google’s keyword tool or Wordtracker’s free trial to verify that people are already searching for what your information product proposes to teach.

In addition, check the search engines to see whether anyone else is already offering a course or report like yours. You may be surprised to learn that it’s better to discover a few products already in existence than none. This tends to show there’s a market. If your search turns up people using pay-per-click to advertise their product on the topic, that’s even better, because most of the time it means buyers, not window shoppers or information gatherers, respond to those ads.

Step 2 – Create the title for your infoproduct. Instead of a cute or mysterious title that might resonate with those who happen to find out about the product apart from search engines, build your product title around an important keyword phrase that people so actually search for. For instance, don’t title your course on collecting quilts “Ancestral Fortunes”; “Collecting Antique Quilts for Fun and Fortune” is far better for SEO.

Step 3 – Write the sales page for your product in close conjunction with creating the infoproduct. Some people write their sales copy before creating the product, while others do it immediately after finishing the product creation. Whichever order works best for you, make sure you include keyword-rich headlines and subheads in your sales page.

Step 4 – Add SEO elements to your sales page. Your title tag – what shows up in the upper left corner of the visitor’s browser – should contain your most important keywords. Your headlines should be coded with “h1” tags and your subheads with “h2” tags. Add keyword-rich “alt-text” to every graphic on your sales page. (If you’re not building the web site yourself, pass these instructions along to your webmaster/web developer.)

Step 5 – Write and distribute press releases and articles that incorporate your infoproduct keywords in the headline and sprinkled throughout their text. This step in particular gets missed by so many product developers, yet it’s what drives your search engine listings best toward the top of page 1 of the search results. Search engines give heavier weight to content published on news sites and third-party content sites.

Whether your product concerns collecting antique quilts, raising children with healthy self-esteem, touring South America on motorcycle or preventing employment discrimination lawsuits, follow these steps and interested strangers will be regularly finding and purchasing your infoproduct. You’ll be celebrating buyers ringing up your virtual cash register.

Author Bio: The author of 14 books and 7 multimedia home-study courses, Marcia Yudkin has been selling information since 1981. Download a free recording of her answers to commonly asked questions about information marketing by entering your information in the box at http://www.yudkin.com/infomarketing.htm

Category: Marketing
Keywords: information products,information publishing,infoproducts,infomarketing,selling,sales,easy,simple