Advertising

If you participated in the Performancing Treasure Hunt, then you know that the answer was: “Make a new friend every day”

At Performancing, we really believe that this is one of the keys to online success. Reach out, make friends, exchange favors, network…on a daily basis. Sure, you need the right idea, but unless people know about it…your idea ain’t going nowhere.

Networking is easy. Unfortunately, there are two major obstacles that most people encounter at one point or another:

1. The Newbie Mistake

The newbie mistake is to NOT contact people like me, due to fear. Get over it. Contact me. Let me know what you want. But first, let me know what you can offer;-)

2. The Expert Mistake

The expert mistake is to grow complacent with your current network. Sure, you’re successful. But networks are dynamic. All you 26-30 year olds -> you aren’t the energetic younguns you used to be. Make friends with the guys and gals who are taking your place…and in doing so you’ll be reinforcing your network.

Success comes from people. The more people you know, the more people you can reach. So start making friends…a new one every day, for that matter.

In the introduction thread of my forum ever-vigilant moderator Jen pulled out a quote from new member Humor Blogging which instantly inspired me:

That’s why I started this site. Something I wanted to exist simply didn’t seem to exist. I couldn’t find it, so I created it.

Could this short quote hold the key to success?

Too many people seem to create solutions waiting for a problem, particularly techies. How many times do people invent something then try to find a market for it. How much easier is it to find an unserved need and fill it?

Bloggers don’t generally follow editorial calendars, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Many of us wait until it’s too late to blog about products, seasonal topics or trends. Rather than wait for the last minute,plan ahead and organize an editorial calendar. Here are a few tips for getting ahead of the game in 2008:

Start researching trends now. Find out what the hot products and topics will be for 2008 and start writing about them NOW. And continue to write about them. By the time everyone else jumps on the bandwagon you’ll already have made it to the tops of the search engines and you might even be considered an expert thanks to your early analysis.

Any interesting holidays or events befitting your niche? Research the history, traditions and ideas behind the event and plan a series. Start writing now, but use your timestamp feature to post closer to D-Day.

Research your stats. What days and months have the higher traffic? Try writing your best posts on the days with the most traffic and perhaps drop a linkbait or two at times when traffic is needed the most.

Will you be away from your blog? Will you be unavailable for blogging due to vacation, family events, or other matters? Blog now, post later.

Plan weekly features. Plan weekly features for your blog, maybe an interview Monday, product reviews on Tuesday, a tutorial Wednesday, and so on. The good thing about this is that you don’t run out of ideas.

Write more than one post at a time. Rather than post on the fly, try taking some time out to write several posts and adjust your time stamp for each post accordingly.

I like editorial calendars because they help keep me focused and prevent me from getting bloggers block. If I know I have to post a certain thing each day of the week, it’s easier for me to plan ahead.

Did you know many bloggers have no idea what they’ll blog about each day? They make it up on the fly. By preparing as much as you can in advance, you only stand to gain traffic and better your reputation.

In my last post, I talked about how to use SEO Digger to find keywords where you rank on the 2nd page of Google. Today, we’ll look at simple steps to move those 2nd page URLs to the 1st page of Google.

I find that people learn better with practical examples, so I decided to help one of my favorite business blogs, Strategic Profits Blog. Also, I hope to get a link from them 🙂

Using SEO Digger, I found a 2nd page URL. As you can see in the screenshot below, the keyword is “online business coaching” and the URL is www.strategicprofits.com.

(For more specific steps on how to find URLs on the 2nd page of popular keywords, check out my previous post, Find Great Keywords With SEO Digger.)

So, what can Strategic Profits to move their site to the first page? Here are some tips.

Change the Title Tag and the Meta Description Tag

The first thing I check is the title tag. In a survey of 37 SEO experts, the title tag was voted as the most important search engine ranking factor. Therefore, the whole keyword phrase should be in title tag.

The current title tag for www.strategicprofits.com is

Business Coaching For Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs

If they changed it to be

Online Business Coaching For Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs

they would have a better chance of ranking in the first page.

While I’m working on the title tag, I check the meta description tag and make sure the keyword is in there too. The meta description tag doesn’t help too much with rankings. However, it increases clickthroughs because the keyword is bolded on the description on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Look again at the Strategic Profits result on the SERPs. See how “business coaching” is in bold text.

Strategic Profits can increase their clickthroughs by simply changing the description to

Find out how you can work less, make more money and have more time off with Rich Schefren’s online business coaching.

I just added the word “online” to complete the keyword phrase.

Insert the Keyword in the Body Text

I looked through the text of www.strategicprofits.com. I didn’t find the keyword “online business coaching”. They should insert that keyword 2-3 times in the body text.

Build Links with Appropriate Anchor Text

You can do this in two ways: link to the URL from your site (internal links) and get links from other domains (external links).

Internal links are easier to build but external links carry much more weight in Google’s algorithm.

Strategic Profits should use “online business coaching” as their anchor text. However, there seems to be a penalty for overusing the same exact anchor text. To avoid this penalty, they should also use keyword variations like these

internet business coaching
excellent online business coaching
excellent internet business coaching
online business coach
internet business coach
business online coach
business online coach
try online business coaching

Strategic Profits should link internally to www.strategicprofits.com with the above anchor texts. Probably the best place to do this is on their blog.

There are a lot of things you can do to build external links. To keep this post from getting too long, I’ll just give two easy-to-follow tactics.

First, I like to get links from the following sites because they’re free. All you have to do is submit a quality article.

squidoo.com
hubpages.com
ezinearticles.com

Second, I like to buy links.

Finally, build links in the content area of a site rather than sitewide links (like the ones on the sidebar and footer). Google likes content-based links more than sitewide ones.

Conclusion

It often doesn’t take much effort to move a URL on the 2nd page of Google to the 1st page. Follow the above tips and you’ll be on your way to a top 10 ranking. Good luck and feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions.

There was a time when I didn’t have any employees. In fact, there was a time when I was an employee.

So I know what it’s like to pretend to be busy, to inflate my productivity in reports, etc.

Now I have employees. Normally, I’m a real laid back kind of guy. I don’t like to micro-manage. I like to let artists do their work, unbridled.

But here’s the thing. I can’t shake the deep feeling that web professionals have this nasty habit of faking commitment. You know why? Because I used to fake commitment when I was working for people.

So let’s paint my picture of paranoia (I’m normally not like this, seriously). We’ll lay out the facts:

1. Working online removes temporal boundaries

The web professional can work at 2am just as easily as 8am. This is great. But it also creates a seductive time-warp in which the web professional thinks he or she can run an infinite number of side projects.

2. Working online removes spatial boundaries

Being close to one’s co-workers creates a sense of accountability to work. A person is expected to focus on his primary responsibilities when in an office. Sure, sometimes that means “faking it” – but spatial proximity enhances focus and singlenes of mind.

3. Working online creates infinite possibilities for making money for yourself

I admit it. I’ve suggested in the past that the best road to success online is to work for yourself.

Nothing like stabbing yourself in the back, eh…especially when your employees read everything you write;-)

So what do you think? Is my paranoia justified? Is it unjustified? Are there methods and structures to utilize these facts about the realities of online work to your advantage?

Help! I think I’m about to go delusional;-)

Let me introduce you to one of my favorite SEO tools, SEO Digger.

With this tool, you simply enter in a URL and it will give you the popular keywords that the URL ranks for in the Google top 20. If you become a registered member (it’s free), you can do a full search of a domain name.

SEO Digger has over 44 million keywords in their database. The keywords come from Wordtracker and Overture. If your keyword is not in the database, you can send SEO Digger your keywords and they’ll add them.

It’s not the most accurate tool. Some of the keyword rankings are inaccurate because the search engine results pages (SERPs) are constantly changing. Also, SEO Digger only updates the database every two weeks.

However, this tool gives you a quick overview of where you stand in the SERPs for popular keywords. I like using it to find keywords where I rank on the second page. These keywords are great because it often doesn’t take much work to move your site to the first page.

How to Use SEO Digger to Find Great Keywords

Here’s a quick example where I used SEO Digger to find a couple keywords on the second page.

I typed the domain name of one of the sites I’m working on, WatchPart.co.uk. I checked “Full search for domain name”. Remember you have to be a registered member to use the full domain search. Also, I clicked on “250 keywords” so I could see more keywords per page.

Here are the top of the results. “Pos.” is the position where your site ranks.

I looked at the keywords on the second page (11th through 20th position). Then, I picked keywords that seemed like they would have a good amount of search volume.

Here are two keywords I found.

Finally, I checked Google to get a more accurate ranking. For watch repair kits, the site is actually in the 14th position instead of the 15th. For watch repair kit, the site is in the 13th position.

To learn more about SEO Digger, check out the FAQ and manual.

In my next post, I’ll give you some simple tips for moving your site from the second page to the first page.

The inevitable has happened. On today’s Internet, the key to success is finding a way to stand out in a sea of mediocre content.

Gone are the days of churning out articles, brute force. Gone are the days of relying exclusively on the long tail of search for monetization.

So what are you supposed to do? I can sum it up for you in two words:

Differentiate upwards.

Your goal as an online professional is to differentiate yourself in a positive way from the vast sea of mediocrity that you see all around you. You should aim to do something that will catch the attention of Main Stream Media. Do something that will establish your site as an authority in its niche; something that’s out of reach for most other competitors.

In other words: look for the real gold at the top of the mountain, not the base.

Steps To Take & Goals to Make

First thing’s first. You should constantly be targeting powerful eyeballs.

Next thing: develop sustainable linkbait. No more of this one-off stuff that dies a quick death.

Go multi-media: that’s audio and video. at minimum, you should do an audio podcast. But aim for a weekly video show.

Be a resource hound: develop the Wikipedia articles that don’t yet exist in your niche…just don’t give them to Wikipedia. Put them on your own site.

Other ways to be a resource hound: build a killer tool, write detailed reviews in a niche that doesn’t have detailed reviews, create a bunch of top 10 resource lists (e.g. Top 10 Online Tools For Accountants)

A Real Life Example

When I got into the celebrity niche about 12 months ago, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it is today. But people are natural born gold rushers, especially if the gold is laying at the base of a mountain.

The competition in the celebrity niche is fiercer now than when I first entered. The hanging fruits are much rarer. It occurred to me a while ago that I needed to take action and hope that there was a lot more gold up at the top of the mountain than at the bottom, where I’d been playing for the last year or so.

In order to differentiate, I decided to start a video production: The PopCrunch Show.

Warning: The following video contains language that many might find offensive. Watch at your own discretion.

What do you think? Will it help PopCrunch differentiate among the sea of celebrity sites?

Why am I so against Adsense? There are a few reasons, I risk getting into a rant if I list them all!

My main reason for disliking Adsense is that it changes people. There are strong publishers who resist the siren call, but in most cases there are two outcomes with Adsense monetization:

1. Defeat – The publisher feels a failure because of the measly Adsense payment, if they even get any at all
2. Submission – The publisher changes their whole approach to serve the needs of the Adsense block rather than their readers

Often in a last ditch attempt the blogger or webmaster will go from (1) to (2).

What do I mean by “submission”? Well have you noticed the hoops you have to jump through to get good Adsense earnings are mostly not reader-friendly?

• Cloaking ads so they look like navigation
• Blending colors and fonts so they don’t look like ads
• Tuning content so better, higher earning ads display
• Tweaking presentation to increase click-throughs
• Attracting a higher percentage of first time visitors who are more likely to click
• Using misleading headlines to generate search traffic that leaves via ads
• etc etc

By all means make money with Adsense, just please do not get caught into the trap of subjigating your strategy to it or feeling like you are a failure if your blog does not earn the big bucks.

Personally, I go for loyal audience over adsense clicks any day 🙂