New Course on Getting Just Right Clients to Your Website

Working on the affiliate program trying to get a pic hosted on sites to work.

Find a niche market | Niche marketing with keyword research

Learn how to find that gap in the market where searchers needs are not being met by enough suppliers, so your new product or service can fit right in and compete, successfully.

The CEO and founder of Wordtracker.com, Mike Minhdel is teaching. Learn from the best!

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A Cloud of Missed Opportunities | WebProNews

Do yourself a favor and explore the cloud options that are out there.

via webpronews.com

Small businesses often overlook resources they need for their online presence and day to day operations. Do you know how many awesome tools you can find in Google Apps Marketplace? Many are free.

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Fearless

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.

To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

Pema Chodron

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It's not enough to want success.

People like you and I, those of us taking risks, investing everything we have into our business and building a personal brand, know it isn't enough to want success. We have to innovate, think, connect, share what we know, and be relentless in our pursuit.

Being able to see progress and feel momentum gives you hope. However, you can have hope even when no one else does or when there has not yet been progress or momentum.

Knowing when to cut your losses is important as well. Sometimes it is important to shift your hopes elsewhere—often times refocusing elsewhere, depending upon the situation.

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Getting the Traffic You Deserve

Are you putting your best content on your website but getting dismal traffic?

Are you writing blog posts, pouring your heart and soul into your content and getting no response?

Does your website have a high bounce rate? Is traffic coming from qualified prospects? Are you converting your traffic?

This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to online marketing. The nuances of building an online presence is changing.There's more competition, more noise, more channels, and more vulnerabilities than ever before. On the other side of the coin, there's more more opportunitity than ever before.

This is a big game. There's a lot at stake.  The influencers gain more influence. Influence = traffic.

You might have really useful information but it is buried. With authority sites taking the first few pages of results, coupled with affilate marketers hijacking traffic on niche topics, it is a daunting task for the average small business to be found in search.

Here's a few things to commit to if you want your business found in search:

• Never stop studying keyword research - pour over your own website analytics and use Google Insights and Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Know what is working for your SEO (on page and off): Use Google Webmaster Tools - there's awesome information about the way the search engines see your site, how your pages rank for various queries, where your links are coming from, reports on crawl errors and malware that might be on your site.
• Optimize Local Search - if you are confused by local search and strapped for time, David Mihm provides the best resource on local search ranking factors
• Take the time to produce good content. Quality over quantity. It takes practice and paying attention. If you are excited about what you are doing, find a way to talk about it. Use the Flip or screencasting tools for quick videos, subscribe to industry blogs and forums, think about ways to present your information visually -here's a great example of an infographic- The Landing Page Manifesto Typographic Essay.
• Connect. Be real and be sociable. The number of followers will grow organically and will produce lasting results if you are connecting because you care. 

Don't get lost in the sea of information. Keep talking about your business, your passions and what you value. Fight for it. You deserve it. Whew. I just needed that little pep talk!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Do you think Google Screwed Up Big Time with Buzz Disengage Button?

Shannon Evans who co-authored a book on local search recently published a post about how horribly wrong Google got this. The sentiment from her post was that Google is punishing people who opt out of Google Buzz.

Fortunately, this isn't true. (The following is a copy of the comment I left on Shanon's post, which she felt a need to delete.)

There's no punishment so you can relax and feel free to disable your buzz and delete your profile. Disabling Buzz and deleting your profile doesn't delete your Google Account. They are not one in the same.

What is true: Google Buzz and Google Profile are intertwined. You can't delete your profile and keep Buzz and you can't disable Buzz and keep your profile.

If you want to keep your profile (and the SEO that comes with it) but ditch Buzz, you'll have to take a few steps: don't ever post anything to buzz, remove all sites from the "linked sites" in buzz, check "do not show lists on my public Google profile" and check "do not show Google Buzz in Gmail".

Not everyone wants to turn Buzz off...they want all of it; Buzz and Google Profile to go away. Google has made that easy.

If you disable Buzz and delete your profile, reviews on businesses do not disappear nor do blog comments or book reviews. If you have claimed your business on Google Places, your local listing is connected to your Google Account not your Profile/Buzz. There isn't a "force people to use Buzz conspiracy" by Google. Not yet anyway.

Some SEO is going to be lost. Especially if you have connected all of your other sites (Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs) to your profile. If you want to be found in Social Search, it is clearly an advantage to connect as many sites as possible. Google Profile is unique in letting you link as many as you want. Btw, there's a lot of room to experiment with SEO and local search here.

On a personal note, I don't see deleting Buzz or my Google Profile as leaving a social network. I see it as a way to stop communicating in a public way. Google social networking tools stay in tact without Buzz (Google Friend Connect, YouTube, Blogger, Reader).