We all know that in terms of organic search traffic Google is really the only game in town. We have dozens of #1 rankings in Yahoo and Bing and they just don’t drive any real traffic – sad, but true. So if you can’t turn to other sources of organic traffic, then where should you be turning?

Paid Traffic – Go Where the Pros Go

The fact is that paid traffic is the fastest way to get a ton of targeted visitors to your site. We just wrote a big post about it on our new blog TopMarketingStrategies.com – you can read it here:  SEO is NOT the Only Game in Town. The beauty of paid traffic is just how fast you can ramp it up and the fact that it is almost limitless.

Yes there are some gotcha’s and yes, if you do it wrong, you can waste a lot of money as well. But today more than ever we need to focus on diversification – Panda should have taught you that lesson, but if it didn’t, then surly the Penguin did! Please don’t wait for the Google Platypus release (or whatever BS name they’ll come up with) to let this point settle in.

You need to be actively searching out and testing alternate sources of traffic besides organic - it’s just smart business.

Diversity Is Key

On the blog we also talk a lot about diversification in this blog post as well entitled – The Worst Number for Internet Marketers – obviously diversification is important and in many ways that you’ve likely not even stopped to think about.

Traffic diversification, however, is probably the most important of all because traffic is what brings you leads and customers and if you are relying on just one source of traffic  your business is on very tenuous ground for sure. Whether it be social media traffic, paid traffic, offline traffic, etc… you must embrace the idea that you need to get traffic from as many sources as possible besides just Google.

If you weren’t able to make the live training webinar with Gauher Chaudhry, then make sure to sign up for our Insider’s Club where you’ll get the replay as well as access to over 30 hours of additional training in our training vault.

Recommended Products by Gauher Chaudhry

• Pay Per View Formula – This is the premiere training course available in the marketplace for PPV marketing – it should really be a $1997 or at least $997 course. For a limited time (just until Monday) you can get it with a $100 discount off price of just $397 and you’ll also get a free copy of the CPA Quantum course as well. Don’t miss this one if you’re at all interested in PPV traffic, there is no better option available. It also includes his secret list of sites to ban to reduce costs in your campaigns as well as his own private tracking utility that runs on your own server. If you want to watch the sales and informational video go here but remember to buy from the link above for the discount.
• Pay Per Click Formula - Most PPC courses we’ve seen focus on Google Adwords – this course is much, much different. Gauher looks at virtually every PPC source known to man and exposes just how many others there are out there beyond just Google. This is a terrific, high quality course and comes highly recommended.
• CPA Quantum – This is more of an introductory course for paid traffic in general, so don’t let the CPA title fool you. At just $47 it is a complete steal of a bargain as it will provide you with a terrific overview on several great sources of various types of paid traffic.

So the past week has seen yet another Google algorithm change this time they’ve dubbed it the Penguin – okay, whatever… Nice name guys, but perhaps you should pay a bit more attention to the algo than the name! Well, that’s our opinion. In our other blog post here you’ll see we give some embarrassing examples of just how bad this algorithm has been.

As we’ve analyzed our network of sites, our client sites and our own affiliate sites we have really seen one common trend and that is all to do with anchor text over-optimization. Now, yes, we’ve talked a lot about this in the past few webinars and really haven’t changed what we’ve said about Penguin or Panda for that matter in over a year now. The same things are being looked at as the original Panda, but just a lot closer than they used to be.

Now we’ve been saying this for awhile and our data has revealed it to be true. We’ve seen where once you start straying above 50% or so yo start entering into the gray area and are likely to be susceptible to the wrath of the Penguin. Now it was yesterday that I was surfing around and pulling up other research that not only confirmed what we were seeing but also added a new twist to it as well. Here’s a quote from Microsite Masters on the topic.

They go into a great deal of specifics and details and have slightly different numbers than we came across in our research, but the end result is the same – over-optimized anchor text *can* hurt you. Now, it doesn’t necessarily hurt you – there are some that are not affected but that’s pretty much always the case. However, the likelihood that the Penguin is swimming your way goes way, way up for high anchor text percentages.

I said above, however, that this site goes into even more detail than we did and came up with yet another secondary observation that, honestly, we hadn’t seen. Their observation is that link relevance is also becoming more important. Now, personally, we haven’t investigated that yet because we have many, many times in the past and it was not the case. However, this new data does warrant a fresh look. As we dive into some better tools and resources for identifying the classification of sites we’ll redo our research and get back to you.

Here’s what they said about it more specifically:

If you check out their site and chart, you’ll see, however that the percentages on link relevance are still pretty low and we expect them to remain that way. While this may contradict our earlier post about link relevance – see Is Link Relevance Relevant? – even so it is only a small shift towards relevancy. The most difficult part of determining relevancy is just that – determining relevancy. How do you do it? What tools are out there for that? I know many are being worked on – even the author links to and cites a beta version of a tool they used – which is good news, but right now there’s not much available other than your “gut check” of whether a site appears to be relevant or not.

Make sure to stop by our new blog and check out the in-depth post there for more information on Penguin and if you’re looking to “solve” the problem of short term tactical SEO failing you and rankings jumping all over the place, then grab a copy of our SEO Post Panda training and you’ll know how we’ve avoided most of this mess.

HELP!!!

Many of your questions and topics have been covered in our “Pandalized” – Panda 3.3 specific training, or Troy’s weekly webinar training series and even in our SEO Post Panda SEO Course, which has been updated for 2012.

SIDEBAR: In fact, recently Troy just went through our Feeding the Panda eBook and revised it for the recent Panda 3.3 changes. I looked at it afterwards and said, “really? that’s all you changed?”. The fact is, that 99% of the eBook went unchanged because what we talked about more than a year ago is still *exactly* what you need to be doing today. If you don’t own a copy of Feeding the Panda, now’s the time to pick it up.

The fact is nobody is going to help you per se, only advise. Only you can get yourself out. It is the same mentality that got people in this predicament that will keep some from recouping. Looking for quick rankings, has now gotten you looking for quick rankings again. It’s the SEO “circle of life”.

Now, let me quantify that. I am not saying you are bad. I am not saying you were wrong. I am saying when you are doing any sort of linkbuilding for one specific search engine that begins with a G – you are an algo change away from a major anxiety attack. And I am saying if you are looking for a quick fix, you probably won’t find it, and if you do, it probably won’t last long.

The facts are the facts. G has always frowned upon linkbuilding, and any sort of SERP manipulation is against their ToS. But marketing and promoting your site is not. There is a very fine line there between marketing your website and manipulating the engines. In fact the line is so thin, that in reality, they can interpret just about any sort of marketing you do as against their ToS whenever they see fit.

The house always wins. It always wins. There will always be winners and losers in this game.

What we have to do is start marketing again. A couple months ago I was driving to the store and I noticed someone put a sign at the corner advertising they will install TV’s on your wall for $99. In fact as I drove around I noticed the sign at every corner – I called the number, and had him mount 5 TV’s at our vacation home in Orlando. (SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT: If anyone is looking to rent a 4 bedroom townhouse in a wonderful resort in the Disney World area in Orlando for a vacation week let us know – we may rent it out for some weeks). My point is you have to advertise, you have to market your product some way and somehow. You can’t stop. If you stop you won’t be found. If you stop you won’t get traffic, and you won’t make sales. And the only way to get traffic is by marketing.

The fact is, this shouldn’t be “news” to anyone. SEO, as we have always said, is just ONE FORM of online marketing. Now we have always believed it to be the “best form” because of the higher converting traffic and the natural “attraction” angle of it, but that still doesn’t change the fact that it should be just ONE of many forms of marketing and advertising that you do for your site. Unfortunately, for many people, they have relied solely on organic traffic – and that is a recipe for disaster.

If you find yourself in that group, please don’t take offense. Instead, look at this as a “wake up call” and resolve to change your business model so that you have many forms of traffic coming to your site – not just one… Don’t believe that paid traffic has to be expensive – you can start small, but you have to start. Use Alexa rankings to target other sites in your niche that have good traffic or popularity and seek to buy advertising on them directly. Every one will NOT be a winner. In fact, most will be loosers. But if you evaluate a couple every month and continue to “search them out” you will discover the ones that work and work well.

Unfortunately, creating a website, sitting around and singing Kumbaya will not get you traffic.

This is where the “The Panda Power of Two” comes in to play (Yeah I just made that up)

There are two ways of getting traffic.

• Organic Traffic – This simply means traffic coming from the search engines organically to your site from your rankings, this also includes organic social traffic, etc…
• Paid Traffic – There are literally tons of different types of paid traffic from PPC/Adwords, to CPV, to PPV, to banners and media buys, to Facebook ads, direct advertising, etc, etc…

Paid traffic can be very expensive and out of some peoples budgets, and organic traffic converts much better. But in reality you should be doing both. In fact, in today’s environment and shaky ground with Google, I’d argue you cannot afford to NOT be doing some form of paid traffic – you simply need to be mitigating your risk. How expensive is it if NOT doing it ensures failure? Organic also includes social traffic and traffic from other sites that come to your site naturally. Paid traffic, includes anything you pay for, PPC, Media Buys, PPV, etc…

The cause of most peoples problems this year with their organic rankings have been two fold.

• You have had a huge link loss due to de-indexing of the networks you used, a link vacuum if you will, and…
• You have over optimized your keywords.

There are only two things to do for the Organic:

• Replace the links you lost
• Diversify your link profile

Well actually there are three, you can also quit.

And now we break my Power of Two analogy, (hmm Panda Power of Two Plus One maybe? )

• Build more links

Everyone is in a panic, everyone has stopped doing what they were doing. Nothing changes if nothing changes people. Doing nothing gets you nothing. We have heard from people that have stopped everything, cancelled everything, people are just plain old frozen in place. BIG MISTAKE.

Waiting…… Waiting…… Waiting….. do you hear the crickets yet? Have you regained your SERP’s? Didn’t think so.

Do you think that just doing “nothing” is going to solve the problem? Worse yet, consider it from G’s perspective. You’ve been building links like crazy and the all knowing big G has seen this, they’ve seen the activity. Now they send out a “threatening and vague” message and “boom” – you stop what you’re doing COLD TURKEY. Nothing. Do you think that looks suspicious? You might as well yell out “penalize me, penalize me – I’ve been bad”!

You need to start marketing, and you need to keep your eye on the prize. You need to think long term. You need to think CHAOS.

When analyzing an authority websites backlinks, you will notice their backlink anchor text is chaotic in nature. There isn’t much of a rhyme nor reason for it. They have random one time usage anchor text. Not 500 anchors to the same word. They have links from many sources. And they have lots of natural ‘nofollow’ links.

NOTE: To make a link “nofollow” simply add the attribute rel="nofollow" to the anchor tag. As in: <a href="http://domain.com" rel="nofollow">test link</a>.

The blog networks worked really well, but unfortunately they are being hunted down. But the fact that they are being hunted down, tells you just how well they work. So that speaks volumes. High PR links still work very well for building authority and ranking. What else speaks volumes, has anyone noticed the sites that took over the top spots once other have fallen? Has anyone analyzed their backlinks? They are doing the exact same things – the same old strategies. Sites that are ranking for highly competitive keywords are still ranking based on paid links with rich anchor text. I have seen it dozens of times. We have analyzed dozens of affiliate sites that are sitting at the top spot for specific keywords and they all have the exact same types of links. The difference was their method of acquisition. They were not using BMR, and the HPRL from forums – they are using networks and sites that have not been discovered yet. Don’t believe it? Go check out your top competitors and sites that are now beating you in the SERP’s.  Seriously, Download a copy of Spyglass and start analyzing backlinks – download Spyglass here – you can try it out for free.

Which leads me to…………….

What is working today for 2012?

In a nutshell, everything is working, to some extent and at a different capacity.

We have yet to update our Best List for 2012 because lots of things have been in flux, however we will be doing a Best of List for 2012 shortly when everything settles down. Here is a quick run down on tools we or team members of ours are currently using today for our linkbuilding efforts.

The key to Linkbuilding in 2012 is – you have to be better, you have to be more diverse, you have to be smarter and you have to think ahead.

• #1. Content – great content has to be your #1 goal. The more content you have the more longtail traffic you can get from your content. We have Authority Bundles as well as Product Review writing services available at ArticlesOnTap.com – these are a great addition to a website looking to expand their footprints. Nothing beats writing the content yourself if you are a subject matter expert. But you can always buy content and then tweak it to add your inherent expertise so it is not as time consuming for you.
• #2. Social signals matter – We have always been huge fans of Synnd, and believe Synnd is now more important than ever. If you are signing up for Synnd, the Enterprise hands off version is a must – not the LITE. You can check out our Synnd review here – or go right to Synnd by clicking here.
• #3. Diversity – you must have a very wide dispersion of links in your linking profile, and if you can’t do it yourself you can have someone else do it. The ArticlesOnTap.com diversified SEO packages are a great way to go if you have the budget. Check them out here.
• #4. Diversity Part 2 – for the Do It Yourselfers, Backlink Banzai offers a footprint free, blog network free way for link naturalization. They actually offer a naturalization process when you sign up for 66% non keyword rich anchor text – for just $67 – its a no brainer if you are looking to do things yourself. Check out Backlink Banzai here at this point they are very recommended and we have seen SERP improvements on URL’s we have test with Banzai as well as we have heard countless stories from dozens of others that are using Banzai successfully. Just remember, it is not the answer to all your issues, it’s just one tool in the arsenal.
• #5. Diversity Part 3 – Article Distributions – Unique Article Wizard still works great for diversity due to the fact that they are sending your articles to a multitude of user owned sites – not private blog networks. You should consider sending extremely highly spun content through for the most bang for your buck, we recommend using Uber Toolz to generate highly spun content along with TBS. We actually prefer Traffic Kaboom – but they are closed and UAW is a close 2nd to Kaboom. ArticlesOnTap.com actually offers an article submission service to UAW, Kaboom, MAN, Article Ranks and Spin Distribute here for the hands off approach. Article Demon still works and has been revamped with a 2.0 version. We also highly recommend using TBS and UberToolz to create highly spun and effective content for distributions.
• #6. Diversity Part 4- SEO Press releases work great for authority domain level backlinks and citations. We wrote a blog post on the effectiveness of SEO Press Releases here and we sell them here.
• #7. Diversity Part 5 – Yes Linkvana still works, but we now use it for diversity – we send 30 links a month, each link with a completely unique anchor text for anchor text diversification. Used in conjunction with other services it works well. Linkvana also works well for 2nd tier link building to Web 2.0 properties to build their authority. The same holds true for The Private Network.
• #8. Video Submissions – they work marvelous for great authority backlinks from authoritative video sites. We review Article Video Robot a while ago and it still works wonders at converting your articles into Videos for distributions. Read our review here and check out AVR here. Another great tool for creating high quality videos very quickly is Animoto. Animoto allows you to upload some photos, add some quick text slides and choose some royalty free stock music and then “boom” – it automatically generates the video for you. Make sure to get the pro version though as it is the only way you can remove the Animoto branding/credits at the end.
• #9. Our ALOT services – They are not super diversified as other services we offer, but used in conjunction with other diversification techniques or stand alone for newer smaller sites – they work really well. Read our review here.

The above list is not the end all be all to linkbuilding. You want to have a site that offers a great user experience, you want to have compelling content, you want to have a site with lots of user activity and interaction. You want to add social elements to your site, Facebook, Twitter, G+, Pinterest, links from tutorial sites and document sharing sites, etc… It is all just a piece of the puzzle, but you want a great site as well.

Additionally there are a few other tools that we can’t live without for 2012.

• SEO Spyglass – for analyzing your competitors and your own backlinks.
• Market Samurai and MicroNicheFinder in conjunction with each other
• Article Builder
• Backlink Booster

Okay, that’s it for now – go out there and “get back to work”… It’s time to quit living in fear and get back to marketing!

FYI – Make sure and leave a comment below and tell us what you think!

Effective & Affordable Post-Panda SEO

Forget writing content, finding link partners, evaluating and testing the best networks - just let us do it for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Get a mix of link types, unique content, high PR links, a monthly Press Release - plus reports and rank tracking.

These days there are a lot more “names” than there used to be. The free Thursday webinar trainings fill up and lock the lines out almost every week now and your participation and enthusiasm is what fuels us. Hopefully that passion that we have comes through in our webinars, our products and even our blog. If not, then we’re screwing something up!

We have truly been blessed in creating a 7 figure business in just a couple of years online. We made a lot of mistakes along the way and the truth is we continue to make them as well, but we surly have been blessed. One thing we have NOT been, however, is LUCKY!

I don’t like that word and you shouldn’t either. You see, we (all of us), make our own “luck”. Those that “get it” get it and those that don’t probably will argue with me till the cows come home on this topic. So be it.

Unfortunately today most live in this instant gratification lottery winning society and have been drinking the kool aide so much that they actually believe their own bullshit anymore. We’re “told” that as Americans we’re “lucky” to live in such a great country. I say bullshit. I’m former Military and so are many of my relatives as well. I know very well that “luck” had very little to do with the strength of the United States.

My great uncle served on Iwo Jima – was there when the flag was raised. He lied about his age, said he was 18 when he was 17, and nearly died from enemy fire protecting our “lucky” country before he was old enough to have a beer. His best friend did the same, only he was on Iwo Jima at the ripe age of 15 – just a boy – but with the courage of a man willing to die for what he believed in. We all owe our grandfathers generation a debt that can never be paid – they were the last true American heros.

Luck is made – where’s yours?

Every action you take – every sales phone call you make, every speaking engagement you volunteer for, every single blog post you write exposing yourself, your fears, your strengths, your successes and, yes, your failures, every video you put out on YouTube to market your business – every single action you take “creates” the opportunity for your luck to arrive.

Unlike the BS we’re told by all of the slick sales copy, the fact is that success is just accumulation as Andrew talks about on his blog. I read this post a long time ago and it is one that has stuck with me through the years – it’s spot on. Mike and I didn’t strike it rich overnight – hell no. We bust our asses for every bit of the business we create – no one is handing out SEO contracts on the corner!

At first it came slowly – so slowly that it almost was imperceptible. But over time, it gradually began to build and grow quicker. You see, success is just accumulation. You accumulate small successes and they build up gradually and turn into a larger one. Your first $50 sale online becomes a $50 daily income, which grows to $250 a day and next thing you know you’ve hit $1k a day, $5k a day and beyond. Two years ago I could not have imagined making in a month what used to take almost a year to achieve. Now six figure months are leading to larger goals and, yes, MORE ACTION (are you getting the vibe here?).

Success starts small…

Learn to embrace the small successes – they are signs of things to come. Don’t brow-beat yourself over small successes when you desire bigger ones, simply make more small ones happen – they will accumulate. But the key here is that you must “make your luck” – you must take action and you must give luck a chance to find you.

I just got back from Utah – yeah, Utah. LOL… Hardly the “vacation spot” for someone who makes his residence in Brazil, but it wasn’t a vacation. In fact, the trip was a bit of a nightmare for me. I rarely travel internationally unless I stay at least two weeks – that’s my “rule”. It’s just too exhausting to do less. But this time I made an exception and flew in just for about five days, why?

Action – that’s why. I wanted to be a part of what my friend Ryan Lee is building – the momentum that he’s fueled – and I didn’t want to miss his event. It wasn’t convenient. The 14 hour flight (without layovers, airport checkin time and all of that other crap that stretched that number to more like 24 hours) sucked. The weather wasn’t exactly “my thing” coming from Brazil. It certainly wasn’t cheap for me to attend when you factor in my travel costs, etc… Etc… etc… etc… In other words, I could have created with negative self-talk and self-righteous justification a thousand excuses as to why it wasn’t the most “prudent” thing to do.

But I’m an action taker – that’s what I do. It was great seeing Ryan again and his event was awesome. I enjoy these events – but generally for different reasons than most. Generally I attend not for the speakers or the presentations but rather for the ability to meet people and make business connections. So far I’ve spent tens of thousands attending events and I can tell you that it has paid off every time – this time included.

There are very few marketers that I “seek out” – that I look to spend time with. Ryan Lee is one of them and for good reason – he’s an action taker. He makes shit happen and I like that – it’s inspiring and it gets me going for the “next round”. Hell, Ryan’s even launched his own TV show now with Andrew Locke and Chris Farrell – both of whom I enjoyed meeting this past week and am looking forward to working with. Great stuff.

Don’t fear success or envy the successful – model them instead!

So many people say that they want to be successful online, but is it genuine? Is that a real burning desire? Or just a “someday” or a “when I get a round to it”… because very few actually take the action necessary to MAKE THEIR LUCK. Having a 250,000 subscriber list like Ryan Lee has doesn’t just “happen” – it takes action, lots of it! Building a 7 figure business like ours in 2 years doesn’t just happen either (though we’re a long way from Ryan’s 7 figure a MONTH business, that’s okay, we’ll get there).

So step back a bit, put things in perspective. Don’t focus on huge numbers or “the dream”. Instead embrace the small successes and keep putting in the action necessary to “grow” them. If you do, they will. But most of all, don’t “fear” success – don’t let the “fear of failure” just become a self-fulfilling prophecy through paralysis.

Lastly, don’t let yourself become “envious” and throw out the “oh they’re just lucky” statement. Embrace the success of people like Ryan and others that have created tremendous success online and done so with ethics, with candor and the respect that would make our grandparents proud. Embrace their success because if you dismiss it, you’re dismissing yourself as well. If you just dismiss it as “luck” then you’re just saying that everything you do is futile and that you’ll only succeed if you’re “lucky” too. Bullshit. Don’t fall into that trap.

Instead, model them. By that I mean, learn from them, analyze them, look at why they’re successful, look at how you can follow in their lead – quit trying to go it all alone and instead let others show you the way. There are lots of successful entrepreneurs worth of that respect.

Go out TODAY – not tomorrow, not next week – TODAY – and create a small list of the top 3 things that you know you should be doing NOW to create more income in your business. Forget about procrastination (don’t give it the power to run your business). Forget about fear (break through that next wall). Just strip away the BS and list the 3 things that you fear most but know could make a big difference in your bottom line and then simply “make it happen”.

TIP: Turn off the damn TV already! I can’t tell you how much I believe that a lot of my success comes from the fact that I rarely watch TV. Living in Brazil it’s just not “relaxing” for me because I have to think in Portuguese and “pay attention” when what I really want is to just “veg out”… so I just don’t watch TV. I have no idea of the depressing depths of the economy, because for me, it doesn’t exist. Think about that for a bit and let it settle in. If you just didn’t give the negativity a chance to “grab hold” of you, how much better off would you be?

Your business growth will follow your personal development

One thing that I have learned over the past few years – probably the most cherished lesson – is that your business growth will follow your personal development. No, this is not some hyped Tony Robins kind of moment here (though I do like Tony) – it is just a simple “law of business”. Remember, as I’ve said many times before, a “law” is true whether you believe it or not. Gravity is a “law” and it really doesn’t care about your positive mental thinking or your disbelief – it’s gonna break that plate when it falls to the floor every time regardless.

So what do I mean about personal growth governing your business? Well, if you are honest and you look at what is holding you back in your business – whether it’s procrastination, poor time management, fear of trying something new, fear of making sales calls, fear of public speaking, etc… – they are all “personal” traits. Your business is a “reflection” of you and until you conquer some of your own fears, tear down some of your own walls, take action, and, most importantly, stop making excuses and hold the “man in the mirror” accountable – well, the reflection will be weak. You, however, can change all of that…

Some resources to help…

Our Insider’s Club is your chance to work with us on a very direct and candid level, including monthly private “insider only” access webinars where you can ask us anything you like about SEO, Internet Marketing or just how to take your business to the next level. You’ll also get full access to our training vault of over 25 hours of quality content, videos and business guidance. If you’re looking for dating advice, we’re probably not the guys to ask, but I can recommend a great country to vacation to!

Ryan Lee has a great course out right now called $1k a day – and yes, he’s qualified to talk about it at that level and yes, we own it. It’s going to be doubling in price in the next few days (not exactly sure when) so you should check it out. There is an 84 minute free training that is included whether you purchase or not, just for checking it out.

Here’s a video from one of his students that is making $1k per day after going through his course.

Effective & Affordable Post-Panda SEO

Forget writing content, finding link partners, evaluating and testing the best networks - just let us do it for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Get a mix of link types, unique content, high PR links, a monthly Press Release - plus reports and rank tracking.

Those that really understood the game all along didn’t fall into this trap. But someone just starting out with SEO or Linkbuilding can’t help but being bombarded by all of the “get page one rankings” today hyped traffic loophole products being shoved down his or her throat. The fact is, there have always been loopholes and there always will be loopholes. As long as there is an algorithm, there’s a way to game it. As long as there are rules, people will break them. That’s just the nature of life.

But who are you really gaming?

I want to challenge you today to consider one key question – “Are you building a business or just tinkering with a hobby?”

I really want you to think about that for a minute and let that question resonate for you. Now, let’s talk about what a business is and what a business isn’t – because that’s probably the clearest path to answer that question for yourself.

• A business is, first and foremost, a legal free-standing entity – a corporation, an LLC, a general proprietorship, etc… Now I know many will argue that just having a business entity doesn’t make you a business – we agree. However, it is one of the first steps that any brick and mortar business takes – why is that? Well, you can’t open a storefront without a lease. You can’t get a lease without a bank account. You can’t collect payments or accept credit cards without a bank account and you can’t conduct business under a business name without a legal entity. While having a legal entity in place will not ensure any degree of success, it certainly does convey a degree of “resolve” and “determination”. That is part of what is missing in most online “wannabe” businesses – resolve and commitment.
• A business stands separate from the individual – separate tax ids, separate bank accounts, separate accounting, separate legal accountability – it’s its own separate entity entirely. As such, a business can be sold. Ask yourself this, would someone “buy” your online business?
• A business is something you would invest in – So maybe that’s not some boiler plate definition, but I think it holds water. Ask yourself if you would “buy” your own business. If it’s not free-standing and something that you personally would buy from someone else, then clearly you don’t have a business.

So why all of the talk about a “business” in a post that is supposedly about the ever growing role of quality content? Well, because whenever we mention quality content most people shy away from it. Most people are trying to build a minimum effort “mini-site” and not a business.

Sorry, don’t mean to piss you off… But we’ve been saying this for months now – many, many months. And yet about 85% or more of the sites that we analyze for customers still do not have nearly enough content and the customers themselves are still not embracing the idea of adding quality content.

The fact is that your #1 user is *not* the person coming to your site that you’re hoping to sell to. Nope, that is NOT your #1 user! When it comes to organic traffic, your number one user is Google – you need to accept that, design for it and embrace the reality. That means that you need to give Google what it wants if you want to get what you want (traffic and sales). Otherwise your site will only serve as a landing page for paid traffic – sorry, but that’s the cold, hard truth in the matter.

Sorry to go off on a bit of a rant, but it is frustrating to preach the same sermon over and over only to have people complain that linkbuilding isn’t working or that the SEO isn’t working. Guys, SEO is more than just Linkbuilding. If you’re having rankings troubles, then you need to acknowledge that. SEO is about having a quality site in the first place that connects well with Google and “fits” within it’s defined playground. Onsite SEO is super critical today and you need to be paying attention to that.

In case you missed it, we’ve added lots of new content related products to ArticlesOnTap.com to help you beef up your site. We’ve added mixed size authority content packages and have even added high end reviews that you can purchase to help build out your review sites. Regardless if you buy from us, buy from someone else or just do it yourself, you’ve got to step up your game when it comes to onsite content. If you don’t have at least 100 or more pages in your sitemap.xml file that are of high quality and large content of 700 or more words (preferably 1000 or more words) then you have got some work to do (and please, don’t count your “about us” and “contact us” pages, etc… I’m talking about real content here).

Lastly, here is a “freebie” that you can get. A very indepth webinar going over how to author quality content. We’re featuring it as a “preview” of the quality of content that we offer inside our Insider’s Club. So if you’re not yet a member of the Insider’s Club then make sure to check it out here.

To access the free webinar, just login to the Customer Portal here:

https://mikeandtroy.customerhub.net

After you do go to the following URL (it’s not in the menu structure, just change the /home to /insiders-preview in the browser and hit enter).

https://mikeandtroy.customerhub.net/insiders-preview

REMEMBER, you will have to login first. If you’re not a registered member of our customer portal, don’t worry, you can sign up there as well – it’s free!

Make sure to leave us a comment below and tell us what you think!

We’ve had tons of people emailing us and asking us when we would be reopening the coaching program – well, they day has come! You can go and check it out yourself here:

We’re excited to be opening the doors again and looking forward to working with as many of our readers and followers as we can. We’ve added lots of extras into the Insider’s Club that we know you’re gonna love – so don’t delay. We don’t know how long it will be open, so come check it out…

We’re not going to list all of the features and benefits here, but just click on the logo above and it will take you directly to the sales page where you can check it all out yourself…

Here’s the thing. If you’re looking for help and assistance, then you’ve come to the right spot. If, however, you’re looking for the “magic button” or a simple “do a, b, c SYSTEM” well, then we are NOT for you. The fact is this is the No BS zone – we tell it like it is, even if that is NOT what you want to hear.

There are far too many marketers out there that will “tell you what you want to hear”, but if you want to instead learn from someone who has “been there and done that” then you should be checking out this coaching program. Mike and I only teach what we ourselves do and have done. You won’t here us spouting out “theory” – just solid, practical advice based on our own business experience. Experience which has let us to $317k our first year in business and into 7 figures our 2nd year.

If you hired us for consulting our time is $250 an hour, but in the Insider’s Club you’ll get tons of access to us for a tiny, tiny fraction of that amount – even a monthly private, Insider’s Only webinar where you can ask whatever you want and get the answers you need.

Come check it out here…

There will surely be a lot of copy-cat products coming out very quickly to cover the many changes coming with Facebook and we want to get out ahead of all of the “noise” and provide you with some real value first before you fall for any of the crap. This is NOT a complete review yet, but will be expanded in the next few days as Mike and I dive into this product ourselves.

So, why are we posting about it now?

The fact is, it’s a Ryan Lee product – and that says a lot. Ryan Lee is one of the few guys in the Internet Marketing space that Mike and I work with, endorse and fully support. Likewise, Ryan has worked with us as well and featured Troy on his Inner Circle Coaching program a few weeks back where Troy hosted a private webinar all about SEO and Google’s Panda to Ryan’s private coaching group. Ryan is known as the “Continuity King” and has hosted numerous Continuity Summits and conferences teaching about the importance of creating recurring revenue continuity and membership sites. Here are just a few of the other great products that Ryan Lee has released:

• Inner Circle Coaching – Voted best membership site of 2011 and has lowest return rates of any Clickbank product (that says a lot)
• $1k Per Day Training – Learn how to get to $1k per day earnings quickly
• Nano Continuity – A great course teaching you how to build up big profits easily on tiny little continuity programs

Anyway, the full review of Facebook Fan Pages Simplified will be coming shortly, but in the meantime, just check it out for yourself. It is ridiculously low priced, so you really can’t go wrong.

There’s a lot more improvements to come, but we wanted to give you a sneak peak of our new Customer Portal. This will truly become your “one stop” interface to all products and services supplied by the Mike & Troy’s brand – ArticlesOnTap.com, ArticleSubmissionReview.com, AutomatedLinksOnTap.com and others.

The real beauty of it is that you only will have one password to access everything. The same email and password will get you to all of your membership content, downloads and account information – we love simplicity!

Right now you are able to administer your account, add or remove credit cards to your subscriptions, update your credit card information as well as access some of your purchases and membership such as:

• SEO Post Panda – This has been fully integrated into the Customer Portal. All of your membership videos, pdf’s and mp3′s can all be accessed here directly.
• Pandalized – This has been fully integrated into the Customer Portal as well. All of your vidoes, pdf’s and mp3′s can be directly accessed here.

In the very near future we will be adding the following:

• My Stuff – This will be an area that will give you easy access to your free downloads or past purchased downloads such as Article Marketing Lies and Feeding the Panda ebooks.
• AutomatedLinksOnTap.com – We will be updating the Customer Portal so that you will be able to login and download your reports directly within the portal.
• ArticlesOnTap.com – We will adding your order fullfillment directly to the portal so you will be able to simply login and download your purchased content directly.

There will be much, much more to come. We will be adding simple support videos to show you how to update your information or credit card, etc… as well as many, many other features over the coming weeks – so check back frequently.

In the mean time, make sure to check out this short video tour below and “see for yourself”!

There’s way too much to go into in a short blog post – or even a very long, indepth one. So, instead of blogging about it, we are going to present our findings on a special 2 hour version of our Thursday Training webinars tomorrow, March 8th at 3pm EST. We are also doing this for other reasons as well. We simply don’t want to put this content on a public blog, so divulging it on a Webinar seems to be the best option.

THERE WILL NOT BE FREE REPLAYS OF THIS WEBINAR. If you want to get the content you need to attend the live webinar or we will also make it available for sale after the event. If you are a current customer of our SEO Post Panda training then you will receive this content for free as we feel that this is a now critical enhancement to the SEO Post Panda training. So we’re simply going to enhance the existing product and include a free update for existing customers.

We expect a very full house on the webinar, so it would be good to show up about 5 minutes early…

We wrote about the most recent algorithm change a few days ago and how above the fold content is much more critical than it used to be. You can read about that here:

• Google’s Latest Algorithm Change – Above the Fold

All of this is just further evidence of what Mike and I teach here – that you need to be focusing on quality and not trying to game the system. It is, however, amazing how many people we see that just don’t think it’s gonna happen to them. It does and trust me, it’s not fun either.

In the past couple of weeks we have seen a few people that have received the following message or something very similar to it from Google:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://YOURDOMAIN.COM,

Google Search Quality Team

Now we’re not trying to be alarmists here, but after seeing more than a couple of these from our readers, we wanted to put out this public post on the subject. The truth is that if you’re still trying to game the system you’re in for a lot of disappointment in the near future. Please stop trying to take short cuts and instead focus on building quality and value. If you’re monetization strategy revolves around lots of sites with poor and or non-unique content, well, we highly advise that you check out the webinar from last week here:

• [VIDEO] Multiple Streams of Income – The Right Approach

The bottom line is that everything we’ve been telling you about is happening and at a much more accelerated pace than we initially suspected, so please pay attention. Google is serious about unique content. They are serious about protecting the user experience and they are committed to improving both.

One of the ways that Google does that is by conducting manual reviews of your site. Now they don’t worry about your site much until you’re getting some decent rankings, but don’t be surprised if it falls off the front page if you’re not focusing on quality unique content and providing a good user experience. We have personally seen various test sites of ours fall off of the front page rankings for both of those situations.

In one case we had a site that was front page on a bunch of keywords for a very long time. It had good quality unique content and was doing quit well. Then we started getting a bunch of junk traffic from overseas – very odd stuff. It was almost like paid traffic that would just immediately bounce off the site – less than a two second time of site. Now we’re not talking about a little traffic here, we saw our daily numbers go up by 20x previous volumes, so this was a significant amount of traffic.

About three weeks later the pages for those keywords dropped significantly in the rankings. It is our belief that this was due to the perceived poor user experience created by the super low average time on site and abnormally high bounce rate. The reality is that it was artificial and we weren’t in control of it. But the result was the same – those rankings disappeared. We don’t generally believe in coincidences and the apparent deterioration in the user experience is the only likely culprit. Perhaps a competitor was paying for this traffic to hurt the site which had long dominated this keyword…

Lessons to Learn

First off, if you haven’t purchased our Feeding the Panda or our SEO Post Panda training course – you need to do so. This is not a big pitch here, but the truth is simply that we’ve put hundreds of hours of effort into creating both of those products and they contain all of our best information on these topics. It would be silly of me to try and rehash all of that info again here in the blog post.

• Feeding the Panda
• SEO Post Panda

In fact, that is exactly how I became an info product creator. We had so many inquiries about Google Panda and I was re-writing all of the same information and sending it to clients repeatedly – so I simply decided to dive in a bit more and create Feeding the Panda as an all encompassing response.

If you do own those products, then I highly encourage you to go back through them and take another look at your site with objective eyes. Make sure to also keep your eyes on your above the fold content as well.

Lastly, there is a great resource that is still available online. I cannot link to it directly because others that have done so have been contacted by Google directly and I don’t intend to put our site into that list (I’m sure you can understand). But who better to listen to than Google itself, right?

Well there is a “leaked training document” from Google in the form of a PDF that is used to train their manual reviewers. This document goes over exactly what they teach their people to look for when manually reviewing a site. To find the PDF do a search on “leaked google review document” – you should come to it… But it is being pulled from many sites because Google’s not too pleased about it being out there, so it may not be out there for long…

FYI – Don’t miss our weekly SEO training webinars and keep up to date on the latest and greatest. You can register for the webinar here.

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