The “new recession” is different.  We’re seeing traditional successful business models crashing all around us.  Profit margins in many highly successful brick and mortar businesses have disappeared, but this time they may not be coming back.  Businesses are forced to get more efficient or die.

I dropped by the Borders Bookstore “Going out of business” sale a few weeks back, where literally everything in the store including the furniture and computers are for sale.  It made me think hard about the changes we’ve seen in just a few years.

Book stores have been a successful business since the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1492.  The press made it possible to mass produce books and allowed the explosion of information that modern society was built on.  From 1492 until the 1990′s the business model for a bookstore remained largely unchanged.

In the 1990′s we saw the rise of the “super bookstore” – stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble built huge “book supermarkets” where you could find tens of thousands of titles, browse in a casual setting and even grab a cup of coffee at the bar.  This drove many small bookstores out of business, but with the exception of the store size which took advantage of lower margins the bookstore had not changed much.

Amazon which started in 1995 and became popular a few years after that took the book superstore model online.  By offering an even larger selection, great web site, user reviews, and even deeper discounts they put a lot of pressure on even the brick-and-mortar book superstores.  But still their model had not changed much – they were offering mail order books at a discount much like catalogs had offered for many many years.  The internet just made the catalog more accessible and more interactive.

However look at what has happened in just four short years since 2007.  In 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle reader – to allow people to download books electronically instead of having any physical product at all.  This drove prices down even further as the cost of producing and delivering a book was nearly zero.  A simple reader, combined with their powerful online store and significant leverage over publishers, Amazon has dominated the e-book market and now sells more e-books than real books.

The traditional bookstore existed as a great business model for 518 years.  But in just four years (2007-2011) the traditional book market has nearly collapsed – replaced by a new market in ebooks and e-readers.

This is the kind of disruptive change we’re seeing across the board as access to the internet and near-perfect information is chipping away the margins of traditional business models forcing them to rethink everything about business.  What about your business?  Are you building it online?

Would you like professional looking custom buttons for your web site?  A lot of people have web sites that look like they are stuck in a time machine and were originally built around 1995. Here’s the quick and dirty way that I make nice professional buttons for my web sites using Microsoft Office tools.

1. Open Powerpoint

• Open Microsoft Office Powerpoint and create a blank presentation with a white background (or background that matches your site)
• Create a blank slide
• Use the “Drawing” tool to create a nice button in the shape you want (example below)
• Type some text into the button
• Click on the “Quick Styles” button to pick a nice 3D style shading and color
• Here is a sample made with the rounded rectangle drawing tool and a “Quick Style” pick of blue with shading on the borders

2.  Now Use Microsoft OneNote to Clip and Save It

• Open your copy of OneNote
• Open a blank page in OneNote
• Use the “Clip” tool to make a screen clipping of your button from the powerpoint window
• Right click on your clipping in OneNote to save it as a graphics file

That’s it – now you can upload your saved button into WordPress or include it on your web page as an image.

If hope you enjoyed this week’s quick tip – please consider subscribing to Online Business Zen for more information on starting and building an online business.

For those of you who regularly follow this site, you have probably noticed that I’m not posting or podcasting as frequently.  The reason is pretty simple – I’ve been focusing all of my time on a new product release for my other business.

I’m in the middle of completing a software release (planned for June) that I’ve been working on for over three years.  Since I’m a one person business, that means not only cleaning up the remaining bugs in the software so it can be sent out but also doing all of the business, marketing and promotional work.

The nice part about this is that the new software will, in a few months, become a largely passive income stream as the ordering fulfillment is largely automated, and support requirements have been moderate.  However, at the moment I’m in a “work hard now, so I can enjoy it later” mode.

Does that mean I plan to abandon Online Business Zen?  No – it simply means I’m following the pareto principle for the moment and focusing my efforts where the largest returns lie.  My main business provides most of my income, and has a large existing user base – and the time spent now on the software release will likely generate income for many years to come.

I do plan to continue to post here periodically, and will likely start podcasting again this summer once the product release has settled.  In fact, I will probably share many of the lessons learned with you – as this is my largest product launch to date.

So while I may be posting and podcasting erratically for a few months, I hope you will enjoy browsing some of my past posts and podcasts.  Thank you for your patience!

Welcome to part 3 of my series on podcasting.  This week I’m going to talk about podcast editing – how to make your podcast sound its very best and give it that professional radio studio sound.  If you have listened to many podcasts you probably have noticed that some have really horrible sound quality – especially when guests are involved.  You can have a great sounding podcast, but it requires a bit of editing.

In the previous two parts, we covered an introduction to podcast formats and also podcasting equipment.  While good equipment helps, having great content and the ability to edit for good sound quality is probably more important.  I could take a mediocre microphone and make it sound pretty good using the right editing techniques, but no one is going to listen to a dull boring podcast, even if it sounds great.

So this week we’re going to start with basic editing techniques and tools, and then go into more advanced tools and techniques as we get farther into the article.  Not surprisingly the software cost and time needed for editing goes up as you get to more advanced techniques.

Quick and Dirty High Quality Podcasting

Lets assume you are starting with a very simple podcast setup – perhaps a USB microphone and the use of skype (covered in part 2) for hosting guests.  You record directly to your computer from the microphone or using one of the skype recording programs covered in part 2.  I’ll also assume that you have at least taken some basic steps to get a quality recording by making sure your microphone input levels are correct and you have minimized background noise, and stored it in WAV format which is an uncompressed audio file.

What’s the quickest way to make your recording sound good? A little free tool called The Levelator is where I would start.  It’s available for PC, Mac and Linux.  What does it do?  Its a combined leveler, compressor and limiter – and it’s easy to use.  Just drop your WAV file onto the levelator and it will level, compress and limit it all at once to make it sound better.

For a quick and dirty solution, I have found none better – and your audio will sound better than all of the low quality podcasts on iTunes if you use it.  The only disadvantage is that it is not really a sound editor, so you can’t cut out bad sections – which we’ll show you how to do next.

Audacity

Audacity is a full featured (and free!) sound editing program available for PC, Mac and Linux here.  It lets you actually edit your audio file so you can take out your nasty mistakes, long silent pauses and 20 second ummms and ahhhs.  It is not hard to use the basic features – you just open your audio file and start editing – cut/copy and paste work as you might expect and there are a set of pretty advanced audio tools you can play with as you get more experienced.  Also a number of video tutorials and written tutorials are available on the internet to help you use it effectively.

Audacity and the Levelator make a nice combination. The quick and dirty way to use Audacity is to open your audio file, cut/copy and paste your audio to remove your mistakes and then save the edited file as a WAV file.  Next take your edited WAV file and run it through the Levelator to make it sound good.  Finally, bring it back into Audacity so you can write the finished mp3 file out.

Podcasts are published as MP3 files, so you do need a plugin (called LAME) for Audacity (details on how to install it here) to write mp3 files from within Audacity, but installing the plugin takes only a few minutes.

Advanced Audio Editing Effects

While the Levelator is a nice all-in-one tool, it does not provide the perfect solution in every situation and has limited options for configuring.  If you were to look under the hood of the Levelator, or even take a look at the equipment used in a radio studio you would find that there are a few key effects being applied to edited audio signals to make them sound great. So here they are:

The Gate

An audio gate is an effect that cuts out sound below a certain level. This is how radio stations, for example, get true silence once the host stops talking – even if he’s shuffling papers around on the desk.  A gate cuts out all background noise that does not rise above a certain volume level.  A gate can be implemented in either hardware or software – many radio stations have hardware gates tied to their microphones to cut background noise in real time.  I use a software gate to cut noise out in my podcasts.  Unfortunately Audacity does not have a pure gate function, but the noise removal tool can be used to cut some background noise.

Gates generally have three main settings.  The most important is the level of the gate - which is simply the volume level where it cuts in. As long as the background noise is below the volume level, the gate will cut out the background noise.  The other two settings have to do with how fast the gate cuts in and out (called attack and release) – and these are adjusted so the beginning and ends of words are not cut off when you start or finish talking.

The Compressor

The compressor is the magic effect that gives your voice that deep, radio voice sound. Like the gate, you can purchase hardware compressors for real-time audio or you can use software to compress the signal when you are done.  Audacity does come with a gate effect.

What it really does is level things out – you see as you talk naturally your voice volume tends to go up and down quite a bit.  While this is fine for face to face conversation, it can be distracting on the radio.  So what a compressor actually does is lowers (compresses) the volume of the your voice (when above a certain level) when you are at a peak so everything is roughly the same level.  Then it boosts the volume level of the entire conversation so it sounds like you are talking at the same level all the time.

The net effect of the compression and boosting is that your finished audio has a more consistent (though limited) dynamic range – making your voice appear louder and more forceful.  If you compress your signal a lot you will get something much closer to a radio DJ sound – also many pop music songs are highly compressed.

The three main settings for a compressor are the threshold and the compression ratio and gain.  The threshold determines when the compressor will kick in – all sounds above the threshold volume level will be compressed.  The compression ratio determines how much to compress the signal – 5:1 is typical for many voice applications.  Finally the gain determines how much to amplify the finished (compressed) signal back up to get back to “normal” levels after compression.

One adverse effect of compression is that it raises the level of the more quiet parts of the audio – including the background noise. That’s why you don’t want to “overcompress” your audio as it will increase the noise you hear in the background while talking.

The Limiter

A limiter can be thought of as a reverse gate – it either cuts off or lowers the volume on all signals above a certain level. This can be helpful if the host or guest starts shouting, or if you want to boost but limit the volume level of your entire show up to a fixed level so you get consistent volume from show to show.  Again it can be done in hardware or software.  Audacity does come with a hard limiter.

A limiter is often used in conjunction with a compressor – you typically compress the signal (with amplification to bring it back up) and use a limiter to soften the loud peaks and provide a nice finished product.  In fact the compressor/limiter/gate is a pretty inexpensive piece of hardware you can add to your studio if you plan to do real-time broadcasts.

The Equalizer

Most people who own a large home stereo are familiar with the equalizer. It lets you boost or lower the volume of different frequencies.  In its simplest form – such as your car radio – you can boost your bass or treble tones by turning one knob.  If you move to a fancy home stereo or mixer you often have several knobs you can use to boost bass, mid-range and high frequency audio.

If you have moved up to a mixer for recording your mixer likely has a built-in equalizer where you can adjust the low, mid and high frequency band volumes.  You can also apply an equalizer in software (Audacity has this).

In practice, I will often use the equalizer to boost the bass in many guests, filter out mid-frequency “ssss” sounds, and on rare occasions even filter out some background noise such as a computer fan humming at one frequency.  However, for the most part, I tend to set up the mixer so each microphone sounds good and then leave it alone.

A Noise Filter

I rarely use a noise filter anymore as proper gating will cut out most of the background noise in the studio.  However, in some situations – such as live recording in a noisy room or a remote live location – a noise filter can come in very handy.

Most noise filters are implemented in software (Audacity has a Noise Removal tool).  What you do is select a section of audio where no one is talking that the software can use to build a background noise profile.  The software then uses that background noise profile to remove as much of the background noise as possible.

The downside is that along with the noise some of your actual audio signal is also cut out – so using a noise filter will change the sound of your voice and that of your guests.  In very noisy environments the results can be pretty dramatic and noticeable, so it is always a compromise to decide how much noise to let through in the finished recording.

Advanced Editing in Audacity

Now that we’ve covered the basic effects available, lets look at how you might apply these to a finished show using a free tool such as audacity.  Here’s how I might edit a show:

1. Cut and Paste Editing – Before I apply any effects, I will usually make a pass through the show and cut out any major mistakes, awkward pauses, swear words, etc…  I’ll also paste in my intro music, transition music and any other announcements I might want to make at the beginning or end of the show so it is basically in a finished form.
2. Gating/Noise Removal – Since Audacity does not have a pure gate, I would probably use the noise removal effect here to cut out as much background noise as possible.  If you are using another audio tool, you would apply the gate here to completely remove background noise during the silent parts.
3. Compression - Use the compressor effect to compress the audio.  For talk podcasts I recommend starting with a 5:1 compression ratio.  Check the “Normalize to 0 db after compressing” box – which will raise the level of the audio back to a consistent level after compression.  You may need to tweak the threshold a bit depending on how loud your source signal is.
4. Equalization – I normally use the equalizer on my mixer to adjust incoming sources, but if you want to equalize a bit here you can.
5. Hard Limiter – While not needed for all shows, if you still have some excessively loud sections you can limit them here with the hard limiter effect to provide a more consistent volume level throughout.
6. Export MP3 file- Use the “Export as MP3″ command on the file menu to export your finished podcast – podcasts are generally published on the internet as MP3 files

Beyond Audacity – Podcasting with Reaper and Adobe Audition

If walking through all six steps above sounds time consuming and tedious, it is!  The problem with a program like Audacity is that even after you have manually edited the bad parts out of your podcast, you then have to apply all of the effects one at a time to your podcast.

The program I use for editing is called Reaper.  While not used by many podcasters, I picked it primarily because it had a significant price advantage over the gold standard for sound editing which is Adobe Audition.  Adobe Audition runs several hundred dollars for a single license, while Reaper runs well under $50 for most home podcasters (though their large business license is a bit higher).

Reaper and Audition both have features that let you set up a series of effects like the ones just described (called an audio chain) and apply them to your audio track consistently – usually in a single step. This avoids having to apply each effect one at a time (like we did with Audacity) and ultimately saves time.  Also I can ensure that I’m applying the same effects to my podcast from week to week giving it a consistent sound.

Finally, if you eventually move up to multiple track recording (guests on separate tracks for instance), both of these programs fully support multi-track editing which lets you apply effects separately to each track and remix the tracks to get great sounding audio even if one of your guests had an equipment problem or a lot of background noise.

Summary

There are a lot of lousy podcasts out there – don’t be one of them! Audio editing is a certainly an art – which is why top professional sound engineers spend years perfecting their trade.  However, even a little bit of editing can go a long way towards improving the sound of your podcast and giving it a professional finish.

For beginners, an all-in-one solution like the Levelator will give you a jump in quality over an unedited podcast.  If you need to do some simple editing or effects, consider using Audacity for cut and paste followed by the Levelator for finishing.  The next step above that is to apply your own sound effects (compression, noise filtering) using something like Audacity.  Any of these work great for a first time podcaster and are free.

Later after you have some experience under your belt you might want to upgrade to a more sophisticated program like Reaper or Adobe audition – if only for the time it will save you.

Thanks for joining me on Online Business Zen.  Please consider subscribing for more free information on how to get started with your own internet business.

This week I talk about some of the critics you will have to overcome when building a business – specifically the people who might think you are crazy for going it on your own!  I also answer questions about how to get your product into stores, productivity and accounting.

Download the MP3 File Here (Right Click and Save As…)

 

Topics and Questions Mentioned in this Podcast Episode: (31:27)

• I share a story from Dan Miller (48days.net) about black crabs, and the need some people feel to tear down ideas that are foreign to them.
• I talk about how building a new business from scratch is something extraordinary
• It is hard to step out of the “norm” to create your own business, but risk taking is part of the adventure
• The black crabs will reappear as you are building your business and even if your business is successful
• Question 1 is about accounting and how to handle the complex tax rules and requirements for running a business
• Question 2 – talks about productivity and getting the most out of the hours you spend on your business
• Question 3 – asks how to get an innovative product into stores – how do you break through and get into the wholesale business?
• Question 4 – How do I actually get a product out – I feel like I’m too much of a perfectionist?
• Question 5 – How do you stay motivated?

Ask me a Question for the Show!

• Leave a short message at 703-873-7782 or skype to “businesszen” at any time 24/7 and we’ll play the best questions on the show
• Send your question to us via email using our online form – While I may not be able to respond to every email personally, I will feature the best of your questions on the show

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When designing a new web site, one of the first principles you need to understand is that people have short attention spans – really short ones.  They will often make a decision on whether to read your web site in a fraction of a second – so it’s critical you pay attention to what is “above the fold”.

Above the fold is actually an old newspaper term.  When newpapers were widely sold on newstands and in small vending machines, only the portion of the front page that was above the fold in the middle of the newspaper was visible.  Since the average prospective buyer only glanced at the machine or newsstand for a few seconds before deciding to buy today’s paper, editors paid close attention to the headlines and stories they put above the fold on the front page.  It could be the difference between selling and not selling the paper.

Your website is no different – visitors who make it to your front page take only a few seconds – some studies say even less than a second to scan the page and decide whether you have anything worth reading.  Only a small percentage will ever scroll down to see the rest of your site, so the portion of your web site that is available “above the fold” or visible in an average browser is the part that really counts.

So what do you need to transmit in that fraction of a second while the person is looking at your site?

• What is your site about and who are you – needs to be clearly relayed in just a few words (not a mission statement) or images on the top of your site.  Images can help really reinforce the theme of your site.  That way the prospective reader can decide if your site is relevant.  A lot of people with persona brands also effectively use a short “about me” link to share their story.
• Some Useful Content – No one will bother to read your blog or enter your store unless you have rich content to capture their attention.  People want to be educated, entertained and informed.  Give them a reason to read further.
• A Call to Action – The one thing you would really like your customer to do should either be top left or top right on your website (just below the headline).  This is where a person’s eyes tend to go first, even before reading the title in many cases.  So if you want them to sign up for your email list, subscribe to the blog/podcast, download your trial software, or become a member – put it there.
• A Reason to Come Back – The web is full of sites that have nothing more than a bunch of products listed, or set of links.  That does not work anymore.  Give them some fresh content updated on a regular basis.  This will engage the customer and keep them coming back.  A recent study said found that on the web, people need to interact with a site or business at least 12 times before they make a first purchase. Email lists, blogs, fresh articles, podcasts, videos and social media give people a chance to have that repeated interaction, get engaged with your content and eventually make a purchase.

That’s a quick summary of the most important things you need above the fold.  Clearly a lot of other things are nice to have like links to your social media profiles, contact pages, about us pages, etc… but these can be safely placed below the fold and in fact are often better there as they don’t clutter or confuse the message you are trying to deliver.

Thanks for joining me at Online Business Zen.  I will be back next week with a podcast and also continue my series on podcasting.  Have a great business week and don’t hesitate to join my email list for more tips on how to get started with your business.

This week I take a detailed look at podcasting equipment and how it can make a huge difference in the quality of your podcast.  Last week in part 1, we talked about how podcasting can reach a broad audience, and spoke a bit about show formats, finding your niche and deciding what your message should be.  Now in part 2 I’ll dive into a high level overview of equipment you need to get started podcasting, as well as cover the basic types of equipment you can purchase as your show grows.

[Full disclosure: The equipment links below are Amazon Associate links that provide me a commission if you choose to order through them]

Podcasting Equipment 101

Let me start by saying that I am an audio snob – there are a lot of podcasts out there that sound horrible, and I simply won’t listen to them, even if they have a great message.  I believe the quality of audio in the podcast matters – a lot!

Most people I talk with about podcasting jump right in and ask “What kind of microphone should I use?”, but even when we talk equipment that is still the wrong question.  The microphone is only one component in the overall system. Lets take a look at the components of an average podcasting system:

• Microphone - Captures the sound your voice makes (and also your co-host), and encodes it electronically, usually as an analog signal.
• Mixer - Usually needed if you want to record more than one microphone or have a guest – the mixer “mixes” two or more microphone signals into a single signal that can be recorded, and also lets you adjust audio levels and frequency so everyone has roughly the same volume level.
• Recorder – Either a computer or separate audio recorder that records the mixed signal digitally so it can be edited and played back later.
• Editing Software – While we will cover the editing process in part 3, you can actually do a lot of things in editing software that used to require hardware, so you can make up for shortfalls in your podcasting equipment by carefully editing your work
• Dial In or Skype Equipment – If you want to capture remote guests (depending on the show), you need to either bring them in via some kind of phone recording system or computer system.  A large number of podcasters use Skype, which is free video-teleconference software to bring guests in on the same or a separate computer.  Skype has higher quality sound than a typical phone line.
• Audio Processing Hardware – If you are a closet sound engineer, you might add any number of additional boxes to your podcasting system.  The most popular is the Compressor Gate which gates out background noise when you are not talking and compresses the audio to make it sound better.  However, these functions can be done in software, so the extra hardware is not really needed except for high end live shows.

These basic components make up every major podcasting system, with high end audio systems approaching the equipment of a major radio studio.  However you don’t need a lot of equipment to get started podcasting. In fact you can do simple recording with a very simple microphone or headset.

So for the rest of this post, I’m going to go over some typical podcasting setups and how you might use them, starting with the least expensive and moving up to the most expensive.

The USB Microphone – One Guy Podcasting

Plantronics DSP-400

The simplest setup for beginning podcasters is the USB headset. Noticed I said USB headset and not microphone or the regular headset you plug into your sound card.  There is a reason for this – the sound card that is built into your computer is notoriously bad at capturing sound.  The reasons are many, including the fact that PC manufacturers are cheap and also the inside of your computer has a lot of electrical noise.

So if you want an all-in-one solution for one person podcasting using your computer as the recorder get a USB headset. The headset keeps the microphone at a fixed distance from your mouth (so you don’t need to have great microphone technique) and if you do have a guest dial in on skype you won’t get nasty feedback from the speakers as you can feed the sound through your headset.

I’ve tested a lot of USB headsets (in fact I often send them to guests), and the top models I recommend for overall sound quality are Plantronics headsets.  I like the Plantronics .Audio 655 USB Multimedia Headset and the Plantronics DSP400 Foldable Multimedia Headset.  The DSP400, though a bit harder to find, is compact and can be carried just about anywhere.  You can record directly from the headset on your computer using your audio editing software (more on that in part 3).

There are two major downsides to using a USB mic – one is that your guest options are very limited (you can host one guest via skype — see below) and the second issue is that you can’t hear yourself talking. Higher end systems using a mixer let you monitor your voice on headphones so you hear yourself as you speak.  This may sound trivial, but the brain actually has a bit of a feedback loop built in that maintains a constant audio level – recording on a USB mic breaks that loop.  As a result, you will have a harder time maintaining the same audio level the whole show vs someone that has that feedback.

To illustrate the point, try conversing with someone on a conventional land-line phone.   You will notice that when you talk on the phone you can hear yourself speak – the phone provides feedback.  Now try the same exercise on a cell phone – which provides no feedback. You will quickly find yourself talking a lot louder into the cell phone (some people practically yell) because your brain misses that feedback.

Microphone, Mixer and Recorder – and Adding Guests

Behringer 802

The problem “one guy podcasting” has using the headset above is that some day he may want to add guests or a co-host.  On the Mac, it is possible to add more than one USB microphone, but on the PC it is just about impossible.  When you add a second person (either live or via skype) you also run into volume and leveling issues. Even if two people are using identical microphones, they won’t sound the same because they use different techniques and talk at different levels.

Using a Mixer for Podcasting

Enter the mixer – a wonderful device that takes anywhere from 2-24 microphones (they come in all sizes) and lets you mix them together into one conversation.  They also let you mix in sound effects and audio clips from your computer by wiring your computer to one of the inputs.  Mixers have a ton of knobs on them and look very imposing.  The one I use is a Mackie Onyx 1620i FireWire Recording Mixer – its the size of a large computer monitor layed flat and has dozens of knobs.  It costs a lot of money.

I bought a big one with firewire to be part of a very special remote podcasting system.  The reality is you don’t need one that big or that complex – you could work for a long time with a simple Behringer XENYX502 5-Channel Mixer – which runs less than $50 or even better the Behringer Xenyx 802 Premium 8-Input 2-Bus Mixer with Xenyx Mic Preamps and British EQs (under $70) which has two studio mic inputs.

The knobs on the mixer look complex, but they are not that hard to master.  Each has a bunch of microphone inputs organized into columns on the mixer.  Below each input is a bunch of knobs.  One knob (or slider on larger systems) – usually the one at the bottom -  lets you adjust the volume for that microphone so you can boost it if someone is talking softly, or lower it if they are too soft.  The other knobs above that let you pan to the left or right channel (hardly ever used) or play with the equalizer levels (also rarely used).  The only other knob that matters is the “gain” knob which is another way to adjust the input level for studio microphones.

On the far right side of the mixer is the output section where you can adjust the overall volume levels for the mixed signal coming out – which will then feed into your computer or recorder for recording.  Also there is a plug and volume knob here for a headset – which gives you the ability to provide that real time feedback your ears need when you are talking.

Podcasting Microphones – Moving Up

Heil PR-40

The mixer also provides another very useful feature – something called a microphone preamplifier. Basically this is a big three prong plug that virtually all studio microphones use to connect along with the electronics needed to power the microphone.  For example if you look at the  Behringer Xenyx 802 you will see it has two of these big plugs for two studio mics and the Behringer XENYX502 has only one.

So if you want to use a radio station microphone, you need to have the mixer. Which microphone to choose?  In the inexpensive range (under $80), I would recommend the Audio Technica AT2020 Studio Mic or the MXL 990 Condenser Microphone condensor mic.  These provide good sound and if you purchase them with a small mixer, you are still looking at a relatively small investment of around $150.

If you want to spend over $100 on a microphone, I would recommend you save your pennies as long as it takes to buy a Heil Sound PR40 Dynamic Microphone (a bit under $350, though you can sometimes find them for less on Ebay).  This is a dynamic (not condensor mic) that has outstanding noise rejection when you are recording from your home and is used by a large number of professional podcasters.  It sounds great.

When you move from a headset to a studio microphone, you need to spend some time learning how to use it.  This means having good microphone technique. The basics are to keep the microphone a fixed distance from your mouth as you speak, point the microphone slightly to the side, and keep the microphone slightly off axis (don’t talk right into it).  This minimizes the “popping” sound when you say the letter “p”.  You can reduce this further using a “pop filter” which is a screen or piece of foam that goes over the mic to keep the wind from hitting it.

Podcast Recorders

Edirol R-09HR

The mixer you purchased has an main output.  You can wire it directly to your computer microphone input and record it, but again you will run into noise issues since most computer sound chips are of poor quality.  A cheap fix for this is to buy a cheap USB sound dongle such as this one: Syba USB Stereo Audio Adapter for under $10 – believe it or not this will perform better than an average sound card when recording.

The next step up from that is to purchase a separate audio recorder. These take the output from your mixer and record them directly to a flash media card – similar to the one you use in your digital camera.  After recording you can take the flash card from the device and copy it to your computer for editing and final production.

I’m not an expert on digital recorders (see below) as I use a different method (below) to record my podcasts, but some of the most popular models used by professional podcasters include the Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder (around $150) and the Edirol R-09HR Recorder (around $270). Of the two the Edirol is probably used more widely by professionals.  For under $100, you are probably looking at simple mono (not stereo) voice  recorders (many under $50).  At the low end, try the Olympus or Sony models and make sure it has a separate microphone input.

High End Podcasting- Multi Channel Recording

Mackie 1620i

At the highest end of the podcasting equipment spectrum, it is possible to record each guest or sound input in a separate track. This is what music recording studios do when they record a band – each instrument and vocalist is on a separate track so they can remix the audio track later using software.

There are huge advantages to doing this. For example if one guest coughs or tries to talk over another guest, you can edit it out in the final copy since you have that guest’s track recorded separately.  If you had the audio levels off a bit when recording, its no problem since you can adjust them in software later.  You can even apply unique effects like compression and gating to each guest so they sound their best.

There are two ways to do this.  One is to buy a special sound card (called an ASIO card) that actually has a bunch of separate audio inputs on it and plugs directly into your computer or has a USB or firewire plug.  It will come with a special ASIO driver that works with popular audio editing software to record all of the tracks at once and let you mix them later.  For example this M-Audio Delta 1010-LT PCI Digital Audio Card lets you record 10 channels.

The second way is to use a firewire mixer.  In this case the mixer itself has a firewire interface built into it that you can plug directly into your computer.  The mixer itself turns the inputs directly into digital signals, so there is no noise in the system, and it comes with an ASIO driver that interfaces directly with your audio editing software.  Arguably the best of these firewire mixers come from Mackie, one of the best mixer makers.  Their models include the Mackie Onyx 820i FireWire Mixer eight channel system, the Mackie Onyx 1220i FireWire Mixer and the Mackie Onyx 1620i FireWire Mixer. I have the 1620i, which is 16 channels, mainly because it has four auxiliary channels that let me bring in up to 4 skype guests.  For full details, here’s more on my full video studio.

Recording Skype Podcasts

A lot of podcasts feature interviews with one guest, or even a co-host of a show who is not co-located with the host.  The best solution I’ve found is to use Skype for handling these situations. It is a free video conferencing program, and easy for guests to set up for both Mac and PC.  My guests need only a USB headset and webcam (if doing video) to participate in the show, and having the video interaction helps with the conversation.  Also you can use the “Skype out” feature to call regular phone lines, which lets you feature a guest who may only have a regular phone for only a few dollars a month (skype charges for phone calls).

There are two ways to record a skype conversation. One is to use software.  Programs such as Callburner (PC), Hot Recorder (PC) , and Audio Hijack (Mac) let you record a two person skype conversation.

The second method (getting geeky for a minute) involves setting what audio wizards call a “mix-minus” with the auxiliary channel on your mixer (assuming it has one) with one of your PC/Mac computers hosting the skype conversation.  The aux channel on the mixer is a separate mixing channel with knobs for each input.

What you do is connect the output from the PC hosting your skype conversation to one of your mixer inputs.  Then you adjust the knobs on your aux channel so the volume is up on every channel except the one you have your skype conversation input coming in on (that one is zeroed).  Then the output from the aux channel goes to the skype PC, essentially providing them with the entire mix – minus their own input so they don’t get an echo.  Using this method you can host one skype conversation per aux channel on your mixer.  My Mackie 1620i has four aux channels, so I can actually host 4 guests (each skype session is on a separate computer).

Summary

We’ve covered a lot of ground with this (very long) post, including a wide variety of equipment.  The best advice I have for new podcasters is to start with some basic equipment - a single USB headset and software like Hot Recorder if you want to do a skype interview.  Record a few shows without publishing them to get the hang of talking, recording and editing.  After you have some experience under your belt and are know you like podcasting, then invest in the mixer or studio mic to make it sound better.

Thank you for visiting Online Business Zen.  Next week, I’ll continue the series on podcasting with a discussion on software and podcast editing, and then after that we’ll dive into actually syndicating and publishing your podcast on iTunes.  Have a great week and don’t hesitate to subscribe for more great info or leave a comment below.

Chris Guthrie is my guest on this week’s episode.  Chris is an Amazon Affiliates master having racked up over $938,000 in sales $64,000 in commissions last year — just by building niche sites focused on Amazon products.  Chris started in Junior High school selling on ebay, but has since moved on to building niche sites.  He also recently sold his niche site on netbooks for a six figure price.

Download the MP3 File Here (Right Click and Save As…)

Topics and Questions Mentioned in this Podcast Episode: (36:58)

• Chris Guthrie from MakeMoneyOnTheInternet.com is my guest this week
• Chris’ start in ebay selling pokemon and Nintendo NES cartridges
• His move into Halo 2 as a business
• Getting fired from his IT job, and starting as a full time entrepreneur
• How he now has moved on to niche web sites selling Amazon products
• The power of building a review site
• Selling one of his niche sites – NetbookReviews.com for over six figures
• His experience selling a site
• Developing traffic for his niche sites
• Experimenting with Google Adwords
• Tips for someone just starting out in their own web business
• Market Samurai – mentioned in the show (an affiliate) – a powerful tool for keyword and competition research

Ask me a Question for the Show!

• Leave a short message at 703-873-7782 or skype to “businesszen” at any time 24/7 and we’ll play the best questions on the show
• Send your question to us via email using our online form – While I may not be able to respond to every email personally, I will feature the best of your questions on the show

Online Business Zen on iTunes

The Online Business Zen podcast is featured in the iTunes store.  If you click on the iTunes button below, it will take you to my page on the iTunes store which has a direct link if you want to open/subscribe to our podcast within iTunes.

For those using another podcast device (non iPod) or a mobile client, here is the direct feed link.

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Podcasting is a relatively new and interesting way to reach out and build an audience around your favorite passion.  While I entered the podcasting world only last fall, I’ve already seen significant growth in my audience which has secondary effects that help both my blog and my businesses.  Along with blogging and video, podcasting is a powerful way to cement the relationship with your customers, build an audience, and share your passions.

What’s a Podcast?

A podcast is an audio show (think radio or talk radio show) recorded and stored as a MP3 computer file.  Podcasting started around 2005, when the iPod and some early software started supporting audio syndication.  Later the iTunes store made podcasting a real success when it offered to syndicate just about anyone’s podcast for free as part of their service.  As a result anyone could publish a podcast on the Apple store, and any iPod owner could subscribe to a podcast and get new episodes delivered weekly by just synching their iPod with their computer.

As early as 2006, the number of podcasts exceeded the total number of worldwide radio stations, and now numbers in the hundreds of thousands.  The potential market is huge, given that over 300 million iPods have been sold worldwide, and now iPhones, computers, and cell phones all support podcast subscription as well.  Podcasts have become very popular with commuters who enjoy listening to shows about their favorite hobby on the morning commute.

Why Podcast?

I currently run two podcasts – the one at Online Business Zen, and an interview show on the hobby of homebrewing at BeerSmith.com.  I publish an episode every other week for each, which essentially means I’m publishing a new podcast every week.  The Online Business podcast started in September 2010 and my other podcast in October.

Over the last four months I’ve managed to carve out about 28,000 downloads to date with an estimated 3,000-4,000 total subscribers.  Obviously this is nothing compared to a major radio show or even the top podcasts, which can draw 100′s of thousands of people, but it is not a bad start for a few hours of work each week.

One of the huge advantages of podcasts over blogging and even video is that you can build a highly engaged audience that gets your entire message.  Blogs and emails tend to be rapidly scanned and videos longer than a minute or two tend to get dropped in the internet-attention-deficit world we now live with online.  But a podcast listener is often in their car commuting to work or doing chores around the house, and they tend to listen to an entire show at a time, are engaged and thinking about what you are saying, and retain a large portion of your message.  Subscribers can, over time, become rabid fans of your work.

How to Get Started?

The question most beginners ask me when they want to enter into podcasting is what kind of microphone should I buy? I tell them that is actually the wrong question to ask (though I will answer it in a few minutes anyways).

Yes, you do need some basic equipment to podcast, and you also need a web site with blogging software such as WordPress to publish your podcast, but the first question you really need to ask is what do you want to say?

Podcasting, like blogging, is a platform for you to convey your message – but before you sit in front of the microphone you need to think about what your message should be?  Why are you podcasting?  What do you hope to accomplish?

Most podcasts are focused around entertaining, educating or informing people about a niche topic.  Some, like music and comedy podcasts are pure entertainment.  Others, like mine, attempt to teach people how to do something.  Some podcasts talk about news, while others just talk about life.  Define first what you hope to accomplish.

Selecting a Podcast Show Format

Just as the purpose of a podcast may vary widely, so so the show formats.  Listen to a few of the most popular podcasts in your niche.  Often you will find a mix of monologues, interviews, music, radio dramas and live on-scene recording.  Some shows have cohosts, round-tables, revolving guests, questions and answers and even live video.

The format of the show can be as varied as the hosts – but selecting a format is an important decision – because listeners enjoy some consistency in their shows from week to week.  In my online business zen podcasts, I tend to focus on a feature segment for the first half of the show and then Q&A for the second half.  I also like to feature full length interviews when I can lock in an interesting internet business guest.

My other podcast is purely interviews – featuring some of the top experts in the field.  In the case of that show, I was fortunate to have a substantial network of potential guests established by being in the business for many years.  However, I decided early I wanted multiple guests, and built up a technical capability to host multiple guests via skype – so they could dial in from anywhere in the country.

Along with the format, you need to decide on a target length and frequency of your podcast (again listeners like consistency).  Most professionals I talk to agree 20-30 minutes is a reasonable podcast length, as it covers an average commute.  However, some podcasts run as short as 2-5 minutes, and some are as long as four hours.  Most podcasters publish at least 2-4 times a month, though some actually produce a podcast every day.  It depends on the time you have available and also the audience you are targeting.

Technical Aspects of Podcasting

I’m going to cover some of the technical aspects of podcasting in my next blog post (actually it may take more than one), as it is something I get frequently asked.  Issues like what microphone to use, how to record a podcast, how to edit it to get that big radio sound, and how to get listed on iTunes are common ones.

I have to confess I’m a bit of an audio snob, and I actually spent several months collecting the testing a variety of equipment before I ever published a single podcast.  I think audio quality makes a huge difference for the listener – and in fact I don’t subscribe to podcasts with poor audio quality.

I have a full skype studio set up where I can host multiple guests with live video.  However, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on equipment, and in fact you can start with a $30 USB headset and a simple online blog.  We’ll cover this in detail in part 2.

Thank you for joining me on the Online Business Zen blog.  Don’t hesitate to subscribe if you want to learn more about starting your own online business.   Have a great week.

In this week’s feature segment I discuss how to define your goals for 2011 in just a few minutes and then turn those into an action plan to generate both the money and actions you need to make them a reality.  97% of adults have no written goals, and an even smaller percentage have an action plan to follow through.  In addition I answer questions about establishing your own domain name and blog, entering a competitive market, updating social networks and advertising via google adwords.

Download the MP3 File Here (Right Click and Save As…)

Topics and Questions Mentioned in this Podcast Episode: (35:13)

• Feature segment: An easy way to set goals for the year
• My series on Search Engine Optimization and my online business course
• Dreamlining: Defining what you want to DO, BE and HAVE for 2011
• Understanding the cost for your dreamline – yearly, monthly and daily
• Turning your goals into an action plan, and getting into the habit of taking a little consistent action each day
• Q: I love blogging about saving money – should I create my own domain name and blog and should I continue even though its a crowded market?
• Q: You pointed out that search engines love long articles – how long should my posts be and how do I avoid stuffing the posts with fluff?
• Q: How can I update multiple social networks all at once?
• Q: How can I get the most from online advertising like Google Adwords?

Ask me a Question for the Show!

• Leave a short message at 703-873-7782 or skype to “businesszen” at any time 24/7 and we’ll play the best questions on the show
• Send your question to us via email using our online form – While I may not be able to respond to every email personally, I will feature the best of your questions on the show

Online Business Zen on iTunes

The Online Business Zen podcast is featured in the iTunes store.  If you click on the iTunes button below, it will take you to my page on the iTunes store which has a direct link if you want to open/subscribe to our podcast within iTunes.

For those using another podcast device (non iPod) or a mobile client, here is the direct feed link.

Online Business Zen Email List

For those looking to learn more about online business, you can subscribe to my email list or subscribe to the feeds at the top of the page.  I’ll send you a note weekly to help you get started with your online business.

Welcome to part three in my series on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  This week, we’ll discuss the key external factors including the importance of linking and backlinking to your site, and how backlinks determine how much traffic major search engines like google and Bing will drive to your site.

In part one of the series, I talked about why SEO is important and also why keywords drive search engines and should also help guide you when building your website.  I also presented some great tools you can use to analyze keywords for your market and competition.  In part 2, I covered all of the major “on-page” factors that the search engines look at when they visit your site.  These included things like your domain name, page titles, page descriptions, content length, and keywords on your pages.  This week, we’ll look at external factors such as backlinks to your site and why they make a difference.

Web Links and Authority

When the google bot visits your site, it is trying to determine two primary things: the relevance of your site for a set of topics (keywords), and its authority relative to other sites.  If you have a web site that is relevant for a given search term and has high authority, google will rank you high in the search results.

The authority of a site is primarily determined by the number and strength of incoming links it has.  The rationale is that if your site is important, then other sites will link to it.  However, all links are not created equal.  A link from a really important site on the web (one that already has high authority) is worth much more than a bunch of links from sites with no authority.  So building incoming links (also called backlinks) is critical if you want to rank high in the search engines.

Note that the relevance of a link is also important.  If you have a backlink from a car site to your site about cars, that’s great.  But if you have a backlink from a site totally unrelated to your topic, that link carries less weight.

Measuring Authority – Google Page Rank

While Google has never published the details of its ranking algorithm entirely, it does periodically publish the page rank for every web site in its index.  Google Page rank is a rough measure of a web site’s authority – a site with high page rank is considered important, while those with page rank zero are unimportant.  I talk a bit about it here in my video on how google works.

You can easily check your web site’s page rank by typing in the address here.  The page rank system goes from page rank zero to page rank 10.  A page rank zero link essentially has no standing at all, while there are only about 20 page rank 10 websites on the web.

Its important to understand that the scale is not linear – in fact each level of page ranking has about 5x the authority of the previous level.  So if a page rank 1 site has an authority of 1, then a page rank 2 site would be worth at least 5, page rank 3 worth 25, etc.  A page rank 5 site has roughly 525 times the authority of a page rank 1 site.

Passing Link Juice

I mentioned earlier that all links are not created equally. Links from high ranking page are worth much more than links from low ranking pages.

In fact, Google internally keeps a much more detailed ranking (more detailed than page rank) for every page on the web.  And each page that has a link on it can be though of as passing some of the authority it has on to the site it is point to.  So if I own a PR3 web page with 25 links on the page, it is as if my PR3 page divides its authority 25 ways and passes just a little bit of its authority.

In common terminology, we often call this authority passed by a link the “link juice”. Google measures the authority of your web site based on how much link juice other sites on the web pass to it.

Some important basic tenants come from this:

1. Sites with high authority pass more link juice - an inbound link from a single PR5 page can be worth hundreds of times as much as a link from a PR1 page.
2. A web page splits its authority between all of its outgoing links - so a web page with fewer links passes more of its link juice to the linked sites
3. The page rank of your own web pages and site is primarily determined by the quality and number of inbound links (called backlinks) it has.

Internal Linking

Link juice works internally as well. In essence, every time you include a link on a page it passes some of the authority (or link juice) of that page onto the one it links to.  So you should use your title menu and sidebars on the web site to link to your most important pages – in essence giving these pages more authority on your overall site.

For the top level structure of your site, you need to make sure all of your pages are linked somewhere or they may not get indexed.  In general its best to use some kind of hierarchical linking structure, perhaps organizing pages into topics or categories.  Finally, whenever possible you should link related pages together.  So if you earlier wrote an article that is related to the one you are currently writing, link back to that earlier article (or visa versa) to enhance the authority of the linked page.

No-Follow vs Do-Follow Links

Website owners in the late 90′s wanted more control over their links for ads, so a new tag was added to HTML (the code that is used for all web pages).  A website owner may mark a link as “no-follow” by using the code rel=”nofollow”. The effect of this tag is that search engines will not follow the link and will treat it as if it has no value (i.e. as if it were page rank zero).

So while a regular backlink has real value and is counted by the search engines, a “nofollow” link has no value from a search engine perspective.  This is important, as many current blogs and discussion forums have “nofollow” as the default for comments and web links specifically to prevent spammers from linking to various spammy sites by posting.

Anchor Text

The text used for a link is called the “anchor text”.  For example if I use this link for keyword research, the link points back to my first SEO article on keyword research, but the anchor text used is “keyword research”.  Google places value in the anchor text used, so if you have a choice you should always try to get one of your keywords into the anchor text when you create a link.  For example, I always try to use the words “Online Business” when referring to this site, as those are keywords I’ve targeted for Online Business Zen.

Backlinking Strategies

I’ve established by now that backlinks are the currency of the web.  High quality backlinks from sites with high page rank that are related to your market niche are incredibly valuable.

Since backlinks really are links from other web sites on the internet, how does one actually go about building backlinks to establish the authority of a brand new web site?  Well it turns out, there  are quite a few legitimate things can do as a web site owner to build links and authority for your own site.  Here are a few of the key strategies you can use.

1. Publish Great Content on a Regular Basis – If you publish compelling content, over time you will become an authority on your niche that other people will want to link to.  It does not happen overnight, but if you are consistent you will be rewarded.
2. Reach Out to Established Site Owners in Your Niche – This is actually the most effective strategy next to making great content, in my opinion.  If you reach out to others in your community you can offer to exchange links, interview them for your site or blog, and often create a relationship that will benefit you both in many ways.  It’s also a great way to get exposure for your content.
3. Article Marketing – Reputable article sites like EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com and ArticleDashboard.com allow you to create articles and include a few links in the bio section.  This creates backlinks to your site directly.  In addition, these sites allow others to republish your articles with your bio, creating more backlinks.  It does take time to create all of this content, but article marketing is one of the most popular backlink strategies at the moment.
4. Forum Posts – Discussion forums in your market niche are a great way to attract direct traffic, build credibility and add backlinks.  However, not all forums are “do-follow” so you should check this if adding a backlink is your primary strategy.  Also, be sure to contribute to the forum and its community – don’t just post links to your site which will be seen as spamming by its members.
5. Blog Comments – Commenting on related blogs is another good strategy.  Though most blogs are “no-follow”, some “do-follow” blogs do have SEO value.  Also you can sometimes use an intelligent blog comment to start a relationship with the blog owner that might benefit you in the long run.  Again, please post thoughtful comments that add to the discussion and don’t just spam the blog with links to your site.
6. Build a Small Free Blog Linking to Your Site – Sites such as Hubpages, WordPress and Squidoo let you create free blogs and post content on their sites.   Create a few pages on each with related (though not duplicate) articles on your niche that link back to your main web page.  These backlinks will, over time, add value.
7. Social Media – While not every social media site is “do-follow”, many of them are.  Maintaining a presence on the “big three” social media sites of Linked-in, Twitter and Facebook is important both for direct traffic and indirect linking.  In addition, bookmarking sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, and others allow you to add your stories – which can create backlinks as well as exposure for your web site.
8. Directory Submissions – List your site on major web directories or directories related to your niche.  Most of these sites are “do-follow”, so the listing will, over time, add some authority to your site.

Why Backlink Building Takes Time

Building backlinks is a very slow and tedious process.  In addition to the time it takes to create valuable backlinks, google and the other search engines don’t like it if you build backlinks too quickly.   They prefer a natural pace.

If you went out tomorrow and added 1000 high ranking backlinks to your site, you would still not rank high for your search term as it would appear “unnatural” that 1000 new backlinks appeared overnight.  The search engines would discount many of those links.  The fact is that it takes 6-12 months to build a natural set of links to rank most web sites.

This is why purchasing a massive number of links is not a great strategy. Adding too many, too quickly will look like you are gaming the system.  Also many of the “purchased link” sites actually give you low quality links on unrelated sites that the search engines can quickly filter out an discard.

A better strategy is to work on adding a few high quality backlinks to your web site each week. While this may be difficult to do at first when the traffic is not there, over time it will pay big dividends to you as your site climbs in the rankings for your favorite search terms.

Tracking Progress

The Yahoo site explorer search tool provides a great way to get a rough count of your backlinks and track progress for your site.  Unfortunately it does not give you a good indication of the quality of the links you are adding, just the number.

Market Samurai (a sponsor) provides, by far, the best tools for tracking backlinks and ranking.  It has a ranking tool that will show you your site’s rank for a given search term as well as the number of backlinks and it can graph these over time.  Also, it has an outstanding competition tool that lets you show the quality (by pagerank) of each backlink as well as those of your competition.  This lets you deconstruct your competitor’s backlinks – and target many of their links.  Finally it has a marketing tool that finds “do-follow” blogs and forums in your niche you can use to build new links.  I use Market Samurai to track all of my web sites and their backlink structures.

Summary

If you are going to start a new web site tomorrow, or even if you have an established site that is simply not drawing search engine traffic, start with the three basic tenants laid out in this article series.  First, do some good keyword research to find moderate traffic, low competition keywords you can target in your niche.  Second, optimize the on-page factors for your site so google will know that your web site is relevant to the terms you are targeting.  Third, build a solid network of backlinks that establish the authority of your site – ideally as one of the most important on the web in your niche.

Thank you for visiting Online Business Zen.  Please subscribe to my newsletter for advice on how to get started pursuing your online business dream.

Corbett Barr is my guest this week as we discuss how to structure a business to support your lifestyle,  building traffic for your web site, how to build a personal brand, and building a successful business.  Corbett, who runs two successful businesses, recently moved towards a personal brand a CorbettBarr.com.

Download the MP3 File Here (Right Click and Save As…)

Topics and Questions Mentioned in this Podcast Episode: (32:31)

• Extended interview with Corbett Barr from Corbett Barr.com and ThinkTraffic.net
• Corbett’s early pursuits including customized search engines
• His foray into venture capital and building a conventional startup
• The realization that lifestyle and personal freedom mattered
• His move from conventional startups to blogging and a lifestyle of freedom
• Loving your work, and having your business work for you
• Building back links and search engine traffic
• The importance of reaching out to other bloggers and developing relationships with others in your field
• Finding your voice as a blogger
• Tips for starting your online business

Ask me a Question for the Show!

• Leave a short message at 703-873-7782 or skype to “businesszen” at any time 24/7 and we’ll play the best questions on the show
• Send your question to us via email using our online form – While I may not be able to respond to every email personally, I will feature the best of your questions on the show

Online Business Zen on iTunes

The Online Business Zen podcast is featured in the iTunes store.  If you click on the iTunes button below, it will take you to my page on the iTunes store which has a direct link if you want to open/subscribe to our podcast within iTunes.

For those using another podcast device (non iPod) or a mobile client, here is the direct feed link.

Online Business Zen Email List

For those looking to learn more about online business, you can subscribe to my email list or subscribe to the feeds at the top of the page.  I’ll send you a note weekly to help you get started with your online business.

This week, I’m writing about on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) factors that are used to determine the relevance of your web site in google. On page SEO is a critical skill to master as it is completely under your control, and can make the difference between your page showing up in the search listings or being discarded for a given search term.

In part one, I introduced Search Engine Optimization and why it is important for building your business presence online.  I also talked about keyword research and why it is critical to know what the most searched for keywords are for your given niche.  Later in part 3 I will cover off-page factors including backlinking strategies that give your site authority.

The keyword research you did in part one will drive on-page optimization, since your goal is to make sure that your page is easily indexed and found to be relevant for the search terms you are targeting.  Its important that you look at SEO on a per-page basis, since you will most often be writing an article, post or page to target a given topic in your niche.  Each page or post on your web site will bring in a bit of search engine traffic, but taken together a set of targeted pages can make your web site the authority for your niche.

Domain Names and Your Page URL

Search engines love to see  keywords in the domain name and address (called the URL) for your website. So if you are creating a new website, it is always best to try to pick a domain name that contains at least one of your keywords in it.  For example “FlyFishingTechniques.com” is a great name if you are focused on fly fishing techniques.

Even if your domain does not target a particular topic you are writing about, you can also leverage the features of wordpress or your web page editor to give each page a name that includes the keywords you are targeting.  For example with a conventional web site you can name the file after the keywords you are targeting such as “Fly_Fishing_Techniques.htm”.

You also automatically set up your wordpress blog so the title is the same as the URL using the permalinks feature - just go to Settings->Permalinks in your wordpress control panel and select the “Day and Name” or “Month and Name” option.  This will tell wordpress to use the title of your article in the URL such as “http://mysite.com/2010/12/fly_fishing_techniques/” for the article “Fly Fishing Techniques”.

Title for the Page – The <title> Tag

Each web page has a <title> tag in it which is the title that shows up in your web browser title bar and also becomes the title of the page once it is listed in Google.  Obviously keywords in the title can really help boost the ranking of a page since search engines use the title tag to determine what the overall web page is about.  The title tag can be a great place to get a few extra keywords in as well – so even if the page is titled “Double Haul Casting” you might want to add a few other keywords to be more specific to it such as “Double Haul Casting | Fly Fishing Techniques” in the title tag.  The first few words of the title are weighted more heavily than the latter ones, so you want your important keywords up front.  Generally you should limit yourself to no more than 10-12 words, as search engines generally discount excessively long titles.

In wordpress, it is generally best to use a plugin or theme to give you better control over title tags.  A free option is the “All in One SEO Pack” which you can add directly from your plugins console in wordpress.  This tool lets you match the title and other tags with your overall post or pages title, and also handles a number of other SEO functions I will mention below.  Another paid option I’ve moved to recently is the Thesis Theme (an affiliate, but the theme I use on all my major sites now), as it allows you to set custom titles and descriptions for each post and page.

Google Search Results – Showing Title and Meta Description

Meta Description

Each web page can also have a <meta> description tag that give you a second major opportunity to tell the search engines what your page is about.  This is the short description that appears below the title when you see google search results.  In the above image, we can see how google lists both the title and meta description when showing search results.  Again the key here is to include keywords in the description while at the same time making the description attractive to visitors who might see your site in a results listing.  Also you need to be brief, as only the first few lines are displayed on search results or indexed by the search engines.

Meta Tags

You can also include a <meta> tags list with any web page.  This is typically a list of specific keywords related to your web page.  Most standalone web page editors let you set these as part of the page much like the title and description.   If you use WordPress, the All-In-One SEO Pack listed above or the Thesis Theme let you set your tags to either match the post tags or enter a set of custom tags.

Most SEO specialists agree that Meta tags are not as important as they once were for SEO, and do not carry much weight today with major engines like Google.  However, it does not hurt to include a few keywords in your post or page, particularly if you can do it automatically using WordPress.  Again, don’t list more than 8-12 meta tags, as the extra keywords will simply be ignored.

Your Web Page and Keywords

Whether you are writing a standalone web page, a post or a new article, it is important that you also include the keywords in the body of the article itself.  Ideally you should use the first few lines of the page to describe what the page is about including the keywords you are targeting. The start of the article or page is weighed more heavily than latter portions, so use the introduction to highlight the most important points in your web page.

Heading styles such as <H1>, <H2>, <H3> are good for SEO as well since they not only organize your page for easy reading, but make it easy for the search engines to extract key points from the sections in your article.  Again, use the headings to highlight keywords for each topic as you write it.

Some people focus on keyword density.  I don’t.  Instead I focus on writing the article in a natural way, using the keywords naturally to highlight points in the article.  You don’t want to overdo it, however.   Remember that you are writing a page or article to appeal to your audience, not just the search engine.   If your article is just a jumble of popular keywords and unintelligible to the average human, driving traffic to that page is not going to do you much good anyways.  To avoid this, I usually narrowly focus my page around a specific topic, and write a second article or page if I need to expand it.

How Long Should A Web Page Be?

Its a well documented fact that search engines have a preference for longer articles, as these generally contain more keywords and are perceived as having higher authority.  However, its also a well documented fact that most people browsing the web have notoriously short attention spans.  In fact some studies have found that the average visitor will decide whether to read your page or not within less than one second of arriving on your web site – often less time than it takes for your web page to load!

So how do you balance these conflicting needs?  If a post is too short, it simply will not carry much authority with the search engines.  Generally I try to keep regular posts in the range of 400-1000 words, and only write authoritative posts (1000-2000 words) about every other week.  For longer posts I also make liberal use of bolding, highlighting and use images to help make the articles quickly scannable for my readers.

Number of Pages

It is a proven fact that a web site with more pages simply will have more authority with the search engines.  However, keep in mind you are doing all of this SEO to ultimately attract readers, so if you publish a bunch of worthless web pages just to boost your page count, you really won’t accomplish much once a human actually visits those pages.

Increasing the number of pages that have valuable content over time will enhance your ranking and also increase the chance that one of your pages might match a long tail keyword someone is searching for.  This is yet another reason it is important to publish regularly on your blog and web site – publishing high quality content on a regular basis boosts your standing with google and the other web search engines.

Freshness

Not surprisingly, google values “fresh” content over old stale content. This is why blogs rank so well in search results.  If you have a static web site that has not been changed in a few years, it will slowly lose its value to newer sites with up to date news and information.

In contrast if you have a blog where you post a few times a week (such as this one), the content is constantly changing and being updated.  As a result the google bot (from my video) not only visits more often but values the content more than static stale pages.  I also update my blog’s look and feel more often by changing the title bar, side bars, and other elements which updates the old pages on my site periodically.

The Age of Your Domain

While fresh content is really important, the search engines do favor older established domain names over brand new ones. If you have an established domain name (i.e. BeerSmith.com) that has been around for 9 years, it is going to rank much better than one that has been around for a few months, even if the two sites have comparable on and off page factors.

The effect is very pronounced for new web sites, and lasts somewhere from 6 months to a year.  This makes it really hard for someone just starting out.  If you establish a brand new website such as “MyReallyCoolWebsite.com”, and then follow all of the SEO advice I’m providing here, it will still take several months for that site build search engine traffic and it may take a year for it to get its “fair share” of traffic compared to an older site.

This is extremely frustrating for new entrepreneurs who may publish great stuff for 6-12 months and see virually no traffic. Unfortunately there is no way around this “startup penalty” unless you purchase an existing domain name (i.e. one that has already been around for several years).

Look for Part 3 – Off Page Linking and Backlinking

This week, we covered all of the most important on-page factors that affect your website and determine if it is relevant to a topic someone is searching for.  In part 3, I’m going to cover the various off-page factors – including critical strategies for linking your site and getting backlinks from other sites.  These off-page factors, taken together, are the most important in determining your web site’s authority – or how important your site is relative to others in your niche.

Thank you again for visiting Online Business Zen.  If you want to jump-start your internet business, consider joining my email list or getting started with my online business course.

A lot of people don’t really understand the idea behind passive income for their online business.  I put together this short chalk talk to help you understand how to design a business that generates passive income.  The idea here is to shape and organize your business so that the business works for you, rather than having you work for the business.

I’ve done this successfully using a variety of business models including publishing software, writing books, selling T-shirts and selling through affiliate programs like Amazon.  While one single stream may not generate a huge amount of money, several different streams put together can be a very effective way to make a living.  Thanks to Pat Flynn for providing the inspiration for this video.

I talked about additional business models on my podcast episode 2 and a lot more in my online business course (or newsletter) if you are interested in learning more.

In this week’s show I feature and interview with top blogger Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome.com.   Pat talks about selling his Pogs on ebay, building his first ebook business, and his huge success with his new blog.  Pat started an ebook business after getting laid off that led to two very successful businesses as well as some interesting niche sites.  Pat’s story of persistence in the face of adversity is quite an inspiration – especially for those looking to start their first business.

Download the MP3 File By Right Clicking and Saving Here

Topics and Questions Mentioned in this Podcast Episode: (37:43)

• Extended interview with Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome.com
• How Pat started his online business
• How he sold off his Pogs (and why he’s sad about it)
• What happened when he got laid off from his daytime job
• What smart passive income means to him
• How success follows failure
• Podcasting and what it has done for him
• The Niche Site Duel
• Building traffic for a site
• Pat’s future plans

Ask me a Question for the Show!

• Leave a short message at 703-873-7782 or skype to “businesszen” at any time 24/7 and we’ll play the best questions on the show
• Send your question to us via email using our online form – While I may not be able to respond to every email personally, I will feature the best of your questions on the show

Online Business Zen on iTunes

The Online Business Zen podcast is featured in the iTunes store.  If you click on the iTunes button below, it will take you to my page on the iTunes store which has a direct link if you want to open/subscribe to our podcast within iTunes.

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This week, I’m going to launch into a three part series on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) including the secrets that helped my web sites to reach 1 million unique visitors per year.  What does this have to do with building a business?  Simply everything – the techniques I’m going to teach you are worth their weight in gold.  A few weeks ago I posted a video on how google works where I briefly explained the importance of SEO for building your web site’s authority, and several of you asked for more.

This is an extensive, in-depth series – well over 5,000 words.  In this part, I’m going to focus on keyword research, in part 2 we’re going to talk about on-page SEO to build relevance for your website, and finally in part 3 I’m going to talk about off-page SEO including building backlinks and getting your web site indexed and ranked well on the search engines.

Why Search Engine Optimization Matters

If you missed the video on how google works, you might want to take a quick look at it.  The big three search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) are the master index of the internet.  People don’t look at the yellow pages or even the encyclopedia anymore – they google search terms.  Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is simply a process you can use to improve the visibility of your website to the big search engines – so people can find your web site.

The huge advantage of traffic from search engines is that you don’t have to pay for it.  Unlike sponsored ads, traffic that comes from the search engines is completely free.  The higher you rank in google and other engines for terms related to your niche, the more traffic you will get.  Other forms of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involve using paid listings and ads such as adwords – but you can actually build a successful site without any paid ads using natural traffic from search engines.

How much traffic can you get from search engines?  For my mature web sites, I receive about 56% of my traffic from search engines – including the majority of new visitors.  About another 30% of my traffic comes from referring sites including social media sites and other web sites in my niche, and the remaining 10% is direct traffic to people who already know about or have bookmarked my site.

The above figures are for a mature site that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, but has almost no paid advertising. If you are starting with a brand new site, you may not get any search engine traffic initially, but if you follow the methods outlined in this series, you will see search engines index you and start to send traffic after a few months. Consistency and persistence will pay off.

Keep in mind that search engine optimization is not the only way of getting traffic – you can also use social media sites, networking, guest blogging, word of mouth, traditional advertising and online advertising to attract visitors.  However SEO is a arguably the largest free source of new visitors, as most information and purchase decisions now start with a simple web search.

How Search Engines Work – On Page and Off Page Factors

As I explained in my video, Google and the other search engines use a program called a “bot” that visits your web site every few days.  The bot tries to evaluate the relevance and authority of your web site relative to others on the web.  Relevance refers to what your page and website are about – so for example if your web site is about fly fishing, google will see a lot of keywords and terms related to fly fishing and index your site accordingly.  Authority refers to how important your web site is relative to all of the other “fly fishing” web sites on the web (5.87 million in a quick search I did).

Google actually uses over 200 factors and an unpublished formula to decide how relevant your site is to various search terms and how much authority your site has.  However, we know that relevance is determined primarily by “on page” factors that you have control over, and authority is determined primarily by “off page” factors such as the  number of sites linking to yours (called backlinks).  Off page factors are not all within your control, but on-page factors are.  This week we’re going to focus on the doing the keyword research that forms a foundation for both.

Keyword Research

Before you can make your web site attractive to the major search engines, you need to know which keywords are important in your niche.  This is the key to becoming relevant.

People type certain combinations of words, called keywords, into the google search box a lot more than others.  For example, the phrase “fishing knots” generates twice the daily traffic that “fishing rods” does.  So if you want to score well with the search engines for a particular phrase or niche, you should have a list of the relevant keywords for your niche handy and target the most popular ones often.

If you want to be even smarter, you should target longer phrases that have moderate traffic but low competition. We also call this “the long tail” which (using the graph above) refers to the fact that up to 80% of the search traffic actually comes not from the top keywords in a niche, but the less searched for ones – which we call the long tail of the graph.  Often if you target one long tail phrase, you will also pick up traffic from related long tail key phrases.

How do you find these keywords?  The Google free keyword tool will give you a great place to start by showing daily traffic and relative competition.  I use a  professional tool called Market Samurai, which really helps me zero in on lower competition but profitable keywords in my niche.  Full disclosure here – the Market Samurai link is an affiliate link that will provide a commission to me if you decide to order from that link.  Its also a tool I paid full price for and use on a daily basis.

Start by doing keyword research for your main web site. Find our which keywords are most popular in your niche and keep a list of them handy so you can use them as you are building content for your site.  Next, do additional keyword research around major topics you might want to cover in your site for articles or specific products.

An important tip: Before you finalize an article or page for your web site, do quick keyword research on the title – you may find that the title you have picked is not one people are actually searching for.  Just reordering the keywords a bit in your title  may significantly enhance the impact of your page.

How to Do Keyword Research

Whether you are using the Google free keyword tool, or Market Samurai, you start by typing in a few keywords related to your topic or niche.  The keyword tools will first display a list of related keywords, and then show you how much search engine traffic there is daily for that keyword and also the relative competition.

Many beginners looking at the google free tool try to target keywords that have the most traffic.  This is almost always a mistake since these keywords are also highly competitive.  In fact for top keywords you are often competing against established web sites run by teams of professionals who can not only generate more content than you but also have already established substantial authority on the web.

Its the web equivalent of an 80lb kid entering the ring with a 200lb heavyweight boxer – its not a fair fight!

Finding Keywords You Can Target

What you actually want to do, particularly in the initial stages, is target very low competition keywords where you might have a chance of making some progress.  These so called “long tail” keywords are not easy to find.  Often you need to start with a top level set of keywords and key phrases and then do further research on each of those to narrow it down to a set of low competition keywords that have moderate daily traffic. These are the ones you will target.

The advantage of using a professional tool like Market Samurai is that it it provides much more detailed statistics on the daily traffic, specific competition numbers for each keyword, even keyword dollar value, and can help automate the process of finding viable low competition keywords to target.  In fact you can filter out highly competitive keywords, and also filter out keywords that are either unprofitable or have a poor match for your business niche.

It also has a competition module that will show you how strong each of the top 10 listings in google are for a given keyword, and even show you what their backlink network looks like.  This lets you “scope out the competition” in detail before you jump into a niche that may already be too crowded, since the top 10 pages for a keyword get most of the traffic from google.

What’s Next?

After you’ve got a solid list of both the top keywords in your niche and also some longer tail keywords that are low competition you can start the actual process of optimizing your web site.  Next week in part 2, I’m going to focus on the most important on-page factors for increasing the ranking of your web site.  We’ll make extensive use of your keywords to make sure your site is highly relevant to your business niche.  In part 3, we’ll talk about building site authority and the importance of backlinks.

Thank you for visiting Online Business Zen – and don’t hesitate to subscribe for regular updates on how you can build your own successful online business.

In this week’s show I interview Maren Kate from Escaping the 9 to 5 and one of Forbes top women entrepreneurs to follow.  We talk about how she got started as an entrepreneur online, her various businesses, and some of the challenges in building a new business.  She also talks extensively about her two new businesses where she is connecting entrepreneurs with virtual assistants.

Download the MP3 File By Right Clicking and Saving Here

Topics and Questions Mentioned in this Podcast Episode: (21:34)

• Reminder – watch the blog for my three part series on SEO
• Feature interview: Maren Kate from EscapingThe9To5.com
• How she got started with eBay
• Her consulting business and freedom as an entrepreneur
• Starting the blog: Escaping the 9 to 5
• How she uses virtual assistants to grow her business
• Her new virtual assistant businesses Virtual Zeta.com and Zirtual.com
• Moving from online entrepreneur to an incubator
• Some tips for first time entrepreneurs
• Next episode I have an interview with Pat Flynn – look for it
• A few seconds about my consulting services and what I can do for you

Ask me a Question for the Show!

• Leave a short message at 703-873-7782 or skype to “businesszen” at any time 24/7 and we’ll play the best questions on the show
• Send your question to us via email using our online form – While I may not be able to respond to every email personally, I will feature the best of your questions on the show

The Online Business Zen Podcast

The Online Business Zen podcast is featured in the iTunes store.  If you click on the iTunes button below, it will take you to my page on the iTunes store which has a direct link if you want to open/subscribe to our podcast within iTunes.

For those using another podcast device (non iPod) or a mobile client, here is the direct feed link.  Voice introduction provided by John Forsythe at TheVoiceOfJohn.com

While many of you are braving the crowds on this Black Thursday to get a gift for your loved one, I wanted to remind the readers out there that my Kindle drawing deadline closes at midnight Eastern time on 1 December 2010.  All you need to do to enter the drawing is to subscribe to my email newsletter using the form at the end of this post.

I’m giving away one Kindle Wireless (6″ display) Reader in a random drawing on 1 December 2010.   I will draw one a name at random from our list of active email list subscribers as of midnight on 1 December 2010 and ship one Kindle wireless 6″ ($139 value) to that winner.

If you have not figured it out, self-education is a major theme on this blog.  I bought a Kindle EReader for myself a few months ago and went through 24 books on business, copy writing and marketing in the subsequent months – it is a fantastic device and a great way to learn – plus you don’t have to lug around a bunch of heavy books.

You can enter by subscribing here:

Please be sure to CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION by clicking on the link you will receive (via GetResponse) in your first email – otherwise you will not be subscribed.

Drawing Rules: The drawing will be made at random from the list of confirmed email subscribers to the Online Business Zen newsletter as of 1 December 2010 at midnight.  The winner will be contacted via their subscribed email address.  If a selected winner fails to respond to our email notice within 7 days they will forfeit the prize in its entirety, and another winner will be selected at random.

Starting out as a new entrepreneur, you will waste a lot of time. Its inevitable.  In fact, I’ve been doing business for almost 20 years, and I still manage to engage in a lot of unproductive stuff – whether its checking my email 20 times a day or checking my favorite news site when I should be programming.

Even if you cut out the truly extraneous stuff (like browsing the news site), much of what you or I do to propel our business forward is still waste.

How much is waste?

In 1906, Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist was studying the distribution of wealth in Italy.  He observed that 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth. Much later Dr Joseph Juran, a productivity specialist, observed that there were “a vital few and trivial many.  A critical small group of people he studied produced most of the results in business.  He made a passing, but inaccurate reference to Pareto’s work.

For some reason Pareto’s name became lodged in popular lexicon, rather than Juran’s, and the 80-20 rule became known as the Pareto Principle.

The Pareto principle says that 20% of the people (or effort) are vital, and 80% are trivial.  Restated, 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results. Alternately, 80% of the effort is largely wasted and only produces 20% of the results.

So when you are forming your business, you may waste as much as 80% of your time engaging in activities that don’t have a significant impact on your business.  Better to focus on the 20% of effort that produces results than the 80% that doesn’t.

Getting More Productive

When you start your business, there is so much to learn.  You need to be a master at marketing, social media, running a web site, search engine optimization, developing products, accounting, establishing a business, etc…  However you need to distinguish between time spent learning and time spent churning.

I still struggle evey day with the huge array of tasks before me – in part because I’m faced with a glut of opportunities all of which I want to pursue at once.  Here are some of the methods I use to keep it under control:

• Keep a “to do” list for each project – and prioritize it regularly so you can focus on the things that have the largest impact for your business
• Pick 1-3 things you really want to accomplish each day.  If you are a part time entrepreneur, you should probably limit yourself to just one.  Only do the most important.  Don’t get caught up doing more than that.
• Schedule your time – block out time and assign a project to that time.  That way you don’t get pulled off by the next shiny object.
• Focus on one thing at a time – close your email, your browser, and put the phone on vibrate.  Just get the current task done.
• Set time limits – Set aside an hour or half hour to complete the task.  Stop when the time is up.  If its not done, mark another block down later on your calendar to complete it

That’s it!  I built a full time income working only a few hours a week – but I focused my time on the things that made the most impact for my business, and them kept up with them for the months needed to be successful.

This week I cover the psychology of social media.  Psychology plays a critical role online in attracting customers, establishing a relationship with them, developing trust and ultimately in their decision to purchase your product or service.  I introduce some of the most significant aspects of online social behavior and how they are used in online business.  I also answer a variety of questions about local business marketing, setting up a simple online store, email lists, twitter, and more.  Share your questions or leave me a comment below!

Download the MP3 File By Right Clicking and Saving Here

Topics and Questions Mentioned in this Podcast Episode: (28:45)

• Reminder: The Kindle drawing closes out on 1 December – sign up for the email list to enter the drawing!
• My post: Top Traffic Tips from 9 Full Time Bloggers
• Feature Segment: Key elements of social media psychology: Reciprocity, Social Proof, Liking, and Authority.  Also the book “Social Media Marketing” by Mitch Myerson.
• Story: You can do more than you think you can…
• How to market a local business such as real estate online?
• Easy way to set up a simple online store for a few products on your web site?
• Should I use a personal brand or corporate brand for my business?
• Why is an email list important for my site?  Is it just another excuse to spam people?
• I don’t understand twitter?  Why do I need it?
• What is a product launch strategy and why should I pay big bucks to learn how to do one?
• Quick Tip – How do you add a Youtube video to your wordpress blog?

Ask me a Question for the Show!

• Leave a short message at 703-873-7782 or skype to “businesszen” at any time 24/7 and we’ll play the best questions on the show
• Send your question to us via email using our online form – While I may not be able to respond to every email personally, I will feature the best of your questions on the show

The Online Business Zen Podcast

The Online Business Zen podcast is featured in the iTunes store.  If you click on the iTunes button below, it will take you to my page on the iTunes store which has a direct link if you want to open/subscribe to our podcast within iTunes.

For those using another podcast device (non iPod) or a mobile client, here is the direct feed link.  Voice introduction provided by John Forsythe at TheVoiceOfJohn.com