Learn Internet Marketing | How to Make Money Online

A Bigger Threat Than the FTC?

good@superbadim.com (SuperbadIM) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:15:20 +0000

Running a successful business isn’t just about making money, it’s also about keeping the money you make.

Once you start making money, it’s easy to blow it on unnecessary expenses, bad investments, exotic vacations and expensive toys. But, you can also lose your money by making bad legal decisions.

Most people in the internet marketing world are probably aware of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). For those who aren’t, the FTC is a government agency given the power to regulate unfair competition and advertising. Not just advertising online, but advertising in any medium.

If you have a business online and you’re not familiar with the FTC, you need to get familiar with them. Especially, these two principles:

1. You must disclose all material connections when promoting, reviewing or endorsing products or services.

and

2. Endorsements and testimonials must be truthful and honest, and testimonials are presumed to be the results that one can typically expect if they buy your product or service. Putting the standard “Results Not Typical” doesn’t cut it anymore.

That’s a very brief summary of the two most common guidelines applicable to internet marketers. If you want to know more about the regulations, you can download the free 2011 Internet Marketing Legal Guide here – internet marketing law.

If you get in trouble with the FTC, it can cost you a lot of money. Read this article by Shoemoney on Phony Product Reviews to see just how much it could cost you.

But, this article isn’t about the FTC. This article is about something potentially worse than the FTC – Class Action Lawsuits.

Class Action Lawsuits

A class action lawsuit is a lawsuit on behalf of a “class” or specific group of people. For example, if Evil Corporation dumps toxic chemicals into the river near your house and everyone in your city drinks that water and gets sick, the sick people in that city could be a “class” for a class action lawsuit against Evil Corporation.

In the example above, a class action lawsuit against Evil Corporation would probably be a good idea. Instead of clogging up the court system with thousands of different lawsuits against the same company, litigating the same issues, you combine them into one lawsuit and litigate the liability issue once. The damages may vary for every person that’s a member of the class, but the main issue is whether Evil Corporation was the cause of the problem.

The Truth

But, here’s the truth about class action lawsuits. In some cases, attorneys look for technical violations to litigate as class actions. In other words, they look for opportunities to make money. There doesn’t have to be a tremendous injustice. All they need is one small violation of some obscure law that no one pays attention to.

If you’re a small fish, you probably don’t have much to worry about. Class action attorneys go after “Deep Pockets.” That means companies with a lot of money or a lot of insurance coverage. They look for a big payout because the real winner in these types of class actions are the attorneys and law firms that bring the lawsuits.

Let me give you an example. But, before I do, let me throw out a disclaimer. I’m not saying that this example is not a legitimate class action lawsuit for a good cause. I don’t know all of the facts and surrounding circumstances, so you’ll have to do your own research to make that call. But, it’s an example of why some attorneys and law firms might like class action lawsuits.

I received a class action notice in the mail about a month ago because I was a potential member of a “class.” You may have received the same thing if you had Farmers Insurance at any time between 1999 and 2010.

Here are the relevant details.

- It was a lawsuit against Farmers Group, Inc, et al and Zurich Financial Services Ltd for allegedly violating California law and charging “management fees” that were too high and the plaintiffs also alleged that Farmers Group made too much in profit.

- The proposed settlement, which must be approved by the court, is for $455 million.

- The attorneys involved in the matter would receive $90 million.

- My portion of the settlement, as a class member, would be $3.07.

So, you can see who the real winners are in class action lawsuits. Many times they don’t even give cash to the class members, they give coupons instead. Of course, the law firms involved will still receive cash.

Internet Marketing

So, what does this have to do with internet marketing? Well, ever hear of Kissmetrics, SEOmoz, Raven Tools, Gigaom or Etsy? They, along with others, are currently being sued in a class action lawsuit.

The reason? Alleged violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, California Privacy Act, Trespass to Chattel, and California Unfair Competition Law.

In plain English, the lawsuit alleges that Kissmetrics and others used tracking methods in violation of the laws. I won’t bore you with the details, you can read the complaint for that. But, the allegations suggest that the defendants were tracking visitor activity beyond their own websites.

If you’re a defendant in a class action lawsuit, you have a lot to lose. We’re talking millions, and in some cases billions (asbestos, tobacco). But, regardless of whether you’re guilty or not, once the lawsuit is filed, you have to defend yourself.

Defending yourself against a lawsuit isn’t cheap and I would multiply that x100 for class action lawsuits. There will be a lot more costs involved with research, investigation, discovery, experts, time involved and so on and so forth.

Protect Yourself

If you have a vault full of money, or you have “deep pockets,” you could be a target for class action attorneys. As an attorney myself, I follow these 3 guidelines to protect myself:

1. Don’t ignore the law. A legal decision is a business decision and choosing to ignore the law is a bad business decision.

2. Follow the law. Don’t just be aware of the laws, actually comply with the laws. If you don’t know what laws apply to your situation, either hire an attorney or do the research yourself. There are a ton of free legal resources online.

3. Get the proper insurance. If your business has liability insurance, your insurance company will be the one defending you against any alleged violations as well as paying any settlements or judgments, up to your coverage limit. Just be sure that you have the right coverage. There’s nothing worse than paying for coverage for years only to find out after being sued that the thing you’re being sued for is excluded.

There are good and bad people in every profession. Not all lawyers are bad. Not even all class action lawyers are bad. You can’t always avoid legal trouble, but if you stick to the 3 simple rules above, you will definitely keep your level of risk low.

A Lesson in Public Relations From Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

good@superbadim.com (SuperbadIM) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:55:08 +0000

If you run a business, you know you can’t please all the people all the time.

So, it’s safe to assume that someone, at some time, will trash you or your business online for the whole world to see.

That nasty comment could be a blog post, a review, or perhaps a tweet. The comment itself isn’t nearly as important as how you deal with the comment.

In the case of Governor Sam Brownback, he didn’t do a very good job of dealing with it.

If you haven’t read anything about the “Twitter incident,” you can read about it here.

The short version is that Emma Sullivan, an 18 year old high school senior, sent out a tweet while she was on a field trip to the state Capitol that said -

Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.

Now, it’s not the nicest thing to say about someone but come on, the guy’s a politician, of course he sucks (just kidding).

Apparently, the governor’s office monitors the internet for mentions of Brownback and after his people saw the tweet, they called someone at the school district and Emma got ripped a new one by her high school principal.

The principal told Emma that she needed to write an apology to the governor.

After Emma spoke with her sister, a college student, she decided not to write the apology letter and instead they contacted the media. The rest is history.

But, let’s take a look a closer look at this public relations disaster.

First, Emma had 65 followers on Twitter at the time she sent the tweet (now over 13,000). Not a lot of people would’ve seen this comment if the governor’s office had simply ignored it.

Second, it’s not a very influential statement. If anyone had seen the tweet, it’s not likely to persuade anyone to oppose the governor. I mean, she said he “sucked” and “he blows a lot.” Not very damaging from an intellectual standpoint.

Third, does the governor even have a policy in place for responding to online criticism? Granted, he’s a politician, not a business owner, but someone from his office picked up the phone and called someone at the school district to complain about this.

Did the governor authorize it? Was anyone in his office authorized to do that? Have they done it before?

Any contact with the public is a reflection of your business. Make sure your employees know what they can and can’t do.

Negative feedback is actually valuable for a business owner…to an extent. If you start to hear the same complaints over and over again, you need to listen and adjust.

If people keep writing reviews about how the spaghetti in your restaurant is always cold, you better fix it and start serving hot spaghetti…if you want to stay in business.

People that are unsatisfied are much more likely to speak out than those who are satisfied with your products or services. So, for every 100 people that are satisfied and say nothing, there will be a few people that are unsatisfied and complain.

When they do speak out, it’s an opportunity for you to show the world that you’re listening, that you care about their experience and you can respond in a calm, rational manner.

Even if there is no hope of saving the relationship with the person complaining about you, your response will be memorialized online for all to see. If you have a clever, witty response, it could actually win you more customers in the long run.

Don’t waste an opportunity to show the world the true character of your business.

Want Big Results? Think Smaller!

good@superbadim.com (SuperbadIM) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:30:21 +0000

Building an online business can be overwhelming.

It takes a lot of work, skill and knowledge to create a profitable online business.

If you manage to successfully build an online business, it can drastically change your life in terms of time and money.

But, to get there, it’s important to think small.

I don’t care if your ultimate goal is to make a million dollars in 1 year or a billion dollars in 10 years, you still need to think small.

Your goals can be as big as you want, but when it comes down to it, your business will succeed or fail based on the small actions you take every day.

How to Think Smaller

Let’s say you want to sell software to millions of people around the globe and build a multi-billion dollar corporation. Great goal, but what’s your process to turn that goal into a reality? The only way to turn that goal into a reality is to take small steps every single day. Not just any steps, the right steps.

You need software to sell, right? That means you’ll have to sit down at your computer and write the code for your software. If you’re not writing the code, then you need to hire someone to write the code, which means you’ll have to contact people, place advertisements, conduct interviews, view their previous work. All small steps.

You finish the software and now it’s time to make your millions, right? Hmmm, not so fast. How are you gonna sell the software? Online? Maybe you need to build a website. Maybe you need to hire a sales person. Maybe you need to park your butt in a chair and start cold-calling companies to see if they’re interested. Small steps.

Your goals can be as big as you want, but when it comes down to it, your business will succeed or fail based on the small actions you take every day.

A Small Company Called Microsoft

Ever hear of a company called Microsoft? It’s a little company that was created by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They started by taking small steps.

Bill Gates learned how to code in High School. He worked on several different projects to improve his coding skills before he left to attend Harvard.

Then, Gates and Allen read an article about a new “personal computer” that needed software but the software didn’t exist. And, most people thought it would be impossible to create the software.

Bill Gates called the person who created the new “personal computer” and told him that they could create a BASIC software program to run the computer. Small step.

Since there was only one prototype of the “personal computer” in existence in 1974, Gates and Allen then bought a manual for the 8080 chip found in the new personal computer so they could understand how it worked. Small step.

Then, they sat down in front of the computer and worked on creating the code. Small step.

The next day, they sat down in front of the computer and worked on creating the code. And the next day. And the next day.

For about 8 weeks straight, they simply took the necessary steps to create the software that they said they could create. Small steps.

Finally, Allen scheduled a meeting with the creator of the personal computer to test the software. Small step.

He got on an airplane and flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Small step.

The next day, Allen tested the software for the first time on the personal computer and it worked. Small step.

I could go on and on about the small steps that led to Microsoft’s massive success, but you get the idea.

Why Think Smaller?

If you want to achieve big goals, you need to focus on the process that will get you there. You need goals, but you also need a system in place to achieve those goals. The system or process is what will make the difference.

We only have 24 hours in a day and when you subtract time for sleeping, eating, showering, traveling, etc, it doesn’t leave much time for getting real work done.

You are where you are right now because of the choices you made in the past. If you were focused on taking action, increasing your skills, your value and the value of your own business, then the results will show that.

If you made excuses, procrastinated, watched TV every night, read zero books and complained about your lack of money instead of taking action, then your current results will be a reflection of that.

So, instead of putting so much emphasis on goals, put more emphasis on creating a daily, weekly or monthly process that will give you the results you want.

If you want to increase your traffic from search engines by 50%, then you need to create a process that will bring those results. Make it as specific as possible and focus on what you will COMPLETE not a vague statement of what you need to work on.

For example, your Monday Process might look like this:

MONDAY

9am – 1pm: Complete 1 article on how to increase website traffic.
1pm – 1:30pm: Format and Post website traffic article on abc website.
2:30 – 2:45pm: Share article on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
2:45pm – 3:45pm: Read 10 articles from websites “A through J” and Post useful comment on each article.
3:45pm – 6pm: Complete research for 1 article on how to learn SEO and prepare outline for article.

This is an example of a very generic process but when you have the specifics of what you need to accomplish, you can write a better one.

Avoid general processes, like “write article” or “get backlinks.” Focus on exactly what needs to be completed to accomplish your goal, then break it down into simple, actionable steps. Take it to the next level by taking those steps and creating a daily, weekly, or monthly process.

When you create a process, you know what needs to be done and you don’t have to think about it. You know what the process requires and you execute it day after day. That’s how you get the results you want.

The results you have today are based on the actions you took in the past. The results you get tomorrow, will be based on the actions you take today.

Focus on the small things today and you will see big results in the future.

How to Install WordPress on 1and1 (Manually) [Video]

good@superbadim.com (SuperbadIM) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:53:48 +0000

Most hosting companies have a 1-click installation for WordPress.

Unfortunately, 1and1 doesn’t. You have to manually install WordPress, as far as I can tell.

Navigating through the 1and1 control panel has always been a challenge for me. That’s why I left them years ago (except for my domain names).

I had an online marketing client that didn’t want to leave 1and1 so I thought I’d make this video for any other people trying to install WordPress on 1and1.

If for some reason, you need to do a manual installation of WordPress on your hosting account, especially on 1and1, here’s how it’s done.

1. Download a copy of WordPress from http://wordpress.org.

2. Login to 1and1 and on your control panel under Domains and Web Space, click on “MySQL Administration.”

3. On the next screen, click on “New Database.”

4. Enter a description and a new password for your new database.

5. Make sure you copy your password, you’ll need it.

6. Hit “Set Up.”

7. The database takes about 5 minutes to setup, according to 1and1.

8. Make sure you copy down all of the information about your database because you will need it in the next step.

9. Click on the WordPress file you just downloaded from WordPress.org and open the file called wp-config-sample.php with a text editor safe for editing code.

10.Copy and paste in the new db_name, the db_user, the db_password and the db_host.

11. Save the file as wp-config.php in the WordPress folder.

12. Upload all of the files located in the WordPress folder to the proper directory on 1and1 (Make sure the directory is empty before you upload the files).

13. Go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php and complete the information for your site.

14. Make sure you copy down your Username and Password as you will need it to login to your new site.

15. Click “Install WordPress.”

16. On the next screen click on “Log In” and enter your Username and Password.

17. Once you hit “Log In,” that should bring you to your dashboard where you can control all the settings for your website.

If you use this manual install for a hosting company other than 1and1, you probably won’t need to change the db_host, as most hosting companies use ‘localhost’ for the db_host.

If this video helped, feel free to share it via Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

The 3 Hour Work Week

good@superbadim.com (SuperbadIM) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:00:22 +0000

The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss showed us that we don’t have to accept the “traditional” life.

Why go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a job you don’t like, work at least 40 hours per week, receive a paycheck every 2 weeks, invest in a 401k, work 5 or 6 days per week for 45 years, take a 2 week vacation every year, retire, take a cruise, sit on your porch for a few years, then die?

Instead, you can start a business, travel while you’re young, outsource work, work remotely, learn new skills, experience different cultures, or just live life on your own terms. Spend your time doing whatever you want.

The 4 Hour Work Week inspired a lot of people but now I give you the 3 Hour Work Week.

Why work 4 hours a week when you can work 3?

Here’s all you have to do.

Earn $6 million dollars while you’re young.
Invest that $6 million dollars with a 5% return.
Live off of the 5% return, which would be $25,000 per month.
Work for 3 hours per week…if you want.

That’s it. That’s the 3 Hour Work Week.

The tricky part is the first step. I’m still working on that one myself, so, let me expand on that a little bit.

How to Make Money

There aren’t a lot of ways to make millions of dollars while you’re young. In most cases it takes time. Even over a lifetime, most people don’t end up with a multi-million dollar bank account.

Unless you inherit millions of dollars on your 21st birthday, or you win the lottery, the most likely way to earn a million dollars is to build your own business.

Let’s face facts. Most employees aren’t rich.

If you’re an employee collecting a paycheck for your services, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever be a millionaire before you turn 50.

In fact, the large majority of people that follow the “traditional” path will never become millionaires.

There are always exceptions but they’re exceptions because they’re very rare.

So, what should you do to live the 3 Hour Work Week lifestyle?

You have to stop being an employee and start being an owner.

Owners get rich. Owners produce things that have value. They create. They build. They innovate. They make things happen.

Is it Scalable?

The key to making money is to build a profitable business that is scalable.

There are plenty of ways to make money. You can open a pizza place. You can open a car wash. You can provide legal services. But, not all of these are easily scalable.

Scalable means that it is capable of being easily expanded.

For example, if you open a pizza place in the city where you live, you are limited in several ways.

First, to buy your product, people must be physically located in that area.

Second, you are limited to the amount of revenue you can generate because you can only make a certain number of pizzas every day, assuming that the demand is there.

Third, unless your profit margin is significant and you can hire someone to manage everything for you, you will probably be an integral part of the business, leaving you with very little free time to enjoy your “self-employment.”

The only way to expand is to open new restaurants in different locations. That means more capital invested, more people to manage and more operational issues to deal with.

Is it money you really want from your own business, or money AND the free time to enjoy it?

Of course, everyone wants money. That’s clear. But, most people simply want money so they can do the things they really want to do, which they can’t do if they have a business that requires them to work 80 hours per week.

What most people really want is the time to do what they want and the money to make it a reality.

That’s where the internet comes in.

Starting an Online Business

The internet is a great way to build a business that is easily scalable. It’s not the only way, but it’s a very desirable way for many reasons.

The internet is global. The internet runs 24/7. Billions of people search for things online every month. Billions of dollars are spent online every month.

Tap into that and you will definitely make a few dollars.

Not only can you reach a lot of people 24/7, but starting an online business is very inexpensive compared to starting a brick and mortar business.

With an online business, you don’t need as many employees.

With an online business, you can use a wide variety of tools and programs to automate day to day tasks.

With an online business, you can work from anywhere as long as you have internet access.

With an online business, you can build a business that generates significant revenue. At the same time, you’ll be building an asset that you can sell in the future.

That’s where the $6 million dollar pay day comes in.

When you create a business that generates significant revenue, you sell it for a massive sum and you’re on your way to a 3 Hour Work Week.

Of course, it’s not easy to build an online business worth millions of dollars. The steps are very simple but the execution of those steps is not so easy.

You need a good idea for your business. Great execution. Knowledge. Hard work. Persistence. And, the ability to overcome obstacles and evolve as you try to build your business.

The more you do, the more you will learn.

Even if you don’t create a multimillion dollar business, chances are pretty good, if you stay focused, that you will create a profitable business that you enjoy and that gives you much more satisfaction than a “traditional” job.

What do you think is the most difficult aspect of building a profitable online business?

How to Succeed

good@superbadim.com (SuperbadIM) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:18:40 +0000

A huge part of success is mindset. Not everyone has the desire to do what it takes to succeed.

Knowing what needs to be done isn’t the same as doing what needs to be done. It takes discipline, dedication and action day after day.

When it comes to the world of internet marketing, this is very true. When you’re trying to build a business online, there’s no one telling you what to do or how to do things. It’s up to you. You make the decisions day after day.

I thought this was a pretty cool video that hammers home the point – How Bad Do You Want It?

How to Get Backlinks – The Ultimate Guide

good@superbadim.com (SuperbadIM) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:00:17 +0000

A backlink is simply a link to your website.

In general, the more backlinks you get to your site, or, more specifically, the pages on your site, the more likely it is that those pages will show up at the top of the search results.

Backlinks have two main purposes:

1. They give you an SEO benefit which will hopefully move your page up in the search engine results – called (SERPS) for search engine results pages.

AND

2.They can drive traffic directly to your site from people who click on the links.

So, if the Wall Street Journal publishes an article and that article links to your website, that’s a backlink. That link should help you in the SERPS – AND you should get traffic directly from the people that read the article and click on the link to your site.

Internal Link

An internal link is a link from one webpage on your site to another page on your site. So, it’s an internal link. For example, if I do this – best web hosting- that’s an internal link to another page on my website. Internal linking is a great way to boost links to important pages on your site AND it helps visitors navigate your site too.

External Link

An external link is just the opposite of an internal link. It’s a link to a page outside of your own website. So, if I link to Google, that’s an external link. If someone clicks on that link, they leave my website.

You can’t control who links to your site, but you CAN control who you link to. If you link to spammy, scammy websites, it could have an effect on your own website. It’s a factor that Google takes into consideration.

Link Juice

Link juice basically refers to the amount of influence or “juice” that any given backlink carries. For example, let’s say that someone creates a backlink to your website. Let’s also assume that he has one link on the page and the link is to your home page. If we say that the link from his page to your page carries 10 link juice units, and he has only one link on his page, then you’ll get all 10 link juice units.

Now, let’s change it up. Let’s assume he has 5 different links on his page, only one of which is linking to your website. The link juice is divided and you’re only gonna get 2 link juice units.

Same thing applies to internal linking. If you have a webpage and you link to 10 different pages from one of your pages, the link juice will be divided. If you want to give all available link juice to one page, then only create 1 backlink.

The more backlinks you have on any given page, the less link juice those backlinks will pass on. Keep this in mind when you create backlinks.

You should give the most important pages as much link juice as you can and prevent the “weak” pages from taking link juice (e.g., about, terms of service, contact, non-ranking pages, etc). The amount of link juice that any given link carries is determined by different factors, like the website where the link is located, the PageRank, how many links are on the page, the relevance of the website and the link, etc.

I don’t know if anyone can determine an EXACT number when it comes to link juice, although I’ve seen some creative attempts. Google doesn’t reveal the specifics of their algorithm to that extent. Think of link juice as more of a theoretical concept to help you understand the importance of links and how you can use them to maximize their effects.

Some people even go deeper with something called link sculpting or PageRank Sculpting. You can design, or manipulate, your website to MAXIMIZE where the link juice is distributed.

You can do this through SEO, proper internal linking structure and using “no follow” tags on specific links. Unless you plan on becoming a hardcore SEO expert, I wouldn’t stress too much about link juice, but definitely understand it and use the principles to your advantage.

No Follow and Do Follow Links

“No Follow” and “Do Follow” are really only important to search engine robots. The default is do follow, so really a do follow link is just one without any no follow tag.

To create a no follow link, you just have to add the tag to the html code. When you create a no follow link, that means that NO PageRank is transferred to the target link and NO anchor text is transferred. That’s what Google claims.

However, I’ve seen a blog – with no content – get a PageRank of 3 just from comment links. So, take that for what it’s worth. But, it’s definitely better to get a FOLLOW link if you have a choice.

A no follow link is also an indication of trust. When a link has a no follow tag attached to it, it’s kind of like saying – we’re not so sure about this site. Some people even use no follow links to “sculpt” the pagerank on their site.

They make everything no follow EXCEPT the most important pages. Obviously, Google frowns upon that type of thing so use the no follow link in moderation – if you use it at all.

PageRank

Pagerank is a number from 0 to 10. It was created by Google and BASICALLY indicates the strength or authority of a webpage.

Every webpage has a Pagerank and it’s determined by a bunch of different factors like the content on the webpage, the strength of the domain, the number of backlinks to the page, the strength of those backlinks and so on and so forth.

The more links you get from relevant, high pagerank sites, the more likely it is that the pagerank on your site will increase. That’s why it’s better to get links from sites with high pagerank as opposed to sites with low pagerank.

Ultimately, pagerank doesn’t mean that much – You STILL need to focus on the most important factor which is – are you making money?

Types of Backlinks

There are essentially 5 different types of backlinks.

Exact Match Anchor Text

If you’re trying to rank for the keyword [how to make money online] – this would be an exact match anchor text backlink – how to make money online.

Partial Match Anchor Text

If you’re trying to rank for the keyword [internet marketing basics] – this would be a partial match anchor text backlink – internet marketing.

Unrelated Phrase Anchor Text

This is an example of an unrelated phrase anchor text. Click here.

URL Link

This one’s obvious, right? – http://superbadinternetmarketing.com

Image Link

When using an image as a link, use keywords in the alt text field, if it makes sense to do so. It’s sort of like using anchor text for your image.

Backlinking Guidelines

Not everyone agrees on which SEO tactics work and which ones don’t BUT here are some of the methods that most people in the SEO world agree on.

It’s better to get a backlink using anchor text rather than one without anchor text.
It’s not good to be top-heavy with anchor text backlinks.
Anchor text links are great, but it’s important to get backlinks using your website url, related keywords, and random text so it looks natural to search engines.
Don’t build backlinks too fast or it will appear “unnatural” to Google.
Backlinks from websites with high PageRank are better than backlinks from websites with low PageRank.
Backlinks from relevant websites are better than backlinks from totally unrelated or off-topic websites.
Do Follow links are better than No Follow links.
No Follow links can help you rank better (this is based on the recent ranking signals report from SEOmoz, check out my summary here).
Backlinks from different domains are better than multiple links from the same domain.
Backlinks located within the main content, as opposed to a sidebar, or footer, carry more weight.
Backlinks located at the beginning, or top, of an article are better than backlinks near the bottom or at the end of an article.
Don’t buy backlinks.
In addition to search engine benefits, backlinks are also good for driving traffic from people that visit your website directly through the link.

White Hat vs. Black Hat

The easiest way to explain the difference between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO is to say that White Hat is ethical marketing that complies with various guidelines (specifically Google) and Black Hat is unethical marketing that frequently violates SEO guidelines.

I won’t go into details about what kind of tactics Black Hatters employ, but I do want to provide you with a few guidelines for TRYING to stay White Hat. These are straight from Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines.

Consider these GUIDELINES before you make your SEO decisions.

1. Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
2. Does this help my users?
3. Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?

Pretty strict, right? Especially number 3.

No one would “build” backlinks if search engines didn’t exist. They would still strategically post backlinks on websites that could drive traffic through their links, but I think that’s the point Google is trying to make. Focus on getting TRAFFIC to your website and the SEO benefits will follow.

For example, article marketing is a common method for getting backlinks. Google does NOT recommend article marketing as an SEO strategy. However, if you write a high-quality article and post it on a popular article directory site with the intent to get traffic through your link, that’s acceptable. It’s not acceptable to post an article on a site JUST to get a backlink, or manipulate the search engine rankings, as Google puts it.

It really comes down to intent, which Google really can’t measure.

That leads us to Gray Hat Marketing. The “gray” area in between the two. It’s hard to say sometimes what’s acceptable and what isn’t acceptable. If you’re doing something to MANIPULATE the search results, like building backlinks just for the backlink, it’s technically against Google’s guidelines.

Of course, Google doesn’t enforce their guidelines every day. They make an algorithm change and it hits like a tsunami across the internet. Websites that use Black Hat or Gray Hat methods are removed from their top positions and fall off into oblivion. No notice. No warning. No sympathy. Unless, of course, you consider the fact that Google tells you not to do it a warning.

If you’re doing anything other than focusing on targeted traffic, you’re probably violating Google’s guidelines. They don’t want people manipulating the search results by going out and building a ton of backlinks themselves. And I’m not trying to scare you, I just want to EMPHASIZE how strict Google’s guidelines actually are. The extent to which they enforce those guidelines is a totally different story.

Backlink Tools

If you build backlinks to your website you need to make sure that Google finds them. If you post a backlink on some obscure website that Google never crawls, they might not pick up the backlink. And, if they don’t know about it, you get no benefit from it. So, you want to make sure that the sources you use for your backlinks are actually getting crawled by Google.

When you create backlinks, you want to make sure the search engines recognize that source. To check your backlinks, you can use any of the tools below.

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
http://blekko.com
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools – This is only for your own site after you register and your site is verified.
http://www.majesticseo.com
http://www.google.com – Just type in links:domain.com and it will return the results (although not very accurate).

True SEO Experts

There are a lot of people that have a good working knowledge of SEO, but I wouldn’t call them experts.

Be careful where you get your SEO information. Everyone is willing to offer their opinion BUT not everyone should. To me, an expert is someone who studies SEO and experiments a lot.

The only way to really find out what works and what doesn’t work, is to run carefully controlled tests. Isolate one factor, make a change and measure the impact of that change. It takes time, knowledge and discipline.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be an SEO expert to succeed at internet marketing. SEO is just one aspect of internet marketing. The information that I’m sharing with you is more than enough to succeed at SEO and internet marketing.

But, if you want to become an expert at SEO, then learn from the true SEO experts.

Here are a few reliable, trustworthy sources online to read more about SEO:

http://www.seobook.com/blog
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
http://searchengineland.com

http://www.wolf-howl.com
http://www.blueglass.com/blog
http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

SEO Expert Tips

The real SEO experts that do SEO for a living don’t just crank out crappy articles all day. They work with major corporations, small and medium-sized business owners and they’re creative about how they obtain backlinks.

Most companies want to avoid any risk of getting in trouble with Google, so they have to make sure their methods are 100% White Hat.

Here are some of the creative methods that SEO experts use to get backlinks.

1. Broken links – Use the tools above to find competitor’s backlinks. Look for broken links, then contact the webmaster and notify them of the broken link and let them know that you have relevant content on your website that they can link to in order to fix the broken link.

2. Complementary Business – Find businesses that complement yours and suggest linking to your website to help their visitors. For example, if you provide accounting services, you can contact a law firm website that specializes in estate planning and discuss the possibility of linking to your website.

3. Offer a testimonial – If you use a product or service, write an awesome testimonial that they can’t refuse, and of course, include a link.

4. Write a Comprehensive Review – If you write an article about a business, contact them and notify them that you are posting it on your website and suggest they link to it.

5. Provide Missing Content – Write a guest post but specifically tailored to content that should be on their site but isn’t. For example, if an estate planning law firm website is missing an article about tax implications, an accountant could provide that article.

6. HARO – Help a Reporter Out is a website that looks for experts or specific types of people to quote or interview for news articles. Signup for the list and reply to appropriate inquiries.

7. Develop a WordPress Theme/Plugin – Develop a WordPress theme and distribute it for free with a link back to your website in the footer.

8. Distribute Free Software – Give away a software program that includes your link or create free software that people will link to naturally.

9. Run a Contest – Run a contest that encourages people to link to or connect with your website in some way.

10. Free Gift – Similar to a contest but give away a gift for taking a certain action.

11. Viral Content- Create (or try) to create a video, infographic, article, or anything that will spread quickly and create links to your content.

Common Link Building Methods

When it comes to backlinks you’re really only limited by your imagination.

Of course, there are also the old standard link-building techniques, which are listed below with links to resources so you can start building backlinks with a click of your mouse.

1. Your own websites – If you have multiple websites, you can obviously create links using those websites. And, don’t forget about internal linking.

2. Awesome Content – Whether you call it awesome, epic, amazing, viral or remarkable, great content can get you backlinks effortlessly. If you do create something remarkable, people will talk about it, link to it, write about it and share it. That means you get backlinks and they do the work for you. This should be your ultimate goal.

3. Guest Posting- Guest posting is simply writing a great article and posting it on someone else’s website. Why would you want to do that? Three reasons.

1. To connect with other bloggers.
2. To get direct traffic from the host site.
3. To get an SEO benefit from the backlinks.

Guest posting is a great method for getting traffic and building a successful business online. It helps you drive traffic, build a network of trusted bloggers, and it can increase your search engine ranking.

It’s really the same thing as article marketing but much more targeted and effective. With guest posting, you want to target the blogs that will give you the most benefit for your efforts.

If you want to write guest posts on another website, you can simply contact the owner of the website and go from there. I won’t go into details on the process of getting others to agree to let you guest post right now, but I will say that in most cases, they will only let you guest post if your content helps their readers.

Most bloggers or website owners care about their visitors and so it’s not about YOU, it’s about how you can help them. They don’t care how a guest post will help you – they already know that.

Provide awesome content that will benefit their audience and you’re much more likely to succeed with guest posts. When you’re looking for blogs to guest post on, make sure it’s a website that can help you reach your target market. It doesn’t have to be the exact same market, as long as it’s complementary and the audience would be interested in the subject matter of your site.

Ultimately you want to find specific blogs related to your niche that will drive targeted traffic to your site, but here are a few sites to get you started with guest posting.

Keyword Academy (affiliate link) – The Keyword Academy is a great place to learn about keywords and link building. They also have a network of blogs where you can publish your own guest posts or get a guest post for your blog. It’s a great resource for building links. It’s free for 30 days and then $33 per month (last time I checked).

http://myblogguest.com – A network of blogs for posting articles and finding articles.

4. Article Marketing – A popular method for getting backlinks, although NOT recommended by Google. The recent crackdown on low-quality content farms has made this a more risky option, but still effective as long as you go to article directories that are still ranking well.

There are literally thousands of article directories online. There are also mass article spinning/submission tools that will submit your article to hundreds or thousands of article directories for you. Most of the article directories are worthless.

A backlink is only good if Google knows about it or people click on it to visit your site. To verify that your articles are being picked up by Google robots, sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and see if the website is listed in the “Links to Your Site” section. If it’s not on your list of links, Google either doesn’t know about it, or doesn’t give the site much weight.

It’s always best to go for quality over quantity. That goes for the quality of the articles you publish and the websites where you publish your articles.

http://ezinearticles.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.articlesnatch.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articleslash.net

http://www.sooperarticles.com
http://www.articlesfactory.com
http://www.articletrader.com
http://www.selfseo.com
http://www.isnare.com

5. Free Blogs – Create a blog using free software. Post your own content on those blogs with links back to your pages.

Be careful because the Terms and Conditions on many sites prohibit using their services just for link building. I’ve had sites shut down with no notice whatsoever on Tumblr, Blog.com and Blogger. Do NOT use any keywords related to internet marketing or make money online in the domain name.

Check their terms and conditions, otherwise you could waste a lot of time and effort. I’ve also seen several free blogging sites go out of business with no warning whatsoever.

Also, search engines don’t always pick up these sites unless you build backlinks to them, so be prepared to do a little work to get your links noticed.

http://wordpress.com
http://www.weebly.com
http://www.tumblr.com
https://posterous.com
http://www.blogger.com

http://www.webs.com
http://www.livejournal.com
http://www.yola.com
http://blog.com
http://www.jimdo.com

6. Social Media – I tend to categorize a lot of websites as “social media” sites. If it has any social aspect, I put it in the social media category. The social media sites listed below vary.

Some of the websites might be good for creating content and posting backlinks. Some of the sites might be good for bookmarking only. Some of them might be good for getting a backlink in the user profile and that’s about it. You also have the social media sites that are good for connecting with other people, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Social media is becoming more important from a traffic perspective and an SEO perspective. So, don’t ignore it. Figure out what will work best for your business model, take a look at the resources below and use the sites that will serve you the best.

https://plus.google.com
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.facebook.com
http://www.linkedin.com
https://twitter.com
http://twitpic.com

http://vimeo.com
http://www.ustream.tv
http://www.livestream.com
http://www.flickr.com
http://technorati.com

http://www.alexa.com
http://www.myspace.com
http://www.squidoo.com
http://www.slideshare.net/
http://www.scribd.com

http://www.stumbleupon.com
http://www.reddit.com
http://www.diigo.com
http://www.mixx.com
http://www.mister-wong.com

http://digg.com
http://www.delicious.com

http://www.tubemogul.com – Distributes videos to multiple sites for free

https://onlywire.com – Distributes links to multiple social media sites for free.

7. Forums – Another method for getting backlinks is using forums. Typically, in forums you can get a link in the profile section and in your signature line.

Of course, you can get links within the content too but unless you have a legitimate reason for posting links in your posts, the moderators will probably delete it or ban you from the forum completely.

In addition, search engines are familiar with this black hat method and your site could end up in the sandbox (far, far away from the first page of search results). If you use this method, I would make sure you have a solid foundation of backlinks built up first.

The forum must be open to the public, of course, for the link to provide any benefit. Here are a few forums related to internet marketing, but obviously you want to find forums related to your market.

To do that simply go to Google and enter this:

your topic +forum

forum:your topic

http://www.warriorforum.com
http://forums.seochat.com
http://forums.digitalpoint.com

8. Feeds – RSS feeds are essentially websites that host your content and can send that content automatically to people that subscribe through an RSS reader. In other words, it’s a method for people to automatically get new content from you and it’s a link to every article published through your feed.

It doesn’t provide much SEO benefit but some people even go so far as to submit their feeds to feed directories trying to get backlinks to their feeds.

I’m sure some people have some sort of success with that method, but I haven’t found much value in it. Nevertheless, you can set up multiple feeds and get backlinks from those feeds, but don’t spend a lot of time on this.

Make sure Feedburner, Technorati and Zimbio are set up properly. The others won’t make much difference. Here are a few of the more popular feed aggregators.

http://feedburner.google.com
http://www.zimbio.com
http://technorati.com

http://www.feedage.com
http://www.feedcat.net
http://www.feedagg.com

9. Press Releases – If you have something that’s newsworthy, you can prepare a press release, distribute it to various press release directories and others could pick it up too. Essentially, it’s just like article marketing, except the format and content is different.

http://www.prnewswire.com
http://www.prweb.com
http://www.eworldwire.com
http://www.prleap.com
http://www.pr-inside.com

10. Directories – There are thousands of directories online. Most of them are worthless.

If you have a website that’s in a very narrow market, it might be helpful to get listed in a directory relevant to your market, but otherwise directories don’t provide much value, with the exception of a few of the directories listed below.

But you never know – you might have a different experience with better results.

Note: Some of these directories charge a fee.

http://www.dmoz.org
http://botw.org
http://dir.yahoo.com
http://www.alexa.com
http://www.joeant.com

11. Blog Commenting – Commenting on popular blogs is another way to get backlinks. It’s also a way to connect with other people and get direct traffic from the people that click on your link in comments.

Yes, most comment links are “no follow.” But, a recent study by SEOmoz indicates that having a balance of no follow links can actually help you rank better.

I wouldn’t recommend using this as your primary method of link-building but commenting on blog posts can provide traffic and social benefits. Obviously, you want to find blogs related to your market with good traffic. You can do that by searching Google and clicking on the “Blog” category in the left column.

Or, you can run a search like this – your subject +blog.

Or you can just go to http://blogsearch.google.com.

There is also a WordPress plugin called Comment Luv. If it’s installed on a site, any person that leaves a comment also gets a link to their last blog post, if you enter your website address, of course.

You can find blogs online that use this plugin just by running a search. Here is THE Comment Luv site with Comment Luv installed – http://comluv.com/blog.

I just want to emphasize again that commenting on blogs for traffic or backlinks is not a good long-term strategy. Use this in moderation and I would actually use it more for connecting with other bloggers.

If you’re looking for blogs with active comment sections, here are a few “internet marketing-related” blogs that consistently publish high-quality, helpful content.

http://www.copyblogger.com
http://thinktraffic.net
http://www.smartpassiveincome.com
http://www.viperchill.com

http://blog.hubspot.com
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
http://www.davidrisley.com
http://www.problogger.net

Linkbuilding Tools

Here are a few tools to help with research, rank tracking, link prospecting and overall SEO strategy.

SEO TOOLS

http://www.mozilla.com
http://tools.seobook.com
http://www.seomoz.org

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
http://www.majesticseo.com
http://www.semrush.com

http://www.advancedwebranking.com/
http://www.link-assistant.com/
http://www.wordtracker.com/

http://www.hubspot.com
http://raventools.com
http://scribeseo.com
http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus

Check out more tools for a variety of internet marketing tasks here – internet marketing tools.

I don’t really recommend using the tools below if you want to stay white hat and keep your risk level down, but not everyone shares my opinion. So, I’ll mention a few tools that I have experience with that can help you build links.

Use at your own risk. These are NOT affiliate links.

http://www.seolinkvine.com
http://rankbuilder.com
http://www.articlemarketingrobot.com
http://www.submityourarticle.com
http://bookmarkingdemon.com

Below are two tools I mentioned previously and they are FREE up to a certain limit.

https://onlywire.com – Distributes links to multiple social media sites for free.
http://www.tubemogul.com- Distributes videos to multiple sites for free.

HTML Code for Backlinks

If you’re not familiar with html code or how to create certain links, here is a quick explanation.

First of all, if you’re using WordPress, you can simply highlight the words you want to create links for and click the link button. Then, you can paste or type in the url.

To create your own link, maybe in the sidebar Text/HTML widget, here are a few ways to do it. Substitute your own link and anchor text, of course.

HTML Code

anchor text

Anchor Text

Backlink Summary

Backlinks are good for sharing information, driving traffic and boosting search engine rankings. The more backlinks you get from high-quality sources, the better results you will see with your search engine ranking. If you want to stay “white hat” remember the guidance from Google:

1. Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
2. Does this help my users?
3. Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?

The best source of information regarding SEO is your own experience. If in doubt, run your own controlled test and measure the effects. That is how you become an expert in SEO.

Use the links and tips in this article to start building backlinks NOW. You should never run out of places to get links from – the hardest part is actually creating the content to build the backlinks with.

Focus on getting traffic with your backlinking strategy and your search engine ranking will skyrocket as a result.

What’s your best tip for developing backlinks?

Internet Marketing Tools

good@superbadim.com (SuperbadIM) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:00:01 +0000

It can take a lot of time to sift through all the crappy internet marketing tools and resources to find the products, services, resources and tools that are actually worthwhile.

Believe me, I’ve sifted through a LOT of crap.

Fortunately, the cream rises to the top and you end up with a great list of resources that can help you build your online business. So, here’s my list of the best internet marketing resources.

Obviously, there is a subjective element involved when you create a list like this. Not everyone will agree with what I put in and what I left out. If you think something important is missing from this list, let me know, I’ll take another look.

But, try to think about this from an OBJECTIVE point of view. Just because you had a bad experience with Liquid Web doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people have great experiences with them.

For example, my experience with Hostgator was terrible. But, I know a ton of people that have never had any problems. So, from an objective point of view, I put them on the list.

This list can save you a LOT of time. I still recommend that you do your own research but at least you don’t have to start from scratch. I tried to create a list of the best tools and resources available, NOT a list of EVERY resource available.

There are a few affiliate links on this list, (the ones without the http in front) which means I get a commission if you buy the product after clicking on my link. If I’m lucky, it might be enough to buy a Long Island Iced Tea. If you want good karma, buy through my affiliate links. If not, life will go on for both of us. ; )

I tried to keep this list short but there are a lot of useful tools and resources in the world of internet marketing. Use what you have an immediate need for and forget about the rest (until you have another immediate need, of course).

Cheers!

How Keywords Could Be Killing your Blog

JC — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:05:46 +0000

You probably know the story.

You want traffic from Google. So, you learn SEO. You build a website with SEO in mind. You publish articles on your blog with SEO in mind. But, the website doesn’t take off the way you want it to.

Some people like the content. A few even buy something. Most visitors come and go quickly without so much as a goodbye.

Are you obsessed with keywords, SEO and Google search results? Maybe obsessed is a little strong but the real question is – are you giving Google too much power over your content?

There’s a lot of competition on the internet. Entry barriers are very low. Getting traffic through SEO, search engine optimization, is a very popular way to get traffic.

If you use keywords on your website, and build enough backlinks, one day, maybe, if the big G “trusts” your website, they might decide to make you number 2 in the search results for your targeted keyword right below Wikipedia.

That’s all nice and good but a problem arises when you restrict what you write about because you’re too focused on traffic from Google. Do you choose your title based on keywords or what your market wants to read about?

Are you afraid to write articles that are too short out of fear that Google will deem your content “low-quality?” I get it. You don’t want to rock the boat with Google. But, if it’s preventing you from writing your best content, you may need to make a change to really get the traffic you want.

Even if you write naturally (no keyword stuffing), it could be subconsciously affecting your content. Ask yourself – would you write differently if search engines didn’t exist? If you had to get traffic from social media, word-of-mouth, guest posting, would you write differently?

One of my very first blog posts (on another site), I wrote an article about Internet Marketing Strategy From My Grandma. In that post, I said something about banging my head against the wall. Well, search engine robots aren’t that smart and when you put “bang” in the same sentence with “grandma” you end up getting visitors that aren’t exactly looking for Rated PG-13 material. And now, I’ll probably get more after this post, but that’s okay because I’m committed to my content first.

With Google on the prowl for low-quality content, article directories have been in the spotlight and they’ve been increasing their minimum word count to decrease the likelihood that the content is classified as “low-quality.”

So, now do you have to worry if you publish a short 100 word article that Google will think it’s “low-quality” solely because of the word count? Who knows!? Search engine traffic is great but it can be gone in an instant for many different reasons.

If you want an example, all you have to do is look at the story of Gourmet Gift Baskets dot com, which you can read about here. The short version is that the SEO company they hired paid for links and Google removed the site from their index once they found out. In total, it cost them about $4 million in lost revenue. Not good. Gone in an instant.

There are only 10 spots (not counting ads) on the first page of Google, 3 of which get the majority of the clicks. It takes a lot of work to get there for significant keywords and there’s no guarantee you’ll stay there. There’s always long-tail traffic, but even that’s not consistent.

Of course, SEO is just one way to get traffic. The number one method to attract traffic is to create great content. Unfortunately, your desire to get traffic from Google may be affecting the quality of your content. Don’t blame it on them. You’re responsible for the content you create.

But, consider putting quality first. Write about topics that your audience wants to hear about. Write in a way that inspires your visitors. Make sure that subconsciously you’re not writing for search engines first and people second.

Focus on getting traffic by connecting with people in your market through guest posting, social media, networking, being helpful and sharing what you know. If Google happens to send traffic your way, great. If not, so be it. Focus on creating outstanding content for your target market.

This isn’t a revolutionary step for most people. In fact most bloggers don’t pay attention to keywords or SEO. I know of several successful bloggers that don’t do anything at all for SEO. The problem is that some people don’t consider themselves to be bloggers, especially if their blog is for internet marketing purposes.

You see, bloggers should be good writers. It’s not enough just to share great information. You need to entertain and captivate with your writing, and at the same time, share helpful information. It’s as much about who you are as it is about your content and your writing style. Don’t neglect the blogger side of you.

Remember search engine traffic is just one part of the puzzle and if you try to force it, it can affect your content in a bad way. Be the best at what you do.

Create awesome content that people want to share.

Create awesome content that people want to talk about.

Create awesome content and give people a reason to come to your site.

When you do, the search engine traffic will be the icing on the cake.

Understanding the SEO Basics

JC — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:00:41 +0000

I’ve learned a lot about SEO since I’ve been involved in internet marketing. I pay attention to what works for me, what doesn’t work for me, and what works for others that I respect and trust. Just about everyone with a website is willing to give you SEO tips, but not everyone should.

Here are some things you should know that will help you get traffic from Google, Bing/Yahoo.

SEO Basics

SEO is focused on getting traffic from search engines, primarily Google since they handle approximately 66% of the search market. Of course, search engines aren’t the only source of traffic. You can get traffic from social media, word of mouth, advertisements, email marketing, and so on and so forth. In this article, I’m talking about SEO only.

The ultimate goal with SEO is to rank number 1 for specific keywords. When a person goes to Google and types in whatever keyword you’re targeting, you want to be the very first website at the top of the list. If your website shows up at the top of that list, you’ll get free targeted traffic. Targeted traffic just means people that are actually interested in the subject matter of your website.

Your goal is to get to one of the top 3 spots in the search results. The top 3 spots get the majority of clicks. If your website is 4 or below, you’ll get significantly less traffic for that keyword.

Of course, results will vary depending on the market and the keywords, but you can also get traffic from long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are keywords that are generally longer, but searched for less often.

For example, if someone goes to Google and types in “how can i use SEO to get traffic to my website,” that is a long-tail keyword. Not a lot of people search using that same phrase but a lot of people DO search using very similar phrases.

For example:

How can I use SEO to get traffic to my website
How can I get traffic to my site using SEO
Learn how to drive traffic to my blog with SEO

All of these queries are looking for the same answer but they use slightly different language. That’s the benefit of having a blog. You’ll get traffic for a lot of different long-tail keywords, just by posting more content on your website. If you write articles on topics that people are searching for, you’ll end up getting long-tail traffic.

On-Page SEO Factors

Search engine optimization is typically broken down into on-page SEO factors and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is everything you can do to your website to increase your chances of ranking well for various keywords. Off-page SEO is primarily getting backlinks.

SEO starts with keyword research. If you don’t know how to do keyword research, I’ll be posting a detailed article and/or video on it soon. Otherwise, you can check out this short article on choosing keywords.

Domain Name

Once you have the keywords you want to target, you can buy an exact match domain, a partial match domain, or a brand name domain. For example, if your keyword is “learn internet marketing,” the exact match domain is “learninternetmarketing.com,” a partial match domain would be “learninternetmarketinghq.com” or “internetmarketingking.com,” and a brand name domain would be “rumorranch.com,” or your own personal name.

In the past, Google would give an SEO boost for having an exact match domain. It made it a little easier to rank higher in the search results pages. For that reason, niche marketers loved exact match domains. However, Google has been turning down the weight given to exact match domains and it doesn’t mean as much today as it used to in the good ol’ days.

There is a lot to say about domain names, but I’ll save that for another article. Just know that if you want a slight SEO boost, consider using keywords in your domain.

When it comes to getting good SEO results, every little bit helps. You can choose to do things any way you want to and it probably won’t make or break your website. If you don’t want a domain with keywords in it, then don’t do it. You could still rank for keywords that you target. If you want to use a .info domain (probably the worst TLD), go for it. You could still rank for keywords that you target. It might be harder, but you could still do it.

Everything is cumulative with SEO. The more good SEO practices you follow, the easier it will be for you to rank well. If you ignore good SEO practices, then you’ll be making it harder for yourself. Generally speaking, no ONE thing will determine whether or not you can get to the first page of search results. But, together, the choices you make will make a big difference. Do as many things as you can to make it easier for yourself.

Website Title

It’s important to put your main keyword, or important keywords, in the title of your website. The title of your website is at the top of your browser and it’s the link that search engines provide in the search results. The title tells search engine robots and potential visitors what the blog is about.

Remember, the home page of your website is just one page. Google ranks pages, so every blog post is a new page and an opportunity to rank for a new keyword, if you so choose. For example, this article could potentially rank for the keyword phrase “SEO Basics.” The phrase is in the title, it’s in the url, it’s in the description, and it’s in the content. If I developed backlinks using “SEO Basics” as the anchor text for some of those links, I could move up in the search results for that phrase. Every blog post is a new opportunity to rank for any given keyword.

If you set your blog up properly, when you use a keyword phrase in the title of your page, or post, the keyword phrase will also be in the url. All you need to do is make sure your Permalink settings are on custom and set to “Post Title” only. It’s a simple change and it’s one more thing that can help you achieve your search engine ranking goals.

Website Description

The description of your webpage is what Google uses in their search results. It’s a few lines of text and tells people what your website is about. Google doesn’t have to use the description that you provide, but if it’s helpful and accurate, they probably will. When you write the description, keep it short, use your keywords, but write it for people first. People will look at the description to determine if they want to visit your website so make sure it’s not just a bunch of keywords thrown together. Don’t forget, you can write a new description for every page too.

Webpage Headings

If you have headings on your webpage, include your keyword phrase as a heading, if it makes sense to do so. Most people in the SEO community agree that using a keyword with the “h1 tag,” or an “h2 tag,” provides an SEO benefit. I can’t say that I’ve seen any concrete studies, but it makes sense that Google would attach more importance to a heading than they would regular paragraph text. That doesn’t mean write the entire page using heading text. Even a search engine program could tell there’s something wrong with a 300 word heading.

Webpage Content

If you want to rank for a specific keyword, you should use that phrase in the content on the page you’re trying to get ranked for. Some people go so far as to say you should use your keyword for every 100 words that you type, or some variation of that. Others say that you should write your content for people that will visit your site, not search engine robots. My preference is to write for people and if I use the keyword great. If not, life goes on.

Use related keyword phrases in your content. If you are targeting “SEO basics” for your keyword, then use similar keywords like “learn SEO,” or “SEO tips.” Those are related keywords and they can help give you a boost in your SEO effort. Obviously, search engine robots can’t determine the quality of articles but they can identify words and that’s how they know to index your webpage for specific words or phrases.

Internal Link Structure

Although this may sound complicated, it’s not. I’m sure many SEO experts can make it complicated for you but I’m gonna keep it simple. Internal link structure is essentially how you use links on your website to link to other pages on your website. By linking to other pages of your website, you can give those pages an SEO boost.

The idea goes something like this. Search engine robots crawl your website looking for links and content. When they find a link, they follow that link and look for more links and content. If you have several links throughout your website that link to a specific page that you are trying to get ranked for a certain keyword, Google will attach more importance to that page because there are more links pointing to that page.

This might be a good time to talk about anchor text links. Anchor text links are links that use actual text as the link. For example, this is an anchor text link – learn internet marketing. An anchor text link using a keyword phrase is much better than a link using non-relevant text, such as “click here,” or a simple url, such as http://superbadinternetmarketing.com. Using a keyword as the anchor text tells Google what the linked page is about and helps you rank for that keyword.

Before you start linking to other pages on your website, it’s important to understand “link juice.” Link juice is an informal term that represents the strength or authority of a link. For example, if a link comes from a really strong, popular website, that link has more link juice than a link from a brand new site that gets no visitors. In addition, every page has a limited amount of link juice to give away. So, the more links on a page, the less link juice those links will pass on. Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say this specific webpage has 10 units of link juice to give away (completely hypothetical example). If I have 1 link on this page to my homepage, my homepage would receive the full 10 units of link juice. If I have 10 links on this page leading to 10 different pages on my website, each page would only receive 1 unit of link juice. So, you can choose to give more link juice or less link juice, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Let me be clear. Link juice is theoretical. I am not aware of any way that you can determine an actual number to say how much link juice any given page has (although I have seen people try). It’s only helpful to understand the value of links. The more links you have on any given page, the less strength each of those links will have. That’s how the theory goes anyway.

So, back to internal linking. You don’t want to link to every page on your website. The ideal scenario is to link to your important pages. I have an “about” page and a “privacy policy” page on this website but I have no intention of linking to them from any of my posts unless it’s to help visitors find something. I save my internal links for the pages that I’m trying to get ranked for.

Keep in mind that Google does take into consideration where your link is located. Even though you could get 100 links immediately if you put a link to your website in the sidebar or the footer (if you have 100 pages on your blog) Google does not give those links the same value they would give to a link found in your content. And, Google is constantly adjusting their algorithm to provide better search results.

The bottom line is that we create websites for people. Create your content for people while keeping the SEO basics in mind.

For example, in addition to helping with SEO, it’s also helpful to include internal links to help readers find information. If I’m referencing another article on my website, it would be helpful for the person reading that article to be able to click on a link and go directly to that page. Always look at things from the visitors perspective, but keep in mind the SEO fundamentals.

Off-Page SEO Factors

Off-page SEO is basically getting backlinks. Backlinks are links to your site from other websites. The more links you have, and the better links you have, the higher you’ll be in the search results. Most people compare backlinks to “votes.” Getting a backlink is like getting a vote from another website. If you want to win, get lots of votes.

When it comes to SEO, all backlinks are NOT created equal. Some are better than others. I don’t think anyone can tell you the precise numeric value of each link and how it affects your overall SERP position. That’s information that only Google has and they don’t like to share that information. Google does provide general information about SEO, but not the details that most people want to know.

First of all, Google needs to be aware of your link, so you need to make sure that the pages that you’re getting links from are crawled by Google. If not, the backlink won’t help you.  I use two main resources to track backlinks. Both are free.

First, is Google Webmaster Tools. Among other things, the tool shows you exactly how many backlinks you have, what pages they link to, what webpages they come from, and the anchor text most commonly used to link to your site. If you know you have links from a website but they’re not showing up in your Google Webmaster Tools, you need to figure out why. You don’t want to waste your time getting links if Google isn’t picking them up.

The second resource is Yahoo Site Explorer (no longer exists). Yahoo site explorer tracks how many links your site has and what websites are linking to your site. You can also use site explorer to explore other websites. If you want to know where your competitors are getting their links from, run the domain through Yahoo Site Explorer and you can see for yourself.

It looks like Yahoo Site Explorer is being eliminated. Apparently, Yahoo is trying to make itself irrelevant. When Yahoo Site Explorer disappears, you can use another site called Open Site Explorer. This is a great resource for checking backlinks. It gives a detailed backlink profile for whatever website url you enter, including your competitors., although it’s not very good for newer websites because it’s slow to register new links across the internet. Check it out and see what you think.

Most people believe that the link information from Yahoo and Google isn’t 100% accurate. In addition, the results are delayed. Obviously it takes time for the search engines to find the links and get them into the system. Your links will change over time also. You might gain some links. You might lose some links. Don’t obsess over it and keep getting backlinks from the best resources you can.

There are some common beliefs when it comes to getting backlinks. I can’t tell you with 100% certainty that all of these beliefs are accurate, but I would say the majority of people in the SEO community agree on most of them. When it comes to backlinks, it’s hard to tell what links are having the most effect and why. With that said, here are some of the common beliefs relating to backlinks.

Backlinks with keyword phrase anchor text are more valuable than a url link or non-keyword links.
Backlinks from webpages with high PageRank are better than links from low PageRank pages. PageRank, created by Google, is a number between 0 and 10. The number generally represents the strength or authority ofthe webpage. The higher the number, the stronger the website.
Backlinks within content are better than links from sidebars or footers. Also, the sooner the backlink appears in the article or blogpost, the better. In other words, put the backlink at the beginning of your article instead of the end.
Backlinks from different domains (and IP addresses) are better than multiple links from the same domain. Ten backlinks from ten different sites is better than ten backlinks from the same website.
“No follow” backlinks aren’t as valuable as “do follow” links. No follow links are links tagged as do not follow, which is a direction to search engine robots not to follow the link. Some people will say that no follow links are totally worthless with respect to Google. Others will say they do have value. In a recent study on SEOMoz, they pointed out that no follow links actually helped with ranking.
If you obtain a lot of backlinks very quickly, it could cause Google to put your website in the “sandbox.” Getting sandboxed means that Google will either take you out of the index or your ranking will drop drastically. Don’t worry, it’s usually temporary. If you keep building backlinks and keep building your website up, you’ll eventually end up where you should be.
It’s not good to buy backlinks. Google usually knows the link farms and having backlinks from “bad” websites could have a negative affect on your website. Although generally, Google doesn’t punish you for links to your site, since you can’t control who links to you.

Backlinks and Blogs

Blogs present some unique issues for search engines. If you have a backlink in the sidebar (or footer) of a blog, that’s a backlink from every page that the sidebar appears on, which is usually every page. A blog with 100 pages would give you 100 backlinks if you put your link in the sidebar. It’s an easy way to get a lot of backlinks very quickly. It’s also an easy way to manipulate your link count.

Google is constantly changing their algorithm to factor in the unique characteristics of blogs. Since Google doesn’t really want people manipulating the search results in that way, they recently filed a patent that indicates they won’t be giving as much value to links in sidebars and footers. I don’t know what Google will do and how things will change, but I would definitely take that information into consideration before relying heavily on sidebar links as your primary source of backlinks.

SEO Summary

SEO is a very important part of any traffic strategy. Search engines can bring you targeted visitors that are searching for what you offer. When you start your website, implement as many good SEO practices as you can. Remember, SEO is cumulative. Every thing you do builds upon the other things and together they can make a big difference. Pay attention to your results and once you find out what works for you and your website, keep doing it.

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