I just learned something new today that I thought I’d share, because I’m sure there are others like myself that are learning this stuff.  This is pretty cool for those that are new to creating SEO friendly code, like myself.  With this code you can create buttons with link text that is readable by the search engines, plus you can also create buttons that are reusable rather than having to create a button for each variation of the same button that you want to put different text  into.

Let me give you an example of this.  I had two buttons on one of my pages.  They were exactly the same except for the text. One button I wanted to read “Compare” and the other read “Reviews”.  Plus it would be extremely helpful if the search engines actually read that text and followed my link to those pages.Now normally you’d say just create two buttons, one for each with graphical text embedded into the button, and you can do that and it’ll work just fine.  However, with a normal button with the text embedded into the button itself, the search engines can not and will not read that “compare” or “review” text… thus you loose potential SEO power.  With the code I’m proposing, you will actually be creating a css style, and wrapping the “<a href>” tag around the div to accomplish the same thing, but now the search engines will see it as a link and follow it.(if you choose to allow them)

So first, here is the code that actually goes into you page: (or in my case my page to show my compare and review buttons)

<a class=”lower_button” href=”<your website location here>”>
<div class=”compare_review_button” onmouseover=”this.className=’compare_review_button_hover’”
onmouseout=”this.className=’compare_review_button’”>

COMPARE </div>
</a>

———————

this is the code for the review button:

<a class=”lower_button” href=”http://<your website location here>”>
<div class=”compare_review_button” onmouseover=”this.className=’compare_review_button_hover’”
onmouseout=”this.className=’compare_review_button’”>
REVIEWS

</div>
</a>

——————–

Here are the classes you will need to add to your css style sheet.  They control the button characteristics using a url of a graphic we defined in fireworks, the size, the text font, and hover characteristics.

.compare_review_button {
color:#000000;
font-family: “Trebuchet MS”, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:11pt;
font-weight:bold;
height:30px;
margin-left: 20px;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 20px;
padding-top:5px;
text-align:center;
text-decoration:none;
width:140px;
background-attachment: scroll;
background-color: transparent;
background-image: url(/images/button-orange.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: 0 0;
}

.compare_review_button_hover {
color:#000000;
font-family: “Trebuchet MS”, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:11pt;
font-weight:bold;
margin-left: 20px;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 20px;
height:30px;
padding-top:5px;
text-align:center;
text-decoration:none;
width:140px;
background-attachment: scroll;
background-color: transparent;
background-image: url(/images/button-orange-hover.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: 0 0;
}

What  you ultimately end up with are two buttons that look similar to the ones in the screen shot below:

The difference with this code is that the search engines will now read two links, one that says “Compare” and one that says “Reviews” that link to other pages on your site.

Now I’m sure some of the established SEO guru’s will say, wow, she just learned this.. yep, I did.  This is an SEO 101.  But I look at it this way, “never too late”, and I’d welcome any comments or corrections if I’ve stated anything incorrectly.  I love learning new things, and sometimes it’s the simplest, easiest things to the guru’s that us newbies don’t know, and still need to learn.

Test it out, have fun with it, and give me a shout if you need any help.

Best Successes!

I want to share a few tips I’ve learned about using Title tags and Meta Description tags that are both SEO friendly as well as user friendly. Many times these two little items are the most overlooked by new website owners and new internet marketers, but yet can be the top traffic “getters” or top traffic “killers” for your site.

For those not familiar with them, both of these html tags go in the header section of your code – so between the <head> and </head> lines of  code.

The title tag is pretty straight forward and looks like this <title> Put your Title Here</title>.

The description meta tag looks like this <meta name=”description” content=”Put your description here.” />

Here are some tips for uses of both.

I hope these tips help.

Things to add?  Think I’m wrong?   Think I’m spot on?   Leave me a comment and let me know!

To your success!

Sound at all familiar? Why is it that we do this to ourselves? After all we tell our children, on a daily basis, to believe in themselves, to go for what they want with all their might and determination, and not let anything hold them back. That they can be anything they want to be if they set clear goals, have a thought out plan, and if they work for it and believe in it nothing can hold them back.  But yet, we somehow hold ourselves to a lower, or at least a “different” standard at various points in our lives. This is a double standard at the least, and as our children get older and wiser, as mine seem to get each year I get older , they could say a bit hypocritical even!

Maybe we feel that we have to sacrifice our own dreams and goals, to play it safe so that we don’t endanger our “safe” lives for our children’s sake.  Or maybe that is just an excuse, because we are just afraid to take that leap, for fear we will fail in front of our children, and that would ultimately be worse than living the “safe life”, forever going to a job we hate, day in and day out.

Well, I think it’s time we start taking our own advice, and start listening to what we are telling our children on a daily basis! “You can be anything you put your mind to, anything you develop a clear plan and distinct goals for.  Decide to work towards it with all your determination.”

I know I have some very distinct goals for the rest of 2008 and 2009, and have decided to work with a mentor to help me get a good start and build on where I am now. I will push those little “nay-saying” voices out of my head every time they start creeping in, and start listening to my own advice with more fervor!  I will surround myself with positive, like minded people, and network and build a community of people committed to helping each other succeed.

I challenge you to do the same! Let’s make 2009 the year we exceed our own goals and climb our own ladder of success rather than one someone else has picked for us!

To your Success!

As I’ve been working on developing my affiliate sites this past year, I’ve come across some other cool sites with some absolutely great information, and just general COOL stuff. I figured I’d put it in one place, and share it with everyone.  Oh, most of these are not affiliate links – only where I’ve specifically stated so.

• This first one, is a collection of “cheat sheets”, everything from CSS Cheat Sheets, to Mod_rewrite Cheat Sheets, to Ruby on Rails Cheat Sheets, to PHP Cheat Cheat Sheets, to HTML Cheat Sheets, to even a World of Warcraft Cheat Sheet. This is one of the best reference sites, I’ve stumbled upon… Added Bytes by Dave Child.  This guy is WAY more organized than I am, or ever hope to be. 

• Another site I found that may interest some of you is this one: The Perfect 3 Column Liquid Layout by Matthew James Taylor.  It provides you with a series of website layouts that use percentage widths and relative positioning, that work with all the common web browsers. They are SEO friendly, and contain no CSS hacks.  This one was referred to me via Stomping the Search Engines 2.

• Thesis Theme (affiliate link) for Wordpress, by Chris Pearson. Although you can get many free word press themes, and I started out using free themes, I found that they really limit your ability to do what you really need to.  Also they tend to not be as SEO friendly as you would really want.  This theme is what I use here at LifeStyleByChoice and it’s very customizable, SEO friendly, and upgradeable without losing your valuable customizations.  They also offer fantastic support, and a very knowledgeable user community via their forum.

• Create .xml sitemaps for google with this site… XML-Sitemaps.com. Very useful when using google’s webmaster tools and submitting a sitemap to google.

• Use Compete.com to research potential competitors in a niche you are considering entering.  Then continue to use it to check on them as your business grows. You can check 3 domains without signing up, and if you sign up for a free account, you can check up to 5 domains at a time.  You can compare daily/monthly visitors, daily/monthly growth, as well as other metrics.  They also offer keyword analytics – showing the top keywords driving traffic to the site.  The keyword analytics only offers a short listing of the keywords, and then you have to purchase the “pro” version to get the full listing.  The biggest advantage of Compete.com for me, is researching who the true market leaders are in a niche you are considering, and tracking that information over time to see if it changes.

• KeywordSpy and KeyCompete are both great key word research tools.  Use them to “spy” into what your competitors or even your vendors are using for keywords to drive traffic to their sites.  KeywordSpy by far has many more features, but is quite a bit more expensive.  You can try out either service and get a very limited result set to work with, before purchasing the expanded versions.

• Almost forgot this one… Traffic Travis. I learned about it, as a free bonus.  I’ve just started playing with this one myself, so I don’t have alot of details on it yet, but from what I’ve seen so far, there is some pretty cool information available at your fingertips.  Plus the base product which has alot of functionality, is Free.   Granted it’s kinda got a goofy name, and it’s not the slickest looking, but some of the information you have available icludes:
  • page analysis of every page on your site, showing the top 20 links with % of link value each is getting, top 20 page words, all your h1, h2 and h3’s on the page, and your google page rank.  This is some useful info all in one place.
  • keyword research tool with daily search counts from google, yahoo, and MSN.  I did find a few that I did not see via google’s keyword tool
  • run analysis on your PPC keywords and see how many competitor ad’s are running for each keyword, also use the search engine tools and see the top ranking sites for each keyword.

As I think of more I will update!

To your success!

People who know me, also know that I do not promote anything that I have not tried, do not use myself, and do not believe in!  I just don’t go there, period!  Even with my review and comparison websites, I tell it like it is, even if that means I end up rating a product #1, that will make me less money as an affiliate than another product.  Now the uber-affiliates may call me foolish for doing this, but that’s my business model.

Well,  since doing Black Ink (and I have a feeling I’m still not done! ) I’ve never looked back, never regretted the time I’ve invested in either of the courses – and there has definitely been a big time commitment, and I’m now seeing the fruits of those labors.  I’m definitely not going to sit here and try to convince you that I’m going to be retiring a millionaire the end of 2008 because of The Black Ink Project.  Again, anyone that knows me, knows that “I tell it like it is”, whether you want to here it or not!   But my goal is to be financially independent within 2009, and Jeremy’s course(s) will have been some of the most useful instruments I will have used in getting there.  Oh, and trust me, I’ve been where many of you have been and tried many of the “must-have’s”, “next course that will solve your problems”, “next ebook that will be that answer that will push you over the top”, blah, blah, blah.  I’ve heard them all, and probably bought most of them! LOL 

So, you are asking, Lynn, “What makes this course so different? and why should I pay for it?”, Well, let me hightlight just a few things that I wish I had known before I had gotten sucked into so many of the “other” courses I wish I had not bought in the past.

• Jeremy is the “real thing”. He will tell you right up front, that if you are not willing to actually “do” what he teaches – meaning take the time and effort to do the planning as well as execute what he teaches you, then don’t even bother purchasing his course because you will fail. Not many so-called guru’s are going to tell you this, because they simply don’t care if you succeed or fail, as long as you buy their course. HUGE difference there.
• You learn everything via video’s delivered in 3 different formats (even IPod movie format, so that you can watch on the go if need be!). Each video averages about an hour in length, and some are over an hour! I don’t know about you, but I learn so much better and easier by “seeing” rather than simply reading.  Jeremy goes over everything step by step and you actually see him create a website step by step.  You can pause the video and be doing the work right along with him.   I know, because I did just that!  Now, I’m not sure how much simpler it could get!  I did not know Dreamweaver prior to Black Ink, but now I’m hooked!  Via the video’s I learned the basics, and then expanded on that knowledge using Lynda.com.
• Topics covered in The Black Ink Project include a very comprehensive list of topics that Jeremy “tested” and refined on the original free participants(myself included) and now has a revised, rock solid, offering based on our suggestions and feedback.  Trust me you will not find another affiliate marketing course that covers a topic list to the level of detail this one does.
  • Session 1 – How to Test Your Niche
  • Session 2 – Develop a Successful Business Plan
  • Session 3 – Content Planning
  • Session 4 – Creating a Site Blueprint
  • Session 5 – Professional Web Design for a Fraction of the Price
  • Session 6 – How to Design an Attractive Site
  • Session 7 – Building a Professional Site (Part 1 of 2)
  • Session 8 – Building a Professional Site (Part 2 of 2)
  • Session 9 – Installing a WordPress Blog (Part 1)
  • Session 10 – Customizing a WordPress Blog (Part 2)
  • Session 11 – Outsourcing Web Projects
  • Session 12 – Finding Profitable Keywords
  • Session 13 – Setting Up and Optimizing Pay Per Click Campaigns
  • Session 14 – How to Build High Converting Landing Pages
  • Session 15 – Tracking Your Success
• Access to a very active, knowledgeable, and supportive forum community of fellow and past BIP participants. Just because we’ve completed the course, doesn’t mean we aren’t there anymore! Jeremy responds to all posts himself as well. If you get stuck, or have a question, you will get an answer or help via the forum, guaranteed.
• Absolutely NO hidden hooks/fees, up-sells, or continued monthly sign-up fees. Or worse yet, the typical tantalizing tidbit that gets you excited and wanting to know more, but now you have to “buy the expanded, professional, version”. Nope, none of that. This is the real, full-blown, take the covers off and look under the hood as one of the top guru’s in the industry actually shows you how he does it, course!

This is not your typical “Hope in a Box”. If you are looking for a quick way to make millions, then don’t bother purchasing the course. However if you are serious about learning Affiliate Marketing, and how to build a long term, sustainable, income stream using a repeatable methodology, then this course is like none other that you have taken.

Remember what I said at the beginning though, you have to be committed to working through each video, doing the planning as well as the “fun stuff”, and actually implement! If you take the course and fail to take action, you will fail no matter what!  If you fail to do the planning and research, you will fail!  So buy the course, plan, research, take acation and Be Successful!

If you are ready, and you take one recommendation from me, ever, from reading my blog, take this one ….

Get in on The Black Ink Project NOW!

To your Success!

Well, I’ve been trying to round up a couple of freelance or contracting projects lately, and to say that my efforts have been less than successful would be a slight understatement.  It seems that my submissions are getting absorbed into some huge black hole of oblivion.

And you know what?  This really rather “peeves” me off!  Especially when the posting is made by a recruiter working for a major head hunter, who can afford to pay $200 per ad he/she places on these major job boards.  And don’t give me the old, “we get so many responses we can’t possibly respond to them all” response… I don’t buy it, never have, and never will.  If people take the time to respond to a job posting, they at least deserve the standard old “dear john, although you have impressive qualifications…. blah, blah, blah” letter of the past.  Or if you want to be truly mean, “Dear John, You Suck.  Good Luck”

We all know those were form letters, that were mail merged and sent out as quickly as the unqualified resumes poured in.  So here’s a tip to all your recruiters… set up an email template and do the same thing!  At least people feel like you at least got their resume, and it didn’t just get sucked up by the black hole!

I’m guessing, and I actually know this is the case from past experience, that many of these postings are for “jobs” that the recruiter hasn’t actually gotten yet, but is hoping to land, and he/she wants to have a list of ready to go qualified resumes, if and when they do land it.  That also really ticks me off!  Get a clue recruiters, you are dealing with real people here, who are looking for REAL jobs.  Not “maybe it will get approved” or “maybe we will get the contract” jobs.  If it isn’t real, don’t post it!

Recently I’ve broken one of my own rules and actually joined a couple of smaller membership job boards that specialize in virtual/remote projects. The fee wasn’t all that bad, and I figured I’d give it a shot.  Well, again this has been less than effective as well.  I’ve submitted several applications and not a single response.  Not a “sorry we’ve already found someone we will be working with”, not a “sorry, but your skills suck, and we laughed so hard while reading through your cover letter and resume that we though we were going to wet ourselves”, not even just a plain old “sorry, bugger off”.  Nothing… notta…

Now I realize when dealing with these smaller boards, they are smaller companies/individuals, but again at least set up an email template with an “I’m sorry” type response so people at least know you got their submission.  If the job board is smaller, and fee-based, my guess is that the number of submissions to any given posting is going to be smaller as well.

Ok, so what gives?  Is there a big black hole out there with my name on it that is just sucking up all my contracting project submissions and laughing at me?  I’m starting to think so… just like the little gremlins in my house that go around and move things or hide things on me all the time.  Darn vermin, when I catch those little bastards, they are soooo dead!

Ok, like I said… I was venting a bit.  Whew… don’t know that I feel any better… but at least I shared. 

Take care… and I wish you better luck than I’ve had lately.

The focus of this blog basically is what the title says Life Style is a Choice.  It took me a long time to realize that, and to start living my life based on my choices, rather than letting others exercise undue influence over those choices.  When I finally realized this, and started creating my Life Style based on my own choices, and the things that are important to me and my family, it was amazing how our lives started to change.

So this blog is about my journey (past, present, and my thoughts on future endeavors) – how I got here, my mistakes, my successes, and oh my gosh, everything in between!  Are you ready?  Not sure I am.. but here we go!

Are you ready to create the lifestyle you choose?  It really is a choice, decide to make the things that are important to you a priority!

Join me, and let’s have a bit of fun along the way!

All the Best!

Lynn