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Here in lesson #4 of the “90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge,” I’ll show you how to create content designed to generate backlinks, rank in even more positions in the search engines for your keywords, and all while laying down the foundation of branding yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

There is a search term (with 2,300,000 results in Google) that when searched for, my content appears in 5 of the top 10 natural results spots. But even more likely than that is the fact that they will click multiple links in the search engine results to see their options. And when they find my content over and over and over and over and over again, they are likely to realize something… this chick must know what she’s talking about. This is how you begin to develop yourself as a thought leader and gain visibility in the search engines while also building backlinks to your site.

The way to hold more than one spot is to publish quality, optimized content on authority sites. Instead of only posting on your blog, publish content on user generated content authority sites as well. A search engine will at the most show 2 (sometimes 3) result listings for your website or blog - but if you publish content on authority sites you expand your ability to rank in more spots in the search engines while also building quality backlinks.

Coming Clean With Excuses…

I’m a writer by trade. I have been running a copywriting agency for five years. I have a degree in literature in writing. You’d think it would be simple for me to crank out content non-stop. But it’s not! And the reasons have nothing to do with time, skill, or lack of something to say, they are all excuses that are deep rooted in fear. If I have them, I bet you do too. And like me, you’ll need to come clean with those excuses and deal with them before you will successfully execute anything on the rest of this post.

Even though we produce thousands of pieces of content per year for other people, I still get nervous and agonize about everything I write with ‘my’ name in the byline.

Here’s the exact process that I go through when writing content for myself including this very blog post you are reading now. (Interesting enough… this magically does not happen when I’m doing work for other people.)

• Is anyone even going to care about this?
• My last post didn’t get as many comments as some of the others so I’m a loser and I should just give up
• I’d better call Tara and see what she thinks of this topic
• I need to run to Starbucks and get a coffee. Need to be alert and focused
• Ooooh! I heard an email, it might be important - better go check (this means I come back to it at 8pm)
• Man… I’m really tired. I should get some sleep and get up early when I’m refreshed and on my game
• I really want people to try this and have it work for them - do I have enough detail?
• OMG… this has gotten so long. No one is ever going to read it. What’s the point?
• There is too much to cover in one piece. I think I need to create an XYZ and an ABC to accompany it
• Why am I giving away all of this freaking content for free? I should be spending my time writing a book
• I’d better ask Tara to proof read this… No doubt I’ll have some error in there and some snarky commenter will point it out to me without mentioning one thing about the 2000 words that were correct.
• Maybe I should read over it one more time before I push the publish button
• Ugh… why did I write THAT. I need to fix that really quick…
• What if everyone hates it or no one reads it at all, or if no one really cares in the first place?
• Ok. Publish.

But when I bite the bullet and push through and get it done, it always well worth it!

Avoiding The #1 Most Common Mistake I See People Make With Content Marketing

As a content development strategist for hundreds of companies over the last five years, I see business owners making #1 blatantly gigantic thinking error time and again: They want to publish advertorials instead of informational content. They only want to create content that will directly sell their product.

They want to publish an advertorial titled something like:
“Why XYZ Web Design Company is So Freaking Awesome”

vs. an informative piece like:

“7 Winning Strategies for Web Design that Converts”
or
“The Conversion Impact of Right Navigation Contact Forms vs. Contact Pages”
or
“The Impact of Website Color Pallets on Buying Habits: A Case Study”

I hear people say (and understand why they do):

• “Why should I reveal to people how to do what I do?”
• “Won’t they then go do it themselves?”
• “Won’t I be giving away my secrets to my competitors?”
• “My customers won’t need me any more!”

But that’s not the way it is…

This is the information age. Companies can no longer control people by withholding information. People are already looking for this information. And if they don’t find your content, they are going to find someone else’s.

When you publish useful, valuable, informational content, you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry:

• Good customers like to work with industry leaders
• People want to interview you as an expert for blogs and info products
• Event coordinators want to book you for speaking engagements
• Strategic partners want to find ways to work with you

Publishing “thought leader” worthy content also has numerous SEO benefits:

• By publishing good optimized content in the right places, customers have more ways of finding you through various search terms
• People will naturally link to good quality informational pieces — one-way inbound links from a variety of sources improves the “value” in the eyes of a search engine. (Remember, when a search engine perceives a page as useful and valuable, it tends to rank higher).
• People tend to mention quality pieces on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites, giving the piece viral buzz. Remember, someone’s reputation is on the line when they recommend content on social networks — influencers want to good, solid content pieces to endorse (link to).
• Being interviewed and mentioned on blogs, trade journal websites, and newspaper websites has the same inbound link power effect.

For the Naysayers…
There are some people who will no doubt say “well…some of the places where you can publish user generated content have no follow backlinks and that won’t help with rankings.” In a way that is true, but in a more important way, this is not thinking big picture.

First, many places where I suggest publishing content do have ‘do follow’ links - so therefore does work to increase your site’s position in the SERPs. Secondly, one of the most important goals with leveraging authority sites in your content marketing is to gain top rankings with that content for an additional search engine results for your keywords and therefore another point of entry.

Creating Powerful, Linkable Content Marketing Pieces

With any of these, I feel that it is essential that you write about things that you have first-person experience with. People can spot when you’ve just researched a topic and haven’t walked the walk. When reading content, don’t you look for information that comes from as close to the source as possible?

#1 Write ‘How To’ Guide That Address Common Things People Struggle With As They Relate To Your Product or Service

If you’re already working with customers or you have a blog, you probably get emails with questions. Think of all of the content you are writing by answering those questions! Why not leverage your knowledge by publishing good, solid, how to guides. Not only will publishing give you more visibility, backlinks, promotion, and position you as an industry expert, you can point people to those guides when they write and save yourself valuable time.

In your content:

• Give actual examples (screenshots showing figures, quote real numbers, etc)
• Weave a personal experience story into the content
• State your credentials (without bragging)

Look beyond questions too where you as a professional see people struggling. For example, because I run a press release distribution site, I know that press release headline writing is a major problem for people. They don’t think it’s a problem, so they don’t know to ask. I have a series of 10 ‘How To’ guides in the works that address things that people aren’t necessarily asking, but that I know most people need some direction with.

Brainstorming Questions….

• What are the most common questions you receive from customers or readers?
• What in your industry do you see people struggling to do effectively?
• If you have employees, what problems do they struggle with in learning your industry?

Sometimes it’s scary to write a ‘How To’ that explains exactly what you do. I was terrified the first time that I wrote a ‘How To’ that revealed the ‘How To’ behind what I do. I thought it would make me obsolete. I thought it would make all of my competitors take my business away. But in fact, it had quite the opposite effect.

#2 Think About The Core Needs Of Your Target Audience As They Relate To Your Products and Services — Then Provide Solutions

Your target audience has more needs than just your product or service. A lot of times, they may not be searching for what you offer, because they don’t realize they need it — but that doesn’t mean that they don’t. Why not reach out to them where they are looking by solving some of their other problems?For example, let’s say that you sell engraved award plaques. When trying to pick topic ideas, my clients will often suggest things like “How To Pick the Best Award Plaque,” or “3 Reasons to Present Award Plaques.” Both of these topics are somewhat company-centric vs. customer centric. And with such a narrow focus, it’s possible that they are missing out on reaching a big chunk of the target audience.

More useful topic ideas that address the target audience’s real needs might be:

• “5 Ideas You Can Implement This Year to Increase Office Productivity” (one of the ideas being an award ceremony where plaques are distributed)
• “Coaching Strategies: 7 Ways to Turn 20 Kids Into a Winning Little League Team” (one of the strategies being handing out awards to each team member)
• “Planning a Lively and Effective Employee Award Ceremony”

Notice how these topics aren’t centered on awards themselves — they focus on topics that solve real problems for their target audience where awards are a solution.

Brainstorming Questions…

• What is the catalyst that causes people to need your product or service?
• How can you help the person who needs your product or service perform incredibly in front of the people who are judging him or her (boss, customer, little league parents, employees, etc)?
• What mind shift needs to take place in order for people to unlearn their old systems and try a new solution?
• What are some other ways customers can (or have) used your solutions?

#3 How Can You Teach Potential Strategic Partners Make More or Achieve More?

In my post How I made $100,000 by spending 25 minutes and $0 on Marketing, I talk about how I grew my business by helping other people grow their businesses. I feel that this has been the key to my success not only because it makes sense, but also because it keeps my head in the right place. It keeps me thinking “How can I help my clients and partners become better” rather than “How can I make more money.”

No matter what business you are in, there are companies out there that can be your strategic partners. They need what you have to better serve their clients. Speaking to them is different than speaking to the end user who needs your product or service. They have different needs, different challenges, and different goals.

For example, if you sell a tanning lotion that for use in tanning beds. Your end client is the tanner, but your strategic partner is the tanning salon that can display your product and make it available to purchase right when the customer needs it. A piece of flagship content titled “How Tanning Salons Can Increase Product Sales by 60%” or “Sales Training for Tanning Salon Employees” would be a good pieces of content to attract the attention of potential strategic partners. When they depend on YOU for solutions, you’re in a position to earn trust. When you’re solutions really work, you’ve earned that trust.

Here are some other strategic partnership relationship examples:

• You offer talking virtual spokesperson technology - they build websites
• You create and edit short, fun product demonstration videos - they build ecommerce sites
• You wrote an e-book on motivational techniques - they provide business consulting

Brainstorming Questions….

• Which industries that offer related but not competing products or services could benefit from reselling what you offer?
• How can you ‘teach’ those people to sell more of your products while improving their business as a whole?
• What “old world” companies could desperately be brought up to date by using the new solutions that you offer?

Your Challenge Should You Choose to Accept…

Your task as part of the 90 Days To Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge is to create and publish the following pieces of content over the next 4 weeks:

• 1 Flagship HubPage
• 1 Slideshare Slidshow
• 1 Press Release
• 1 Article marketing article
• 1 Informational PDF

Once you use these guidelines to write the content, you’ll need to know where to publish them and how to promote them…

5 Places To Publish Your Content That Offer Search Engine Visibility And SEO Value

Writing great quality content pieces is step one. But just as important is WHERE you publish them. If you’re only publishing content on your blog or your website and not leveraging authority sites, then you’re missing out on some major opportunities for visibility and search engine authority.

Leveraging authority sites is a solid way to get more visibility and generate leads. Done right, it’s not a waste of time. In the 28 months that one of my hubs has been published, it has been ranking #1 position in the search engines for various keywords, generated business for my company, and to date has gotten 17,341 views (an average of 619 views per month). Not bad for one piece of content.

This post being over 2,000 words now I felt it was a good idea to split it up so created a HubPage titled Authority Site Content Marketing: 5 Powerful Strategies for Leveraging Authority Sites To Publish Your Content. But length is not the only reason I’m going to direct you to HubPages for the rest of the content. I’m doing this to show the strategies discussed in this article in practice. By splitting it up between a blog post and a HubPage (and soon to be slideshow, PDF, and press release), I’m getting more mileage from this topic while having the space to give you all of the critical information necessary to really and truly use content marketing to your advantage — and you can do the same!

What’s Stopping You From Starting?

I want to hear about your questions, challenges, and successes about content marketing!

• What are your greatest challenges around content marketing?
• What is stopping you from starting?
• Want to brainstorm some topic ideas?

Get a conversation started — I look forward to hearing from you!

Topics: 90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge, Business Development | 10 Comments »

If you’ve plunged into the “90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge,” welcome to lesson #3. If you’re new to the series and want to seriously learn the steps I take to get my clients ranking in top positions for profitable keywords, I highly suggest starting at Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge #1 and digging in!

You may be wondering why for three straight lessons, I’ve been obsessed about keyword research — but it’s because it is that important. I know it’s not as much fun as diving into social media or publishing kick ass content, but I promise… if you want to start building qualified leads and sales through organic search engine traffic, strategically choosing your keywords will be the foundation of your success.

Today’s Mission: Finalizing Your Laser Targeted Keyword “Short List”

Est. time to complete: 40-80 minutes (depending on the number of keywords found)

You may be feeling overwhelmed right now based on the number of keyword opportunities that you found in the last two challenges. You may have found hundreds of keywords that you want to optimize for.

However, not ALL of these keywords are going to be good target keywords. And even if they are, some are going to be more effective than others. This list has got to be prioritized. I’ve found that it’s far more effective to pick 5-10 keyword terms and hit them hard for a few months before moving onto another group, rather than spreading your efforts over 20-30 keywords at once.

Keyword Refinement Step One: Identify the HIGH CONVERSION TERMS

If we’re going to have to narrow down the list, we may as well start with terms that are HIGH CONVERSION TERMS — terms that imply that someone is looking to buy.

If you did the second session of the ‘90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings‘ challenge, you downloaded a keyword research worksheet and filled in some of the columns. Now you’re going to complete more of those columns. In the column titled “type” you’re going use your gut instinct and what you know about your industry to designate which of these are actionable (conversion-focused) terms. If it is a high conversion term type “actionable” in Column D. Do this for all keywords.

For example, if you’re a graphic designer, you might imply that someone who searches for “hire a graphic designer” is more likely to buy than someone who searches for “graphic design elements.” Therefore, the term “hire a graphic designer” would be an “actionable” term.

Next, click the arrow buttons on Column D and “sort descending.” All of your actionable items should be grouped together. For now, we’re only going to work with these. You can cut and paste all of the other items onto another tab on your excel sheet — we’ll come back and revisit those at a later date.

Here’s Where The Nifty Little Keyword Research Trick Comes Into Play…

Keyword Refinement Step Two: Analyze the Organic Competition

You’ve seen the “1 - 10 of about” number that appears when you do a search for a keyword term. These are the number of pages that Google believes is relevant to your search query. I don’t believe that this number is important — what matters more in terms of identifying how many pages you are REALLY competition against are the number of pages with the search term in the title tag of the page.

“allintitle:” is a Google Operator. This particular operator returns only the results where your keyword is in the title tag of the website. This allows you to get a good feel for the number of sites that are actively optimizing for a particular keyword — i.e. how steep the competition truly is for that keyword.

Note If you conduct a between 25 and 30 of “allintite:” search results consecutively; you will get a “We’re sorry” screen from Google. Don’t be alarmed. You need to take a break and come back to it later. You haven’t done anything wrong by searching for “allintitle” — in fact, Google tells you how to do this. They only reason the search gets blocked for a while is because, if you’ve done many searches like this consecutively, Google thinks that you are running a script to do automated meta searches — which is NOT allowed.

ACTION ITEMS

• One by one, enter the keyword terms you’ve listed into Google
• This time however, precede the keyword with the term “allintitle: ” (do not include quotation marks and leave a space between allintitle: and your keyword.
• Copy the number of search results and paste that number into column C.
• Graph the results

Analyzing the Keyword Research Data

Now that you’ve got all of this raw data, you need to know how to read it. Looking at a spreadsheet full of numbers can be hard to read at first. I usually work with the raw data, but I know it helps to have something to “look” at that gives a visual snapshot of the data. Adding a graph can help you to quickly get a visual picture of your data.

The ideal keyword is one that has high search volume and low competition. That doesn’t mean that you can’t rank for high volume keywords — it just means that it’s going to take a little bit longer.

ACTION ITEMS

• Highlight the data in columns A, B, and C (including the titles)
• If you have a newer version of Excel, click the “gallery” icon and select the “charts” tab
• Scroll through the chart types until you find the “bubble” graph
• Select the bubble graph - and a graph will instantly appear

Reading the graph:

• The SIZE of the bubble represents the amount of competition. A bigger bubble = greater competition.
• The height of the bubble on the page represents the search volume
• A small bubble high on the page = a term with high search volume and low competition
• By hovering over the bubble, you can read the name of the keyword

Building Your Keyword Short List

Next, you are going to build your shortlist of keywords. These are going to be keywords that you are going to work very closely with over the next 30 days. To keep things simple, I suggest that you choose 6 keywords. For this first month, those 6 keywords will be

• 3 absolute “must haves” in terms of conversion
• 3 of the lowest competition keywords that have a relatively significant amount of searches (I’m not going to give an exact figure, because each industry is different. For some industries “relatively significant” may mean 1000 and for others it may mean 300.)

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You have made it through what I consider to be the most tedious part of SEO! Keyword research can be boring, frustrating, and mind numbing, but if you’ve pushed through, you’re in a better position than everyone else who gave up.

Coming up!

Now that you have a finely tuned list of keywords, your upcoming challenges will revolve around ranking for those keywords. It’s time to start planting the seeds and soon reap the fruits of your labor…

This week, I’d like to give a shout out to Edward Lujan of Setster  (NOT an affiliate link) for introducing me to a way to cut out the hassle of trying to schedule a call. Thought I try to handle everything through email, there are times when a call is necessary. I have a 5 hour window of time per day when I can take a call — and that time fills up FAST.

It has been such a pain in the @$$ to try and go back and forth with people. If you schedule phone calls, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Here’s a pretty common scenario when scheduling a call before Setster…

1. First, I go and check Google calendar and write out an email listing the scattered hours that I’m free.
2. The client writes back the later that day and say that they are available at “x” time.
3. In the time it took them to write back, someone else has already scheduled a call during that slot because I had given 2 other people the same email with my available times.
4. Then we start the dance all over again

The process now with Setster

1. I give the person a link my Setster calendar (which is linked to my Google Calendar) and they schedule the call themselves during an available time.

This would be a great tool for people who offer paid consulting, because you can embed a widget on your site — and the tool integrates PayPal so that you can charge for consulting. I may use these features in the future, but right now, I’m just THRILLED to have an easy way to schedule a call that doesn’t take so much time and frustration. If you’re looking for appointment scheduling software, I definitely recommend Setster.

Thanks Edward!

Topics: 90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge | 18 Comments »

I run a press release distribution site that is designed for SEO — we offer people the ability to add anchor text links within their press releases because building backlinks in keyword rich anchor text links (within relevant content on quality sites) is an important component of SEO.

Day after day, I am continuously blown away by the keywords I see people choosing — keywords that will not help their SEO campaign at all.

The biggest mistake most people make when choosing keywords — and it is a critical one — is that they choose keywords that are far to broad or that do not directly relate to either the services they offer or the problems their customers are looking to solve.

In this post, I’m going to show you a process for not only identifying profitable keywords, but also discovering ones that you actually have a shot at ranking for.

I’m also going to show you a few pictures of my Scottish Terrier Molly modeling Kai’s new marketing product.

Tara and I do our best to educate every customer, providing personal one-on-one SEO counseling to every person who submits a press release using one of the upgraded packages that includes editing. It is one of my personal missions to show as many people as possible how to choose effective keywords that will increase their search engine visibility for their target audience.

And that leads us to this week’s Mission: Laser Targeting Profitable Keyword Opportunities For You To Dominate

This is Mission #2 in “Mission Possible SEO Challenge.” If you’re just finding this post for the first time, you may want to start with Mission #1: Analyze Your Site Through the “Eyes” of a Search Engine.

Step One
Est. time to complete: 5-7 minutes

When choosing keywords, there are several layers of consideration:

• The conversion potential of the keyword
• The search volume of the keyword
• The estimated time required to dominate the search engine results page for a keyword (more competition for a keyword means its going to take more time and effort to rank for it)

Choosing profitable keywords is a process that requires a combination of common sense, gut instinct, keyword research tools, and some smart analysis.

ACTION ITEM:

1. 

   Open a Word doc and list 5-10 keyword terms that relate to the services you provide and the solutions you provide for people. Use your gut instincts and common sense when compiling this list. Do yourself a favor — don’t just think about these keywords and not commit them to paper. Not only does it help solidify your thoughts — but you’ll be using this doc in the next step.

When Choosing Keywords to Jot Down:

Think from a customer’s perspective

Before you open any keyword research tool, think about the SOLUTIONS you provide for people. What are people really trying to accomplish when they are searching for what you provide?

If you’re a graphic designer, your first instinct may be to target the word “graphic design.” Not only is that term so broad that it will likely be an arduous battle to the top of the search engine rankings, but it may not be what your customers are looking for. Specific terms like “flash animation designer” or “freelance website graphic designer” often prove to more lucrative and to be easier to rank for.

Be Conscious Of The Type of Customer You Want to Attract

In just about any industry, there are terms and phrases that only those ‘in the know’ use. For example, in the CD manufacturing industry, industry terms are “CD duplication” or “CD replication.” Someone who has at least some level of familiarity with the process might search for these keywords. On the other hand, someone who is not in the industry might search for a term like “how to make a CD.”

If your business sells products and solutions applicable only to a more sophisticated industry buyer, it’s best to target industry specific terms. Using too general of keywords can bring you unqualified leads. However, if your business provides solutions for people newer to the industry, it might be more lucrative to avoid industry jargon.

Step 2: Expanding The List
Estimated Time to Completion: 30-45 Minutes

Next you are going to use a keyword research tool to expand on or narrow down the list of terms you’ve created based on your common sense and gut instinct.

ACTION ITEMS:

1. Download this keyword research worksheet
2. Open the Google Keyword Tool in your browser
3. Enter the ROOT phrases of your common sense terms. For example, if one of your common sense terms is “freelance website graphic designer “graphic designer” — and you’ll likely discover some new possibilities.
4. When you find a term that is relevant to what you offer, enter that term in column A
5. Enter the Global Monthly Search volume number in Column B (this number represents the approximate number of times that this keyword is searched for in Google during a given month. Keep in mind that Google accounts for about 70% of search engine use the last I checked, so the actual number of searches for these keyword terms across all search engines is actually higher.)
6. Do NOT enter the “advertiser competition” number (I’m going to show you a better way to analyze the real competition next week.)

NOTE!! A broad term that has a HUGE volume of searches doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a “money term.” How often have you done a broad search and then narrowed your search term because the results were just too broad? Broad terms are often where people begin their search, but not where they finish.

NOTE!! Do not get hung up on search volume! A graphic designer that structures their business correctly can generate years of profitable work by attracting one solid client. For businesses that don’t rely entirely on new business volume, it can be more important to dominate several laser specific, lower volume keywords than chase search volume.

It’s also important to note that NO keyword research tool is perfect. Search results for keyword phrases will be swayed by many things like advertisers and keyword researchers doing keyword searches to evaluate potential terms.

Your goal with using a keyword tool is:

• To use this to get ideas that slipped by you in the common sense phase
• To get an idea about search volume

As I mentioned above, I am going to show you how to analyze the organic competition for these keywords next week. This, I believe is the most exciting part of the process. But — you’ve got to get through this step before moving on to the next!!

Share Your Progress, Questions, and Frustrations

The keyword research step is so critically important that it should not be overlooked. If you just have general questions, by all means post them! My goal is to help you get a firm grasp on these concepts and dominate your niche on the search engines.

Today, after many, many, many long months of preparation, Kai Rostcheck has launched Free Marketing Made Easy. I’ve had the opportunity to review it before hand and I highly recommend it. I didn’t just ‘review’ it — I consumed it.

While I do have some bias because I’m an expert contributor and affiliate, I believe that this kit is an ideal compilation of resources for anyone who is a beginner to internet marketing or who is skilled in some areas, but wants to branch into new areas.

Contributors to the Free Marketing Made Easy Program Include:

• Denise Wakeman, online Marketing Advisor, and Founder of The Blog Squad.
• Lou Bortone, The Online Video Guy
• Michael Martine of Remarkablogger, a consultancy focused on helping businesses get more sales and more customers with blogging, social media, and Blog SEO
• Adam Weiss, Podcasting and interactive media consultant
• Paul Clowe, Sr. Manager of Training & Certification with Marketing Experiments
• Ben Cope, professional Dotcompreneur, Web Designer, and Internet Marketing Consultant
• David Cutler, the brain behind the Eat Media blog and Creative Business Development
• Amy Ellis MailChimp brand manager
• Jay Goldman, Head of Marketing at Rypple
• Jesse Goldman is Head of Business Development at Rypple
• Tracey Lawton, an Online Business Manager & Office Organization Expert
• Mike McKinnon is the Sr. Demand Generation Manager at ReadyTalk
• Christine O’Kelly, founder of SEO Content Solutions, cofounder of Online PR News, and Self Made Chick blogger
• Susan Payton, Managing Partner of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an Internet marketing firm specializing in blogger outreach, social media, and PR
• Joe Pulizzi is the Content Marketing Guru of Junta42 and public speaker
• Seth Resler, Founder of New England Social Media, which creates comprehensive campaigns using all of the leading platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more
• Kai Rostcheck, Founder and Co-Creator of Free Marketing Made Easy
• Mike Samson, co-Founder of crowdSPRING and Emmy Award® nominated Producer and Production Manager
• Mindy Sanderson of Vistaprint

If you think you could learn from some of these folks, take a look at Free Marketing Made Easy.

To celebrate the launch the program is being offered at 50% off between May 3rd and May 7th only.

Awesome job Kai and Team!

Topics: 90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge | 11 Comments »

There are many effective ways to drive traffic to your business today: social networking, guest blog posting, viral marketing strategies, referrals, affiliate programs, newsletter outreach programs — the internet has truly opened a world of possibilities.

However, one of the absolute essential components that has constantly driven a steady stream of business, often more than we can even take on at one time, is the fact the people find my site in the search engines.

Even when I was so unbelievably buried with building my businesses that I could not seem to find the time to post blogs or get in the amount of social networking I truly wanted, inquires continued to pour in.

Because of the way that I structure my business, one lead can mean thousands of dollars year after year after year. Multiply this by 4 years and you’ve got a nice set up. What started with ‘just me’ as a freelancer has now blossomed into me, a 50/50 business partner, 5 account managers, and a dedicated team of about 20 freelancers. I attribute about 75% of the company’s growth to the fact that the right people find us on search engines precisely when they need us.

SEO isn’t ideal for all businesses — but I think it is for the majority. If you have a product or service that solves a known problem to people, and they are out there searching for a solution, then optimizing your site for search engines can be an extremely profitable move.

Let’s Get This Show On The Road…

The very first mission — the first several in fact — revolve around strategically choosing keywords. I am a keyword evangelist. Starting an SEO campaign without keywords is like starting to build a house with no blueprint. You may get something, but it won’t often be what you wanted and you’ll waste a lot of time, effort, and energy on things that won’t help you achieve the end goal.

By starting with your SEO strategy solid, strategic, keyword research, you will be laying the foundation for highly targeted search engine visibility that can bring you a stream of leads and customers year after year after year.

Are you ready for your first mission?

Your First Mission:

Analyze Your Site Through the “Eyes” of a Search Engine
Est. time to complete: 15-20 minutes

Step One

**The purpose of this step is to help you understand where you are now so that you can get to where you want to be.**

Your challenge today is to identify what your web pages are currently optimized for using the tool provided below. Your mission is to analyze your homepage and any key product or services pages on your site. For example, if you offer financial services, you likely have a page on your site dedicated to “will planning,” another that explains you “estate planning services,” etc.

Enter your URL in the tool below:

(If you cannot view this tool in the post, click here).

What appears after you enter your URL is a keyword cloud. This is a visual representation of the dominant words on your page, i.e. the words and phrases that search engines would assume were the primary focus of the page.

I like the keyword cloud because most of us are visual creatures and we can “get it” right away without having to weed through a bunch of numbers and percentages. The terms that are most relevant to your page, from the eyes of a search engines, are displayed the largest. The most relevant terms on your page should be the largest and ideally, should be in the top left-hand corner of the box. If not, there is work to do — and that is something we will tackle in a future mission.

Take a look at the keyword clouds below. Both of these sites sell office chairs. One is ranking in the #1 position in Google for the terms “office chairs” — the other I found by doing an online yellow pages search and does not show up at least in the first 200 search results for the term “office chairs.” Which do you think is which?

Step Two

Part two of your mission is to document your findings. Follow the link provided below and download the current optimization analysis form and complete the quick exercise for 5 to 10 of the most important revenue-driving pages on your site.

Download your free keyword planning worksheet and complete the quick exercise for 5 to 10 of the most important pages you need to rank for.

This simple exercise can be a serious eye opener for you. In upcoming challenges, the knowledge gained from this challenge will become the foundation for a strategic, actionable, search engine optimization plan….

Now for the Tough Part…

It’s one thing to learn a concept by reading, but it’s another thing to dig in and do the work. I encourage you to accept this challenge — and even if it gets frustrating, seems ‘boring’ or seems like it doesn’t matter — follow through. I promise you that, although somewhat boiled down for ease of understanding, these are the exact same steps that I take when conducting SEO audits and action plans that I charge between $750 and $1000 for.

Most of you who read Self Made Chick are self-starters. You want to dig in and take a first hand approach to your marketing. Many of you are just starting out and don’t have the money to hire a search engine marketing firm — or don’t want to. And you don’t have to. You can do it yourself — if you are willing to invest the time into learning and the effort into doing. None of this is rocket science — but it can be quite complex and there are a lot of moving pieces involved.

Many Self Made Chick readers are overachievers - i.e. busy and juggling many ideas and tasks at once. My goal over the next several weeks is to break out some of the most absolutely critical pieces of the search engine optimization process into manageable, actionable chunks. Each week, I will publish a new mission for you — something that will take anywhere from 15 - 45 minutes to accomplish. Each step is published in a logical, systematic order. All steps will be published on the blog, so you can subscribe to post by RSS or by email to ensure that you don’t miss any essential pieces in the process.

Share Your Questions and Frustrations

There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ marketing plan — but by sharing strategies with you at a fundamental level, I hope to address the needs of every different type of business, website, service, etc. However, there will certainly be questions for certain types of businesses. Please, feel free to ask those questions here in the comments section so that everyone can learn!

If you just have general questions — post them! I’ve been entrenched in SEO for the last 5 years of my life. It is likely that I’ve used some jargon or missed some logical steps between points A and C — ask away! My goal is to help you get a firm grasp on these concepts and dominate your niche on the search engines.

Ok, now get rockin!

Topics: 90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge | 18 Comments »

I’m a huge fan of online press releases for several reasons:

1. SEO value - when you embed anchor text links in your press releases and publish them on authority sites, you gain valuable backlinks — which helps your site rank higher in the search engines.

2. Visibility - When you publish a well-optimized press release in the right place, you can gain almost instant page one visibility for even very competitive terms. If you have something to announce, don’t wait for people to find you, put yourself in front of them. News results typically stay on the front page for 1-2 days, but they stay online indefinitely (depending on where you publish them - some sites want to charge you to keep them online indefinitely, others take them down after a while, at Online PR News, they stay online indefinitely).

3. Authority - Submitting well-written press releases can help you establish yourself as an authority in your niche.

You don’t need to be a Fortune 500 Company to write a press release. Your news doesn’t need to grace the pages of the Wall Street Journal to be considered ’successful.’ Give yourself the credit you deserve. If your news could be useful, interesting, or beneficial to those in your niche, then you have a damn good reason to put together a press release.

Here Are Some Examples of the Power of Online Press Releases:

Top SEOs put out a press release titled: “The Best Social Media Optimization Agencies for March 2010 Ranked by topseos.com.” Later that day, I Googled “Social Media Optimization Agencies” (notice that there are 1,370,000 search results for that keyword) and their press release is ranking in spots 1, 3, and 4 as a result of the distribution on Online PR News.

The next example highlights a press release about Google Caffeine was distributed by Scott Moir. Scott is the founder of Irbtrax and also owns PR Site List, a list of free press release distribution site.

The image below (snapped a few weeks ago) shows a search for another competitive search term, “seo internet marketing tips.” Even though there are 143 articles related to that topic, Scott’s press release title is being displayed. Also notice that this screen cap was taken 4 days after the press release was published.

Online Press Releases and Twitter

In the past, press releases were only distributed by big expensive PR firms that had connects with journalists. And the only way your news was going to get out was if a journalist decided it was print worthy. But the social media age has turned that balance of power upside-down.

Now people decide what is newsworthy. People are the media influencers. Scott Moir has been very active with integrating Twitter with his press releases - and the results are awesome.

As recorded by Uberview, this press release about the Google Caffeine update has 52 conversations (retweets).

As documented by bit.ly, his Secret List of Free Article Marketing Submission Sites press release has received 577 clicks and 93 tweets just after publication.

How to Write a Press Release

It’s tough to deny that online press releases have online power, but there are a few key ingredients to success.

1. You’ve got to have a news angle: Many press release submission sites will not publish your press release if it doesn’t have a news angle. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering news, but it does have to be timely and relevant. There are probably lots of things happening within your company each month that are newsworthy and relevant.

Here are some good examples of topics:

• A new product or service
• A new client or employee
• Announcing an award or accolade
• Announcing a special event, contest, or sale
• Announcing a new website, blog, or website enhancement

2. Appropriate tone and style: A press release should be written in 3rd person - meaning you need to avoid using “you,” “I,” “we,” etc. Otherwise, it tends to sound too promotional and subjective and that will likely mean it won’t get published. If it does, people reading may not take it as seriously as they should. You can use first person if you’re quoting someone in a press release. Some people try to get around that by making 90% of their press release a quote, but that defeats the purpose. A good rule of thumb is to have 1 quote per every 200 words in the press release - and that quote should be 1-2 sentences long.

3. Filling in all the pieces: There are several standard pieces and parts of a press release that you need to have in place:

• Title: Should be around 100 characters in length. The title should reflect the news angle! This is one of the main problems we see at Online PR News. Anyone should be able to get a feeling for what the press release is about just by reading the title.
• Summary: Should be about 250-300 characters in length - a few sentences that summarize the press release
• Body: This is the main part of your press release where you talk about the news announced in the title
• Quote: This is where you get to be a little bit subjective and toot your own horn a bit. While the majority of the press release needs to be objective, you can give an opinion here
• About the company: Wrap up the press release with a short “about the company” paragraph that gives and overview of your company.
• Contact info: Many press release sites will not publish your press release if you don’t have adequate contact info. This includes name, phone number, email, website, and sometimes physical address.

How to Submit An Online Press Release

Now we’ve covered how to get your press release published on a press release distribution site. But that alone won’t get you the type of results you’ve seen above. To gain great visibility with your press release and to have it work for you in the search engines, it needs to be optimized.

4. Keyword optimization: The most important place to use your keyword is in the title and the summary of the press release. You’ll also want to include at least keywords in the body of the press, but don’t worry about counting and calculating - just get them in there naturally.

5. Anchor text links: If you’re using a press release distribution site that allows you to include anchor text links, this is ideal for SEO. You should already have three of your most critical keywords in the body of the press release. Then you’ll want to turn these keywords into anchor text links by linking to your targeted webpages in those keywords.

And even if you do all of these things, your press release could fall upon deaf ears if you don’t submit it to the right places.

7. Not all press release submission sites are created equally: You’ll want to submit your press release to a place that has certain characteristics:

• Visibility: Look for sites that are indexed by Google News.
• SEO Friendliness: Press Release sites that are coded for SEO friendliness will help your press release rank higher. For example, the title of your press release is in the title and the URL, your summary becomes the Meta description, etc.
• Offers anchor text links: Links are the currency of the web. If you’re going to submit a press release, you might as well get some anchor text links!
  Press release stays online indefinitely: Some places will only keep your press releases online if you continue paying a monthly fee. Once you stop paying, your links are gone. Others will just take them down after x amount of time.
• Extended distribution: Some sites will push your PR our to their content networks for much less than you would have paid if you would have submitted to all of these places alone. For example, Online PR News’s $49 package includes extended distribution worth $225. Strategic partnerships and volume discounts that the PR submission site can leverage help YOU get more for your money.

Tara and I put together an ebook that offers even more detailed info about how to write a press release titled “The 7 Deadly Mistakes People Make When Writing Press Releases” that is free to download.

Shout Outs!

I want to give a couple of shout outs to two awesome people who are really working hard to educate people and give them the tools they need to create successful businesses. I also want to graciously thank them both for allowing me to be a part of their projects.

Dave Navarro: Dave is one of the most genuine people I have ever met. Not only is he an @$$ kicker, but he is passionate about teaching others to be the best that they can be.

His More Buyers Mastermind program is packed with so much information from industry experts that I had to absorb all of it in small doses in order to fit it all into my head.

Kai Rostcheck: Kai definitely fits his title as the idea guy and his energy is contagious. He’s on a mission to help people go from zero knowledge of online marketing, to having enough information to be dangerous.

He’s always got his target market in mind. When we were doing the podcast and screencast for Free Marketing Made Easy, he did such a superb job of keeping me on track and asking questions that are important to his audience so that they can take the information and hit the ground running with it to market their businesses.

Dave and Kai - Thank you both for inviting me to be a part of your projects!

Topics: Marketing | 12 Comments »

I’ve always avoided explaining why I break one “rule” of blogging that many people parrot by posting irregularly and infrequently, but here’s why: When I started this blog, I made a commitment to myself not to add to the noise pollution on the web by writing about anything that I didn’t have first hand experience with. I don’t want to bore you with regurgitated posts or writing about things that I speculate to be true. That, and I don’t want to be on Caroline Middlebrook’s list of 11 pointless blog posts that waste my time (one of my favorite blog posts of all time!)

Cutting the Crap and Getting Down to the Point: The Monkey Bar Theory

What the Hell is the Monkey Bar Theory? The Monkey Bar theory is something I’ve noticed after living a dual life of fear and risk-taking. In order to make big changes in life, you’ve got to let go of one monkey bar to harness the strength, fear, and resolve to jump to the next.

When I was first desperately trying to find a way to escape the cubicle, I wanted to make sure that I had one hand firmly positioned on the next “monkey bar” before letting go of the last. In that situation, the last monkey bar was my current job, and the one I was grasping for was entrepreneurial freedom. For 3 years, I hung stagnant between those two bars, with nothing but sleep deprivation, a few business plans, and a couple full stacks of glossy business cards to show for it.

Why didn’t it work? Because building a successful business is based on making some scary decisions. It requires action that will sometimes make your insides feel like rotten Jello and making decisions that will scare the crap out of you. In the past, when I had a hand on that other monkey bar, I would ‘conveniently’ get too busy at my ‘real’ job find some other excuse why I couldn’t make the final reach to that next bar. But when you don’t have anything else to hold on to, you will likely summon every ounce of gusto within your being to ensure you get a hold on that bar to avoid crashing down.

What it took for me to finally make the leap was for my ex-husband to have a 15-year premature midlife crisis, decide that we needed to leave the downtown San Diego 5-9 grind (intentionally transposed), and move to the cheapest place possible, which happened to be in the middle of nowhere in the California desert. If it weren’t for the fact that I was living a life dependent on two incomes and pretty much felt I “had” to go, I doubt that I would have ever had the cajones to make such a leap.

But it was that move… literally throwing myself into a situation where I had NO backup plan, NO family to bail me out and NO ‘decent’ jobs within 150 miles, that caused me to get my business off the ground.

Do I recommend being this extreme? For those that know they have what it takes to survive at any cost but can’t seem to harness that power — yes. Is it risky? Hell yes. Is it guaranteed? Hell no. Does it suck? For a while — yes. Is it worth it? Hell yes.

The Monkey Bar Theory and Love

For years, I was in a miserable marriage and wanted out. But I was afraid. Yep. Before I was the Self Made Chick, I had created a lifestyle that depended on two incomes, allowed said other income earner to ‘almost’ convince me that I was pretty much worthless and incapable of making on my own, and only dreamed of being able to support myself and two kids. In the back of my mind, I ‘hoped’ I would meet someone else — another monkey bar — to grab onto so that I could let go of that one. But I didn’t have the courage so I waited in limbo for years.

But when I started to have some success in business and some confidence in my ability to support myself, I finally let go of that monkey bar and did all those things that once seemed ’scary’ with no problem. And eventually, once I learned to love myself, and with space in my life I had the room to meet someone else.

How many people are in a loveless, unhealthy, unhappy relationship but too afraid to let go?

A Closet Full of Compromises…

There’s a reason why ‘the closet’ is such a strong metaphor for our lives. Within most of our closets is a biography of our compromises and insecurities. It’s a clear picture of how we cling to things that are no longer of use to us and that choke out room for new things to come into our lives.

I’d venture to guess that you, like me and many other people have closet guilt resulting a closet packed with clothes and things you don’t really need and that just don’t ‘feel’ right when you wear them. Perhaps even things that are dragging you down emotionally.

Do You Dare Take This Challenge?

A ’safe’ way to test out the monkey bar theory is to get rid of all but 3-5 pieces of clothing that truly represent you now and where you want to go in life. If you were to get rid of all of your clothing, I can almost guarantee that you would find the resources to fill your closet again. By making a conscious decision to only fill your closet with things you WANT, you would eventually create a new wardrobe of only things that you wanted.

Would wearing the same 3-5 things be embarrassing for a while? Probably. Would you feel tempted to fill your closet with just anything? Probably. Would you have to give up other things to find the resources to buy new clothes? Maybe. Or maybe you’d figure out some other way to create those resources. Would you feel great once your wardrobe was filled with clothes that defined you? Certainly.

On a simplistic level, the above scenario is similar to what it takes to build a business from scratch. It’s scary to make the choice to DO IT. It takes resolve to stand steadfast in your decision NOT to fill your time with things that won’t lead you to your ultimate goal.

It Get’s Easier, But Is Never EASY

Risk taking is a learned skill that gets easier with practice. But it’s never EASY. I’ve learned to become much more comfortable with taking calculated risks, but there is always an element of fear. I think that if we wait around and hope for courage or for something not to feel scary anymore, we are selling ourselves short! In fact, whenever I feel a bit of fear about losing, it feels exhilarating, because I know the result could be a big change.

Even so, I’m struggling right now with letting go of some things in my business and in my life. Are you? If so, why? When you talk it through, are your fears rational — or just as irrational as holding onto that old shirt in your closet that just makes you feel yucky when you put it on? Have you ever ‘let go’ and come out better for it?

Topics: Risk Taking | 42 Comments »

Last February, Dave Navarro and I put each other to a challenge… he put my ebook on how to start a freelance business to the test in a Freelance Smackdown to see if he could make an extra $1,000-$2000 per month in his spare time. Within a month, he had made that goal. Then I challenged his 30 Hours a Day Program to see if I could use it to make an extra $20,000 in passive income that year.

The very awesome Melinda Brennan of WAHM Biz Builder recently asked… so how’d it go? I’m happy to announce, that this challenge has had an incredible positive financial impact in my life. But not exactly in the way I’d imagined…

In order to devote time to my new goal, I would have to free up some time. I have never been so aware of and so in awe of the power and consequences of time spent until I began working for myself.

Two Paths Diverged In A Yellow Wood…

There was a critical choice that had to be made in order to free up that time… a choice so pivotal that it would change the course of my future. It’s a choice that every freelancer faces, whether or not they realize it to be a choice. One choice would be a fast path, the other a long haul.

Should I continue on as a solo freelancer? Or should I turn my freelancing gig into a company?

The Solo Freelancer Path

As a solo freelancer, my work was fairly stress-free. I was fluent at what I did. I worked with a handful of steady clients and project management was fairly straight-forward. Really, my solo freelancing career had turned into a stable work at home job.

My life was predictable and safe. I lived in my favorite place in the world – a place that I finally felt at home after years of moving around the country. It would have been so easy to just maintain that predictability and safety by cutting back a little on freelancing and devote that time to building my passive income stream.

The Living Company Path

Having taken this path, I can say that making the shift from solo freelancer to full-fledged business owner is not the simpler route. The path is riddled with fears, obstacles, tests, puzzles, and quicksand. Instead of being financially responsible for just yourself, you are now financially responsible for the people that work for you.

There may be times when there are just not enough funds in the coffer to pay yourself after you’ve paid everyone else and your overhead. There is training that must take place, organizational systems to set up, and more paperwork to manage. There are systems to develop to ensure that quality and deadlines are met. And all of these things demand a great deal of time.

That is why you may have noticed my blog posts becoming more infrequent during certain months. Although I consider myself a person that can juggle a LOT of tasks and, throughout my life have taken on more than what most people would consider sane, I was still hammered for time. Many times, my life felt like a game of Tetris with all of the blocks falling so fast and capacity running out. But I’m glad I chose this path.

There are upsides of course. One is the possibility of creating something larger than yourself – a legacy that can live on without you – fulfilling one of the most primal human desires. Another is the ability to serve more people with work that you are passionate about. A third is the possibility that one day, the company can grow to a point where it operates almost on it’s own, but generates revenue for years to come.

A lot of people have had amazing results keeping their business solo or almost solo while building massive income streams with info products. I mean, look at Naomi raking in the bucks with her products (and with damn good reason – the chick is a rock star). Look at Ray Edwards and other master copywriters who charge tens of thousands of dollars for copy and make money giving classes and seminars.

Sadistic or Smart?

So why go the business building route when so many others are making bank by staying solo? Perhaps I’m self-sadistic. Perhaps it’s some sort of sick sense of low self-esteem or a refusal to let go. Perhaps it’s the lust of wanting to have my cake and eat it too. Whatever it is, it’s the road I took and I’m glad I did.

I like to tell myself that it’s because I love what I do, I love serving customers who are passionate about growing their online businesses but may not have tens of thousands of dollars to spend. I like to tell myself that it’s because I want to be able to scale to serve more of my clients in the same capacity.

After busting a$$ for a very long time, free time to work on the ‘big picture’ is within view. Just this month, we hired a personal assistant and are hiring a full-time project manager. This gives me the opportunity to create even more systems to help the business scale and to pursue other ventures, produce some products that have been on my mind for quite a while, begin offering consulting – and all while serving more of the customers that I love.

So Did I Make the $20,000?

I can say that yes, I have made $20,000 in ‘passive’ income last year. But it wasn’t as passive as it would have been if I were to have created a product or automated service.

Instead, I created a system within my existing business that worked to produce income from projects with minimal hands on involvement from me. I worked my a$$ off creating systems that can continue that trend year after year.

Either way, I thank Dave for asking me the tough questions to get my butt into gear. Dave and I worked together on the phone during coaching sessions (which at this point he’s not offering so the next best thing are his audio programs and ebooks).

How To Grow Your Business From Solo Operation to Business Operation

The details of growing a business from solo to a fully operational team could certainly fill a book. Instead writing an obscenely long blog post, I’d love to open up the comments section to stories and questions about growing your home-based business without going into debt by using creative, strategic methods.

Growing and Marketing Your Business in A Tight Economy

If you’re really serious about growing your business, I highly recommend Melinda Brennan’s upcoming free business marketing teleseminar, Marketing Biz Brainstorm, taking place live on March 3rd at 2:00pm EST. I’ve been invited to be a panelist on this call with Melinda of WAHM Biz Builder and Kelly McCausey of WAHM Talk Radio.

One of the goals of this teleseminar is to answer of your personal questions on small business marketing. When I say your questions – I mean it! The call is very much directed by the questions YOU submit when you register for free. So think of some good questions and ask them here – because this is a great opportunity to get your questions answered for free!

If you’re in business for yourself, you’re in a state of constant flux… where are you now? What challenges or fears do you face in terms of growth? Do you have any tips to help others scale? I’d love to hear from you!

Topics: Business Development, Freelancer Tips | 29 Comments »

(BTW - it’s free!) Since launching our press release submission site, Tara and I have learned something truly important - many people are making some major mistakes when it come to writing and submitting press releases! To help others learn to write more effective press releases, we put together this free downloadable guide to writing press releases.

The book highlights the 7 deadly mistakes we see in a surprising majority of the press releases submitted. With just a few little tweaks, most of the press releases we receive could be transformed from so-so, to great! It doesn’t just cover the writing of search engine optimized press releases, but how to submit them so that they look great online.

This e-book is a quick and easy read, filled with lots of graphics and no B.S. tips for writing and submitting better press releases.

Why Is It Free?

A few reasons:

#1: Because, I’m more concerned about giving you the tools you need to write better press releases than I am about making money off of this. Times are tough for a lot of people right now and submitting press releases online is a great, low cost way to get the word out about your news and to build quality backlinks to your site that ultimately help it rank higher in the search engines.

#2: Online PR News is a new site, and we want more people to know about it! Our goal over the next few years is to make this the best and most affordable damn press release submission site online - a site that truly connects people with news to share with those looking for new things to talk about. If you find the ebook useful and you’d like to share it with others, feel free to direct others to Online PR News where anyone can take their free copy.

To download your free copy of the press release writing e-book, just head over to Online PR News and you’ll see the download link right on the homepage.

Wishing You Success,
Christine ~

Topics: Marketing | 25 Comments »

I’ve been kind of obsessed with 50 Cent’s new reality show ‘The Money and the Power.’ If you haven’t been following, it’s like a g-style version of The Apprentice where the contestants live in a crappy warehouse while they are tested and judged by Mr. Fitty and his G-Unit crew. Every week the challenges revolve around one of 50’s words of street wisdom – such as “Choose Your Crew Wisely,” “Respect the Hustle,” and one of my favorite new sayings “Turn Sh** To Sugar.”

Just last week, I mixed a little sh** with Fitty’s wisdom and a healthy scoop of a Mindshift technique learned from the always awesome Steve Chandler to overcome an obstacle. And the results were delicious. In fact, I’m looking forward to stepping in more sh** just to use these techniques.

The Situation

You may know that Tara and I just launched Online PR News – and were so very excited about it. If you’ve ever launched anything, you know that it requires a lot of time, money, and emotional investment to create the best product or service available. You want every single person to love it and have the best possible experience…

Then this happened:

Sure enough, the site was throwing an error whenever anyone tried to add the SEO upgrade to their press release.

Three options for responding quickly ran through my mind:

Response Option #1 – The fear-based response: Don’t reply to the person, just fix the problem and chalk it up to a loss.

Response Option #2 – The lack of responsibility response: Send a ‘computer generated’ sounding response like “we’re sorry to hear about your issue and will attend to the problem right away, signed, the company.

Response Option #3 – The ownership response: Reply as a real person, admit the mistake, genuinely thanking them for alerting us to the problem (as you know, most people will get an error and just move on) and offer a free upgrade in exchange for their troubles, signed, Christine O’Kelly.

A Mindshift in Action

Then I remembered the wise words of Steve Chandler from his Mindshift course… He said (and I’m paraphrasing) that we need to shift our thinking – literally change the words we hear in our mind when we face a problem. Instead of thinking “I have a problem that I have to deal with,” think “I’ve been presented with an opportunity to make my businesses better.”

As a result, I chose response option #3. The customer was not only happy to receive the free upgrade, but even promoted us on a social networking site that she belonged to. She has since become a repeat customer and posted an “I Love Online PR News” to her network on Twitter. Thanks!!

Why Learning To Turn Sh** Into Sugar Is So Incredibly Powerful

The majority of the reason any of us don’t live up to our potential the way we know we should is based on FEAR. If you put yourself out there, you absolutely will be faced with rejection, roadblocks, and problems – there’s just no doubt about that.

But if you learn to shift your mind and consider problems to be opportunities for growth, you will then willingly go boldly into situations that may lead to rejection, roadblocks, and problems, because they will only make you better.

What have you been afraid to do? Why? Get out there and do it, learn to turn crappy situations that everyone else is avoiding into sweet opportunities for yourself!

Random Awesome Things I Discovered Through Twitter

This cool tool called Twitter Grader from a post by Jack Bastide (@JackBastide) where he interviews Yvonne Perry of Writers in the Sky.

How Make Deals With Bigshots in Less Than 10 Minutes - by Laura Roeder (@lkr) on ProBlogger (BTW - I wholehearted recommend that everyone subscribe to Laura’s newsletter The Dash where she serves up weekly managably sized action items that you can do to improve your business - these are GREAT ideas that make you say DUH! Why didn’t I think of that!). Nice job on the guest post Laura!!

How To Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet For Any Topic:  Information overload! (The good kind)

Topics: Business Development | 27 Comments »

Three weeks ago, Tara and I launched a brand new free press release submission site – Online PR News. Today, 3 weeks later, it is ranking in the #9 spot (update, it is now in the #6 spot) in Google for one of our target keywords (competitiveness of the keyword is: 1,380,000), the #13 spot in Google for another target keyword (competitiveness = 2,180,000), the #10 spot in Yahoo for yet another target keyword (competitiveness=8,360,000), and in various other spots for a variety of other keywords.

Some SEOs that I know won’t touch a brand new site – one that I know won’t work with any client if their domain hasn’t existed for 3 years or more. Reason: it can sometimes take months for a site to even be indexed by search engines let alone rank on the first page. But who has time to wait? I’m moving at the speed of business and my clients are too. Over the years, we’ve developed strategies to get rankings quickly – and I’ll show you exactly how we did it in this post.

Factor #1: LOVE and PASSION

This probably sounds ridiculous to some, but I don’t care. I believe that love and passion for any site that you’re promoting is critical. I even bring this into our business practice. When I take on a client, I make sure that I can have the same level of love and passion for their site as we do our own – otherwise, things just don’t work out as well.

I’ve tried building sites based on money and not passion. They never got anywhere – and it all stemmed from me. Building and promoting them seemed like work. Coming up with ideas for content was like pulling teeth. I didn’t know enough about the target audience to really connect with them. I didn’t like the way I felt about the whole thing… so why would anyone else?

Many years ago, I decided to stop relying solely on all of the rehashed trends and strategies I was hearing out there. I decided to read Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s college paper titled PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web. What I learned is that no matter what loopholes internet marketers find, Google’s goal is to rank the most useful and authoritative sites at the top of the rankings. So I’ve made a commitment to producing what I believe are the most useful sites to real people.

If you don’t have love and passion for what you are doing and for the people who will be utilizing your site, it will be an uphill battle to do all that is necessary to truly produce a great site and hence, get visibility for that site.

We created Online PR News because we wanted to provide the most feature-rich, best looking, most affordable press release submission website. We created it because we use PR sites constantly and wanted to combine all of the features WE desired in a press release like anchor text, image uploading, pull quotes, and an iFrame so that we readers can navigate to the publisher’s site right from the press release. (Take a look at this sample press release to see those features in action)

Sure, there are exceptions to this ‘love and passion’ rule, but in general, if you are not passionate about the site that you are promoting, it just won’t get as far.

Are you truly and honestly passionate about what you do? Do you LOVE waking up in the morning to get to work on building that business? If not, there is time to find that thing you love and let the passion of it fuel your fire…

Factor #2: Resource Building and Diversified Publishing

For any product or service, there are a limitless number of resources that can accompany it to help others to use the product or service better or to use the product or service to enhance their lives. If your products or services – and the people who use it are something you are truly passionate about, it isn’t difficult to come up with a wealth value added resources.

They key however, is in publishing those resources. Many people publish their info on only a handful publishing resources such as their blog or website. But there are so many different places to publish content. If you choose those places wisely, many of them will offer a backlink to your site (which helps it to rank higher in the search engines) as well as visibility of that resource for the search terms.

Some of the types of content I publish are:

• Hubpages – leverage an authority site to like Hubpages correctly can help bring your presence to the forefront quickly.

• Slideshows – I publish how-to guides on slideshare to that truly help people learn how to accomplish a particular goal – such as this one called “Submit An SEO Press Release: A How To Guide“

• Article Marketing – I write articles that designed to help people build their businesses and syndicate them to a wealth of article directories

• Press Releases – publish press releases on sites that offer search engine value

• Free eBooks – promote them on eBook directories

• Blogs – both by blogging and by reaching out to other bloggers whose readers could truly benefit from the services I offer

• Social Networking Sites – We’ve scoured the web to find the best business networking sites that offer not only a useful service, but backlinks as well

• Directory Listings – Not all directories are great… but there are a handful that are

• Wikis – while the links on sites like Wikipedia, Wikihow, and eHow are often ‘nofollow,’ the exposure can be dramatic

• Forums – helping others to solve their problems on blogs and forums can go a long way. I interviewed a wonderful entrepreneur, Chris Hanisco, aka, The Dippy Chick, who was found by the news media because of her active presence on a popular enterprenuer’s forum.

• Email Marketing – reaching out to current clients and people who have expressed interest in our products and services to get the word out

• Twitter – Thank you Angie (one of SEO Content Solution’s awesome writers and an online writing coach) for Tweeting about the new press release site!

• Friends – Give friends and contacts to review your site and, if they like it, to give it a Stumble or recommend it to their contacts. Offer an incentive to review your site and invite them to link to it in their upcoming posts. For example, if you would like to review and link to Online PR News, I will gladly offer you a free SEO press release upgrade. Just send me an email with a link to your post and the title of your press release and I’ll pay for the upgrade
  

Are you spending too much time on any one particular blog, social media site, or other resource when you could be diversifying? It’s GREAT to have a few that you focus on more than others, but you could be holding yourself back by not tapping into all of the many options out there.

Factor #3: Strategic Keyword Planning

As an SEO copywriter and online marketer, one of the very first things I ask a client about is their keywords. Establishing the keywords you need to bring traffic to want is one of the most critical factors of a strong search engine ranking.

I’ve used a lot of keyword tools, but my favorite by far is Google’s keyword selector tool. With this, you can see how many people are searching, the level of competition, and be introduced to related keyword phrases that you may not have considered.

Keywords are essential in everything from writing title tags, to writing your on page content, to titling articles, to the anchor text you’ll use in your published resources. You’ll want to keep your list of keywords handy and use them consistently in all of your publications.

Factor #4: Treat Others With Genuine Compassion and Fierce Loyalty

Business is an ecosystem. Like any ecosystem, one organism depends on the other organisms in the ecosystem to survive and flourish. This is a lesson I learned well when hitchhiking across the country and during the days that I lived in a tent. If you want to survive, you have GOT to be fiercely loyal to your pack, to share when you have something to share, and to create relationships of unconditional trust.

Being genuinely kind, helpful, and reliable to others without necessarily expecting anything in return goes a long way. The ethic of reciprocity may be cliché… “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – but so true.

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