Check out what my mentor had to say about a flopped 40 Keyword campaign I ran for a content-driven business website (200+ articles) recently.
 

“This type of site falls into the “trying to be too many things and succeeding at none of them” category. I had a customer like this a couple years ago, it was an auto parts store that spun out from an exotic car dealership. They spent all their money inputting 100,000 different auto parts and sold nothing, when they should have focused at one specific thing – like being the #1 air filter store or #1 custom brake store.

 

Also just an opinion, when you look at customers, try to figure out what their customers value is. It looks like these guys are selling ebooks and affiliate products, so their customer might only be worth $30. That is really low and makes it difficult to be able to afford advertising and related services. You’re therapy guy will be a better customer because he can probably pay several hundred dollars to acquire one customer.”

 

A great “over the shoulder” resource showing exactly how to set up Google Places can be found here.

LOCAL AND REGIONAL BUSINESSES MUST PAY ATTENTION — SET UP A GOOGLE PLACES LISTING IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY!

85% of people searching for local businesses choose the Google Places listings. While Google Places listings don’t
show up for every keyword, they do show up for the most fertile.

If you’re unfamiliar with Google Places (often called Google Maps) listings, type in “Auto Repair Charlotte NC” in the Google search window and notice the series of Google Places listings at the top with the little red upside down teardrop next to them.

Go here to set yours up: http://www.google.com/places/

If your business has multiple physical locations then set one up for each!

Include as much information as possible in your listing. Make it complete. Include your hours of operation, payment methods, actual address and phone number, etc.

Include a Keyword in your business name if possible – “Achieve National – An Omaha Training Company”

The easiest way to do quick keyword research for this purpose is to use the Google Keyword Tool: http://www.google.com/keywordtool.

While jotting down your keyword list, pay attention to:

1) Keywords that actually match what you do.
2) Local Monthly Searches
3) Competition (the less green, the better!)

An example of a local market keyword search is “Auto Repair Nashville” or “Nashville Auto Repair.” I would choose the highest volume keywords that pertain to your business first, and worry about the competition rating secondly.

Create categories based on your most searched keywords – ie/dallas collision repair or dallas auto painting. You can create 5 categories total, but just one has to be a Google specific. The others you can create using keywords and your city/state.

Obviously include keywords in your description. I recommend including your 10 best and make sure to end your listing with your city and state. Your description should convey what you’re going to do for the customer. Make it enticing and trustworthy sounding, not simply a place to boast about how long you’ve been in business and how successful you are.

Upload photos and videos.

Put in a “specialty item : ” in Additional Details at bottom of setup page.

You can add several specialty items. Whether you truly offer a specialty item or not ALWAYS add Areas Served..Kansas City, MO, Kansas City Metro Area, Overland Park, etc., all in a row in one blank within the specialty item area. This can help you gain regional coverage outside your city!

MAKE SURE TO HAVE AT LEAST 5 REVIEWS ADDED ONCE YOUR LISTING IS PUBLISHED! Bear in mind, publishing could take several days because Google will want to verify your listing over the phone or by a mailed postcard.

Once published, jot down the link to your listing and ASK YOUR BEST CUSTOMERS TO LEAVE YOU REAL REVIEWS – NOT FAKE REVIEWS: Google can tell by the IP address when reviews come from the same PC or office network. The reviews should come from individual customer’s computers!

You could even put this on your website, in emails to customers, or on your Facebook page.

“IF YOU LIKE THE WAY WE SERVED YOU TODAY, PLEASE GO TO AND LEAVE A REVIEW!”

Add a Google Coupon right on your Google Places page. Google makes this easy to do and it’s effective!

Create Backlinks to your Google Places listing

Use IMAutomator, OnlyWire, Reddit, Digg, FolkD, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Hubpages, squidoo, etc. Most people know to create backlinks to their site, but rarely to the Google Places Listing. So this little secret will give you a big edge over time.

Google Places Check List:

1. Keywords in Company Description
2. Add Photos
3. Multiple Reviews
4. Add a coupon
5. Add Video(s) – optional
6. Build Links to your listing
7. Keywords in Company Name (optional)

Want to see a rediculously simple Free Way to Create Backlinks & Quickly Get Your Site Indexed with Google?

Any small business owner out there should give this a try. Below I’ve listed 20 safe backlinking sites you can submit to by simply substituting your website address for “www.yourdomain.com” then placing the whole string in the URL bar of your browser, then hit enter. But before you do these manually try this free site which does it all for you!!!

http://www.sitevaluestats.com/

If that doesn’t work, then go the manual approach. So far I’ve had pretty good luck with the sitevaluestatus site.

       http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.yourdomain.com

Here’s how easy it is to do! For my site, I typed in http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.seodesigndynamics.com.

Again, simply plug in your website address in place of www.yourdomain.com, put the full string in the URL bar and hit enter. Voila! These sites will essentially create a backlink page to your site that will indexed by the major search engines.

1. http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.yourdomain.com
2. http://www.builtwith.com/?/www.yourdomain.com
3. http://snapshot.compete.com/www.yourdomain.com
4. http://www.aboutus.org/www.yourdomain.com
5. http://www.quantcast.com/www.yourdomain.com
6. http://www.cubestat.com/www.yourdomain.com
7. http://whois.tools4noobs.com/info/www.yourdomain.com
8. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.yourdomain.com
9. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.yourdomain.com
10. http://www.siteadvisor.cn/sites/www.yourdomain.com
11. http://whois.domaintools.com/www.yourdomain.com
12. http://www.aboutdomain.org/backlinks/www.yourdomain.com
13. http://www.whoisya.com/www.yourdomain.com
14. http://www.who.is/whois-com/www.yourdomain.com
15. http://www.robtex.com/dns/www.yourdomain.com
16. http://www.zimbio.com/search?q=www.yourdomain.com
17. http://whois.ws/whois-info/ip-address/www.yourdomain.com
18. http://whoisx.co.uk/www.yourdomain.com
19. http://searchanalytics.compete.com/site_referrals/www.yourdomain.com
20. http://www.statbrain.com/www.yourdomain.com (this one takes quite awhile)

In just a few minutes you can have your sites submitted for backlinking and indexing. Not a bad way to supplement your current backlinking strategy!

You have the potential to drastically increase web traffic to your website or blog by expanding the scope of one simple rule.

When submitting entries to social bookmarking and social networking sites take advantage of a golden opportunity to create multiple keyword-rich search pointers to a single page or article by creating unique body, tags, and title content for each entry. By no means are you required to take this extra step however, you could potentially double your traffic and ranking effectiveness by going the extra mile!

Whenever a new blog post or webpage is written then cached as completely unique and fresh by the search engines. We all know that Google would be quick to punish if we were to duplicate this content verbatim on another blog or web page once it’s been cached. So most of us would then take a winning blog post and rewrite it for posting in a high PR article directory. Right?

So let’s say we extend this practice to our social networking and social bookmarking entries by making each entry unique. This will increase your chances of having most of or even all your unique linkbacks to this page indexed based on a number of different quality keywords.

A simple example follows…..

Say I’ve written a blog post about “Metabolism and Weightloss.”

Obviously I want the search engines to pick these two terms. However, I’d also be interested in having the search engines recognize my post for other keywords such as “quick workouts” and “best ab exercises,” so each time I point back to this single post within a various Social Networking and Social Bookmarking platforms, I can tailor the individual entries based on unique keywords rather than just repeating myself over and over.

Perhaps on social bookmarking site “folkd.com” I’ll create a link back to my blog post as follows.

Link Title: “Crank Up Your Metabolism for Maximum Weightloss” – this title text is then used
by folkd as the anchor text pointing back to your blog post.

Tags: Metabolism, weightloss, weight loss, fast metabolism.
Description: “Cranking up your metabolism not only leads to higher energy it also is the number one contributor to weightloss. This article discusses foods and various easy exercises that correlate directly to weightloss and a healthy metabolism.”

Then on Facebook I may create another link using the following description.

“The best ab exercises can be part of quick workouts contributing to increased metabolism and weightloss in as little as 5 minutes per day. Let me show you how.” — best ab exercises would be the anchor text linking to my blog post.

Notice how I varied my link content in terms of avoiding duplicate content and inclusion of various keywords.

Also, I recently started using this awesome source for quality automation of backlinks at a very reasonable price! They do a professional job mixing up the descriptions and anchor text, and make a point to do “contextual linking” based on the theme of your business and pertinent keywords. This means that in addition to linking with quality bookmarking sites they also find directories, blogs, etc. directly related to your industry to create links in. Google eats up contextual links!

Give them a try – the site is www.backlinkranking.com and you can get 100 quality backlinks created using up to 5 keywords for right around $30.00. Talk about quality work and massive time savings at a reasonable price!

Having multiple links mixing various keyword combinations pointing to a single page can pay big dividends in the long run. Don’t be shy about even creating multiple links for each keyword to your single page or post. There are plenty of social networking and social bookmarking sites to go around and taking steps to maximize your “link juice” is never a bad thing!

More than 66% of Americans use the web to find information, products, and services, and 90% of Internet users rely on search engines to find what they’re looking for online. Conversely only 7% will ever stumble upon your website if it’s not properly optimized.

No matter how effective – or how expensive – your traditional advertising is, its impact is only the tip of the iceberg if you’re trying to drive more traffic and revenue to your online channel

Contact us today at (615) 397-6544 or by email to learn more about our unique low-cost approach to small business SEO.

“SEO in a Box” & the best of all Keyword Tools I’ve Ever Used…

As a successful and diverse Internet Marketer & SEO professional I’ve helped many “bricks and mortar” businesses as well as information product marketers achieve great success online. Just like with any business, succeeding at internet marketing means following a system and doing things right in the most efficient manner possible.

I was lucky enough one day to stumble upon the traffictravis.com website and since then, my career has never been the same! This software runs 90% of my business for me.

THE TWO MOST CRUCIAL FACTORS of effective Small Business SEO are determining the absolute highest volume, low competition keywords AND finding the best business directories and linking sources to list with related to these exact keywords.  The second of these two focuses is almost overlooked, however Traffic Travis makes doing this a cinch!

Traffic Travis has been nothing short of a LIFE SAVER for me, eliminating 20+ hours of of wasted time in helping me succeed with the Exact precision those expensive SEO Services use to Rank Websites. Forget the other Keyword Tools and SEO analysis softwares out there…this one is King!

What makes Traffic Travis unique and why is it the only SEO software I’ll ever use? The answers are simple. It’s intuitive and easy to use, highly effective, a complete “SEO in a Box” solution providing all the SEO and keyword solutions you need, and is absolutely positively the only affordable solution of it’s kind that does not carry an ongoing subscription fee of some sort.

That’s right, once you own it, it’s yours…updates and all. You will not pay another dime. And the good news is, you can download and try the Robust new Version 4 for just $1.00!

Best of all, you can save all your work as TXT, HTML, or CSV for reference later on.

Not to mention, Traffic Travis does it MUCH BETTER! I feel fully qualified to make such a statement because I’ve tried the manual approach and dozens of other solutions that either wouldn’t fit into my budget or were too complicated.

Check out this video showing just one of the several powerful SEO features Traffic Travis offers.

Check out Traffic Travis Today. What do you have to lose??

What I’ve been able to do for all my clients using Traffic Travis….

• Identify which keyword phrases are most common and best in terms of search volume and competition.
• Discover who the most successful competitors are and observe in detail what they are doing right.
• Discover all the back linking sources from top competitors as well as the top ranking business directories to list with for each keyword.
• Fully optimize any web site with regard to keyword phrases, keyword density, frequency and position.
• Monitor search engine positioning of my sites and competitor’s sites with respect to the best keywords.

The Traffic Travis Program Provides You with the Tools and Know How to Accomplish All
these Initiatives…

Uncover exactly why your main rivals out perform you..then use this information to match or beat them! Expose simple blunders you are making in your website… then correct them! Establish quality backlinks to your website effortlessly… saving you time And money!

Build Keyword Lists

Why pay membership charges? Traffic Travis can dig up all the pertinent keywords and phrases for your campaign. Simply type in any term in and Traffic Travis will peruse not just Google, but Yahoo and Bing as well, and return only the best results!

Then Determine the most Successful and Lucrative Keyword phrases

Figuring out the right keyphrases to target is arguably the most crucial aspect of SEO, yet often times little attention is given to this step, particularly in the area of keyword competition. It is not unusual for a would-be SEO to target phrases that are so competitive that it could take years to break into the top 10. Conversely, concentrating on keywords that are so obscure that they are rarely (if ever) sought out is another enormous waste of time. Want to find out if a keyword is profitable? The simplest way to figure this out is to watch others advertising on that word. Are there lots of PPC ads in place? Do advertisers keep this word on their list, or dump it quickly? Traffic Travis can help you figure this out.

On-Page SEO Analysis

Peer into any website’s on-page SEO factors with this intriguing application: Uncover areas for improvement on your site as well as just what competitors are up to, the top 10 links, most often used key terms and more with just the mouse click.

Come across Top Websites in a Niche

Discover who the big players are in your market. Traffic Travis
will discover out the number of keywords ( within your list) they are bidding on, and their average position. Once you have this information you can start to dig a little deeper and begin making key improvements to your website and marketing campaign.

Analyze Your Competition

Once you’ve discovered the heavy hitters within your market you can start to evaluate their strategy, starting with their keyword list: In a single swoop, we can show you which keywords they’re bidding on and how well the ad does for the advertiser. Even track your competitors campaign over time!

Uncover Back links to Websites From Google & Yahoo!

This awesome tool quickly checks who is back linking to you, and then gives you a hoard of useful stats regarding those sites. You can also employ this tool to determine who is back linking to your competitors! (An ideal way for locating sites you should be acquiring links from). I even found a way to see how many times each backlinking source links back to a given site – another useful way to evaluate the “link juice” of a particular link source!

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Grab Traffic Travis Today!

1. Someone Else Just did – and they’re about to start getting your traffic!
2. It’s So Easy To Use –Even For A Newbie
3. The Tools Are Built-in So you Can not miss a step
4. With Traffic Travis, you’ll be capable to find and focus on just the MONEY keyphrases
5. In contrast to Other Systems Traffic Travis is the whole package – From Keyword Research To Placement Checking, You Even Get PPC Optimization.

Need to bone up on your Internet Marketing Skills? Check out my
comprehensive Free SEO & Internet Marketing Mini Course.

Here’s a link back to my Keyword post.

But can I afford it? Great question! Actually you can’t afford not to engage in a quality SEO campaign! Over 66% Americans go straight to the web to find small business information and it’s estimated 90% use the search engine alone to find what they’re looking for. BUT we recognize that Small Businesses operate on a budget which is why our goal is to (a) Charge less than our competitors for the same or better level of service and (b) Have you humming along well enough within 3-4 months so you can go into less expensive “maintenance mode” or even “auto-pilot” at a fraction of the price for our services. I’m aware of no other company that offers these options. Contact us today at (615) 397-6544 or by email to learn more.

Blog Collector

Dot Sauce’s Feed Listing

You should note that our good friend Traffic Travis also plays a role in all this. By running through the SEO snapshots it creates you can quickly pinpoint specific business directory listings that show up in the top 20 search listings for any specific keyword you’re seeking to rank for. This not only hands you the best directories on a silver platter but it also tells you what keyword(s) to focus on when writing your listing!

Most of these listed below are free or inexpensive to list with depending on whether or not you’re willing to place a reverse link back to the directory site or not. 

Generally I recommend paying the small fee for listing in lieu of placing a reciprocal link on your site for any directories with page rank (PR) of a “4″ or higher. Page rank (PR) rates the overall popularity according to Google’s traffic and SEO algorithm.

A small handful of these you will simply register for and leave a comment about your business which is still of value to you. Either way, I know first hand that achieving success with small business SEO and small business internet marketing involves submitting your business information to multiple online business directories.

Each of the links below open up in a new page so you are not redirected away from this site.

You can always search for more by searching for “free online business directories” on Google or perhaps directories specific to your niche.

http://google.com/local/add/businessCenter PR10

listings.local.yahoo.com PR10

https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx PR10

http://www.ubl.org/ PR7

www.merchantcircle.com PR8

www.hotfrog.com PR6

www.yelp.com PR8

www.cityslick.net PR4

Free Pegasus web directory PR3

www.insiderpages.com PR7

http://www.getfreelisting.com/Registration.aspx PR1

www.localpages.com PR4

www.somuch.com PR5

www.urbanspoon.com PR7

www.tripadvisor.com PR8

free.kudzu.com PR6

http://g.live.com/0HEWL_LOCALENUS9/118037 PR5

http://register.local.com/free/update.aspx PR7

http://www.askalix.com/uk/index.php PR N/A

http://www.tyloon.com/index.php?app=apply&step=1&grade_id=14 PR N/A

http://webapp.localeze.com/extranet/add-modify-close-business-listing.aspx PR 5

http://www.locald.com/ PR 4

http://www.bizhwy.com/ PR 3

http://www.bizfive.com/submit-site/ PR 5

http://www.vavou.com/?_kk=free%20business%20directory&_kt=f1d8bbf9-2553-4b51-8428-40b63c4bd3f6 PR 0

http://www.dazzleyellowpages.com/listing-packages.asp PR 3

http://www.sbdpro.com/admin_dir/add_url.php PR 0

http://www.businesslinedirectory.com/ PR 4

http://www.nsphereinc.com/Local_Business.html PR 3

http://www.brightpages.com/sign-up.gwt?gclid=CIGup6bT96UCFcFk7AodXhJBqA PR N/A

https://secure.ezlocal.com/newbusiness/find.aspx?RefererID=adwords&gclid=CIOv37TT96UCFZdM2godMDkHYA PR 4

http://www.businesssearchnetwork.com/index.php?req=submit_site PR N/A

http://www.jigsaw.com/ PR 6

http://advertising.superpages.com/spweb/portals/customer.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=bp_listing_find&_nfls=false&link=addListing PR 7

www.yellowpages.com PR N/A

http://botw.org/helpcenter/submitcommercial.aspx PR 6

http://www.alivedirectory.com/submit.php PR 3

http://www.webotopia.org PR 3

http://www.bizcompare.com PR 5

http://www.littlewebdirectory.com/links.asp PR 3

Whenweseo’s List of Free Directories With Traffic Ranking PR 2

Sladco Web Directory PR 4

http://linkcentre.com PR 4

Promotional Directories – Don’t Worry about PR with These

www.groupon.com (try www.groupon.com/nashville or whatever your city name is)

http://livingsocial.com/getfeatured

http://startagroupbuy.com/group-buying-site-integration/

Directory submissions can take up to 8 weeks to propagate the world wide web but your efforts are well worth it in the long run. Plus establishing backlinks slowly actually works to your advantage. Take time to do a few submissions each day and I encourage you to seek out industry specific directories as well – these prove to be particularly fruitful (example: chiroweb.com for chiropractors) even it there’s a charge associated with submissions.