In this article I want to have a closer look at SEO. It’s a subject that takes a lot to get your head around, especially if you’re not familiar with internet marketing. People often say to us something like, “I want to take the number one position for “massage” in Google.”

To which I reply, “Okay have you got the right kind of business model in place to get a good return on investment?”

To which is often replied to with…. blank stares, or silence.

I’ll explain what I mean. With a keyword like “massage” there is a fairly large search volume, and a large amount of competition. According to Google there is over 20 million searches per month, and over 302 million competing pages.

To go for that keyword would not be viable for most people.

So a keyword like “remedial massage” still has 27,100 searches per month, and only 628,000 competing pages.

Now this keyword would be more viable to rank #1 for.

Still, you need to understand your business model well enough to know if it’s worth going for a keyword like this.

So for example you might be selling a $12 e-book about remedial massage. Now to take the #1 spot in Google for “remedial massage” is possible, but it could take months, and the cost will be quite high. It will either cost you time to build enough links to take the #1 spot (if you’re good at SEO). OR, it will cost you money ($1000′s) to pay someone to do it for you. So it’s either going to cost you time, or money.

Once you do take the #1 position, you would have to sell perhaps 250 or more of those $12 e-books just to break even, before you make any profit.  It may not be worth the investment.

So you can see how important it is to understand your business model first, before undertaking an SEO campaign. On the other hand, if you were selling remedial massage as a service to customers who might pay $300 per session, you would recoup your investment much faster, and be more likely to profit.

One example I have used in the past is that of the painter. This particular painter understood his business very well, and knew that his average customer is worth $1400.

In his local area there is 880 seaches per month for “local area painter”. And there is only a relatively small level of competing pages – 32,900. So with an investment of $3000 for a few months of SEO, he was able to take the #1 position in Google in 58 days.

When the website had reached #4 position in Google, he already had 5 jobs generated from people finding the site in Google. Within 2 months, he had made just under $15000 from those 5 jobs. Giving him a 500% ROI.

After taking the #1 position there is no need to keep on building links, so there is no ongoing cost. But the business keeps rolling in. This is awesome for business owners. When you compare SEO to TV advertising, the ROI can be much, much higher. Don’t get me wrong, TV ads are great, but when you stop paying… the ads stop getting air time, and…the phone stops ringing.

Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of how SEO can work for you.

Has the Yellow Pages died a slow and shameful death?

With the debate heating up about whether on not the Yellow Pages is still useful for businesses to advertise in, people on the street give a revealing insight into why the Yellow Pages could be yesterdays news. This video also highlights the importance for business to have a strong presence on the internet. It is no longer profitable to just have a website. It really must be visible to the huge group of people who are searching on Google.

This Google vs Yellow Pages video highlights an important point that EVERY BUSINESS OWNER must pay attention to.

The results swing overwhelmingly in favour of Google, with over 92% of people opting to use Google over the Yellow Pages.

There’s a few interesting points I’ve taken out of this video.

The majority of people don’t know what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) means. Here’s it is in a nutshell – SEO is what goes on behind the scenes of a website that makes it get to the first position in Google.

Here’s some more points:

• 46% visit top few results
• 30% click only top 5 results in Google
• 100% never go past the first page

What this tells us is that if you’re not at the very least on the first page of Google, you have little chance of being found. And to maximize your websites potential you should be in the top 3 results.

Click To Enlarge

And that is further demonstrated by the heat maps released by Google. You can see that the majority of Clicks happen around the top 5 results, and drop off considerably down towards the 10th result.

If you need help to get your website to the top 5 positions in Google to catch that valuable market we’re here to help you. Check out our SEO packages or have a friendly chat with one of our consultants today.

What do you use the Yellow Pages for?

• To raise the height of your computer monitor?
• Door stop?
• Excellent mini step ladders for the hard to reach places around your house or business;
• A seat for the vertically challenged?

Leave your comments below!

Read This First!

Instructions To Get Continual Traffic For FREE!

You’re about to discover how to get powerful back links and continual traffic by using these Google codes. I have used these same codes to snatch page 1 rankings in Google for tons of different keywords. If you implement what you discover here, 1st page rankings are yours! Which means more traffic, continual traffic and more sales/profit. Sound good?

Okay, this first lot of Google codes will find you WordPress blogs to comment on and get lots of link juice back to your website and increase your ranking in Google. And I’ve included a lot more than 10 of these codes.

Step 1

First copy and paste the code in each box into the Google search bar.

Step 2

Once you’ve copy and pasted the code into the Google search bar, replace the “ADD YOUR KEYWORD” with your own keyword then hit “Search”. This will bring up a whole list of websites related to “your keyword” that you can comment on. Click on the websites 1 by 1 leaving a comment as you go. That will give you a nice juicy backlink to your site. (Be sure to leave genuine comments that are relevant and ad value to the blog or website you’re commenting on, and you’ll reap the rewards)

Copy and paste your Google code into the Google search bar

And I’ll also ad that when you’re leaving your website address, ALWAYS include the http:// on the front.

So this will work–>> http://www.websitefactoryplus.com

This won’t work–>>www.websitefactoryplus.com

WordPress Sites – COPY AND PASTE!

Comment Luv & Keyword Luv

Okay, this second lot of Google codes can be used to find sites that use the Comment luv and Keyword Luv plugins. It is especially useful for getting backlinks to individual posts on your site. I’ll explain why – when you’re commenting on blogs you can only link back to your root domain, and not an extension (also known as deep linking).

A root domain looks like this – http://www.websitefactoryplus.com

An extension looks like this – http://www.websitefactoryplus.com/seo/how-to-get-on-the-first-page-on-google-instantly/

So basically an extension is anything with a forward slash after your main domain name. Comment Luv enabled blogs get around this by letting you link back to any page or post within your website, which is a great way to get keyword related links to any page on your site.

And the Keyword Luv enabled blogs allow you to use your KEYWORD instead of your name (normally doing this borders on spamming, but on keyword luv sites it is encouraged.

Squidoo

The next Google code allows you to locate Squidoo Lenses that allow you to get links. You need to have signed up to sqiudoo which is very easy.  What you do next is click on the Squidoo Lens, and you’ll find at the bottom there is a “list”. Now you can click on “Ad to this list”. Then you ad your website URL. And make sure that your description is original and contains your keywords.

Government Sites

These Google codes will find you high page rank government and .edu sites to get links from. In the world of SEO, links from .gov and .edu sites are highly coveted. In Googles eyes, just one link from a government site is worth many links from non .gov or .edu sites. Very few people know how to get links from government sites. So use these codes to get some mega link juice…

Have a play around with these too

To find Australian gov sites just ad on site:.edu.au OR site:.gov.au to replace the site:.gov OR site:.edu of the Google codes above.

Blog Engine Sites

Resources mentioned in the video:

SEO Quake plugin for Firefox

Leave your comments below! I’m very open to answering any questions you have, and I’ll do what ever I can to help you to get on the first page of Google.

This is a little known technique to get you on the first page of Google in just a few hours.

Resources mentioned in this video:

• http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=123668
• http://www.pressreleasepoint.com/paid-and-free-press-release-site-list
• Webwire
• Website Factory Fan Page

What did you think of this video? Leave your comments below.

This is another cool little thing I want to show you, it’s how you can get free traffic from twitter to build your list.

But first you must have one thing.

Now if you’ve been marketing online, or anywhere for the matter, you’ll understand the importance of using FREE in your marketing. Basically you give people really cool free stuff to kick in the principle of reciprocation. You give them something for free, they feel indebted to you, and compelled to return the kindness.

Any way, if you’re marketing online you’re probably giving something away for free to get people to sign up to your list, and more often than not that free thing is an e-book or free report, right?

And you’ll either have the opt-in form on your website/blog, or you’ll have a squeeze page built just for collecting leads.

Okay here’s where the fun starts. Twitter is awesome as a marketing tool, and it’s especially awesome when you leverage others peoples Twitter. The cool part is –>> for this exercise you don’t even need a twitter account!

Heres what you do. Go into your free report or ebook that you’re giving away. Next you simply put a text link right at the very bottom of your report. You can also use an image like the tweet this image i have used. Feel free to use this one.

We have found using the term “Help Us Spread The Word About (Your ebook)“ gets a great response, and making the colour dark red works well.

Next you’ll hyper link to the image. So in your program like MS word or Open Office click on the image and insert a hyperlink.

And this is the hyper link you insert (obviously with your own tweet.)

http://twitter.com/home/?status=Free+report+reveals+how+to+make+your+website+pull+4+times+more+business.

+Check+it+out+http://bit.ly/bBTjY2

Basically after the ?status=, you put in your tweet, and use the plus symbol instead of a space.

So here’s the trick, make sure the web address is your squeeze page or your blog (not the URL of your free report). So that way any one who clicks on that link from Twitter will be directed to your squeeze page and will sign up for your free report/ebook.

What I’ve also done, and I urge you to do the same, is to use a link shortening service like bit.ly. Once you’ve got your web address shortened you can track exactly how many people are clicking on it and where they are clicking from. Use this shortened link in your tweet instead of your squeeze page or blog web address.

Now what happens when people click on your retweet this button, is it will take them to their twitter account, then all they do is push tweet. So you can see that leveraging other peoples twitter accounts is a smart thing to do. There is almost no work to be done by you.

So have fun with this, and put the retweet button in your free report or ebook take advantage of the viral nature of twitter.

I’ve got some free small business marketing ideas that will generate a ton of new leads, business and cash flow, and you may be shocked at what I share with you. First there’s a concept you need to grasp to be successful. It’s called tracking, testing and measuring.

You can assess how effective a marketing strategy is by measuring and tracking the results you get. In fact, I consider tracking and measuring results compulsory for the success of your business.

Think about it for a minute – if you’re spending $45,000 a year on a Yellow Pages ad for example, then you would want to know how much return on investment you’re getting. One simple way to do this is by asking every customer how they found your business. (You can do this on your website, in person, over the phone, at the checkout with a simple little slip of paper with check boxes and so on..) It may seem very simple and obvious, but I am surprised how many business owners have no idea what’s working for them in terms of their marketing. Okay, let’s say that you’re spending $45,000 on a Yellow Pages ad, and you find after 3 months only a handful of people are finding you through the Yellow Pages, then you have two options.

1. Cut it out and instantly save $45,000 a year (then reinvest that budget into something that does work)
2. Get a savvy direct response marketing professional to write a Yellow Pages ad that DOES ATTRACT A TON OF BUSINESS and pays for itself.

But if you don’t track your results, then you’ll never know right?

Now here’s something really cool>>> You may have heard that Facebook recently came snapping at the heels of Google, as the most trafficked (not sure if that’s a real word but I’m going with it) website in the world. Facebook has over 500 million active users, and 50% of that are on Facebook on any given day. Now that’s a huge audience, imagine advertising your business to even a fraction of that number (it’s still huge) I’ll show you how you can tap into that for free.

Google vs Facebook

Here’s some stats from Alexa.com This graph compares the page views between Google and Facebook.

One objection I hear from business owners is “Facebook is for kids and young people. My target audience is 26-35′s”. Well have a look at this pie chart below . 24% of Facebook users are aged 26-34. (That’s still 120 million people in the 26-34 aged group)

Okay let’s get to it! Here’s one of the best free small business marketing ideas you’ll ever see (hopefully:) The first thing you need is a Facebook account. It’s dead simple to set one up, if you don’t have one yet. Next let’s start reaching your customers. We’re going to make a Facebook fanpage.

The advantage of this is you can connect with your customers, build relationships and it’s a great way to learn about what your customers want and interact with them, all from the huge investment of $0. Also remember that it’s not just about advertising and saying “buy my stuff”, it’s like a listening tool. If you know what they want, you can taylor your service to exactly what your customers want. And of course it grows virally, when someone becomes a fan, all their friends see that and they may become a fan, then their friends see it and may become a fan and so on in a viral manner.

Go to: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?

Facebook Fanpages

Make your page and invite your friends. As you go through the process of inviting your friends you may find it tedious because you have to invite them one by one.  The quickest way to invite lots of people to your fan page is to use my simple method. Copy and paste this javascript code into your browser and boom, all your friends are invited instantly(as shown below).

javascript:elms=document.getElementById(‘friends’).getElementsByTagName(‘li’);for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === ‘object’){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

All your friends are now invited to your page

If you don’t have many friends, we have a great service that gets you A TON fans, just contact me and I’ll be glad to help.

Here’s a page I made for fun, after the fan treatment it kept on growing every day (virally) And of course you can track everything online to see what’s working.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?#!/pages/I-Love-Cool-Free-Shit/139437616075816 (right now it’s up to 566 fans)

Next follow the prompts, it’s fairly easy from there to ad your profile picture and content.

The next free marketing idea is Youtube marketing. Youtube has become the 2nd biggest search engine in the world. It’s 2nd only to Google. It’s bigger than Yahoo and MSN. And it’s free to have a presence there, more about Youtube in the next article.

In the past few years the use of online marketing has become a cornerstone to the success of almost very business today. I could safely say, that if a business doesn’t have a website or some kind of online presence, they are missing out on profits for their business. The market online is huge. To my surprise, after  talking to many business owners i have discovered some businesses still do not have a website. In this situation, their competitors who are online are literally stealing the customers out of the market.

I was at a BBQ the other day talking to a friend of mine who is a painting contractor. I asked him if he ever thought of getting a website, and looked at me like i had a second head growing out of my shoulder.

Google seacrhes are rising for EVERY BUSINESS

“What do i need a website for? Who’s going to look for painting contractors on the internet?”, he said, like it was the most ridiculous suggestion in the world. (He is from the old school). I replied, ” Actually, you would be amazed at what people look for on the internet.”

Filled with curiosity, i had to do a bit  of research and find out exactly how many people were searching for “local area painting contractors”, and a few other related keywords. Sitting at the computer with burgers in one hand, i showed him that there was actually 895 people a month looking for a “local area painter” on Google.

“Okay, so let’s just say that we built you a website which could secure you just 20 of those 895 people searching a month, as clients for your business”. So we quickly did the math and found that over the course of a year, his average client was worth $970. “Now if we get you 20 out of those 895 people a month (which is quite achievable) it would be an extra $19,000 per month”. This is when he started to pay more attention. Over a year, that website would generate an extra $228,000 for his business. “I don’t know anything about running a website, what would i have to do?”, was his next question.

Marketing your business online gives you a massive ROI

“You don’t do anything except work out how you’re going to handle the extra business”.

Even after the initial investment of $4500 for the website, and $9600 yearly in SEO, maintenance and updates, he’s still $213,900 richer.

What is it that makes websites such a success?

Direct response marketing. I want to give you some Direct response marketing tips to use on your website to make it a profit center for your business. Just grab your free copy of “The Secret Online Profit Formula” (up the top right), and you can start  implementing these direct response techniques today to increase your cash flow and profits.

If you’re serious about your business succeeding, you have to understand a few simple laws.

The first one I want to talk about is the power of free. Let’s have a look at one of the most successful, and richest companies in the world.

Google gives us a free email service, free advertising vouchers, free chat features and more...

Google. Now for the most part, “Google” will never appear on any of our credit card statements. And not many of us will ever get a bill from Google, or have to pay Google any money.

So how did they become one of the richest companies in the world?

By the power of free! They give something away for free, that something being the search engine, that we all probably use daily, right? With so many millions of people using their free stuff (the search engine), a lot of doors open up for Google.

• They can market to us for free, because we’re there, on their website every day.

• They can charge people to advertise with them, because they have such a huge customer base. That’s where they make their billions.

So let’s learn from the best, and do what Google does…. Give something away that’s really cool, something that your customers are going to love! That’s what get’s them interested, and keeps them coming back. I love free stuff. Everyone loves free stuff.Okay, so  you may be asking, “But I own a mechanical repair shop, what can i give away for free?” Well something like a free 30 point safety check, or a discounted service where you change the oil and spark plugs.

Or you may own a hair salon. In that case you could give away a 30% discount voucher, or a two for the price of one deal voucher on your website that people enter their name and email to get access to. That way you have their details, and you can market to them for free, let them know when you’re doing future special offers, sales and send them reminders when they’re due for the next haircut.

That’s where the next law comes in to effect. The law of reciprocity. When you do something for someone, and they consider it to be nice, or a kind gesture, or something free, people feel like they want to do something nice for you. Essential repay the favor. The law of reciprocity is a universal law, you can’t change it. But you can use it if you know how, to grow your business. I’ll talk more about that in the next article.

Remember to get your free copy of “The Secret Online Profit Formula”. Just enter your details up the top right hand side. Inside I’ll reveal a multitude of  overlooked opportunities, and under utilized assets you can use to grow your business. Inside is a voucher that entitles you to a free Internet Marketing Consulting session, which I normally charge $500 for. If you’re serious about growing your business and increasing your profits, Download “The Secret Online Profit Formula” today.

I want to share with you the biggest secret to spending less on your marketing while increasing your profits.

Are you ready?

Here it is – the first thing you have to do is change what marketing you’re doing now. That might sound way too simple but it’s true. And if you’re not marketing at all, then you need to start marketing your business. There’s a well known saying that goes, “The definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect a different result”. So if what you’re doing now isn’t working for you, or you’re not getting the results you want, which I’m guessing is the reason why you’re reading this – change what you’re doing!

As a business owner you are very skillful at what you do right? That’s why you started your business. If you’re a painter, you are very skilled at painting. If you’re a lawyer, you’re very skilled at the in and outs of the legal system and helping people in that area. If you’re an electrician, you have to know about wiring and how electricity works.

Now just because you’re a very skilled painter, it doesn’t mean that you know how to write a good news paper ad, or construct a yellow pages ad that brings in a lot of business. Or if you’re a professional tiler, it doesn’t mean that you know how to write a good newsletter or post card to send out to your ideal prospects. If you’re a Lawyer, you may not know the best practices for internet advertising. At the end of the day as a business owner, being highly skilled at what you do doesn’t put a single cent in your bank account. What does put money in your bank account is finding new customers who need your service or product.

Knowing how to build an effective marketing system that generates non-stop customers is the biggest asset that you can have for your business. You might think your best asset is your tools, or your employees, or your skills in what you do. This is where most business owners are mistaken. With out good marketing and advertising, none of your customers are going to find you. So as you probably realize, even if you’re the most highly skilled professional in the world, if no one knows about you and you don’t get new customers, and you don’t get money coming in, your business will die very quickly.

Now you probably have a website  right? If you don’t you’re missing out on a lot of business. So listen, I want to give you a free gift revealing how you can make your website easily bring in 400% more business by making a few simple changes, and learn how to implement some highly effective small business internet advertising strategies. There’s also a bunch of things that I will show you, revealing how to increase your cash flow, profits, and attract loads of new customers all for free, using marketing strategies that don’t involve the internet.

Here’s what you do:

Just enter your details on the top right of this website to get “The Secret Online Profit Formula” for free.