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I’m constantly answering newbie questions at the ListBuilding Club, which is great fun. Helping people to learn how to create an online business is probably the most fun part of being in online business, for me. And as the Project Manager for the LBC, I do lots of training for our members. I can tell you… there are questions that come up over and over and over again.

The biggest one is, “Why do I need a blog, and why can’t I just use a free one?”

I get that. People don’t have a lot of money to spend, especially in this economy. And they want to go the “Free” route every time.  Can’t say I blame them. When you’re making no money yet, online expenses can mount. Yet, the old saw “You have to spend money to make money,” applies online just as it does off. You cannot possibly have a successful online business without breaking a few dollars. You just can’t!

Host Your Own

One expense that is really important is that of self-hosting your blog. I know there are lots of free blog sites like WordPress.com, Blogger, ClearBlogs.com, and Tumblr to name only a few, but guess what? You can’t be commercial at any of those places. Blogger allows you to use AdSense, but that’s about it. The other sites will just shut you down without warning for marketing on your blog–even just posting an affiliate link, and you’ll lose every bit of work you put into it. No recourse, and no, they won’t give it back.

The cheapest and fastest way to have a powerful website is by setting up a WordPress blog. This comes from WordPress.ORG, and it’s open source (=free), search engine friendly software that is also so user friendly, it’s amazing. I’ve used WordPress blogs for years and I haven’t found an equal to them. Oh sure, people swear by Drupal, TypePad, and other platforms, but they’re just not as customizable and marketer friendly, at least in my experience.

So, you have a free WordPress blog. The next step is buying a great domain for it. At GoDaddy, the cost of a domain is currently under $10 a year.  That’s like 3 cents per day for your own domain, 21 cents a week, or 90 cents a month. Cheap! So, decide what your blog will be about and get a domain that includes a keyword for that topic in it. Keep it short, make it a .com, and stay away from dashes or anything hard for people to type into the address bar or remember. If you want to get maximum SEO benefit, register the name for 2 years. This way, Google will look at you as a more serious blogger, and it will be easier for you to rank.

OK… we’re up to 90 cents a month… cool.

Now, you need a place to host the domain and your blog.

The best hosting company I have found online (and I’ve been doing this for almost 6 years, remember) is HostGator.  Don’t get the minimum account because you’ll outgrow that much too fast. Cough up the dough for the “Baby” Gator account, which is only $7.95 a month if you pay for the entire year up front. That would be $95.40. Sweet! But if you can’t afford that, you can go the monthly route, and pay $9.95 a month for your account.

Check this out: For around $11 a month, you now have your own domain, a powerful hosting account, and with Fantastico (which is available at HostGator), you can install a WordPress blog with the push of a button. It will take you all of about 5 minutes to do it.

Your in business, baby!

Where else can you spend $10.85 a month and have a business? Only online!

Other concerns

There are other considerations, like you have to change your nameservers and such, but there is a solution to that, if none of this is making sense. The ListBuilding Club will take you by the hand and walk you through all of this in easy-to-understand videos. Brian Edomondson, my good friend and Chief Video Instructor, is a natural teacher, and he makes it all very easy for you.

Right now, there’s a trial membership going, so jump on over and sign up! I only wish that I had had the option of joining the LBC when I was starting out. It would have cut my learning curve by more than half.

Anyway, blogging is a great way to start out! AND, when the blog is on your hosting account, you can do anything with it you like. Nobody can tell you what content you can have or that you aren’t allowed to advertise. Plus, nobody can shut you down for that. Blogging is really a great way to begin, so don’t wait… get your blogging engines started!

I did a call the other night about  blogging, and one of the questions I was asked was, “How can I tell if someone else has already used the material I bought from an outsourcer?”  I didn’t have a good web software or other source for that, and it bothered me. I’m known for having the answers, and when I’m asked a question I can’t answer fuly, well… I can’t rest until I find an answer and provide it.

What I’ve done to track down dupe content in the past is just to grab a unique phrase from whatever it is, and Google it. You’d be surprised at how Google can catch stuff like that. But, it’ s certainly not a foolproof solution.

Today, I found a site called “CopyScape,” and it’s not a hidden resource. In fact, Google partners with them to find dupe content on the Web. You can run a free search there for any web page, or you can pay $0.05 per search for content pieces. That means, you can do lots of searches very inexpensively. You can also monitor your content for folks, who might be pulling it right from your site.  That’s pretty sweet, if you worry about that sort of thing.

It’s happened to me. Someone decided to rip off my blog verbatim, and put it on his own blog without proper attribution. Grr. As a professional writer, that really pisses me off!

But I’m lucky with outsource content. I have two really great outsource people that I trust.

But if I were buying a lot of articles from Elance.com, or one of the other outsource sites, from people that I didn’t know, you can betcha I’d be using CopyScape to check every piece before I paid good money for recycled articles. You should, too.

I’ve been at this business for almost 6 years now, and have accumulated a ton of useful knowledge. I’m grateful for that, and just absolutely LOVE learning stuff — new stuff all the time. And I’m very lucky because working for Overcome Everything gets me lots of cool info that I couldn’t afford myself. It’s really a super perk of the job.

So, with all this stuff in my brain, I’m asked to do teleseminars often.  I love that! Teleseminars are absolutely the best way to get people interested in who you are and what you know that can help them to move their businesses forward. You gain their respect, trust, and because of those things, you make money. People buy from people they know and trust.

The best of all situations, of course, if having your own teleseminar series. Here’s a link for you: http://easyseotricks.com/13th . I can attest to the fact that this system works, and that it gives you a MUCH bigger list than the one you have now.

The thing is that you can’t be shy. Shy will NOT work in business. So, get over yourself, right now! Anyone can use the strategies that the link above gives you… anyone.

So, last night, I did a teleseminar with someone who started out as a customer of mine and Telman’s and he quickly became a friend. His name is Rick Burdo, and he’s a disabled Veteran. He can’t even type because of his disability, and so does all of his pages with voice recognition software. It’s amazing! He’s really struggled through a LOT to put his whole system together, and now, he’s actually doing it.

What’s your hurdle?

You don’t have to know everything about your topic. All you have to do is assemble a group of experts who do. Then, you interview them. Simple, right? It’s not that tough getting experts in your niche, either, because they want to sell their stuff to your list and get all the cool respect, trust, etc. from new people that they’ve not met before.

Then, when you put all of the interviews together, you have a product, and… it’s a great product because of all the information that the experts have put forth. It has nothing to do with you or your expertise! It’s how Tellman built a multi-million dollar busines and then, he was able to hire me and 14 other folks! So, now, how enticing are teleseminars, huh?

I’m telling you… they’re the BOMB!

Want to know the particulars? Check this out: http://easyseotricks.com/13th Believe me… it’s amazing what one simple teleseminar series can do for your business and your wallet. Amazing.

OK… Didn’t get those 10 comments, so… you lose. Can’t give you the rest of that really, really cool advice. But, I’ll give you another chance.

You win!

I’m doing a call about blogging for business with Rick Burdo for his Disabled Veterans Teleseminar Training Series tonight. I’m kicking things off!

So, if you’d like to hear what I have to say, along with 11 other smart speakers, including Tellman, Erik Stafford, Kyle Battis, Mike Purvis, Jeff Mills, and a bunch of other cool people…

Click Here to Sign Up for the Disabled Veterans Teleseminar Training Series that starts at 8 p.m. EST tonight!

Oh, yeah… it’s free. How cool is that?

Something that comes up time and again in calls, in email, on the phone with clients is that they can’t get started because there’s so much stuff coming at them all the time from people whose lists they’ve joined. They’re overwhelmed and unhappy and why aren’t they making all the big bucks they’ve been promised?

OK… I get that. I’ve been in this game for almost 6 years now, and I felt the same way at the beginning when I was a newbie. But I wanted to learn. I wanted to be the smartest and best damned Internet marketer on the planet, and I wanted to make all that money and have that Ferrari – Beachside – Buy Anything You Want, Anytime lifestyle, too. It was all so much fun and I figured it would all just gel in my brain one day.

And it did.

But though I knew a LOT of stuff (and still do, BTW), want to know how much good it did me?

NONE!

I was trying this and that. I had four blogs going. I was driving traffic ineffectively, and though I knew a ton of stuff, I wasn’t making ANY money! It was frustrating and time consuming and I couldn’t look away for an instant because well… I was sure that I would get the big break any second, and I really needed the extra money, and well… it just never happened.

In my case, I was lucky. Tellman happened, and my IM life was transformed.

Want to know how?… Come back on Monday and I’ll tell ya.

But, only if I get at least 10 good comments. (No “nice post” comments will do. Tell me your thoughts or what you’re feeling about all this right now!) Make a comment and the secret will be revealed. Otherwise…  Hmm… I guess you’ll just have to keep being overwhelmed.

The question that gets asked most by new Internet marketers is, “What niche should I be in?” I think. They have ideas about what they’d like to do, but are concerned about whether or not it will be a “good” niche, and rightly so. Selling clothes for racoons probably isn’t a great idea.

What to do?

Research.

The first thing to do is to think about what you really like to do and what you can work on for hours and hours without becoming tired or bored. What’s your passion? That’s really important. If your heart isn’t in it, guess what, neither will your mind be.

So, your first step is to sit down and to make a list of things you really enjoy doing, no matter what those things might be. It’s amazing that there are markets online for some things you’d think will never sell. And then again, things you think are a sure fit might totally suck. Or, they might be seasonal. Or, they might be so over.

Once you have your list, take your search for a niche over to http://SEOBook.com. Plug each word into the search bar and see how many searches a day are happening in Google. If you find that 3,000 to 10,000 searches are being performed each month, you’re on the right track. But that’s just the first step.

Move over to the column that says “G Trends,” and see whether the trend for whatever you’re searching is rising, falling or consistent. Rising and consistent is good. Falling isn’t.

Then, move over again to “Google TE” and see how much people are playing for clicks at Google AdWords. Anything over $1 is promising.  Anything under that is iffy.

So, there are some general rules of thumb. SEOBook, also has a great blog. Peter D, who  wrote “How to Spot Keyword Trends,”  pulls Twitter into the mix, and some other factors that you can track to decide on a good niche to be in.

The whole idea is… do it! Why waste a lot of time working on things that nobody is interested in? You’ll lose time and money chasing something that just won’t work.

Just got back into town after a whirlwind trip to New York City. Tellman took most of us up for the 2009 American Business Awards, affectionately known as the “Stevie Awards.”

It was pretty swanky. We stayed in the Marriot Marquis, which is right in the heart of Times Square. In fact, we could look out the window and see the whole corner… pretty nifty. (Click on the link to see our view.)

The sad part is that we didn’t win. <sniff> Oh, well… there’s always next year.

But the Internet was well represented. Among finalists such as AT&T and Delta Faucet were names like ConstantContact, SchoolDude.com, and even Matt Bacak was there, representing a totally different category from ours. Sorry to say that Matt’s company didn’t win either, but at least we got to hang out with him a little later that night,  in Koreatown.

Not winning was important. We were nominated as one of the fastest growing companies with under 100 employees in the country! That’s pretty huge, right? But what I’m thinking is that if that was so for 2008… we have a big  job ahead of us for 2009, and we’re toally up for the task.

The truth is, we’re a very dedicated bunch and we really do care. We all want folks to learn and earn that extra money they need from an online business, or to even start a new business of their own so they can stop buying all that gas commuting to a job they hate every day. Whatever people want to achieve, we want to make that happen for them. The money comes from that, sure, but the money really isn’t the goal. I’m just blessed to be part of such a great company.

And the OE gang is totally fun to hang with, too.  We did a whole walk of the city yesterday morning from Times Square to Central Park to Madison Ave., and let me tell you… my feet hate my guts. It’s not smart to wear new shoes when you’ll be walking like 15 blocks after an awards dinner, and then start all over the next morning and walk for like an hour and a half without stopping. Argh! We’re talking major blisters, people!

But it was still great fun. Wish you’d been there.

I’m so excited to have a friend of mine take the time to make a great video for my blog. His name is Wayne Sharer, and he’s done a great job of explaining the basics of keyword research, and I know that if you’re just starting out and aren’t sure of the process… Wayne will clear things up for you, so pay attention!

Learn something? Well… I hope you have and that you’ll visit Wayne at http://YourTrafficStarterBlog.com. He’s got some great traffic videos for you there, and I know they’ll be helpful, especially if you’re just starting out.

I’ll be back atcha with another post on Wednesday. I’m actually on my way to New York City today. You see, Overcome Everything is nominated as one of the fastest growing companies in the country for the American Business Awards. I’m really excited because I was lucky enough to get to write the entry that landed us the nomination.

So, Tellman is taking a bunch of us to the dinner and the ceremony. Pretty cool. Wish us luck! That would be one of the coolest things that’s ever happened and it wouldn’t be too bad for business, either. Ha!

Ever have one of THOSE days? Well… I did today. Nothing seemed to have been done right… out of my hands… just a victim of getting others to do things for you and not following up. Who’s court is the ball in ultimately? Mine, of course.

Or, how about those days when you don’t see any sales, no optins, nothing working no matter how hard you try! I get that. Been there…

I have a friend who’s vlog will totally pick you up and set you on the straight road again. Energy and how to channel it is important. But that’s only one aspect of her vlog that I know you’ll enjoy…

http://www.reneevations.com/vlog

Make your day!

I was over at SEO Book, reading Aaron Wall’s post from June 16, entitled “Expert SEO Testing: Usually Worthless,” and was surprised to learn that rel=”nofollow” no longer works. Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson, admitted that was true at the recent SMX Conference.

So, Wall linked to Danny Sullivan’s post “Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting,” which made me curious. So I went over to Danny’s blog, which explains the situation in much clearer detail.

Page rank sculpting is the practice of adding “no follow” to links going to your overhead pages, like your privacy page, your terms of service, or other pages that you don’t want ranked in the search results. It used to be that if you had 10 units of page rank and each link on your page was worth 1, when you added “no follow” to 5 of those links, they would transfer their page rank to the remaining links, right? So, then, each of the bare links would be worth 2.

What Matt Cutts is telling everyone now is that “no follow” no longer transfers page rank to the bare links. So, basically, by using no follow, you’re merely wasting PR. The “no follow” links will be worth zero, but the bare links will still only be worth 1.

I should say, “Is,” because apparently, this has been true for about a year and nobody noticed.

Great.

If you’re using “no follow,” don’t run around trying to change the links back to bare links. It’s not worth the time and effort. Just understand that you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s a waste of time.

Why did Google decide to institute the practice in the first place? Basically, to stop blog comment spamming, and yet, it didn’t really stop anything, so it “no follow” means “bupkiss.” It’s like the keywords META tag. Another useless convention.

Put your time into more important things like developing good, unique content and solid keyword research. Those should always pay off. I say, “should,” because there’s just no accounting for the whim of the Google ghods.

Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s happening, and try not to get caught up in the fads or fancies. Nobody truly knows the algorithm but Google, and they’re changing it all the time. Even the few people who claim to know it probably have no 100% clear idea.

Danny is an awesome video creator… He teaches you stuff and it’s fun to watch!

OK, so I’m the project manager for The ListBuilding Club and totally love, love, love it. And why wouldn’t I? I’ve helped create it, have maintained it, and work on it 100% of my time for Overcome Everything. I’m prejudiced. But we have hundreds of people, if not thousands who would agree with me.

The site starts at the beginning with picking a niche, getting a domain name, setting up a blog and so on. I mean, it’s step-by-step video training that anyone can follow. It just rocks and we’re constantly working on what we have to offer to make it better and better. We really care that people love it and are able to use what they learn and take it to the bank.

But that’s not why I’m writing here.

I’m writing to tell you about our affiliate program. It’s awesome! I mean, where else can you get $20 – $29 a month from every customer you refer and pays for his or her membership? That keeps on coming! It’s an awesome site to promote, and something you can be proud to represent.

Want to join us?

http://EasySEOTricks.com/AA

Sell 50 memberships to the LBC and then, you can apply to be an affiliate for our high-end coaching programs that bring in MUCH bigger commissions. Show us you know your stuff and you stand to make a great deal of cash!

But here’s a cool thing:

Even if you’re new to this whole affiliate marketing environment, we’re there to help you. Every Friday, we’re putting on training teleseminars that will teach you what you need to know to promote and make money with our system. You’ll love it!

So, sign up now and be part of the team. We’re waiting to help you make the cash you need to get by in these tough times.

Oh wait???? What’s that? I mean, really. If you’re a good affiliate marketer, there is no recession. It’s awesome!

So many folks are unaware of how devastating a domain name change can be… if it’s not handled properly. The search robots will freak out when they go looking for your website or blog and POOF! It’s gone. (At least to them.)

There is a way to handle a domain name change so that it doesn’t affect your rankings, and it’s known as a “Mod Rewrite.” For example, if you change the permalink structure in your WordPress blog, the blog automatically writes a small file to explain to robots what happened and where they can find the content presently.

This concept isn’t an easy one, but I found a great description and “how to” today in the Search Engine Journal blog by Sherice Jacob, entitled appropriately, “How to Change Your Domain While Keeping Your Search Engine Ranking.” This article explains .htaccess and what you need to do to appease the spiders. Very good explanation that is bound to help you if you’re planning to take this step.

If you’re not a big name in the Internet marketing world, it may not be as easy as you like to get subscribers for your list. Here are some ways to encourage people to sign up…

WordPress came out with version 2.8 today and I didn’t wait an hour to install the new version. Why would I when the blog will do it for you, eh? I mean, they’re making things easier and easier and I’m loving it!

So, what’s new? The color of my dashboard changed. It’s now a putty grey with blue headers. Hmm… not that thrilling.

But there are some things that don’t show. They have fixed some 790+ bugs. That works for me. I’ve been getting kicked off Firefox when trying to add an image. Let’s hope THAT one is fixed.

One of the coolest improvements is that WP2.8 allows you to search for and change themes without leaving your blog. Not too bad. As a constant theme changer, this is very cool for moi.

The widgets interface looks different now, too. Plus, you can drag and drop to add or delete, and I like that the old information goes away when you get rid of one. Plus, now, when you add a widget, you don’t have to save the content in it and the sidebar, too. Only one save is sufficient.

Anyway, here’s a list of all the upgrades, if you want to read through it: http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.8

The changes aren’t quite as sweeping as they were with WP 2.7, but hey… they’re still pretty sweet.

Do you know what the “Open Directory Project” is? If you don’t, and you’re interested in getting a really top notch backlink, you should. The directory belongs to Google.

DMOZ.org (AKA ODP) is an Internet Directory that is human edited, and the listing is free. And though it’s an awesome backlink to have, the listing is very difficult to acquire. In fact, one of the only ways that gives you an edge is to become a DMOZ editor. That means you have to select, describe and organize websites to increase the size of the directory, and it’s not easy to become an editor, either.

You have to apply. You have to select a few sites in the category you want to edit and supply descriptions for them. And you have to remain active. Any editor who hasn’t been active in four months will be expired. So, it’s not a “do it now and then” sort of thing.

So, what should you do?

Find the appropriate category for your site, submit, and keep your fingers crossed. You MIGHT get into the directory. However, it’s not certain. I entered Tellman’s Instant ADD Success site in there almost three years ago, and there is still no listing for that.

What’s the bottom line?

Don’t worry too much about getting a DMOZ listing. It’s great to have, but not critical. I’d still submit my site, but make perfectly sure that I’m in the correct category and that my site is quality enough to add. Who knows? You could get lucky and some smart editor will be happy to enter your site.

But don’t hold your breath.

And don’t try to get crappy AdSense sites, squeeze pages, or other sites into the directory that don’t contain good, solid content. That’s just bogging the editors down and not providing good content for the Web. Your site will probably never be listed, anyway. Use good judgment when submitting and follow the instructions carefully. Then, you at least have a fighting chance.

The other day, I was over at SmartPageRank.com checking on this blog because I heard that Google had updated PR rankings again, and was curious. I had recovered from the paid links drop to PR0 back up to PR3 again, and was hoping maybe I could see a PR4 (where the blog was before the nasty debacle). I really shouldn’t care, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. But… I was totally surprised when…

I saw a PR0 again! Wow! That really pissed me off. And sure enough… days later, the PR0 appeared in my Search Status (see yesterday’s post) toolbar again.

I’m sorry but I won’t stop selling links. So, there, Google! My links have been there a long time, and so, people are obviously finding value in having them there. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to take that away from them. They were loyal to me before Google decided to penalize people for having paid links, and I seriously doubt that those links continue because the folks who are buying them wants to get some link juice. They didn’t leave me when I was a PR0. They just get clicks on the links or they wouldn’t keep paying for them, right? I mean, if Google took my PR away before…

I’m guessing that’s why they did it again.

So be it.

Does it hurt me? Well, if I was trying for some reciprocal linking, I’d say yes. But I’m still ranking #2, right under Matt Cutts (the Google spokesperson), for “seo canonical” for my post on canonical linking. And I’m ranking #3 for “WordPress marketing,” and #5 for “twitter nofollow,” and various other terms on page 1 that are pretty competitive. My page rank, though now bupkiss, hasn’t hurt me at all.

I was on the phone with Brad Fallon one time, when Tellman wanted me to find out why a site I’d been working on for a few months still had no page rank, and he told me that page rank means nothing. We all still worry over it and think about it, but the proof is in the pudding, people! PR means zip, zilch, zero.

What matters is where you land in the results.

So, I’ll keep selling links. It’s a matter of principle.

I have a few cool plugins for Firefox, but one of my favorites is “Search Status.” Here are some things it does:

• It provides not just Google Page Rank, like the Google Toolbar does, but Alexa ranking of any page you land on as well. And these ranks sit in your lower toolbar and you can see it automatically. You can also see a compete rank and an mozRank, which measures the link juice coming into that site, as well.

When you right click on the Search Status symbol (an @, but with a q in the middle), it will show you the following about any site you visit:

• Highlights “no follow” links. Want to see if a blog is allowing spiders to follow links? Turn this option on and all “no follow” links appear in little pink boxes. You may want to use this when considering the site’s link potential.

• Gives you a link report on. How many are coming in/going out? How many of them are follow links?

• Shows the META tags and description

• Shows what the site looked like historically.

• Gives you robots.txt, whois, and sitemap

• Provides the keyword density and highlights any keyword you choose

• Shows all pages indexed in Google, Yahoo, and MSN (now bing.com)

• Shows the sites linking back in Google, Yahoo, and MSN

So, you can learn much of the SEO data just from this little plugin. Of course, some of it overlaps with the data you get from SEO Quake, but I think you really need both plugins to have a fully functional SEO browser. I mean, there are other SEO add-ons for Firefox, but these are 2 I couldn’t do without.

And if you want a firm foundation in SEO, visit http://SpiderLanguage.com

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I think Jeff Johnson is a pretty smart guy. He’s got some smooth tactics going with SEO, selling affiliate products from Amazon, and using blogs to run the whole shebang. I know. I’ve been through just about all of his free videos, and let me tell you… they’re KILLER.

But there are pieces missing. Jeff ascribes to the old Jimmy D. Brown adage: “Give them incomplete information,” apparently, and good advice that is. Jeff really knows how to whet your appetite for learning his systems. I wouldn’t say they’re for newbies, but…

I think that with his help, people could get this all together pretty quickly, even if they knew very little of Internet marketing and how it all fits. Don’t get me wrong. Jeff’s stuff is advanced strategies, but as a member of his Underground Lab, I’m sure anyone could pick it up and run with it.

You may want to check it out: http://easyseotricks.com/jj.

There’s lots of money to be made.

I won’t kid you, the price tag isn’t puny, but the potential is HUGE.

Have you seen Microsoft’s new (revamped) search engine “Bing” yet?

Pretty cool.

Every day, there’s a different picture when you start out, and when you rest your mouse on different parts of the picture, you can see little tags of information. Today, it’s Denali National Park, home to Mt. McKinley. If you want to see where it is, there’s a link to the map. If you want to know about dog sledding (because it’s how rangers patrol the park in winter), there’s a link for that. Pretty interesting, I think. I can’t wait to see where we’ll be tomorrow. That’s totally non-Google, eh? Nice!

When you do an actual search, it’s simplified. I did a search for “eye glasses” just because it was on top of my mind. I need new ones, and I got the usual results. Eyeglasses.com came up first. But over to the left-hand side, I get “Women, Men, Babies, Kids…” This engine gives you categories to make searching easier.

The usual tabs are at the top… “Web, Video, Images, News, Maps, More…” And the suggested searches, rather than being at the bottom of the page, like they are at Google, are in a left-hand sidebar.

I’m not sure that Bing will overtake Google anytime soon, but that remains to be seen. It’s just fun to play around with because it’s not the same old thang… ya know?

Here’s a video I hope you enjoy. We posted it to YouTube a while back, but I’m telling you… if you’re marketing online and you’re NOT writing articles, you totally need to start, and here’s why…

Want more? Lots of stuff on our channel… Check it out: ListBuilding Club Videos

Have you been to Google lately? (Who hasn’t, right?) Everyone seems to be talking about the new search item they call the “Wonder Wheel.” It puts me in mind of a couple of tools online. One is Personal Brain, which is mind-mapping software, and the other is Visual Thesaurus that will help you to brainstorm keywords or really just find synonyms if you’re a writer. Pretty neat, both have limited free versions that are worth checking out.

But what does Wonder Wheel do? It helps you to expand your horizons. When you do any search in Google, you’ll see a link above the horizontal paid ads, just under the Google search box, on the left-hand side of the screen that says “Show Options.” When you click on that, a right-hand sidebar opens.

You’ll notice that you can choose videos search, forum posts, or reviews. You can also decide how old you want the listings to be.

But the links at the bottom are the ones you want to pay closest attention to. The first link is for related searches, but the second is for the Google Wonder Wheel, which when clicked, opens just to the right beside the search results. You’ll see that circling the center search (what you typed into the search box,) are related terms.

For example, if you search for “search engine optimization,” you’ll see terms like “search engine submission,” “meta tags,” “search engine optimization pricing,” and so on for other terms related to SEO. When you click on “search engine optimization for dummies,” another wheel opens that’s linked to the original wheel, and you get new stuff to think about, like “google universal search,” “major search engines,” and “xml sitemaps.”

Pretty sweet. This can help you develop a pretty broad keyword base for any niche that you’re pursuing. That’s great for SEOs and Internet marketers, but it’s great for just plain searchers because it helps them to really get where they want to go. For example, if you click on XML Sitemaps, it takes you to places where you can learn what they are and to generators that will prepare them for you.

Anyway, it’s a cool new tool and you should check it out. It can be very valuable for your business or help you to search a whole lot smarter.

Email marketing is the most powerful tool you have! So, you need to improve the chances of converting with the people that do want to buy your stuff.

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Yesterday, I advocated the idea that you should always use a sitemap on your blog to be sure that all your permalink pages are indexed.  But what is a sitemap and why is it so important?

A sitemap gives search spiders information about your website. It tells the bots what pages are on your site, when they were last changed and when it’s likely that they’ll change again. Search bots love information that updates frequently, and it’s part of the reason why spiders love blogs. If you’re blogging consistently, and using keywords associated with your niche you’ll find yourself in the results pages pretty easily, providing you’re not competing for terms that are uber competitive.

Sitemaps also give spiders information about pages that they might not discover otherwise, which is great, and sitemaps allow you to prioritize your pages, if you want to do that.

The bottom line is that they just provide more information and make it easier for spiders to crawl your site. The easier you make it the more likely it is that they’ll discover everything that you want them to. If you’re using flash, or Ajax for example, having a sitemap is mandatory. Otherwise, you might lose the opportunity of having your page crawled at all because spiders find information in those formats hard to parse.

Having a sitemap doesn’t totally guarantee that your page will be indexed, it just increases the likelihood.

Sitemaps are easy to create, whether for a blog (get Google XML Sitemaps plugin) or a website.  Just go to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ where you can set priorities, and the dates/rates of change for your website. Then, take the file and upload it to your root directory via FTP. It’s really simple.

To make this more powerful, you should have a Google Webmaster account. It’s free to set up, and when you do, you give it the URL of your sitemap and you’re all set.  XML-Sitemaps.com will index up to 500 pages for you for free. It’s a great deal. Totally take advantage of it.