When a business owner decides to bring their business to the web, generally the last thing that they think about is search engine optimization. They assume that whomever they hire to do their web design will put up a site and then submit it to the search engines and the traffic will magically pour in.

Unfortunately it takes more than that to drive search engine traffic to your site, and even more unfortunately most developers don’t program with SEO in mind, nor do they educate the client about the process involved in gaining traffic from search engines.

Whether it’s carelessness or a lack of knowledge, or a combination of the two, this often leads to a client that several months down the road doesn’t understand why their site doesn’t get any traffic and isn’t helping their business. A good designer will not only program with SEO in mind, but will also educate the client about the basic principles of SEO, whether they are the one who executes it or not.

Many times the clients we inherit over at AllSpark Interactive have gone through this scenario and then face drastic on-site changes to get their site search engine friendly before we are even able to begin the arduous process of link building. Whether you’re designing a website for yourself or for a client, following the simple steps below when programming will ultimately save the business time and money and result in a search engine friendly site that truly maximizes the online potential of the business.

1.Use proper tags for headings, bold text, italic text, and lists 

HTML has heading tags, bold tags, italic tags, and ordered and unordered lists for a reason and you should use them. Using CSS you can practically style them however you like, but actually using a heading tag for your headings, and bold tags for important text, will help allow search engines understand what text on a page is a heading or what is more important than the surrounding text. Simply applying a CSS style that makes text larger or bold doesn’t do that.

2.Optimize your images 

Search engine spiders can’t read text within an image. Adding ALT text to your image tag helps, but ideally you should remove all wording from the image and style it using CSS, adding the remaining portion of the image as a background image to the text. This is very important to do because the search engines are really favoring pictures within content a lot more now so this is a step that you should really focus some attention on.

3.Avoid canonical problems 

Believe it or not, search engines can see http://yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com, and http://www.yoursite.com/index.html as three different pages. A simple solution is to use a 301 redirect to point all of your pages to their “www” counterpart. You can also select the preferred domain that Google shows in the new Google Webmaster Tools console.

4.Get rid of Session IDs if you have a PHP site

Have you ever seen a PHPSESSID variable added to the end a URL on a PHP page (it looks something like PHPSESSID=34908908)? This happens because PHP will add a unique PHPSESSID to URLs within your site if cookies aren’t available. This can be extremely problematic for your site’s search engine ranking. Google and Yahoo will see a unique PHPSESSID in the URL every time they visit a page on your site, and in turn think that said page is a different page each time. At worst, this could be viewed as duplicate content and get your site banned, and at best it will reduce the perceived value of each page. One solution that I’ve used successfully is to utilize url_rewriter.tags.

5.Put CSS and JavaScript in external files 

Nearly every site nowadays uses CSS and JavaScript for something. While both are great for enhancing user experience, neither will help your search engine ranking if left on your page. One of the factors that search engines consider when ranking your site is the percentage of code relevant to the search term. CSS and JavaScript can take up hundreds of lines of code, minimizing the importance of your text and in turn hurting your ranking. By putting them in separate files and simply including them in your page by reference, you can reduce hundreds of lines down to one and increase the amount of code in the file that is relevant content.

6.Minimize the use of tables in layouts

The debate about whether or not tables should be used in site design has been going on for years and there’s no end in site. I fall somewhere in the middle – there are certain circumstances (like organizing tabular data) where I think tables still make the most sense, but I also appreciate the SEO benefits of using CSS layouts. CSS layouts drastically reduce the amount of code in your site that isn’t content that the user sees. Just like moving CSS and JavaScript to an external file, the less on-page code that isn’t content, the better. Check out Search Engine Friendly Layouts for some free example layouts.

7.Validate your site

A site doesn’t have to be perfectly coded to rank high in the search engines (there are many, many other factors), but valid HTML will help ensure that search engines and browsers alike will accurately see your page. Try using the official W3C Validator . Validating generally identifies areas of code that are redundant, unnecessary, or not accepted across all browsers. All of which will help make your site more search engine friendly.

These are all areas that are very important to pay attention to when you’re creating a web design or if you’re hiring a company to do this for you. The more work that you have included within your design the better it would be for your search engine optimization for your company.

WordPress is one of the most powerful marketing tools that are available on the internet today. It can be used to create a blog for your internet business or your very own website to promote your product. What is really great about WordPress is that you can create either of these in a matter of minutes even if you do not know how to do HTML. The key to a successful WordPress blog or website is the SEO Capability. Here are a few tips that you can use on your WordPress Marketing blog or website to make it SEO capable.

1. Permalinks:

You need to be sure that you are using permalinks on your WordPress site.  By default your WordPress software contains web URL’s which contain question marks and numbers inside of them. These links are hard for the search engine web crawlers to attach themselves to. As a result your site will not be indexed as fast as it would normally be.  WordPress also, however, does offer you the opportunity to create custom URL’s for both your permalinks and archives.  You will be able to find this option under your Administration panel.  All you will have to do is to choose the options panel then click on permalinks.

2. Titles:

In the permalinks section of your WordPress marketing software you have the option of date and name based.  This option will place the year, month, date, and post title in your URL.  For the SEO webcrawlers it is best to have the site of your site appear in the front of this URL.  So instead of using the basic URL you should choose the custom URL and create a link that has your site name appearing first.

3. Tags:

Tags are a great addition to your site on a SEO standpoint. They will enable the search engines web crawlers’ crawl through your site more easily and also it will allow you to create specific pages for your tags and keywords. You can also install the Ultimate Tag Warrior for your WordPress.

4. Page Titles:

You will need to make sure you have good titles on all of your webpages.  Just as you put the site name at the beginning of your URL you will need to do the same thing with your page title.

5. Post Titles:

The post titles that you choose should be clearly written.  Do not stuff these titles with keywords that you are using to target your site or blog. Choose your keywords carefully when you are posting and get those words in your post title.

6. Autolinks:

You will also need to cross link to your own posts and pages in your content. You do this by linking keywords to your relevant posts.  This is one of the best seo methods that I’ve used. The search engines want to see you linking with other relevant posts within your website. Do this on an ordinary basis and you should be great.

7. Relevant Posts:

Be sure to post links to related posts under all your postings. This will help the web crawlers that are crawling through your site and indexing all of your posts.

8. Ping Services:

Each time you post or edit either a posting or a page your WordPress blog can notify a variety of different sites that you have updated your blog.  It is very important that you use this step.

9. Google Sitemaps:

Google has a tool for you that are called Google Sitemaps. This tool will help you index your site and allows you to tell Google which pages are the most important.

10. Categories:

Categories will help you organize your content. If you have your permalinks turned on, the category names will appear in your URL. This is why it is very important that you name your category names very carefully. Try and make sure that you use keywords to name your categories and do not be afraid to make loads of them. WordPress gives you the ability to use sub categories and sub-subcategories so make as many categories you can. This way you are able to down your focus on certain keyword phrases.

Creating a WordPress site that is SEO ready is simple if you know how to do it correctly. Using these steps can help you create a great SEO site in no time.

These seo strategies that I recommended you do with your WordPress website I learned from a mentor of mine last year. He offered a great product on Only 72 where some of the best internet marketing products are released for a short amount of time. In the next 24 hours they’re going to be opening the doors to this great vault of internet marketing products.

If you’re really serious about taking your business to the next level I really want you to go subscribe to the email newsletter so that you’re notified when they open up this website. Last year I purchased about $500 worth of products for about $97 and I was extremely happy with it all.

Head over to Only 72 now and subscribe so you don’t miss out on your learning experience too.

Creating products is one of the best revenue sources that you could do online today. Instead of wasting time with Google Adsense, sponsored reviews, and other useless monetization methods to make money online; with me completing my first internet marketing product I wanted to share with you guys some of the tips and strategies on how you can create yours to and why you shouldn’t wait as long as I did.

You see I started out online in late 2009 and I had no idea what I was doing at all. Like most people when you first start out online you hear about people making money using the internet and that really excites you; it did with me too. Loving the idea that you can make about $5,000 on a product fascinates you and you want that. But the only problem is you don’t know where to start and you have no clue about what product to create either.

Yes, I was in that same boat and it took me almost two years to create my first internet marketing product.

Why?

I was trying to be the super man of internet marketing instead of finding a niche I was passionate about and creating a product within that niche.

You see what most people fail to tell you when first starting out online is that if you want to make money with creating a product, focus on a niche that you’re passionate about. You can do all the research in the world but if you’re not passionate about that niche you’re going to never produce a product, because you’re going to spend one year learning about the industry, and the second year trying to build a community. How to bypass a two year product creation is to do these steps in creating your first internet marketing product.

1: Choose a Niche You’re Passionate About

What you should be doing from day one is going into this not looking to make money, but to add value to a niche that you’re already passionate about. One thing I figured out is most people go into a niche because they do tons of research and they see it’s a profitable niche, but have no knowledge of that area at all. So, it takes them a lot more time to learn about that niche and creating a product. Or they quit their job because they want to be their own boss; but they’re not prepared yet to be an entrepreneur so they need money right now so they rush and put out something terrible.

Write a list of 20 different areas in your life that you’re passionate about right now that doesn’t seem like work to you. Narrow that list down from the best to the least. As you shorten that list down you will start to see what areas you’re passionate about in your life. When you get that list down to about five areas, then you do the market research to see which one you should go into.

Also, make sure you have money in a savings account for at least six months if you think about quitting your job too. It takes money to create a product and don’t let anyone say it doesn’t.

2: Create a Product Competition Report

After you’ve narrowed your niche down then you want to browse Clickbank and Google to find some of the top products in that niche that was sold over the past 12 months. You need to see what products sold the most so you can then figure out how you should create your own. If you see that video products sold the best then maybe you should create a video product. If you see an audio course with a ebook attached sold the best then that’s something you should focus on.

But, creating a product competition report is very important. Realizing what other people in your niche have done is important. Also, this would be a great time to start writing out your joint venture list as well.

3: Create Areas That You Know Well & Outsource The Rest

Now, since you have a good idea of the product you’re going to create get to work. What you want to do now is do the work that you can actually do. If you’re going to create a video product then do your videos and get that work done in the next 7 days. You can do it! If you’re going to write a guide then write the outline in the next 24 hours and use the rest of the six days to write that damn guide now. Don’t wait.

Most of the products that you’re probably going to create will take about 24 hours to outline and to have a good idea of what path you’re going to take after you have that you can then dive right into product development mode. The longer you wait the more you’re probably going to never release that product at all. Get that product out and make sure that you get on top of it now. For all of the work that you can’t do just outsource it. Don’t freak out about it just have someone that is knowledge deal with it. If you’re doing a video course and you don’t know how to edit; then hire an editor. If your grammar sucks like mine with content then hire someone to edit your guide. If you want to clear the audio clarity with your audio course then hire someone to do that too.

Don’t try and be superman/woman with your product and learn how to do everything. Do the parts that you can do in the next seven days and outsource the things that you don’t. This is where I got stuck. I wanted to be the product creator and the designer. Yeah, those two things weren’t going to happen at all. If I would have just went on Elance.com and hired people to do the extra work I would have been done with everything a lot quicker. So don’t make this part complicated for yourself. Get the product done in seven days and outsource everything else that you can’t do.

4: Copywriting, Sales Page with Optimize Press, and Clickbank

Copywriting is fun but you need to have a skill at it. For people to purchase your product your sales copy needs to drag them into the light. You need to sale them on the features of this product and how it’s going to make their lives better. But, the thing about copywriting is that this is something that you can’t learn overnight. Believe me I tried it! So, what do you do? Outsource it but also learn how to do it yourself. I purchased books on copywriting and also purchased a copywriting course to learn as well. I did learn a lot from those books and course, and actually wrote the sales copy for my product. But, you might not have that luck so see which angle is going to work best for you.

Then your sales page is another thing. See you need to have a presentable sales page for people to buy your product. I use Optimize Press which is great, easy to use and a lot of great designers to choose from if you were to outsource this platform to create your sales page on. With my product I will be using Clickbank because it’s just an all in one kind of company that offers you peace of mind.

A while ago Sean Malarkey did an interview on The Rise to the Top where he spoke about Clickbank and how amazing they were, and I already knew Clickbank was great but after that interview I realized this was the best company to use from now on. I know some people use Paypal, but Paypal is hell if you start bringing in a lot of money at once.

5: Finding JV Partners

Joint venture partners is where the true success of your first product is going to come into place. But, this is also not an issue area too because this would be your first product that you’re releasing so you can’t show previous results of launches. A strategy that I used was that competition report that you created in step 2; I start to build relationships with those people as I’m creating my product by getting involved with their blogs, connecting with them on social media, and just getting to know them as a person. Then as my product is finishing up I ask them would they mind reviewing the product that I just created and giving me some suggestions on it back.

When they do and I receive my suggestions I ask them would they be interested in promoting my product to their list. I tell them that this product won’t conflict with their product that they already have launched, but that their community would benefit from purchasing this product. Going into more benefits as to why they should be a jv partner such as their commission they would receive, any discounts for their lists, and promotional tools as well.

Do this strategy for each person on your competition report. Now, you see why it’s very important for you to have a long competition report of some of the best products over the past 12 months.

6: Marketing.. The idea of being EVERYWHERE the first three weeks of launching

Don’t you dare create a product and spend all of this time invested and then to market it by putting a Facebook status update that says “Hey guys my product is finished go over to (URL) and check it out”. That’s the dumbest thing you could do. You need to create a marketing strategy for your product the first three weeks of launching. Create a list of relevant blogs within your niche, interviews that you could do, and a webinar to put on too.

With this being your first product you might or might not have a big email list, so guest blogging is going to be your biggest method of driving traffic to your product. So, once again leverage that competition report and find the websites that offer a blog and guest post on all of those blogs. When your audience see’s you on all relevant sites within that industry, they are going to be more likely in purchasing that product because they see you everywhere. What you can do is take a section from your product and write a 1200 word post that focus on that one area and do this for each section on a different blog.

Then you create a webinar for your niche of people to really showcase the knowledge that you have, and then present your product at the end of that webinar. Make sure you record the webinar too so you can share it with your email list and also other online outlets too.

Creating your first internet marketing product can be a bit stressful but you should follow these tips I gave you, and it should lighten the load a lot more. Don’t wait to take action on any of these. If you want to become a person that is known as a person that has knowledge in your industry then create your own product!  Being an affiliate of products your whole internet life isn’t that much fun and no one will recognize you. If that’s what you want then fine go ahead.

But, if you want to be known then create your product and do it now. Don’t wait any longer like I did to create a product.

If you want to know what it takes to make money online then download my 65 page ebook that talks about just that today!

I’ve been waiting for a really great plugin to use with Paypal to help me increase my revenue. You see I’m not that technology savvy when it comes to coding, and implementing html coding for a website at all. That’s why I use WordPress for all of my websites and that’s why I used Paypal buy now buttons for all of my products because it did the majority of the work for me.

But, their was a problem that I consistently ran into with Paypal buttons. They were very ugly and you couldn’t position them around that much within the pages and posts on WordPress. You needed to do additional html work to have it look correct and for a guy that has no design knowledge and trying to have a very low overheard cost this is a major issue for me. I wanted a very attractive buy now buttons for the products that I either promote for profit or just to give away and I couldn’t find any.

Until now…

One area that a lot of people online don’t really consider or think of is there buttons that they use with their products they create. They don’t understand the power of a take action button from an “instant access now” to a “join us today” button and the importance of how these buttons are when it comes to a specific product and industry that you’re looking to become very useful within.

I learned that the hard way when I released my first free informational product Traffic Over Drive and I didn’t understand the value of the take action buttons. I made no email opt-ins only because I was using a button that gave off the wrong impression to my target audience, that you had to purchase the ebook instead of leading to a email opt-in version. After about two months of realizing this mistake I changed it and then I saw huge results with my opt-ins.

I told you my story so you understand the importance of take action buttons on your webpages. Most people just take any button and throw it up and move onto other areas of their sales pages. This is an area you can’t just look over. You need to choose the best buttons that will assist you with increasing your conversion rates with both email opt-ins for free gifts and also the paid products that you promote as well too.

Ask Your These Questions Now:

1. Have you ever really thought about the buttons that you use for your products?
2. Which buttons go with what products and how to gain a higher conversion rate?

A great group of guys named Shane Williams, Cory Shanes, and the Qody people have created an amazing WordPress plugin called WP Button Factory that offers you some great take action buttons that will help you increase the revenue of your Paypal transactions. When I was introduced to this plugin and started to play with it I was really impressed with how easy it was to integrate this within my WordPress pages. I finally met the WordPress plugin of my dreams.

WP Button Factory

This plugin takes the ordinary Paypal buttons that you’re using right now and gives you a better selection of buttons to use within your sales pages within WordPress. It takes the idea of easy and gives it to you in a plugin that offers you a bunch of buttons to choose from that are really easy to integrate. You’re never going to have to leave your WordPress dashboard to see how these plugins will look on your pages and it makes it very easy for you to customize the buttons for any tablet so it fits the screen of different technology applications.

Yeah, WOW!! When I heard that part I almost freaked out. You probably never consider the tablet users at all do you? You forget that more and more people are carrying around tablet devices right now and purchasing products off of there tablets. If your sales pages or download pages doesn’t have buttons that cater to these users then you’re missing out on a lot of money right now. These take action buttons fit the size of the screen so that any user looking at your sales or download page has an adjustable take action button.

You don’t need any html knowledge to really understand how this WordPress plugin works at all. They offer some of the best customer service with a full blown forum section for its members that you will probably see me dive into from time to time as well.

I know that this plugin will be running for a limited time and the price will be going up relatively soon too. If you’re serious about increasing your conversion rates then buy this product today. Don’t wait another second and lose out on potential money because of the bummy buttons that you’re using with Paypal.

I’m an affiliate of this product and I do stand behind this product. I’ve known the guys that created this product for some time now and they’ve put out some great products before this one and this product is no different.

For everyone that buys through my affiliate link I will send you my personal guide to show you how to gain more joint venture partners for your products online. Along with a custom email template that I use to build a relationship with some of the top people within my niche that you could use for yours too. This is unlike any guide that you’ve probably seen or read before that goes into specific strategies to use starting today.

For a limited amount of time you can gain access to the developers section if you purchase it right now as a WSO. What that means is that you can use this WordPress plugin on as many websites as you want.

Once you purchase through my email link email me a copy of your receipt to Justice@Justicewordlaw.com and I will send it right over to you.

Purchase your copy of WP Button Factory today.

Seo is a very important matter that companies should focus a great deal of focus on. As I continue to focus on seo for this month I wanted to share with you a very interesting infographic that I found while browsing the web. It shows the comparison between paid traffic and organic traffic.

You see paid traffic is a method that a lot of companies feel is very crucial to the success of their business which is true in a sense. But, paid traffic only offers spikes in traffic to your website where if you’re going to focus on building organic traffic you’re going to build a consistent flow of traffic coming into your website.

The focus of any company should be to bring traffic in on a consistent basis and to leverage paid traffic when you have a new service or product coming out.

Leave a comment below with one paid traffic method and one seo method you have used so far this year. 

Think about how many seo strategies that you’ve come across that has told you that you need to focus on this this or focus on that and you ended up never seeing any results or you end up getting black listed on Google… How did that make you feel?

Try being on the web for six months and your first blog you ever created getting blacklisted because of a seo strategy that a guru told you to try out. How would that make you feel? What would you do?

That happened to me and after that point I made it my goal to understand quality seo strategies that offer good results. I learned to become patient and to ask the right questions.

I want to share with you three different seo strategies that I feel are the worst to focus on and that you need to pay attention to these if a company is telling you to do them or if their saying their going to be focusing on these areas for you.

Check them out:

1.Comment Only on PR 3,4,5, and 6 Sites

If you never heard of this strategy then wow, I’m actually surprised because this is the one that I normally hear about a lot of the time. If you take the time to really browse the web you will hear a lot of people say that you should find high page ranking blogs within your niche and comment like hell on these sites. That you should take between one to two hours per day and just comment on these sites to gain back quality links to your website.

This entire process is both boring and terrible. Why would I want to waste a good amount of my personal time commenting on blogs? Yes, these sites have a high page rank but do you actually know that these commenting systems offer a “dofollow” link directing back to your site? You don’t unless you’re the owner of that blog. Then you need to invest the time and research with finding relevant sites that actually are high pr sites which could take a lot of time. When you do this and then you try and add a link back to your website most blog owners will either delete or report your comment spam. I know I do that all the time.

I personally don’t like links in comments on my blog.

But, if you’re actually thinking about doing this then download the Google Chrome app Seo Quake. This app will tell you a majority of the seo information for websites once you get on there  website. If you have trouble just send me an email and I will walk you through this. This is still a lot of time that you shouldn’t waste in my opinion.

2.Focus On Forum Posting with Personal Signature

Another strategy that you will hear about from time to time that honestly is time consuming and just really not worth the effort. Forums in my opinion is about masterminding with other people that are alike you and that are looking to learn and share ideas. Not looking to gain more backlinks to a website that you honestly don’t know is adding any value to the world wide web.

With forums you will hear some of the experts, gurus, or blah people tell you that you should create a signature link that is directing people back to your website, blog, or sales page. That you should place your keyword phrase that you’re looking to rank for in the signature hyperlinked such as “Internet Affiliate Marketing”. I find this strategy okay but still not amazing. You still have to take the time out to comment on multiple threads and actually add value. You can’t just go on a thread and comment “great suggestions” and assume you’re going to actually gain relevant links back to your website. Most of the people that are involved within the interactive marketing industry all hang out on the Warrior Forum.

I’ve been on that forum for awhile and I really do enjoy the engagement with other professionals but I do see people that do this tactic and honestly they’re wasting valuable time. When I first came online, I saw a lot of people suggesting this method but when you understand how much of your time is worth then you will understand why this strategy is not good to focus on.

3.Placing The Title Tag Multiple Times

Stuffing the word “chapstick, cheap chapstick, black chapstick, and ugly chapstick” doesn’t do you that much relevance in a title. You’re just making that title tag look very ugly and you’re making it stuffy. You’re not going to gain any more links from the search engines by doing this and you should just focus on the low competitive keyword phrase so you can really rank for a good quality word.

I tried to do this for “beginner affiliate marketers” and when I did I got called out for this by a friend of mine and he said that it made me look desperate for link juice and that I should stop. He said instead of doing that, that I should focus on focusing on one keyword phrase or keyword and building quality content around that.

By stuffing a keyword multiple times in a title tag makes no sense. Yes, the search engines will crawl the site but just because you have it in there multiple times doesn’t mean anything other than you wasted that much time doing that. The scary thing about this seo strategy is that people do this because they see other people do it. This is honestly one of those “monkey see, monkey do” kind of strategies that is honestly a waste of time.

Focus on one keyword, create relevant content around that keyword, and do it that way. Don’t stuff!

These three seo strategies have really been something that most experts say to do.

Why?

Because they seem like the easiest and cheapest to do. If you’re honestly looking to rank for a keyword phrase either low competitive or not then you should really look into putting the effort into doing strategies that will offer you long lasting results not just “one and gone” results which all of these do in there own way.

The question I want to ask you is have you done any of these? What were your results? Is anyone honestly doing these right now and if so how are they working out for you?

I tried out the comment posting back in 2010 and I thought I was cool but then I realized I was investing 10 to 15 hours per week doing this alone and not seeing any results I stopped. If any seo strategy is not helping you with building quality traffic to your website then don’t continue doing it. No, you won’t see traffic over night but in the end you will if you invest into the right seo strategy.

I thought it would be cool when I started out online by doing my own seo and learning all of the backlinking and keyword research strategies that were effective but I learned over time that it takes a lot of time to do all of that. You really need to have a good amount of free time to effectively do seo for your website. Especially if you’re trying to go about it the correct way and not the black hat seo way!

When I started out I would go and do my market research on Google Keyword Tool and Market Samurai which took about 2 to 3 hours of work because the goal was to aim for low competitive keywords with a search volume of < 500 per month.

Why is that?

I try to focus on building up very low competitive links to my website so then it would be easier for me to piggy bank on that success over time for more competitive search terms. Wowzerr I sounded pretty cool saying that! 

It’s true though and I’m going to have a better time going about it that way. That’s the strategy I’ve used with my website here and the same strategy I will be implementing with AllSpark Interactive too.But, it does take a lot of time. I would say quality seo takes up about 80 to 90% of your time if done correctly. If it doesn’t then either you’re already outsourcing your seo or you’re doing strategies that you shouldn’t be doing that search engines will back slap you soon enough.

With seo, you try and measure your success with the amount of traffic you receive. The conversions you start to have and the keywords your page starts to rank for.

But, if you’re trying to run a company which most of the people that come to my website is trying to do then you can’t only focus on seo now can you?

I doubt it!

That’s why you need to outsource your seo!

If you understand the value of your time and your rate per hour then you’re going to understand why outsourcing your seo is important if you can. If you don’t understand your rate per hour then read Internet Business Manifesto by Rich Schefren then you will.

But, outsourcing your seo is an amazing feeling. You don’t need to have a huge budget to outsource your seo either. Their are services such as Fiverr where you can grow backlinks to your site for only $5. You can hire a person via Elance or Odesk to do your seo, and you can even hire me to do it personally too then you get to work with the awesome guy writing this blog post.

But why is it that outsourcing seo is for smart people?

Because they value their time?

They hate doing it?

Their lazy?

They don’t understand it?

Um……

I would say all of the above.

Seo takes a lot of work, time, energy, and money that honestly some people don’t want to invest. If your company isn’t solely an seo/keyword research company why would you only focus on that one marketing strategy? You shouldn’t to be honest. The focus should be on building effective marketing strategies to help you with increasing the revenue of your company not solely on seo.

Yesterday, I was reading a post titled How I Made My First Internet Dollar and Nick was talking about the time that he had to invest in his niche site when it came to seo and all of the back and forth work he had to do. He brought up the topics on how  a lot of bloggers that discuss seo and backlinking strategies make it sound so easy and that it only takes about 5 hours a week to do it all and that’s not the case at all. If you’re serious about ranking for quality keywords it takes time and a lot of research. You need to find that right angle so that you can have a good chance of ranking for that search term.

Between keyword research, article spinning, submitting the article to directories, web 2.0 sites, looking for changes in search engines, paying attention to increase in traffic, that could end up being an 8 hour per day job. That’s why you must outsource.

I know this blog post doesn’t go into much detail of specific seo strategies, we’re going to go over that in the next blog post. This post will raise the awareness that you need to understand that if you’re not prepared to sacrifice a lot of time with your seo then outsource it. Don’t go the cheap route and try and do it yourself because you’re going to get aggravated and end up quitting.

If your project is something you’re trying to increase over some years then investing in an seo company is great.

Some questions you should ask would be:

• What is the length of time it takes for them to rank for low competitive vs. medium competitive keywords
• Will they be doing on-page vs. off-page seo work
• What is their process with doing seo.. how do they go from point “a” to point “b”
• What different methods will they be focusing on first ie: forums, comments, article marketing..etc.

These would be some really good starter questions to go with and then as you see the conversation growing you can direct it in the way that you’re looking for it to go. I advice you to really take notes and compare them with other companies that you interview. This process shouldn’t be taken lightly because you want to go with a company that understands all of this.

If you have any other questions that I can help you with leave a comment below and I will answer them.

If you hire a company or freelancer and they say they can get you to page one of Google in 2 or 3 months run like hell. Because they’re lying.

On Saturday, I met with a client with my business partners where she was telling us a story where she hired a company before where they told her that they can get her on the first page of Google for the keyword “fashion” in just two months. “I was like wow that was a lie”. Because if you know anything about keyword research and quality seo that is one hard word to rank on the first page of Google for.

That takes time, energy, money, and PATIENCE on a client side!

Which a lot of companies that are looking to do seo for their companies don’t have. They don’t realize how much patience you need to have with ranking for very heavy keywords.

So, as she was telling me this story she asked for my opinion since I run all interactive marketing for our company and I said that we can assist with ranking for competitive keywords but she will need to be patient and that were going to create a strategy around her new company. That if she doesn’t understand the idea of patience upfront that she’s going  to get a headache and end up giving up. Which a lot of companies do.

Once they realize that it takes actual work to rank for keyword phrases they end up giving up which is a good thing for them because they realize that their not focusing on the future of their company but the right now. That their just looking for over night money and tons of traffic. And that’s not the case with search engine optimization. This is a process that takes time to become truly successful with.

I’ve been involved with seo focused for about two years now and it seems more and more companies are getting impatient about this side of the business where you need to be the most patient.

Search engines change their algorithms constantly to make sure that black hat seo strategies don’t work and you don’t find companies taking advantage of the system.

When you first start to realize that you want to take the seo for your website seriously really start to gain a picture in your head of what search results you would want your potential customer to type in to find you.

Every time my company AllSpark Interactive a digital media agency picks up a new seo client. I always ask this person to give me there imagination of how seo would look like for their company. If they were to try and find their company on Google which keyword phrases would they type in? What kind of blogs and forums would they go to?

Once, they give me this picture then I could better analyze and instruct them on how this process could work and offer them a better proposal as well. We do this process for every client and when we do this it always ends up being a success because they’ve already told me what they wanted and they could then get a better understanding of the length of time it would take for us to rank them for these quality keyword phrases.

You see how seo is not for impatient people.

It takes time.

Your going to be working against major brands that have the funds to put teams into place to rank for top tier keyword phrases or purchasing out relevant blogs/websites that are already ranking for these phrases.

Which leads me into my next topic.

If your just that impatient and you just have to rank NOW.

The best thing for you to do is to purchase Market Samurai, go into the seo competition field and type in your keyword phrase and just purchase the top three websites/blogs that are ranking for your keyword phrase.

A client I had last year wanted to really focus on building their companies website seo higher and quicker then the normal proposal stated so I recommended we buy out his competition. He loved the idea because I treated seo competition as a business. And most businesses that are successful buy out their competition.

We purchased about 15 different websites revolving around his keyword phrases and had them directing traffic back to his website as we worked strategically on his seo for the website. The process worked out great and he has been a client of mine ever sense.

Impatience is going to be your enemy with seo.

Every new client I bring on in this area seems to be the same way until they create their own image of successful seo strategies in their head. And once they see it then they understand why it takes 6-7 months. It’s not about taking your money. It’s about building quality links to your site so if any algorithm were to change that your website doesn’t take a major hit because you were doing black hat seo strategies.

Learn how to understand patience with seo. If you think your going to rank tomorrow, next week, or even next month your going to be upset.

You would of never thought that you would grow as much as you probably did so far this year? Going into a new month right now you’re probably excited and overwhelmed with the accomplishments that you’ve encountered. I’m in that same position right now. As I reflect back on this month I remember some of the moments I’ve had and some of the people I’ve met and adventures I’ve taken which led me into this blog post.

I’m just a 23 yr old entrepreneur with a passion for interactive marketing, fashion, fitness, personal development, and good books. And I always told myself that I would be the CEO/Founder in my life outside of god which I’ve grown to become. It has become a very interesting and very focused path I’ve taken but the growth is something that I wouldn’t change for the world.

But, I had to learn how to grow.

Which a lot of people don’t know how to do. They don’t understand that you must let go of the bad memories. That you must forgive to grow. This is something that is not an overnight growth you will have, it will take time. 

You see I didn’t go to college. I went for a semester in 2007 and I left because I honestly didn’t see that course in life benefiting me for my end goals. I went against everything I was taught, and I did nothing that everyone else was doing. Instead of going out and partying I focused on building a company. Instead of sleeping in, I woke up to read,pray, and meditate.

But, I had to learn how to grow.

Ask yourself this question are you learning to grow?

Are you taking the steps to bring in the income you like? To hire the employees/interns that will benefit your company? To attend the events that will connect you with the right people?

Or are you learning to wait?

Waiting on that person to do the work for you? Waiting on someone to give you $1,000 for your next venture? Waiting for a new life to fall in your lap?

Waiting to….be you!

I was in the Dubai international airport when I overheard some professionals talking about how their going to wait to join this club and not take action.

It made me realize that their probably never going to get in that club. Their sitting their waiting and instead of learning how to grow to get in that club.

A lot of people do that.

They wait for something instead of learning how to grow into something.

Why? Because their scared.

They don’t understand how to grow because they’ve been fooled that waiting for something is the right thing to do. That if I wait long enough something magical is going to happen. Well, my response to that is that your foolish. That you need to learn how to get what you want out of life, that you need to learn how to build the right skills and team to create what you want.

I took the time over the past months to learn how to become a better man, learning how to be patient but get what I want at the same time, to learn how to be better for me so I can be better for other people around me. With learning how to grow over the past couple of months I came to the realization that their is not a lot of outlets to teach men how to do so.

To teach learning how to do new things for their life.

How to be better men, how to grow their minds, and bodies in a way that makes them stronger. Where an idea came about. An idea that will take all of my passions into one and  that I will have the opportunity to share with other men across the world.

The idea of “turning men into gentlemen” as the tagline.

I’ve been investing in books, classes, seminars, and coaching sessions to really learn about myself and life and with that knowledge I wanted to build upon all of passions into

one.

Which will be….

GentLyfe.. a man’s blog that I’ve created and will be launching August 1st that will cover fashion, grooming, personal development, finance, and fitness. All of these areas I’m passionate about and wanted to share valuable information. This will be ran as a community blog with a high level of content from various writers across various industries.

Containing products, interviews, audio interviews, and other forms of information that will help men grown.

Right now I have three writers already on board and will be looking to speak with more and also a editor in chief for the content of the site. I’ve always wanted to combine all of my passions into one and with this I will. I made the decision before I went off to Dubai that I will create a million dollar blog revolving around my passions and work remotely by the end of 2012. I’ve been doing a lot of meditating around this topic and I discussed it with people that I care about and everyone is supportive.

They’ve seen how I’ve learned how to grow and that I will be focusing primarily on this matter and digital media agency AllSpark Interactive.

When you learn how to grow you start to realize where your passions lay and what areas you need to focus on the most to make them come true. Learning how to simplify your life and being grateful for some of the smaller areas of life. This is going to be an amazing experience and I will share the growth with everyone over the course of months.

My advice to you is to learn how to grow. Because when you do your going to realize where your passions lay and where you should focus your attention too.

I wish you the best and much success.

I wasn’t taught to be an outside of the box thinker. No one told me that if you work smart and hard that anything is possible.

You see I grew up in a household where the mindset of working 40 hours a week, investing money in a 401K, taking a weeks vacation, and requesting for random days off just because you were sick and tired of being in that job of yours was the usual. My parents didn’t have that “hey their is another life past the rainbow” conversation with me and I want to thank them for not.

Because if they didn’t I wouldn’t appreciate as much as I do right now.

You see right now I’m writing this blog post in Dubai where I’ve been hanging out, vacationing, planning, strategizing, and enjoying life for the past 10 days. You see in my last blog post Giving Up Money For Passion I mentioned the idea of my new startup and I wanted to share with you what that exactly will entail and how this trip plays a vital role in that.

But, back to entrepreneurship….

Entrepreneurship is something that most people never understand. They think about the money and the control of hours that they have which that’s not the focus that you should have. Entrepreneurship is about providing a service or product that helps another person better there life. That your giving something with such value that it increases the other persons per hour amount so it gives their family a better life. If you were to ask me about entrepreneurship in 2009 I would of just brought up the amount of hours I have control over working and the money.

Where now those are the last things on my mind. The only thing that is on my mind is value. Hope much value can I offer my clients? How much energy can I give my clients? How I could offer my clients the best return on their time? That’s the only thing on my mind.

That’s what entrepreneurship is about… value!!

A lot of people wanting to be entrepreneurs won’t make for a long time. Why? They look at the glamor of entrepreneurship and not the fundamentals. They bypass the most important parts of the entire process of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Don’t let that be you!

If you want to be an entrepreneur then understand what value your going to offer. Write out and plan your ideas so you have a strategy in place to guide you. I’m telling you this not as an expert in entrepreneurship but as a person that went through a lot to get to this point and will continue to go through a lot to get to the next point in life. If I would of understood that having a set strategy in place will assist me with avoiding 80% of the challenges I faced with financials, time management, outsourcing, finding clients, managing clients, and everything else that comes along with this constant flow of challenges and successes then I would have.

And that is what I’m telling you now.

If you think your an entrepreneur then let me ask you this question.

What is your companies growth plans for the next six months? How are you going to effectively grow your company within your industry with all of the competition? Who is your top 10 competitors in your region right now? What are their price points for their major services ( just give me five of them)? How is your sales funnel structured for leads to convert to customers and your follow up sequences?

If those questions are confusing to you then your not quite their yet. Believe me I wasn’t either two years ago. It took me a lot of reading, researching, and studying to get there but I finally did. And that is what led me to grow a successful business and now having a new business with two great partners.

Which leads me into my new point.

I did say that I will be telling everyone where my new focus will be on and that will be AllSpark Interactive which is a digital media agency here in Chicago, IL. My two business partners Jason Stewart and Alesha Shaw we are forming a company which will be offering services and products for entrepreneurs and companies. We will be offering search engine optimization, consulting, graphic design, app development, and video production along with other products and services too.

I’m very excited about this company as we’ve been working very hard on the launch that were having on May 1st and all of the work that comes into starting a company.

If I never would of had all of the failures and success moments with my previous company I wouldn’t of been as prepared for this company and the potential growth that were going to encounter.

The dedication that you need to have with being your own boss is something that blogs, videos, or any audio course can tell you. You just need to desire that burning urge in your body that you just want something different for yourself and your willing to work for it.

If you have that right now then you know your ready for entrepreneurship.

I’ve met so many people tell me that “oh yeah I’m an entrepreneur” because they tweet all day or their on Facebook all day putting up pictures or motivational quotes and to be honest that doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. Not in my opinion.

Add value to someone else’s life.

Become an asset to someone else. Then your an entrepreneur.

But, the only person that can do that is you!

Are you ready? I hope so!

Here are a couple of pictures from my trip in Dubai:

Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world

This fish tank was huge

Really Gorgeous Place

I did find a KFC