Category Archives: Helpful Tips & Tricks

Top 10 Internet Marketing Web Design Mistakes

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Internet Marketing Web Design Mistakes

Does your website grab your visitors and keep them around wanting more?  Or does it send them running the other way vowing never to return again?

Here are the top 10 most common mistakes that I see in bad web design.

1. Audio loading automatically in your web page

In my opinion, this is one of the most irritating things that send me running the other way every time.  Never assume that your visitors are going to want to hear your music, advertisement, or your speech when they arrive.

Set any audio options so that it doesn’t start automatically.  Just give the visitor the option to turn it on if they wish to hear it.

2. Poor background & text colors
Dark background colors combined with dark text, or light backgrounds with light text are very difficult to read.  If I have to struggle to see what you have to say, I’m outta here.

3. Flash intros & graphics
Using flash in your website is just a bad idea if you’re an online marketer.  Not only can they chase away some of your slow dial-up visitors, but they do absolutely nothing for your SEO.  Flash is invisible to a search engine spider, so if your home page consists of a flash intro, Google sees no content on your page at all.

Use fast loading web optimized graphics instead.  This way you can take advantage of the “alt” tags in your HTML code and insert your important keywords for your images.  This will help your rankings in the SERPS.

4. Excessive pop-ups and flash fly-ins
If you want a guaranteed way to send your visitors packin’ & pissed off, try loading your web page with a bunch of pop-up windows.  While you’re at it, throw in one of those flash or java adverts that follow you around every where you go, as well.

Pop ups are pretty much blocked by every browser anyway.  A better alternative would be to use a javascript pop-up to capture emails in return for some type of value to your visitor, or an exit pop-up of some type.

5. Dead links
Dead links on a web page tells me that you don’t maintain your site and that your products are probably old & outdated as well.

The other thing that irritates me is clicking on links in the navigation menu and landing on “under construction” place holders.  If you haven’t created a page yet, either don’t create a link for it, or at least add a “coming soon” label to the link text.

6. Adsense
If you have a sales page or a product review page, Adsense is about the worst thing that you can do for your conversions, not to mention your search engine rankings.  According to James Brausch, Adsense actually lowers your rankings.  This is most likely because there are so many junk “made for adsense” sites out there that the googlebot will likely lump you right in with this ilk.

Unless you’re getting 100,000 visitors a month, I would avoid it.  It’s not worth the 2 bucks a month payout. In areas where adverts won’t kill your sales, try Advaliant as an alternative to Google. This can make you real money, not just pennies & nickels.

7. Huge paragraphs & run on sentences.
Web surfers generally are scanners.  They want to skim through a web page quickly to see if it’s interesting or has what they’re looking for.

Having excessively long paragraphs may work in a novel, but not online.  Keep your paragraphs limited to 1-3 sentences.  Even though your former English teacher may give you a rash about it, this is what works. This is especially important for your sales or affiliate product review pages as well.

8. Busy web pages
Don’t fill your web pages with too many graphics, columns and adverts.  Some web pages are so crowded with pictures mixed with text and poorly spaced columns.  Thus causing the paragraphs to almost collide with the adjoining paragraphs and making for an unpleasant & difficult read.

Keep your web pages clean & easy on the eyes.

9. Poor Navigation
Make your website easy to get around in.  Don’t make your visitors have to click on excessive links to get somewhere.  Having to guess where to find something is no fun either.

You should design your website as if you were expecting dear old grandma to visit your site, who’s never used a web browser before.

10.  Welcome to the 90′s
Do you have cheezy animated graphics created in 16 colors scattered all throughout your web pages?  Or the java-script snow falling in the background along with the midi-music playing as well?

Back button, take me away!!! Come on man, get into the 21st century.

So… there’s my top ten. Did any of the above look familiar to your own web site? If so, it could be costing you in lost visitors which equal lost revenue.

Sometimes it just takes a simple change to make a huge difference.

Beef Up Your Conversions For Free

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Here’s a talking head video featuring me and my scary lighting showing you how to really crank up your conversions by creating web pages that optimize themselves.

In case you don’t like watching videos, here’s a transcript of the video:

Hello, Jack Keifer here with a tip on beefing your conversion rates on your web sites with self-optimizing webpages.

So how does a web page optimize itself?  
With a testing techique called Multi-Variate testing.

Multi-variate testing is done with software designed to allow you to automatically test different versions of various sections of your webpage.

Let me clarify this a little using one of my websites as an example.

Here at AmazingCloaker.com you’re looking at the headline portion of my web page.

Your headline is that critical element to get your visitors to stay beyond that 3 second event horizon.

Usually a visitor will hit their back button within 3 seconds if you don’t peak their interest somehow.

See why the headline is so important?  
Anyway,
The sales page is made of of different components like the Headline, sub heading, bullet list, main body, guarantee, call to action and buy button, to name a few.

Scrolling down, we move through the different sections of the sales letter.

With multi-variate software, we can create different versions of each of these sections and test which combinations of these versions give the best conversion rates.

Everytime one version of a section scores higher conversions, it is tested against other sections of the web page more often.

Every time you make a sale, your web page is constantly refining and improving itself.

I’m going to clear my cookies here and refresh my web page.  This will cause a slightly different version to load.

Ok, here we have a new version of the page.
The headline stayed the same.
Scrolling down the page there are various paragraphs that are slightly changed.

Not too big a difference here.

Let’s refresh this page again and see if we get more dramatic results.

First, I’ll clear my cookies, and then we’ll just hit the refresh button again.

Ok, looks like we still have the same headline.
That could mean that this particular headline is creating better conversions.

Interesting… here we are now seeing extra graphics relating to the AmazingCloaker.

Testing these graphics against nothingness is also a variable.  
Sometimes less is more in a sales page,
so always consider testing something against having nothing in its place as well.

Ok, let’s do this one more time.
Clear the cookies again…

Ok, this time the headline has changed.  
This headline was scoring pretty high in the beginning of my testing.
Scrolling down, there are additional changes that you would note in various sections of the page.
Looks like the extra graphics are gone again in this version, so its possible that the extra graphics are actually scoring lower and that “nothingness” is winning out.

Ok, so the next question you’re going to ask is
“What software did you use and how much did it cost you?”

Well, that’s a great question.
So how does FREE sound?

That’s right, I simply used a free tool compliments of Google called “Google Web Optimizer”.

Just go out to www.google.com/analytics
and log in using your Adwords credentials.

If you don’t already have a google account, you can sign up here as well.

Ok, let’s get logged in.

In Google web optimizer, you create what are called “experiments”, which are the multivariate tests that you setup for your website.

As you can see here I have a few experiments showing, but only one is active.  
The other two are abandoned first attempts while I figured out how to use it.

Here are the current stats for each section of my web page that I have set up for testing.

Each section here shows what percentage of the time they were used when a sale was made.

Pretty useful when you want a quick overview of what is working and what isn’t.

This way you can continue giving the non producing areas additional tweaking to get every thing up to peak performance.

There’s literally thousands of combinations that your website will display automatically when visitors come to your site.

Ok, Now let’s take a look at my conversion stats for the month of July.

I started this around July 5th so my conversion rates are showing for just over a month.  
To track your sales, you set up what are called “goals” and then paste some javascript into your thank you page.

I forgot to add in my Goal Values, so they are showing zero… d’oh!

Normally you would put in your net profit here and then it will calculate your visitor value if I understand it correctly.

Let’s take a closer look at the stats so far.

As you can see, I didn’t put much effort into traffic generation this month, but my converation rates are pretty decent.

My average conversion rate for the month is calculating at 4.37%

Let’s click on the more detailed chart.

Here you can see that I started july at 4.50% and the multivariate testing has cranked my current standing to 9%.

Not too shabby if I don’t say so myself.

With an impressive 9% conversion rate, I could confidently employ paid traffic strategies, if I chose to do so.

Just as an FYI, there are premium multivariate software packages packed with other great features as well for getting even greater accuracy.

For example, I’ve used for quite some time, a product called KaizenTrack.

It’s a little pricey… around $500 that last time I checked, but well worth it.

Another excellent multivariate software is “MuVar“, created by James Brausch.  
Right now, MuVar is only selling for $100!  This is because MuVar 2008 is about to be discontinued.

From what I’ve read, MuVar is a kick-butt multivariate software, and it will even calculate your visitor value for you as well.

Well, now there’s no excuse for not tracking your results.

Testing and refining are vital components to getting the most out of your internet business.

If you ignore this step, you’re leaving thousands on the table in lost income.

Besides that, how would any potential JV partner take you seriously if you didn’t even know your own conversion rates for your products?

Also remember, that you don’t have to have your own product line to use this.

If you’re an affiliate marketer, you should be testing your affiliate landing pages as well.

So if you’re not testing your pages, what are you waiting for?
Jump out to google.com/analytics and get started now.

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Gotta Love That CommentLuv!

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Around the end of April I made a blog post referring to some cool wordpress plugins to add to your arsenal of useful stuff. One comment I had received was from Annie, who right away took advantage of the KeywordLuv plugin that I am using.

She later left a second comment recommending another great plug-in called CommentLuv. Being the type to try out new things that may be useful to me and beneficial to my readers, I decided to look into it. Thanks Annie! I’m glad I did…

CommentLuv benefits your readers by automatically inserting their last blog post title into their comment. This way, if you have a blog and you want to leave a comment, CommentLuv will scrape your last blog post and insert it into your comment. You can really benefit from useful keywords such as “internet business”.

Here’s an example of what my comment would look like on someone else’s blog using CommentLuv:

Jack Keifer on May 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm

Hi Homer,

That’s a great story about your son Bart. Looks like he will be president someday!

-Jack

Jack’s last blog post..A Competition Free Internet Business

As you can see CommentLuv scraped the last blog post (in this example) from my web site which I added into the comment form. Now I have a great back link for “Internet Business” on Homer’s website, who just happens to have a PR 8.

Without CommentLuv I would only be back-linking for “Jack Keifer”. Not a very useful back-link. Sure, I could type “Internet Business” in the name field, but more than likely I would be flagged as a spammer and my comment would be deleted. Even though I left a useful comment, the blog owner may never look past the keyword stuffed name field.

CommentLuv is a great way to get back-links to your own blog with targeted keywords. To find other CommentLuv Blogs out there, you can Google using the phrase “Enable CommentLuv” + your target keyword. For example, if you wanted to find blogs related to internet marketing, you could Google for “Enable CommentLuv” + “Internet marketing”.

You will get back all the indexed CommentLuv blogs that are using CommentLuv and related to internet marketing. Now go leave some useful comments and get some nice relevant backlinks to your blog.

You can potentially generate a lot of extra traffic to your blog as well, because readers of other blogs will see your cool headline and click on it to see what you have to say.

CommentLuv is also a great way to get more people commenting on your own blog as well. Remember back when your blog was new? It probably took awhile before you got that first comment. You may not have had more than a handful of readers.

Blog posts with comments shows your visitors that you are creating interesting and useful content that people want to respond to. Comments also validate that you have a following and decent traffic which encourages others to come back and eventually contribute. This adds to the credibility of your blog.

A majority of readers rarely, if ever, comment. CommentLuv just may be a great way to encourage your readers to chime in and contribute to your blog. It’s a win-win for both the blogger and reader. Give it a try!

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A Competition Free Internet Business?

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Competition free internet business

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably run across the occasional sales letter or even blog post talking about finding niches and dominating them. Or that if you buy that mega cool keyword research tool, you’ll discover great niches with little to no competition, which you can completely dominate! Wow! Can you imagine being the top dog in the designer ball bearing niche? Imagine having little to no competition in your newly discovered niche!

Sounds pretty great right? I would have to say, eh, er, um… NOT!

It’s a big internet universe out there. First of all, you have to step back and ask yourself why there is no competition? To think that designer ball bearings is an undiscovered niche just sitting there waiting to make you the next internet millionaire is just pure fantasy. Yet many people buy into this very niche mindset.

Perhaps there’s another reason that a niche has little to no competition. Remember in the last post when I wrote about the word exchange game? Try exchanging “competition” for “interest“. Exactly. The niche has little to no interest.

Competition is an indicator of interest in a product. If you have lots of competition, then its a pretty safe bet that there is a demand for this type of product. You have a REAL market.  Competition is a good thing… really! In fact, in any major market, let’s say “internet marketing” for example, competition is really just an illusion. The other people in your market shouldn’t be thought of as competitors at all. Instead, let’s use the word switching game again and substitute “competitor” for “JV Partner”, “link exchange”, “affiliate”, or even “traffic source” as few basic examples.

As you can see, taking different perspectives on things, including your internet business is a very important lesson to absorb into your life experience.

The next time you want to create a product or if you’re looking for a new market to expand into, do the opposite of what the “gurus” are teaching. Go jump into a really big market with lots of “competition” and stake your claim. See what happens. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results!

I Can Sell You Anything

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Vintage Advertising

I was reading an excellent post yesterday while getting my James Brausch fix on his blog. I started out reading an excellent set of posts. The first one is entitled “That Doesn’t Make any Sense”. This was a follow up post from the previous day called “Thinking About Words Used“. I went on to read the original post which involved a word replacement game, where you would replace emotional trigger words in a sentence with another one. The general idea is to open your mind beyond the conditioning that we regularly receive from TV, family, peers, etc. and seeing things from other perspectives.

This post made me think back to a book I read as a teenager called “I Can Sell You Anything” by Paul Stevens. In one chapter of the book, he elaborates on the use of “weasel words” such as helps, virtually, up to, as much as, etc. For example, “Virtually spot free”. Most people would think of a clean surface with no spots. Let’s check out the definition of virtual from a dictionary.

virtual adj. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo.

OK, so another way of saying “virtually” could be “almost” or “not really”. Almost spot free… Not really spot free. Hmmm, paints a different picture, eh? Of course, technically, weasel words are necessary in advertising to protect the maker of the product. There are no absolutes with a pain reliever for example. For Novartis to claim that you will be free of pain in 15 minutes after popping two Excedrin would be marketing suicide.

After reading that book way back then, I started word replacing all the weasel words that I would pick up on in the commercials I would see on TV, or in printed Ads. This really helped me to become more aware of exactly what the product was really about, & not what you are led to believe. I started seeing advertisements in a whole new light and I was suddenly much less vulnerable to being snowed.

An entirely new perspective was opened up to me that I never saw before. Kind of like the movie “Dead Poet’s Society” with Robin Williams, where he played a college professor who, in one scene, had his students stand on top of their desks so that they could see their every day surroundings from a different perspective. That was the same kind of “ding” moment for me way back then.

This same “ding” moment can come about in any aspect of communication if you play along as James Points out in his post. I apply this concept pretty much unconsciously all the time. I never really gave it much thought before reading James’s post. TV really is a dangerous medium for conditioning because we simply absorb what is being spoon fed into our brains. This is why TV is such an effective advertising medium, because you can insert “where’s the beef?” directly into the brains of the public and suddenly, millions of people know that Wendys is the place for big juicy hamburgers.

When you think about it, everything the average person really knows about world affairs, politics, government, etc is by what they are fed by the media. Whether true or not, people then regurgitate that info back to their peers as if it was absolute fact, just because they were told it was so by the media, without any “real” first hand proof to back it up.

Check out Jame’s post in the link above and play the word exchange game the next time you watch or read the news, an advertisement, or are copywriting your next sales letter. If you apply this to key facets of your internet business, you will tap into a new level of creativity that you never knew you had.

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Finding The Magic Pill For Unlimited Income Online

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Online Riches blue pillOne thing that makes the marketing of information so popular on the internet is the quest for the “magic pill” mindset. 98% of those who are looking for information, especially in the areas of self-improvement, internet business, marketing, weight loss, etc., tend to make their purchases based on the hope that somehow this info will magically take care of everything for them. If any new skill sets can be absorbed by osmosis, all the better.

In the movie “The Matrix”, Morpheus offers Neo either the blue pill or the red pill. If he takes the blue pill, everything will remain the same. He will continue on with his relatively comfortable life as he knows it, but never achieve his true destiny. If he takes the red pill, however, then the illusion of reality will be lifted and he will learn the secrets of the Matrix. It will not be a comfortable, easy transformation. All the brainwashing and comfortable false security will be gone. See any parallels?

In my own personal observations, I’ve noticed that people generally want the best of both pills. They want the comfort of the blue pill, remaining stagnant and unchanged. At the same time, they want the results of taking the red pill.

This is one reason why prescription drugs are such a huge market. For example, many people with high blood pressure would rather pop a pill every day for the rest of their lives, rather than make a lifestyle change and cure the root cause of the problem. This would require effort. A deviation from the comfortable pattern that we have molded for ourselves into.

This is the very thing that you have to consider for your online business! Even after taking the red pill, Neo had to take action and work to fulfill his destiny as “the one”. Once he understood the matrix, he could have simply lived out his life in obscurity in his new found world and died an unknown.

When you purchase that needed tool for your current business, or that course on how to build an internet business online, remember, if its good information, you may be getting the red pill, or at least some diluted form of it. Now its up to you to act on your new knowledge, and fulfill your destiny.

The secret to success is that there is no magic pill that will do it all for you. There is no system that will allow you to input nothing and get millions back out. The real secret, the real magic pill is action. Get a mentor. Learn all you can about being successful and then apply it.

If you’re an info junkie, then you may already have a goldmine of information just collecting pixel dust in your hard drive. Dust off those e-books, go back through them, but this time ACT on what you read. Getting a successful internet business off the ground takes work. It takes dedication. Don’t let anyone B.S. you into thinking that it doesn’t.

With that said, its really not that hard once you take action and start making those baby steps towards your new future. You must start by having a “take action” mindset as your biggest priority. Now build your business, stick with it even through the failures, and freedom will be yours.

Some Very Cool WordPress Plugins

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WordPress plugins for your internet business blogI was surfing around some of my favorite blogs today & I came across two different posts relating to some cool WordPress plugins that I never paid attention to in the past. The first one I discovered was noted in Mohamed Bhimji’s Blog called alinks. This awesome plugin will automatically create a link from any keywords that you choose. As you noticed above – Mohamed Bhimji and alinks were both auto-generated by alinks. Somehow, I missed Mohamed’s post on the 16th and I’m glad I found it. I immediately installed this plugin and started creating my keywords.

This is especially valuable for creating some back links to your other products and web sites. Alinks will automatically update your entire blog to show the proper back links from your chosen keywords. For example, I have a number of posts that references AmazingCloaker, my url link cloaking product. In one instance, every reference to AmazingCloaker has been automatically updated to link to my product website.

You may have also noticed that the keywords such as “AmazingCloaker” only auto links once within a post. Another smart feature to prevent inadvertent anchor stuffing, which would have a reverse effect on your SEO. You can even opt to not display keywords past a certain date. Oh, did I mention that it’s FREE? This is a definite “must have plugin!

Then I was off to Kenton Newby’s blog. As usual Kenton always has great posts to read, and today, coincidentally, he had posted an article about a couple great plugins that he’s added to his arsenal as well.

The first one is called KeywordLuv. This cool little plugin allows your commenters to insert keywords into the Name field without being flagged as spammers. For example, in the “Name” field, you would insert your name, then an “@” symbol followed by your keyword phrase. For example, if you wanted to use the keywords “Internet Business Blog” as your back link anchor text, and your name was Joe, simply type in (without the quotes) “Joe @ Internet Business Blog”. Everything after the “@” symbol is stripped out into anchor text for your back link, which corresponds to your website info that you then enter into the URL field.

In order for this to work, you need to become “dofollow” friendly. By default, WordPress uses the “nofollow” tags which doesn’t give responders the full benefit of the back link from their comments. I downloaded a “dofollow” plugin called Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin which seems like an excellent “dofollow” plugin. It has many features such as minimum response requirements and other things to discourage link spammers.

The other plugin that Kenton mentioned was WP Ajax Edit Comments. This allows you to edit your comment within a certain time after you have posted to the blog. I can think of many times when I’ve responded to a blog post, submitted, and went back to read it only to find spelling errors, or something phrased wrong, but it was too late to change it. WP Ajax Edit Comments will solve that problem for your readers.

Normally, I try not to bog down my blog with too many plugins. You’ll find people out there that have nearly every widget and plugin under the sun running in their blog. I’m always wary of what consequences that this could cause in regards to search engine indexing or just bogging down the mySQL server. However, the above plugins seem to be very friendly not only to me, the blog host, but more importantly, to you the reader as well.

If you have a blog, do yourself a favor and check them out! :)

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Virtually Quit Your J.O.B. Today

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freedom internet businessYou’re starting your internet business, or you’ve already started it, but you’re working full time to pay the bills while your business gets off the ground. This is the predicament that most of us find ourselves in. How do you build your business when you have 40 – 60 hours per week tied up in trading your time for money (a J.O.B.)? In prior posts you’ve read different techniques for getting more time freed up for your business, such as ditching the TV, turning off the phone, avoiding forums, etc. But then what?

How dedicated are you to really building your internet business? Is there anything more important than your freedom? James Brausch wrote once that by walking out on your J.O.B., you would have the time and the freedom to really build your business. Imagine if you reached this level of freedom!

The typical reaction of course is “huh? Just walk out? Yeah easy for a millionaire to say!” Ok, with a mortgage, bills, and in some people’s cases, monstrous credit card debt, one would have to be pretty gutsy to cut off their only stream of income. On the other hand, one has to be pretty gutsy to have only one stream of income – a J.O.B.!

Ok, how motivated are you right now to start your internet business? How motivated are you to take your existing ones to a full time income? With a mild comfort level that a J.O.B. creates (false security), the sense of urgency isn’t really there for most people to get that internet business really cranking.

So now I’d like you to try something. Did you ever mess around on one of those trading sites like ScottTrade and sign up to play their stock market software with pretend money so you could learn the ropes of stock investing?

Try doing the same thing with your internet business. Pretend, right now that you just told your boss to stick it sideways where the sun doesn’t shine. You just walked away from your J.O.B. Now you have no income what-so-ever except for what you might be making online. Now what? How hard would you work now to build your business? Would you work like your life depended on it?

Let’s play a mental mind game called “I just fired my boss!” Put yourself in this scenario for the next two weeks and work your business as if your J.O.B. doesn’t exist, and there’s no J.O.B.s available anywhere.

Tell yourself that you need to make “x” amount to cover your expenses this week. Can you do it? Set a goal at covering your virtual expenses and start creating that video product. Now think about how you’re going to promote it. Post a preview on YouTube, start an eBay auction, blog about it. If you don’t have a blog, then start one. Promote your blog via blog carnivals. You get the picture. Play this game seriously and really challenge yourself.

If you don’t do very well the first couple of weeks, play again and see if you can top your results. If you play this game seriously enough, you will reach the level where you can tell your boss to go pound salt for real!

Need some more tips on how to start from scratch? Check out this book and put yourself in his shoes.

Dead Blog Syndrome

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dead internet business blogsJames Brausch made an interesting observation about an apparently dead blog at sabrinajefferson.org. Although the actual reasons aren’t really clear in Sabrina’s case, James suspects self-sabotage. Thus the subject I would like to touch upon. I’ve seen this myself on a few occasions where one is beginning to really get a successful foundation laid out when all of a sudden, things start going wrong. The spiral continues downward until finally, the business owner makes the command decision to discontinue the business and go back to a J.O.B. or start something else. With a little objective analysis, you’ll see that in many cases that those things that were going wrong were actually self-created. Sometimes the self-saboteur has no clue why the business is taking a nosedive. They trash themselves totally unconscious that the root cause is from within themselves.

What is the source? Negative beliefs. You can recite all the positive affirmations in the world to convince yourself that you will be successful and that your subconscious will be magically reprogrammed through these affirmations. Unfortunately, if your core beliefs say that you aren’t worthy or good enough for success then you will continue the cycle of self-sabotage until you can erase these limiting beliefs which shape your subconscious. Remember, you ARE your beliefs.

One way that you can help turn these negative beliefs around would be to set a high goal for yourself, and then break it down into small bite size pieces. Each time that you succeed in each baby step, you are slowly proving to your subconscious mind that success is something that you can make into a reality. Your confidence will grow with each baby step. Soon you will erase the old self-defeating belief and realize that you are capable of true success. Your belief will change and your subconscious mind will reprogram itself for success. Now you can begin to build a real business.

If you find that you continually crash your projects and never follow through on really building a lasting business, consider this. Your goals are probably not focused. They may not be focused because you really don’t believe that you will accomplish them anyway. Take this simple technique and map out tiny stepping stones for each day, building one upon the other to complete the big picture. Then simply do them every day. You’ll be surprised how many days of small forward progresses will propel you far beyond your expectations. As a result, you will see yourself in a completely new light. Suddenly, when you look in the mirror, you will see one of those successful people that you thought you could never be, starring you right back in the face. Trust me, you’ll love the feeling!

SEO Tips

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Search engine optimization or SEO. Some call it the holy grail of succeeding online. Some view it as full of mystery and secret knowledge that only a few who are “in the know” can actually master. Still others like James Brausch will ask why someone could possibly think that they can optimize a search engine? Search Engine Optimization, optimize a search engine. Good one James. Perhaps WSO or web site optimization would be a more accurate term. Hmmm

Anyway, there are various ranking factors that influence how you will fare in the search engines. A few weeks ago James Brausch released his predictive analysis of the latest Google data. Here is his breakdown for the highest predictability results:

Nemeas (domain name & structure) Factors: 18.2%
RaSof (on page) Factors: 43.8%
Link Factors: 38.1%

What I’d like to cover are some of the on page factors that I have used that have given me significant results. First of all, you should know what keywords that you want to optimize your site for. I like using WordTracker for getting a feel for what terms the most people are searching for. Your stats are also a great resource for finding the keywords that people used to find your site via a search engine. Here are some on-page factors that you can use to crank your rankings:

Title – What you have in your page title is a biggie. You should use highly searched terms relevant to your site here. I’ve read that having your keyword(s) at the beginning or end of your title works best. I don’t have facts to back that up, but I’ve gotten my best results this way.

Anchor Text – This is the text in a hyperlink. For example – Internet Business Blog would be the key phrase that I would use in my anchor text to rank for “internet business blog”. Be sure to take advantage of anchor text. Many people waste perfectly good hyperlinks with totally irrelevant phrases such as “Click Here“. I’ve found many times that if I refer to another website with a good keyword, it boosts my own website for that term. Don’t forget the title text. You can enhance your link power with an extra phrase or word in your title text. This would go after your “href” URL. For example – <a href=”http://somesite.com” title=”great keyword”>

Images & Alt Text – When you add images to your website, be sure to name your image with a decent keyword. You’d be surprised how much extra traffic you could pick up from Google or Yahoo! image searches. Alt text is often ignored too. Use the alt text every time you use images.

Header & Footer – Bold text and <h1, h2> text in your header contribute to your on page factors as well. Even bolded text within the body of your content will make a difference. Be sure to have keyword rich links in your footer as well. The footer is a significant area to your on page ranking.

Obviously you will want to sprinkle your keywords throughout the body of your content as well. Don’t over do it and always write your content for your readers FIRST. If you don’t, your content will lose value by sounding unnatural and keyword stuffed. This will immediately drop your credibility down to the neighborhood of the MFA junk sites.

As shown in James Brausch’s stats above, domain name/structure and back links account for another 56.3% of the factors involved for a top Google rating. Deciding on your domain name and its structure comes before you build your website. On page factors come as you create your site, when you add new content, and when you’re ratcheting your site for better search engine results. Finally, getting back links is something that you always want to work on for the lifetime of your site.

Following these simple steps can boost your website from being off the radar to enjoying a high ranking in the search engines. By combining all of the three major ranking factors, you are bound to nail a top spot in the search engines.