Link Building Tool #1: Link Diagnosis
Excellent tool to evaluate your incoming links and the incoming links of your competitors. By far, my favorite link building tool.

Link Building Tool #2: Xenu’s Link Sleuth
Not really a link building tool, but a great tool to find broken links on your site, 404 error pages and duplicate meta descriptions and page titles.

Link Building Tool #3: SEOMoz LinkFinder
Amazing free tool to find link building opportunities all over the web.

Link Building Tool #4: Majestic SEO
Another great competitive link intelligence tool that I use all the time.

Link Building Tool #5: SEOMoz Open Site Explorer
A much better alternative to Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Link Building Idea #1: Ask Business Partners
I’m sure you know a lot of people with websites and/or blogs. Ask these people to link to you! It doesn’t get any easier than this. These are some possible link sources: customers, vendors, co-workers, employees, business partners, relatives and friends.

Link Building Idea #2: Organize Events and Charities
People love supporting good causes and you can get a lot of links this way.

Link Building Idea #3: Give Awards
Organize contests and give the winners badges to put on their sites. These badges will naturally link to your site.

Link Building Idea #4: Get Links from Sites that Mention You
Sometimes websites mention you or your company but they don’t link to your site. Sometimes they even include your URL but it’s not clickable (not a link). Use the SEOMoz LinkFinder to find these sites and ask the webmasters to include a link to your website.

Link Building Idea #5: Ask Past Linkers to Link to You Again
Keep a list of people that link to your content and let them know when you have more similar content. If they linked to you in the past, they’re very likely to link to you again.

I travel a lot and so do my partners and employees. We often find ourselves working very far away from each other and we need tools to work just like if we were in the same room. These are my 10 favorite free (or almost free) collaboration tools.

Skype
Skype allows you to talk to people all over the world for free. It also offers chat, video chat and you can also share your screen with other people.

BaseCamp
If you’re looking for a tool to manage your projects, BaseCamp is by far the best option. Create to-do lists, milestones, projects, upload files, assign tasks to people, control the progress of your project and communicate with other team members.

Twiddla
Think of Twiddla as a whiteboard that several people can see at the same time. It’s great to explain ideas, draw arrows, call-outs, etc.

Google Docs
This Google tool allows you to share documents with your team. Just put them in a folder everybody can access and you can all edit the same documents.

Mint
This is a great money-management tool and it’s free.

LogMeIn
Do you need to remotely control a computer? This is a great tool for it. You can use your partner’s computer from Seattle if you’re in New York. You can leave your computer at home and access it from any other computer in the world.

Google Calendar
Keep all your events and meetings organized with this tool from Google. The best part is that you and your team can share the same calendar so you can all see what everyone else is up to and when they all have some free time to meet.

BlueTie
This application isn’t free, but it’s only $5/month, so it’s almost free. BlueTie is a great tool to manage emails and keep your contacts organized. You can share email messages and contacts with your team. BlueTie has a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) engine built-in that I really like.

PamFax
Send and receive faxes for very cheap from your own computer. You can send documents (PDF, DOC, etc.). When you receive a fax, you’ll get the pages as email attachments that you can print if you want. Having fax has never been so cheap.

EchoSign
Isn’t it annoying when you have to print out an agreement, sign it, fax it, have the other person sign it and fax it back to you? There’s a better option: EchoSign. This cool tool allows you to sign documents online in just a few seconds.

If you’re not in the local listings, you’re leaving a lot of business on the table. It’s free, it’s easy and it’s fast.

Where Should You Get Your Company Listed?

Google Local
Yahoo! Local
Bing Local
InfoUSA
Yellow Pages
Localeze
Yelp
Acxiom (via UniversalBusinessListing.org)

Some Tips to Make Your Ads Appear Above Your Competitors’

• Add your location and the keywords you want to rank for in the title tags of your website pages. They should look something like “Janitor in Atlanta, GA”, “Atlanta Janitorial Services”, etc.
• Include the legal name of your business in the title tag of your contact page.
• Use a local phone number (same area code as the city you want to rank for) and avoid toll free numbers.
• Use physical addresses instead of PO boxes if possible.
• Use your keywords several times in your local listings (in the title, description, categories, tags, etc.)
• Complete your local listing profiles as much as you can. Add business information, website, photos, videos, etc.
• Some local search engines allow you to add coupons. Take advantage of this.
• Include full contact information in your website footer and on your contact page. Include a physical address and make sure it matches the one in your local listings.
• Some people say that locations closer to downtown are more likely to rank above other listings. I haven’t seen proof of this, but if you have multiple addresses, use the one closer to downtown.
• Don’t submit your listing more than once. Duplicate entries can get you in trouble.

I’ve been working on an SEO book for the last 8 months. I finished it the last day of 2009 and we launched it today. I wrote it for entrepreneurs and business owners, not IT geniuses, because I wish there had been a guide like this one when I got started.

The e-book has been published by StartupNation, the biggest entrepreneurship community on the web and you can find more information about it here: Google SEO Book.

This is what you’ll learn in my book:

• How to find the perfect keywords for your SEO campaigns.
• How to analyze your competition and discover what areas of SEO you need to work on to make it to the top of Google.
• How to create a website that Google loves.
• How to create content that wows your visitors and makes them want to come back for more and tell all their friends about you.
• How to get high-quality links with very little effort (HINT: it’s not about getting a lot of links; it’s about getting THE RIGHT ONES).

Do you know why most people fail miserably at Social Media Marketing? Because they don’t really get what it’s all about. They think it’s about promoting their companies. It’s not; it’s about MAKING FRIENDS.

“Really? Making friends?”

“Yes, really.”

See, people like doing business with their friends. If your toilet breaks and one of your friends is a janitor, you’ll ask him to fix it. If you don’t have any janitor friend, then you might ask your friends if they know a janitor they trust. People do business with their friends for two reasons:

1. They get a better service, price, deal, etc.
2. They give money to people they care about.

So, how can you apply this principle to Social Media Marketing?

1. Make sure your social media profiles say what you do and have links to your site.
2. Make friends. Discover your target market and start talking to those people. Don’t sell them anything; just make friends with them and check out their status updates. What are they doing? Is there anything you can help with? Are they asking questions you can answer or looking for something you can give them?
3. After a few interactions, something very interesting will happen. They’re going to ask you the BIG QUESTION: “so, what do you do for a living?”. Just tell them what you do but don’t make it sound like you’re trying to sell them something. This is where your elevator speech will come into play. In case you want to know what an elevator speech looks like, this is mine: “I help companies get thousands of qualified visitors for their websites.” Create an elevator speech and be ready to share it when people ask you what you do for a living.
4. People will add you to their “mental Rolodex”. It works something like this: “Joan P. - High-end catering services”, “Marty K. - Real estate agent”, etc.
5. When they need a real estate agent, they’ll call Marty. And, they’ll also recommend Marty to anyone who needs a real estate agent (assuming that Marty took the time to build strong relationships with his contacts instead of trying to sell them his services).

I can’t emphasize this enough: Social Media Marketing is about MAKING FRIENDS, not about selling your stuff. But remember: making friends is a great way to sell your stuff!

I believe that if we all understood the concept in this article, the Social Media Marketing world would be a lot more fun and efficient, so let me ask you a favor: spread the word. Send this to your contacts, re-tweet it, share it on Facebook, or share it any way you want. Thank you!

These are the top 10 deadliest website mistakes:

No Clear Call to Action
Most website just have information. What about the call to action? If you don’t tell people what to do, they won’t do anything.

No Effective Sales Funnel
There is one thing the most effective websites in the world have in common: they capture the contact information of their visitors and they use email to follow up with them. This works because you ask for a small commitment upfront (name and email or just email) and then you work on building a relationship and trust with your list.

No Social Proof
All the companies in the world say they’re the best; people want to see EVIDENCE of it. Show them case studies, testimonials, “as seen on” boxes, list of companies you work with, income proof, celebrity endorsements, expert endorsements, etc.

No Headline
A headline has to grab your readers attention. You need to know your market well enough to be able to push the right hot buttons in the headline so they read the rest of your copy.

Too Much Stuff
My favorite web design quote is “a website is ready not when there’s nothing else to add, but when there’s nothing else to take away”. Enough said.

Copy Doesn’t Follow a Logical Sequence
First you need to grab people’s attention. Then you need to let them know how you can help them and finally you need to invite them to take action. Use clear and simple copy. Don’t just mumble around, go straight to the point. Remember it’s not about you and your company; it’s about what’s in it for THEM.

No Testing
99% of the business owners think they know what their websites should look like in order to increase the response from their visitors. 100% of them are leaving sales and leads on the table by assuming too much and not testing enough. Google Website Optimizer allows you to test headlines, calls to action, graphics, copy, offers, prices, layout and whatever else you can think of. Don’t guess; test.

Information Is Hard to Find And Website is Difficult to Use
Your website should be intuitive. Go visit your gramma and ask her to go to your site and order your product. If she can do it without browsing around for minutes, you have a winning site. Figure out what you want people to do and what information they need in order to complete that action. Make sure they can find that information easily and complete the desired action painlessly.

No Risk-Reversal Tactics
Social proof and professional copy is great to persuade people to take action. But it’s not enough. You have to show people that even if your product doesn’t perform as they expect, they’ll come out on top. Some ideas:

• 100% refund and they keep part of the product or a bonus
• 110% refund and you take care of the return shipping
• You ship your product first and you only charge them if they don’t return it within 30 days

Copy Is Hard to Read
Here you have some tips to make your copy easy to read:

• Use simple words instead of complex ones (write as you speak)
• Use short sentences
• Use short paragraphs
• Use bold subheads to break down big chunks of text into shorter sections
• Use bullets
• Use images
• Take a quick glance at this blog post to see what easy-to-read text looks like

A lot has been written on keyword research. This is the criteria I use to analyze keywords and decide whether they’re worth pursuing.

Do They Convert?
This is the most important factor to consider. Before doing SEO, it’s always a good idea to do a PPC campaign and test your keywords. I can guarantee that half of the keywords you choose by doing keyword research will not make you any money. Don’t waste a year doing SEO for them. Run a PPC campaign and see what keywords make you money before targeting those terms with SEO.

Are They “Action” or “Research” Keywords?
Some keywords indicate that people are ready to take action and others indicate that they’re just doing research. A person will start by doing research and then possibly take some sort of action. You want to attract people in this last stage. For example, someone who wants to buy a car will start by searching for something like “best cars of 2010″. They’ll find a few cars they like and they’ll do research on them. In this stage they’ll search for something like “Audi S4 2010″. Once they decide they want to get that car, they’ll search for “Audi dealership in Seattle”. That’s the keyword you want.

Do They Have High Search Volumes?
Obviously, keywords with a lot of searches are better than keywords with just a few. But, keep in mind it’s all about conversions. If keyword A brings you 1,000 visitors and 1 conversion a day and keyword B brings you 200 visitors and 5 conversions a day, you should choose keyword B.

Are They Hard to Rank For?
I don’t discard keywords just because they’re hard; I know that I can get a top ranking for pretty much any keyword I choose. But I do consider how much time and money it’ll take for me to get there and sometimes it just doesn’t make sense.

Current Ranking
With SEO, you see a bigger traffic increase from going from position 8 to position 2 than you do from going from position 300 to 12. Therefore, checking where I am in the rankings for each of my keywords is crucial. If I see a keyword in position 11 (second page) that is getting a lot of traffic, I know that by getting to position 10 (first page) I’ll see a nice boost in traffic. I use Google Analytics to check what keywords send me traffic and I check my current positions for those keywords. If I see keywords between positions 11 and 50, I know those are great opportunities.

Tools I Use
For initial keyword research:

• My brain (to come up with some keyword ideas)
• Google (to spy on my competitor keywords)
• Google AdWords (to run PPC campaigns and find keywords that convert)
• Google Keyword Tool (to come up with keywords and find out traffic volume)
• SEOMoz Keyword Difficulty Tool (it’s a paid tool. This is a free one)
• RankChecker for Firefox (to check my search engine rankings)

The other day I met with Matt, Mike and Peter, three great friends and business owners. We’re all serial entrepreneurs and neither of us had started a new company in the last year, so we decided to start a new business together.

We talked for a good hour or so about what kind of business we wanted to start. We discovered that our definition of “the perfect business” was very different from those you can find in most business books. These are the criteria our “perfect business” had to meet:

We Should Be Able to Launch The Business in One Month
We don’t like planning for years and then opening our doors and hoping for the best. We like getting started right away so we don’t lose momentum.

We Should Be Able to Start the Business with Less than $2,000
This is why we decided to start with a very small investment:

1. We want to test the market to make sure there is demand for our product.
2. When you have little money, you’re desperate to make sales. That’s a good thing! When you have money, you feel like you can sit around and “wait for the business to take off”.
3. When you have little money, you become very efficient. You negotiate more, look around for better deals and decide against expenses that won’t help your business grow.

We Don’t Want Investors
What’s the first thing business books tell you to do? To write a business plan and look for investors. We don’t like having investors for these reasons:

• We want to be able to make fast decisions without having to seek for approval for everything we do.
• We want to focus on creating value for our clients instead of making our investors their money back as fast as possible.
• Too much money makes people lazy. They stop caring about small costs, they pay more for stuff they can get for less and they’re not as desperate to find clients as they should be.

I’m not saying that having investors is a bad thing; I’m just saying that I don’t want to have investors for MY businesses.

We Want a Business That Provides Cashflow from Day 1
You’ve read it before: start a business, work your butt off and sell it in 5 years for millions of dollars. Although some people try this and make it, the great majority of those who go this route fail miserably. I like instant gratification. I want to make money from day 1. I want to make money every month, not just once in 5 years.

We Want a Business That Generates Recurring Income
The beautiful thing about a business that provides you with recurring revenue is that:

• You can afford to break even or even lose money to acquire a new client.
• You don’t need to get new clients all the time in order to keep your business profitable.

Think about it: you give money to your cable and cell phone companies every month. All they had to do to get you to hire their services was to offer you a great deal for the first 3 months. Not a bad business model, huh?

We Want a Business that Allows Us to Charge Our Customers Before We Have to Pay Our Vendors
The hardest part of a business to manage is cashflow. When you have to pay for something before you can charge for it, you can get in trouble. Let me explain: let’s say you start a business with $10,000 and you sell $1,000 widgets that you pay $500 for. If you sell 20 widgets in the first month, all your money will go towards buying inventory and it’ll take a few days for you to get the money from your clients (because of shipping times, the money clearing your merchant account and getting deposited in your bank account, etc.)

You’ll run out of money and when someone orders another widget you won’t have any money to buy inventory. Also, you won’t have money for marketing and unexpected expenses. And, your customers will be upset that you can’t fulfill their orders.

Now, compare the scenario above with these ones:

• You create your product ONCE and you can sell as many of them as you want without any additional costs (e.g. informational products, software, etc.)
• You pay you supplier AFTER you collect the money. You collect $1,000 for every widget you sell and you pay your supplier $500 AFTER the sale is made.
• You sell your supplier’s product and they give you a PERCENTAGE of each sale. This could be in the form of affiliate marketing or drop-shipping and out of these three options this is my least favorite.

The 3 scenarios described above are a lot less risky than buying inventory upfront and then trying to sell it.

We Want a Business We Can Automate
Some businesses are extremely complex and require a lot of time. We don’t like those. We like businesses that we can automate or delegate easily. We like processes that we can break down into smaller tasks and train high school students to do them. This doesn’t mean that we always hire high school students, but it’s a great way to think about it.

We Want to Do Something that Makes Us Happy
This is the most important criteria of all. To me, 40% of the happiness a business brings me depends on who I work with. I like working with smart people I can have fun with and share my way of doing business (mention “business plan” around me and I’ll run away from you as fast as I can).

The other 60% depends on doing something with meaning. I want to know that not only I’m making money but I’m also making the world a better place. I’m not talking about alternative energy or fighting poverty (although I’ll make a contribution to those fields some time soon); I’m talking about creating tools to make processes more effective, save people money, help them make more money, be happier, etc.

When you believe in what you do and get hundreds of nice emails from customers, it feels really, really good.

Let’s see if you’ve been paying attention… What’s my favorite word? If you said “steak” you were close, but the answer I was looking for is “LEVERAGE”.

Let’s define leverage as using other people resources to multiply the outcome from your efforts. Guest blogging is one of my favorite ways to use leverage because:

• The most influential bloggers in your industry have access to thousands of people you don’t. When your content gets published on their blogs, you automatically gain access to all these people.
• The most influential bloggers in your industry are seen as experts and they’re highly trusted. If they trust you, so will their readers.

So, How Do You Become a Guest Blogger?

1. Do a Google search for [keyword] blog.
   
2. Check the top 50 results and find blogs with a lot of readers. The best way to find out if a blog gets a lot of traffic is by checking how many comments their posts get. Good, active blogs get plenty of comments.
   
3. Subscribe to the blogs and start commenting often. Bloggers love it when people comment on their blogs.
4. After a while, once they know you, send the bloggers emails and congratulate them on their blogs. Don’t ask for anything yet. Just say something nice.
5. Keep building these relationships. There’s no magic number as far as how many emails you need to send them. Just play it by ear. Find ways to help them. If you have suggestions for ways to improve their sites or topics for them to blog about, send them your suggestions.
6. Once you have a great relationship with them, tell them you have a great idea for an article and ask them if they’d like to publish it. Don’t ask for a “guest blogging position”; ask for a small commitment instead. Just one article on a great topic. Tell them that you can write it and if after reading it they decide not to publish it, you won’t be offended.
7. After your first article gets published, ask you friends to check it out and comment on it. Most bloggers love comments and the more they get the happier they’ll be.
8. At this point, go for a slightly bigger commitment, like 2 articles per month or 1 per week.

Very Important: Build real relationships with the bloggers. Don’t just kiss their butts to get something from them. This won’t take you very far.

Social Media Marketing is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Figure out who your target audience is.
2. Find them online.
3. Connect with them.

Most people are good at figuring out who their target audience is (#1) and have good people skills to manage relationships successfully (#3). They only struggle at finding their target audience (#2). The good news is that finding your target audience online is extremely easy. I’ll show you how I’d go about finding potential clients online if I sold Harley Davidson merchandise.

How to Find Potential Clients on Forums

• Search Google for “[keyword] forum”.
  
• Some variations: “[keyword] discussion board” and “[keyword] discussion forum”.
• Use BoardTracker and BoardReader to find forums.
  
• I prefer the Google search over BoardReader and BoardTracker because Google will give you forums instead of individual threads within forums.

How to Find Potential Clients on LinkedIn Groups

• Choose “Groups” from the drop-down menu and enter your keyword.
  
• Join the groups and become part of the conversation.

How to Find Potential Clients on Facebook Groups

• Go to Facebook Groups.
  
• Search for your keyword.
  
• Join the groups.
  

How to Find Potential Clients on Google Groups

• Go to Google Groups.
• Search.
  
• Look for active groups. You should look at the date of the last post, the number of members and the number of messages per month.
• Join the groups and make a contribution by providing valuable content.

How to Find Potential Clients on Yahoo! Groups

• Go to Yahoo! Groups.
• Search.
  
• Look for attractive groups (with plenty of active members), join them and engage in the conversation.

How to Find Potential Clients on Blogs

• Do a Google search.
  
• Subscribe, comment and make friends.
• Make friends with bloggers too. Send them emails and congratulate them on their great blogs (make sure you really mean it). These people have access to thousands of Harley Davidson fans. Blog readers really trust bloggers, so take the time to develop strong relationships with the most influential bloggers in your industry.