Underdog
They Laughed When I Told Them I Was Going to Be a Professional Weightlifter. Nobody Is Laughing Now.

Who Else?
Who Else Wants to Quit their Jobs, Spend More Time with Their Families and Make $87,000 per Year Working 2 Hours a Day from Home?

Are You Ready?
Are You Ready to Discover the Secret Marketing Formula that a Handful of Dentists in the UK Are Using to Get Thousands of Dollars a Month (Without Any Extra Work)?

How I Did It
How I Went From a Complete Rookie to Ski World Champion in Only 3 Years and How YOU Can Do the Same

How To
How to Lose 2 Pounds per Week for 8 Weeks Eating Ice-Cream

Niche Headline
For Busy Doctors Who Want to Cut Back Work Hours (But Don’t Want to Earn Less Money!)

If You Are…, You Can…
If You Are a Doctor Who Makes More than $100,000 per Year, You Can Pay 42% Less in Taxes!

Secrets
Successful Serial Entrepreneur Reveals the 6 Secrets that Helped Her Make Millions Selling Informational Products

Warning
Warning! If You Mess This One Thing Up in Your Mortgage Application, Your Banker Can Take Your Home!

Give Me… and I’ll Show You…
Give me 90 Seconds And I’ll Show You How You Can Have a Flat Tummy in 3 Weeks

Ways
5 Ways to Make More Money With Your Existing Website Without Getting More Traffic. Guaranteed!

Celebrity
What Would Brad Pitt Say if He Saw You Wearing This Dress?

Illegal
A Money-Making System So Easy that Should Be Illegal

Direct Statement
Get 1.25% Cash Back on All Your Purchases!

Question
Are You Sick of Your “Love Handles”? Don’t You Wish They Would Just Go Away? What If I Told You that You Can Make them Disappear with 2 Simple Exercises that Won’t Take You More than 6 Minutes per Day?

Testimonial
Microsoft Has Increased their Online Sales 142% in 2008 Using Our MarketPack. You Can Do the Same. Discover How!

Command
This Is Your Chance to Lower Your Long-Distance Call Costs. Take It!

Guarantee
Natural Cream Guaranteed to Completely Eliminate Your Acne in 13 Days –or 110% Money Back and You Keep the Product!

Problem/Solution
What Would Happen if Your Computer Crashed Right Now? How Much Valuable Data Would You Lose? Here’s How You Can Make Sure This NEVER Happens to You

Discount
5 DVDs. 5 Bucks. No Commitments. No Strings Attached. Act NOW!

Reasons
9 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Complaining About the Economy and Do Something About Your Business Right Now

Story
How a Single Mom with Two Kids Managed to Get Out of Debt and Save $20,000 in 11 Months without Working Extra Hours

News
Doctors Astounded by New Miracle Pill that Increases Chances of Getting Pregnant by 211%

Not This… But This…
No “Get Rich Fast” Scams. No MLM Lies. No “Build It and They’ll Come” BS. Just Down-to-Earth Tips for the Smart Business Owner.

And remember: you can combine two or more of these tactics into one headline!

Related posts:

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• Submit a sitemap of your site so Google knows what pages they should index.
• Tell Google what is the canonical URL you want to use (site.com or www.site.com).
• Detect issues with duplicate title tags and meta descriptions.
• Find 404 error pages.
• Detect crawlability issues.
• See a list URLs restricted by robots.txt.
• See the most common keywords people find your site through.
• Get a list of links pointing to your site.
• Tell Google how they should index your images.

Steal Your Competitors’ Keywords
These are some of the ways you can do it:

• Look at the keywords they use in their title tags.
• Look at the keywords they use to link to their “money pages”.
• Some webmasters are dumb enough to include their money keywords in their meta keywords tags. Take a look at these but keep in mind that smart SEO people won’t do this and they might actually put bad keywords in the meta keywords tag to get other wannabe SEOs to use them.

Pay Attention to Your MozRank
SEOmoz has a tool called LinkScape that calculates your MozRank. MozRank is a great metric that evaluates the quality of your incoming links, something that most link assessment tools don’t do (they focus on quantity only).

If you have more links that your competitors but they’re ranking above you, you should take a look at your MozRank and theirs; maybe they have fewer links than you but they are BETTER than yours.

If your MozRank is higher than theirs, you have more links and they rank above you, then there’s probably an issue with the lack of keywords in the anchor texts of your incoming links.

Get a Double Listing
A double listing (or indented listing) can increase the click-through-rate (CTR) to the roof. How you can get a double listing?

• You need two pages of your site on the same page of Google results. For example, let’s say you have page A and page B. Page A ranks #4 on Google for “affordable leather shoes” and page B ranks #15 on Google for the same keyword. You need to take page B from position 15 (second page of Google) to position 10 (first page of Google) so pages A and B are on the first page of Google.
• Perform this Google search to find out what 2 pages Google finds most relevant to a given keyword: site:yoursite.com [keyword].
• Now that you know what 2 pages are the most relevant for that keyword (according to Google), use the SEO Rank Checker Tool to find out the Google rankings for those pages.
• Optimize pages A and B for your keyword. Link to page B from page A and vice versa using the keyword you want to rank for in the anchor text of the links.
• Get some keyword-rich links from external sites to pages A and B.
• Voilá! Your listing will look like this one:
  

Use Google to Get Keyword Suggestions
Start typing your main keyword in the Google search box and get ideas for keywords.

Fix Canonical URL Issues
If you can access your site by typing “site.com” and “www.site.com”, Google will see that as two different sites with the exact same content and that can hurt you a lot. You need to create a file called .htaccess with these three lines and put it in the root folder of your site:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.site\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.site.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Warning: unless you know what you’re doing, have someone else do this. All servers are configured different and you don’t want to mess with your .htaccess file.

What To Do If You Ever Get Penalized By Google
First of all, stay away from spammy tactics so this never happens. But, if you’ve been a bad boy/girl, this is what you should do:

• Find out why it happened. Read Google Webmaster Guidelines and find out what you’ve done wrong.
• Fix it.
• Ask Google to reconsider your site. Admit to everything and don’t pretend you didn’t know what you were doing. Promise that you won’t do it again.
• Don’t do it again!

Create a Google Sitemap
Use this tool: GSiteCrawler.

Learn the 4 Truths of Links

• Links from authority sites (e.g. CNN) are worth more than links from average sites (e.g. your cousin’s skating blog).
• Links from relates sites are worth more than links from unrelated sites.
• Links with your keyword in the anchor text are worth more that links that say “click here” or “read more”.
• Link quality is WAY more important than link quantity.

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What Makes These Directories So Special?

• Because the directories I’m about to mention aren’t free, 95% of the webmasters stay away from them. That makes these directories a lot more exclusive and links from these sites a lot more valuable to you.
• The other reason these directories are so good is that real humans review the submissions they get and approve/decline requests manually, based on the quality of the sites they review. Because they only add quality sites to their indexes, links from these directories are worth A LOT more than links from spammy directories.
• Not only are these directories good for SEO, but they can also drive very qualified traffic to your site.

Show Me the List!
OK, here it goes:

• Yahoo! Directory - $299/year
• DMOZ - This is the only free directory on the list. Submit your site to it and move on. They can take months (if ever) to approve your listing.
• Business.com - $299/year
• Best of the Web - $149.95/year
• Best of the Web Blogs - $75/year
• Gimpsy - $49, one-time fee
• Skaffe - $44.99, one-time fee
• WOW Directory - $43, one-time fee
• Aviva - $49.95/year
• GoGuides - $69.95, one-time fee
• Starting Point - $99/year
• Web Beacon - $39.99, one-time fee
• JoeAnt - $39.99, one-time fee

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Step #1: Test A LOT of Sites
When it comes to online advertising, it’s impossible to guess what websites are going to perform best. There’s only one thing you can do: test a lot of them. I use these networks:

• Google AdWords Managed Placements (you get to choose the websites where your ads get displayed).
• Google AdWords Content Network (Google shows your ads on pages that are related to them).
• AdBrite (the biggest ad marketplace on the web).

Step #2: Test Everything
These are some of the things you need to test:

• Websites (to see what sites work and which ones don’t).
• Text vs. image ads.
• Different sizes for image ads.
• Different headlines and calls to action.
• Different marketing approaches.

The keys to effective testing:

• Define your goal. Your goal should be conversions, not clicks or impressions.
• Split-test the same kind of traffic. Don’t show Sunday traffic one ad and Monday traffic a different ad. Sunday traffic is different from Monday traffic. The same concept applies for all the other variables. Make sure that when you run split tests you show both ads to similar audiences.
• Achieve statistical significance. This is a fancy term that means “you need enough data to be confident that the results you’re getting are accurate”.
• Be very organized and document everything. If your experiments are a mess, the outcome will be an even bigger mess.

Step #3: From CPC to CPM
When you get started, you’ll be using the cost-per-click (CPC) model. That’s a good way to understand what websites work and which ones don’t. Once you get a good idea of what websites are losing you money, get rid of them as fast as possible.

The next step is very important so pay attention. You’ll start using the CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) model for those websites that worked for you in the past. You’ll get a lot more clicks and will pay less by using CPM instead of CPC. You can manage this through your AdWords and AdBrite accounts.

Step #4: Cut Out the Middle Man
Advertising networks only pay the publishers about 30%-50% of what they get from you. If you pay $2 for 1,000 impressions, the publisher will get anywhere from $0.60 to $1; the network will keep the rest. This is what you should do:

• Contact the publisher directly and negotiate a CPM price. Offer them 60% of what you’re currently paying. That will work out better for them and you.

Step #5: From CPM to Flat Fee
Take a list of those sites that are performing great and approach their webmasters. Negotiate a flat fee instead of CPM. They prefer this anyway and you can save a lot of money this way. Plus, your ads can be on their sites 24/7 instead of on/off. You won’t need to share the space with other advertisers anymore.

Step #6: From Flat Fee to CPA/Affiliate
Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing and affiliate marketing are great ways to advertise your products because your publishers will only get paid when visitors complete a goal on your site. The goal could be to submit a contact form, proposal request, download a free report, buy a product, etc.

When you get your publishers to become your affiliates, they’ll be a lot more motivated to make your offer work. They’ll be more likely to email their lists about your offer, advertise it in their newsletters and give your banners top visibility.

When you offer your publishers to become affiliates, tell them it’s on a trial basis and if they don’t make more money that way, you can always switch back to the flat fee model. Show them there’s nothing for them to lose and they’ll be happy to give it a try.

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Strategy #2: Publish a Book
If you want to be the go-to expert in your industry, there’s no easier way to achieve that goal than by writing a book. When you’re “John Doe, the author of…” a lot of doors open for you. The problem is that people think getting published is a lot harder than it really is. There’s a great alternative to traditional publishing: self-publishing. CreateSpace is a company owned by Amazon that will make everything very easy for you.

Strategy #3: Get LinkedIn Enforsements
One of the coolest features of LinkedIn is their endorsements. People can endorse you if they think you do a good job. You can get your clients, old clients, co-workers and bosses to endorse you.

Go to Profile > Recommended > Get Recommended.

When a lot of people recommend you, LinkedIn suggests your company to other people that might be looking for your services. This takes 5 minutes and can get you a lot of new business.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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“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!

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