The 30 Day Challenge is where I began to learn the nuts and bolts of internet marketing, SEO, Wordpress…and where I was introduced to to the amazing research tool, Market Samurai.
The Immediate Edge is where I stay up to date on the newest tools, techniques and strategies for online success.
When I began really learning about online business and internet marketing, I knew a lot about building an offline business and about retailing, but nothing about websites, keywords, SEO and PPC.
I went looking for teachers and found what you’re probably finding…lots of people willing to take your money and teach you nothing useful. It’s actually gotten worse since 2001…now they’re all teaching the same rehashed information that worked back in 2001 (only a slight exaggeration) but may or may not be working now in 2009.
There is a tremendous amount of fraud out there, and I stayed in a safe community of coaches for a very long time because it was scary out there. I also realized that do build the kind of business I wanted, I really did need to learn more from the internet marketing experts.
I went down some dead ends, and I was and continue to be very, very skeptical. You should be skeptical too. No matter what I teach you, I want you to test it out and make it your own. Don’t just take my word for it.
When I discovered good teachers, I didn’t take what they said as gospel. I took what they taught and experimented with it and tested it in unrelated markets…birdhouses, auto products, fondue pots, house and garden products etc. Some worked, some didn’t but through it all I was learning how to select keywords, set up a website quickly and easily (forget major design initiatives), and get ranked in Google.
It’s taken over 2 years to really feel confident in what I’m teaching you, and that confidence comes directly from testing everything I’ve learned, and proving to myself that I could get on page 1 in Google.
My promise to you is to share only what I have tested myself, and to be clear when I’m sharing something I haven’t yet tested.
There’s another kind of reaction I’ve been getting recently that is just as disturbing as the ones I mentioned yesterday. These are the reactions from people who are just getting ready to launch their websites or have done so recently.
Most of these fall into the category of a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing…
These folks have got it into their heads that keyword research and search engine optimization are something you do after your site is up. The prevailing view is that I can then do something (they know not quite what) to their site to make it rank in Google.
Yikes! This is more ass end backwards nonsense that’s been perpetrated on the unsuspecting and ignorant online businessperson by the so called “SEO experts”.
Yes, if you have a website up it can be improved by keyword research and adding keywords to your copy and tags, but this is the worst way to go about it.
The best way is to do your keyword research first and build your site around those keywords.
So rather than adding stuff on to your site which almost always looks like it was added on, you build a site from the foundation up. The advantages are that you build into your site a consistency and cohesiveness that’s hard to create after the fact, and this has a huge impact on how Google views your site in organic search and it impacts the kind of quality score they give your ppc.
