Recently, I received an email from a well known female blogger saying that she had received death threats.

She said there was a “Mean Site 1″ that talked to a “Mean Site 2″ and both of them threatened to kill her or do her harm.

She was targeted because trolls on the Internet don’t like successful women, she said. She quoted specific excerpts from the offending site, proving that they threatened to kill her.

This was horrible! I was outraged.

Background Check

Because of my deep cynicism and morbid curiosity, I wanted to check to see what these “Mean Sites” had actually written. It’s always good to double check what anyone says on the Internet.

After a quick search, I found the obvious “Mean Site 2″. They were, in fact, mean.

I read in amazement that this “Mean Site” was not actually threatening anything close to death.

The quotes that were used by the female blogger were taken so far out of context that they were meaningless.

The female blogger had lied. Big, obvious lies.

Sex! Murder! Money!

As I read more and more into the background of what happened, who said what, and who did what, I found the story of a possible affair, a husband leaving his wife and family, an actual premeditated murder by a hired killer that someone is serving time for, tax fraud, fake death threats, and money making scams that target defenseless women through deception on the Internet.

I was more shocked at the truth than I was at the original lie.

I will give you links to all of the offending, and offensive, sites and blog posts at the end so you can go read as much about it as you want.

The Truth About Mean Site 2

Mean Site 2 was actually a site that targeted “scammers”. Their goal was to take down, expose, and humiliate, anyone who who took advantage of people for financial gain.

They are, in fact, mean about doing that. They use profanity, insults, and name calling.

The Mean Site 2 was scheduled to expose the female blogger’s scams, so she had struck first in the court of public opinion with her email.

There was no threat at all.

The most damaging excerpt that she quoted was not even about her. It was a satire, written about other people. She took other quotes so far out of context, well, you’ll just have to go read them.

They were not threatening her with death. They were saying that she’s a liar, a scammer, and takes financial advantage of vulnerable women.

The Scam

In simple terms, the general scam that everyone uses is that if you buy my product, then you will have whatever you want, but the product is worthless.

It’s the classic “snake oil” sales pitch.

A lot of people want to believe that SEO, or Internet Marketing, or blogging, can make you all the money that you want. Scammers sell books and training on how to do those things.

The victim spends money on the training/books/coaching or whatever, but is never successful.

The best way to make money on the Internet is to teach other people that the best way to make money on the Internet is teaching other people the best way to make money on the Internet.

The Secret and Oprah Winfrey

The biggest target of Mean Site 2 is James Arthur Ray. He was part of the book The Secret, which was featured on Oprah. Huge seller. This guys is famous.

The Secret is basically a bunch of cobbled together religious sounding, philosophical crap. Believe in yourself, imagine the possibilities, if you can visualize it, then it will come true, etc., etc.

(I visualized that I could fly when I was 10 and jumped off the garage roof. That didn’t end well.)

James Arthur Ray used Oprah’s support to build a following that he sold books, tapes, and personal appearances to.

Ultimately, he took $10,000 from each person who attended a week long retreat, where everyone was to be enlightened. Part of the program was a “sweat lodge” experience.

3 people ended up dead.

James Arthur Ray was convicted on three counts of negligent homicide.

I don’t think he ever visualized that.

Internet Marketing

This whole story really hit me hard (not the James Ray thing, the email death threat thing). I know, and have bought products from, some of the people involved. I’ve had email conversations with them and their friends.

I’ve also written a book that I will sell to you on Internet Marketing. I have one on SEO. Both of those books have great information in them and, I think, are worth the money.

The information that I’ve sold people is accurate and valuable, but I wondered if I crossed an ethical line too.

I know, from people’s questions and comments and emails, that most people who buy my books never get around to doing anything about them.

I get to take their money, but nothing really happens after that, for most people.

Most people are lazy, looking for easy solutions. (I know I am.)

If only we can buy the right book, or watch the right video, then we’ll be successful.

The Secret To Making Money On The Internet

There really are principles and methods that you can use to make more money on the Internet. There is a secret to being successful and making money.

It’s hard work.

Take good solid information and work hard at it, consistently, for a long time.

That’s true. I’ve done it. I know other people who have done it.

My Future, My Life

But am I taking unfair advantage of people’s hopes and dreams by selling them something they will never use?

I don’t know.

I’ve decided that I will concentrate on providing good, solid information and stay away from the unicorns and rainbows.

Your success will be based on your efforts and hard work.

I give you the map. You drive the car.

My background is in web development and marketing. I know about SEO.

I will not be building any more web sites for clients.

I will be creating a series of video based training modules.

They will cover everything you need to know to set up a WordPress web site, then use it to market products. SEO and Internet marketing will be covered.

I Need Your Help!

I’d like to know what you want to learn about. Please tell me your greatest needs. What do you have the most trouble with? What do you want to know?

I’ll create the training videos and put them up for free for everyone. After I see how people react to them, I’ll take them behind a pay wall, leaving only samples available for free.

Anyone who gives me feedback or input, or talks to me nicely, will get a discount or free access or something. Not sure how it will all work yet.

I just want to get it out there and see what happens.

Thanks for your help and support with everything.

The Links To All The Drama

OK. I know you want to go read the juicy stuff.

Warning that everything on the Salty Droid site contains profanity and offensive stuff, but not lies.

Original Naomi email, Aug 29:
Death Threats and Hate Crimes, Attacks On Women Bloggers Escalating

The Salty Droid post that provoked the email, Aug. 24:
The IttyBiz Spider

Blog post that contains “death threats” (actually pretty funny), Aug. 27:
10 Easy Steps to Professional Blogging

Salty Droid’s response to the email, Aug. 30:
Naomi Dunford’s Death Threats and Hate Crimes

Second blog post describing the “Mean Site 1″, Aug. 31:
Letter to Two Dave Navarros

Naomi’s response. Aug. 31:
Sometimes The Bad Guys Win

The big blog post that exposes everything, Sep. 1:
Spider Sh*t Storm

This is “Mean Site 1″. I had no idea that it was “mean” after reading it:
Letters To Dave Navarro

Feel free to poke around the Salty Droid site. Amazing stuff in there.

Remember that criticism is not a death threat. Disagreement is not hate. Name calling is not libel.

Most of all, remember that unicorns are not real.

The best part of third grade is recess.

With this house deal about done, I’ll be taking a break from “Untangling The Web” for a while.

It will probably be two or three months before I get back into the groove of writing weekly blog posts.

Old Articles

I know you’ll miss me, but I’m sure you’ll be tough enough to make it through the night.

Maybe I’ll post links each week to old articles you may have missed.

Floating Ideas

I’ve got a lot of ideas floating around in my head.

I think the time away might allow them to blossom into great, new ways to help you make more money from your business.

I’d love to hear what you are thinking.

I want to know how I can best help you.

What is your biggest problem?

What is your biggest question?

What is your biggest need?

Please click here to send me an email and tell me.

My break is from writing, not from reading email.

Your ideas, mixed into my ideas, might make some pretty good soup.

See you in September.

I just added a new offer to the end of this article that I wrote about a year and a half ago: How Much Does WordPress Really Cost?

Before I describe the offer, where I set up WordPress for you for free if you use my affiliate link and buy the web hosting from the web hosting company that I use and recommend, oh… wait… that was the offer.

OK. You can click on that link and go read the details now if you’re so impatient, Mr. Smarty Pants.

Tip: Take advantage of deals when you find them.

Random Chance

As I was saying, I want to tell you a story about that page.

I first wrote that article as one of many rants about the wonders of WordPress.

People read it and there was some interest and that was nice, but whatever.

It didn’t burn the house down.

Then some guy linked to it from his blog roll.

A “blog roll” is the list of links to blogs in your sidebar.

It’s used to link to people and things that you find impressive that you want to share with your readers.

“Look how cool I am! Check out all these other cool blogs to go read!”

So this guy puts a link to my page in his side bar.

Well, his site has over 3,000 pages on it, with the sidebar on every page.

That page now has over 3,000 links to it from this guy’s sidebar.

Tip: Write content that people find useful.

Google Notices

Next thing I know, I’m getting traffic from Google for people who are searching for how much WordPress costs.

There are variations on the search “WordPress cost” and “How much does WordPress cost” are the two biggest.

Apparently people are reading the article and it’s working for them.

It answers questions that they have.

It’s useful.

People read it and link to it.

Tip: Check your Google Analytics regularly for trends.

Still Top Ranked

Then I see that guy’s web site disappears. I think he was a politician and was using it for a campaign.

When the campaign was over, the site was gone, along with my wonderful, beautiful inbound links.

It doesn’t matter. It’s still ranked well.

Both “how much is wordpress” and “how much does wordpress cost” get a #1 ranking.

“WordPress Cost” gets it at #4 and #6.

I am, apparently, the world’s number ranking expert on How Much WordPress Costs.

Tip: Write with authority. Be an authority.

Surprise SEO Trick

You can steal this trick, I think.

The politician doesn’t link to me any more, but I still rank well, so I checked Yahoo’s Site Explorer to see if anyone else was still linking to the page.

I was surprised to see that there are 15 links from iStockPhoto.

Someone linked to it in response to a question in the forum.

iStockPhoto then translated that link into 15 different languages, one for each of their forums.

It appears that you can leave one link in the English forum and it will be multiplied into 15 links by iStockPhoto.

Tip: Write comments in forums, especially iStockPhoto.

Take Advantage!

I am currently getting 36% of the “page views” on my entire site on this one page.

The home page only gets 5%. Whatever the current newsletter points to gets about 6-8%. All the other posts get 1-3% or whatever.

I decided to take advantage of the traffic and put a special offer on that one page.

If you want me to install, set up, and configure WordPress for you, I will do all of that for FREE!

(It’s a marketing rule that you always have to capitalize the word “free” and use an exclamation point after it.)

I can do that if you use the special link to get your web hosting from the company I recommend.

If you want to take advantage of that offer CLICK HERE. Read through to the bottom of the page and follow the directions.

Tip: Take advantage of trends to create specific offers based on traffic.

You Can Make Money As An Affiliate

Every time someone uses that link, which contains my affiliate code, PowWeb records that click and writes a cookie to their browser.

If a sale is completed, they send me a referral fee at the end of the month.

If you want to make money as an affiliate, you need to go sign up with “them”, then use the special links they provide to pass your customers off to them.

Every time your users make a sale with them, using your link, with your code, you make money.

“Them” in this case is PowWeb, but there are a ton of other people that do this too.

If you want to check out other possible affiliates that might be more closely related to your niche, check out Click Bank or Market Bay.

Tip: Make money referring your readers to other sites.

Content Marketing

Did you get any good info from this post?

If you make a post valuable, people link to it and you end up with traffic, then money.

See how that works?

Can you write something of value that people will want to share with their friends and readers?

I thought you could.

Go make me proud.

Tip: Don’t just sit there! Put these tips into practice.

This is the view from the lot we want to buy and build a house on. Who wouldn't want to live here? This is amazing!

We’ve always dreamed of moving to Prescott, AZ.

We vacation there a lot and houses are (relative to CA) cheaper there.

Our plan was to pay off our house here and buy a house there, so we would have two houses.

That has been the plan since forever.

Change In Plan

Until I had lunch with a friend last week.

He’s been a real estate broker for over 25 years. He knows the market.

Without getting sidetracked off the point I want to make, he said that because of the changes that Obama and congress have made in the banking laws, it’s really difficult for normal people to get house loans.

Only rich people can buy houses now, that top half of one percent of people. They pay cash.

As long as those laws are in place, house prices will be in a tailspin.

He said that prices will go down and drag along the bottom for 3 to 4 years.

He was adamant that we shouldn’t buy another house for at least 2 years.

He also told us not to pay off our house now. Since we couldn’t get another loan, we should hang on to the cash to keep our options open.

We can make more on investing our cash someplace else instead of paying off the house loan.

Mind Blown

This all blew my mind.

I had no idea.

This new information forced us to reevaluate our plans. If we had done what we always planned on doing, what seemed to be smart, we would have lost our advantage, lost money, and lost opportunities.

New Information

When I talk with clients about building a web site for them, or working on SEO, or coaching, they usually come at me with a lot of assumptions.

My old approach was to just do what they told me to do. I was a code monkey that had to accomplish the task that was set before me.

I’ve realized that clients coming to me don’t know what I know. They don’t know the intricacies of SEO or how social media might actually work.

The assumption is that they need to “do SEO” so they get more traffic because only then will they make more money.

The assumption is that if you only make the web site look pretty and put big, moving, flashy graphics on the landing page, then they will make more money.

Here's the view from another house we looked at. Go ahead and click on it to see the larger version of it. This place is for sale right now.

Expert Advice

Sometimes, it’s best to seek out the advice of experts that understand that goal that you are trying to accomplish.

This might be a shock to you, (it certainly has been for me), but I actually don’t know more than everyone else, about everything.

In the process of selling this house, we’ve had to rely on a lawyer to straighten out “trust” issues. We’ve had to rely on a real estate agent to navigate putting the deal together and getting it sold. We’ve had to rely on an escrow agent to make sure that every law and agreement is complied with.

I have no idea about some of the things they’ve done for us.

They are the experts.

Questions

It is best to approach any project that you have with questions.

Questions are the more powerful tool you have.

You need to be humble enough to consider that you might not have all of the answers, so you need to ask all of the questions.

Will SEO really get your site more traffic or are you in a competitive market that makes social media more effective?

Will FaceBook bring you any more customers or will it be a waste of time and money?

Will time spent on Twitter be wasted?

Will leaving comments on other’s web sites be effective in bringing new customers?

Ask Your Question

Find someone to ask your questions. Get as much information as you can. Make informed decisions.

If you have a question, please leave it in the comments below, or ask a friend, or hire an expert.

(Comments are cheaper!)

Ask your question!

Are they not bright? Do they make common mistakes?

Well, the reality is that they are stupider than you think.

They’re idiots.

Coupons

I was recently working on getting “coupons” to work for a client’s ecommerce site.

I had to do some research on a specific technical issue on the WP-eCommerce site.

The latest blog post there said “We’re updating the coupon system, so if you have any requests about how we should improve the coupon system, let us know in the comments below!”

The first comment said something like “Yes please! Drag and drop categories would make life a whole lot easier.”

The second comment said “Oops, misread the original post, thought it was asking for general suggestions.”

Idiot.

Checkout

I finally got everything up and running the way it should for my client.

His customers would buy the product on a third party promo site for half price.

They would get a coupon to enter on our site to reduce the price from full price to just the shipping charge.

My client sent me a frantic email, asking if I set the coupons up right.

A customer had sent them an angry email saying that when they put in the coupon code, the price of the product was $125 instead of free.

Crap! Did I make a mistake?

When I tested a coupon code, it told me on the checkout page that the “discount” was $125 and the “total price” was $14, the shipping charge.

The customer misread the checkout page.

Idiot.

FaceBook

I was scanning the FaceBook page of a well known person that I respected.

I saw a comment from someone else saying “I saw some videos of you on this other page, and not the good kind. You better check them out.”

I was horrified.

I immediately went to check them out. I had to log into Facebook to see them.

Then I realized that there were no videos and that I had just typed in my Facebook user ID and password on a page that looked like Facebook, but wasn’t.

I looked up at the URL and it was a Russian URL.

I immediately changed my Facebook password.

I had fallen for a “phishing” scam because I wasn’t paying attention to where I was and what I was doing.

I had gotten distracted.

Idiot.

What This Means For You

People are idiots. All of us.

No matter how clear and concise you are, someone will always misunderstand you.

We get distracted.

We don’t pay attention.

We do things without thinking.

We assume.

(What happens when we assume? It makes you an ass. Don’t drag me into it.)

If you want someone to do something on your site, make it EASY.

Make it OBVIOUS.

Give them a big red button and tell them “PUSH THIS”.

If you ever think that what you have written, or how you have created your web site, is too “dumbed down”, it’s too simple, too unsophisticated, it’s not.

Always make things easier.

Take a pass through your web site and ask yourself if everything is obvious.

Could a 5 year old understand it and figure it out?

Tell Me

What stupid things have you seen on your site?

(What stupid things have you done?)

Idiot.

Starting out, most people are not aware of the technical issues involved with setting up a domain name or a web site. It’s easy to get started using a service with an established company.

Definition: URL is Universal Resource Locator. Think of it as the address or location of the web site. It defines exactly where the web site is located.

If you use Etsy, your store is located at www.etsy.com/shop/yournamehere.

If you use WordPress.com, then your web site is located at www.wordpress.com/yournamehere.

Blogger and some other sites will use yournamehere.theirname.com as the URL to your site.

Your option is to register and use your won domain name. Some services allow you to use your own domain name on their server. Some don’t

Danger: If you are not using your own domain name, then you are relying on someone else for the identity and location of your web presence. If they go out of business or change a policy, your entire web presence could disappear.

Precaution: Own your own domain name. GoDaddy is cheap and reliable.

2. You Don’t Own Your Domain Name

You need to make sure that the email address that’s listed in the official “whois” record for your domain name as the “Registrant Email” is yours and not someone else’s.

That email address is the legal owner of the domain name.

If you ever end up in court over ownership, the owner of that email address wins.

Maybe you had your developer set it all up for you because you didn’t know how, or you didn’t want to be bothered.

I’ve registered a couple domain names for people who didn’t know how to do it themselves and had limited computer skills.

I won’t rip them off because I’m a nice guy. Not everyone is.

I’ve also registered domain names in my name instead of the client’s until I got paid for the job. If they didn’t pay me, I’d keep their domain name.

Danger: Someone else owns your domain name and not you.

Precaution: Go to this site and plug in your domain name to check it: whois.net

3. You Don’t Own Your Own Email Address

If you are using an email address provided by Gmail, or Yahoo, or your service provider, then they control that address.

Danger: You can’t move your email to another service if you become dissatisfied with them. You don’t control your email address. They do. It also doesn’t look professional to have an email address that doesn’t reflect the domain name of your company.

Precaution: Set up your email address with a mail service that allows you to use your own domain name, e.g., yourname@yourdomain.com. Usually your web hosting company will do this for you as part of your hosting package.

4. You Don’t Host Your Own Site

This is similar to the domain name stuff above. If you are using WordPress.com or Etsy or or Tumblr.com, or a free blogging service, then they own your site and can shut you down any time they want to.

Danger: You can lose your web presence because of someone else’s policy change. If their name is part of your URL, then they control your site, not you. You would have to change your URL if you ever wanted to move somewhere else.

Precaution: Rent your own web server space. Pay for it, know how to use it, and control it. I use and recommend these guys: Powweb.

5. You Don’t Have Access To Update The Web Server Files

If you can’t touch the actual files on the web server that hosts your web site, then you don’t have control of your web site.

There are 2 possible reasons that you can’t touch the files. First, you don’t have FTP access. Second, you don’t know how to.

Danger: You don’t have control of your web site unless you can touch the files on the web server that hosts your site.

Precaution: If you don’t have FTP access, you should get FTP access or move your site to a host that gives you FTP access.

If you have FTP access, but don’t know what to do with it and have no idea what “FTP” is, learn what it is and how to use it. (It’s not that hard, really.)

6. You Can’t Update Your Site’s Content

In the old days, 3 or 4 years ago, it was typical that you had to pay your web developer for every change you wanted to make to your web site.

You need to be able to make regular changes to the content of your site all by yourself. You wouldn’t hire someone to keep the key to your front door and pay them to unlock it for you every day.

Danger: If you can’t change content yourself, you are at the mercy of other people to do what you want done. You can get stuck with bad content that can damage your company’s credibility.

Precaution: Make sure you have the technical ability, and the knowledge, to do whatever you want to do on your web site.

7. You Don’t Use A Content Management System

Originally, we built all web sites manually using “static” HTML files.

A Content Management System uses a database to dynamically generate the web site.

Instead of a “static” pages built with coded files on the web server, you can use a web page interface to make changes to the content of your web site.

Most all services like WordPress or Etsy or Tumblr or any of those guys use a CMS. If you host your own site, you should be using WordPress, which is probably the most popular CMS today.

It makes updating the content of the site so much easier than hand coding HTML files.

Danger: You don’t know how to write HTML and can’t make changes to your site, so you end up with bad content and your customers hate you and all of the stuff above happens.

Precaution: Use a CMS.

8. You Don’t Have A Blog On Your Site

A blog that is updated regularly will make you more money.

As you write new blog posts, each post adds another page to your site. Sites with more pages have more authority with search engines.

As you write new blog posts, the search engines see that your site is updated regularly, so they give you more authority as an active web site.

The more things you write about, and the more blog posts there are, the bigger the chance that someone finds something on your site. More content means more possibilities for search results to be on your site.

If you are at all interesting, you will get customers coming back to read your stuff, which gives your business more exposure.

If you write honestly, potential customers will grow to trust you and tend to prefer your business to someone else’s that they don’t trust.

If you’re helpful, informative, funny, entertaining, or give people valuable information, then you have built good will that will translate into sales.

Danger: You don’t have a blog. No one knows you. No one cares about your business. Your business shrivels up and dies. You go broke and live on the street in your car.

Precaution: Write a blog.

9. You Don’t Update Your Site Regularly

This is the look of the site, as well as the content.

There’s nothing worse than a customer looking at your web site and seeing something that looks like it was built in 1998.

Styles change. People will react to the style of your site.

If people react badly to how your site looks, you could lose the sale.

If you don’t have your current products on the site, you lose credibility.

If you have a blog post or some content with a date of 2007 on it, they’ll know you don’t keep your site up to date. You lose the sale.

You might not have to have the latest trends, but you have to at least look like your site was from this decade.

If you don’t care about your site, why should I?

10. You Don’t Have A Newsletter

Every list should have ten items, so I had to reach a little for this one. It might not exactly “crush” your business if you don’t do it.

There’s a saying in marketing; the money’s in the list.

You should at the very least ask people to sign up and capture their email addresses for some kind of a newsletter.

It’s better if you can give away something free to entice them into giving you their email.

If people are interested enough in your business to give you an email address, then you should treat those people like they are the most precious resource you have.

Send them an email and keep in touch. Give them good information that they can use. Be helpful.

They are interested in your business, so you should be interested in them. Be nice to them. Don’t throw spammy sales pitches at them. Don’t be rude.

Next Steps

As you read through the list above, there are some you already have nailed. There are others that just scare the crap out of you.

There are the ones in the middle that you might be able to do something about without a lot of effort.

Pick 3 of those and do them.

Do them now, before it’s too late and your business is crushed and dies a horrible death.

You can do it. I know you can.

The question is: What are you going to do now?

Now, she checks it first thing every morning, before she gets out of bed.

It has nothing to do with age.

I’m 55. I’ve been building web sites for 15 years. I can hand code a complete web site from scratch if I wanted to, then configure the DNS, add the .htaccess rules, and write the SQL to input content to the database, which I created manually.

Fear and being lazy. No excuses.

It’s time to debunk the myth. You are not too old to use social media. Pretending that you are is the equivalent of blaming the recession for why you’ve been unemployed for two years. It’s an excuse and it’s a bad one at that.

Just because you’re not familiar with a new technology, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a benefit or that you shouldn’t pick it up. Learning and growing and mastering new skills is what we do as humans. It’s what we’ve always done.

You weren’t born knowing how to use language and form sentences, but you learned.
You didn’t know how to drive a car, but you learned.
You didn’t know how to type and/or use a computer, but you learned.
You learned by doing it and practicing it. You learned because it moved you forward. I’d hate to see where we’d be today if the cavemen wrote off fire as “shiny and useless”.

If you want to learn social media, you need to stop talking and start doing. Using your age as an excuse just sets you further and further behind the curve.

Read the entire article at:
http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/too-old-for-social-media/

It’s the one SEO issue causes the most confusion and the most questions.

Here is the step by step method that I use. I’ll walk through the general process first, then work through an example.

Balancing Traffic and Competition

Lots of people search for keywords using search engines. Lots of web site owners create content on web sites. The search engines try to match them up.

The problem that we’re going to solve is finding the balance between general keywords that are too broad and everyone looks for, and narrow keywords that are specific, but no one looks for.

On the general side of the spectrum are words that are included in searches by a lot of people for a lot of different things. They may or may not be related to your specific product or web site. The amount of searches is huge.

On the narrow side of the spectrum are words that are very specific to your product or website and you want to absolutely own these keywords. The trouble with these keywords is that hardly anyone actually searches for them. The amount of searches is small.

A search for “car” is done 124 million times a month. There are 434 million web pages that mention the word “car’. That’s pretty general and a lot of traffic.

A search for “Toyota corolla tail light” gets 3,600 searches per month. There are 129,000 web pages that contain that keyword phrase. If you sold tail lights for Corollas, this is the keyword that you want to own.

You want to find keywords that enough people search for so they get decent traffic, but are specific enough that you don’t have too much competition.

Step One – Traffic

First, you start with your best guess. Pick the keyword that you want to be found for.

This should be the response to “What is this site really about?”

Go to: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Type in your best guess keyword and hit “Search”. If you are using a phrase of multiple words, put quotes around them to get the exact phrase.

The tool will list your keyword, along with all of the keywords that Google thinks are related.

Disregard the “Competition” column for now and just look at the number of monthly searches. In fact, if you click on the column header, it will sort by that column.

After you sort by Monthly Searches, the related keywords with the most amount of traffic will be at the top.

We’re going to try to pick maybe 10 that we think are good keywords to go after.

Try to do a good job here, because after we do some calculations, we might come back and go through this process again.

Pick 10-20 keywords that have decent traffic, but are not too general. This is going to depend on how much competition you have in your specific market.

I would look for keywords with between 2,000 and 10,000 searches per month to begin with. Adjust that range based on your specifics.

Write down those 10-20 keywords somewhere.

Write down the number of monthly searches (global or local, whichever you are) next to each keyword.

Step Two – Competition

This one is easy. For each of your keywords, go to Google and search for each of them.

At the top of each search results page, it will tell you “About NNNNN results”.

Write down the number of results for each keyword next to the number of searches for that keyword.

You now know how many pages you are competing against.

Step Three – Compare

This is where it gets tricky, because there’s math involved, but you’re strong and smart and, gosh darn it, people like you.

If you don’t want to do the math, use a spreadsheet. I’ve created one that you can download and use for your own keywords.

Click Here To Download Spreadsheet.

For each keyword, you want to divide the Pages by the Searches. For every search that’s made each month, how many pages are there competing for them?

What you end up with is a ratio. A ratio is comparing the amount of one thing to the amount of another thing.

When you use the spreadsheet, it’s really easy to see what the ratio actually is.

It’s usually between 10 to 1 and 100 to 1. You want to pick the keywords with the lowest ratio.

That means for every search, there are less pages that you have to compete with to make it to the top spot.

The ratio of 10/1 means that you have to compete with 10 pages for every search. The ratio of 100/1 means that you have to compete with 100 pages for every search.

Step Four – Pick

After you get all of your numbers into your spreadsheet, look at the Ratio column. Which keywords have the lowest ratios?

You may score really well for a keyword that gets very little traffic, so you may want to throw that one out.

If you are competing against a keyword with more than say 500,000 or so, other pages, you may want to throw that one out too.

You want the best ratio with enough traffic to have value, but not so much competition that you will never beat them.

Decide which keyword should be your primary focus. Then pick 3-5 secondary ones that you can work on also.

Review the numbers on these. Make sure there’s enough traffic and not too much competition.

Don’t to this strictly by the numbers. Google’s search numbers are estimates. Look at them all and make your best guess on what makes sense to you for your situation.

When you get to this point, you might be thinking, “You know, I may have another way to approach this, now that I see how it works.” Go back and try again with different keywords.

Rinse. Repeat.

Example – Sea Glass Jewelry

I worked on this one for a friend over a year ago. Here are the keywords and the numbers.

Immediately, throw out anything over 100 to 1. That’s just insane to try to compete with those.

Beach glass is the best ratio. I found out that “beach glass” is an East Coast thing, where “sea glass is a West Coast thing. I would try both of them.

Sea glass has a good ratio, but there are 1,350,000 pages to compete with. That will make it tough.

What’s with the misspelling of the word “jewellry”? More people search for that? Here’s my cynicism showing. I don’t believe Google’s numbers.

I think “beach glass” and “beach jewelry” are the best best here, based on ratio, but might not really be specific to the product of “sea glass jewelry”. They might include how to find beach glass and other kinds of jewelry to wear to the beach.

The balance of being specific enough to the product, and getting enough searches to make it worth while, and not too many pages to compete against, I think, would go to “sea glass jewelry”, even with the 70/1 ratio.

Secondly, I’d go with “sea glass necklaces”. That’s very specific with a decent ratio and not much competition. I think I could crush that one. Not a lot of traffic each month, but we could own that one.

Your Turn

There’s the theory. There’s an example.

You know how to do it, so grab your spreadsheet and start doing research.

If you have any questions, please leave it in the comments below.

Get out there and crush your competition.

Another friend had a barely-speaking toddler take over his iPad. She could paint and handle complicated tasks on apps with ease and grace almost before she could walk. It is now sort of her iPad. One day he printed out a high resolution image on photo paper and left it on the coffee table. He noticed his toddler come up to up and try to unpinch the photo to make it larger, like you do on an iPad. She tried it a few times, without success, and looked over to him and said “broken.”

Read the entire article at:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/04/born_digital.php

Those 4 words are “You Are Not Alone.”

Seems that the desire to belong, to connect with other people, is a strong, universal emotion that we all share.

The Missing Piece

That got me thinking. I enjoyed doing the webinar a couple weeks ago with Eugen.

We both talked on the phone, with each other, while everyone could hear what we said.

The missing piece for me, was the feedback, the connection to everyone else on the call.

The Conference Call

As an experiment, just to see what would happen, I set up a conference call a couple weeks ago and sent invitations to everybody on the newsletter mailing list.

Some people showed up and we talked. One person was 20 min. late, and one person never said anything at all, but we all had a really good time.

Everyone could hear what everyone else said and could talk whenever they wanted. It was like a big ol’ party.

Talking to real people on the phone is a very different experience than reading, or commenting on, a blog, or even email.

You can read all about that in the post from April 12, Lunch With Conrad.

What They Said

I picked the best comments from various people during the call.

(No, I didn’t ask them up for these.)

I gotta say, Conrad. You have lifted my spirits in an incomparable fashion.

I’m feeling SO much better about what I’m doing and what’s going on.

This has been very valuable, extremely valuable.

Even coming in late, I got a lot out of great notes.

It does all seem shrouded in mystery and awe when you read about it, (to put it mildly), so to actually speak to someone about it instead of passively read about it is a nice thing.

Doing It Again!

Based on the positive feedback, we’re doing it again.

It will be just a conference call. We won’t do a presentation, we’ll just hang out and talk.

You can ask me any question you want, about SEO or marketing or WordPress or websites or whatever.

The coolest thing about this, is that you will come to realize that you really are not alone.

Your Invitation to Lunch With Conrad

You are cordially invited to
Lunch with Conrad
A conference call on
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011, at 11am PDT.

(I screwed up the times on the original newsletter, so I’ll try to not do that again.)

The time zones are: 12 Noon MDT, 1pm CDT, and 2pm EDT

R.S.V.P.

If you want to be on that call, please send me an email, telling me you want to be there and I will send you the details of how to call in.

There’s no cost, other than your phone charges. I’m not selling anything. There’s no pitch at the end. I just want to answer questions and help people out.

Spaces are limited. If you want to be a part of it, tell me before it’s full up. Do it now.

Reply to this email or send an email to: conrad@untanglingtheweb.org or www.untanglingtheweb.org/contact

The Future

I just want to see where this thing takes us.

If it works, and people want to, we’ll start to have them on a regular schedule, twice a month, on the second and fourth Tuesdays.

Don’t be afraid. I promise you’ll dig it.

You won’t be alone.

Click Here To RSVP.