Without a single drop of SEO work (besides adding the URL to Google by going HERE) and not a single additional bit of content since the site was built it is now ranking on page 1 for over 700k results when the phrase Chow German Shepherd is searched. Apparently 41 people have visited the site since it was built, and a few even clicked the AdSense ads!
God bless those pups for helping me point out the incredible SEO value of a keyword rich domain. Those in the know call this effect the domain name bonus, I'm thinking of changing that jargon sounding name to the Jack & Jill bonus, because dogs are cool, even if they are illustrating dry SEO theories.
Currently I’m in the mountains at the State of Rufus retreat, where all stakeholders in this fine company meet to discuss the goals and objectives for the year ahead. Earlier today when I was on my way to ship off some paperwork I drove past this marvelous indoor water park hotel resort. How’s that for a long categorical name?
I’ve noticed these funplexs have grown in popularity recently, when I was searching for a place to take my mom for Christmas last year I came across not 1, but 2 similar resorts. Who knew you could enjoy a 50ft freefall from the same building that you eat a stale continental breakfast at?
I shot this pic while literally driving past it at 30 mph, not bad eh?
I kid you not the Westin WakeCup is the best single cup brewer I've ever used, and I have used a lot of them. I bugged a rep at Westin corporate to sell me one, but all she agreed to do was suggest to management that they sell them. China if you are reading this, take a hint here, knock it off so we can all enjoy the WakeCup! Since it's branded with Starbucks marks all over the place I doubt it'll ever be cleared for commercial sales, so we need some pirate style production of this thing.
I seriously choose Westin over virtually every hotel, except Ritz Carlton, when I travel because of this freaking miracle of machinery.
I have yet to figure out exactly how to profit with these cool iPhone type apps, but I have a feeling a great idea is around the corner when it comes to them.
Wonder how warm it is on my block? Check below. Thanks Google Gadgets!
Whether you are marketing discount apparel or attempting to build a brand around your new book, fresh blog posts are THE way to stand out on the internet. I’ve been a fan of blogs for a long time, but just recently have fully realized their SEO potential.
Imagine search engines such as Google acting as a giant strainer, the type a chef would use to dry out a ten pound boulder of spaghetti in a commercial kitchen. After the straining is complete, the only thing left in the metal contraption is what the chef wanted to begin with, pasta. Search engines, at least in theory, act the same way in the sense that they attempt to drain out all the unnecessary stuff, and leave the user with whatever it is they were after to begin with.
So if your website is the water so to speak, and you want badly to be part of the spaghetti that is the final result of a good straining, how can that happen? Is it even possible to be part of something that has already formed in a given structure? I believe it is in fact possible, and one of the best ways to show up is through consistent blog posts.
Regular posts on blogs, sticking with the analogy above, creates a crumb building effect that ultimately allows for the presence of a given website at or near the top when all other elements are strained by the search engines. In other words, if you post to a blog often, you are creating littler kernels that when bunched together offer the search engine algorithms a compelling reason to be placed for any given keyword term.
Time after time I’ve searched certain keyword terms, and noticed that above even the namesake domains, are highly active blogs. The key to success here is to continually post high quality content to a blog with relevant keyword terms.
I like saturating the search engines with more than one website, because for me, it isn’t about the top spot on page 1 in Google, as it is about having the top 4 out of 5 spots on Google. I want my website, and my client’s sites to be impossible to ignore when you search their money keyword terms in Google.
But who has time to write all that content, and do all the research that makes a quality post, well, quality? Our writers have plenty of time, and the beauty of our Blog Content Creator service is that through each month our writers get to know the client, and their business very well. This makes for high quality posts that only get better with time. This formula combined with a blog’s natural ability to attract search rank (think RSS feeds, commenting, and the like) makes this service one of the best our company has to offer.
Apparently so, Full Sail is known as one of the best places to learn how to become a record producer, apparently now they offer internet marketing fields of study as well. My prediction is that in 10 or 15 years most major universities will have similar programs.
Can someone please tell me what a micro blog actually does to help build equity in a brand? Can anyone explain why we all care so much about who is using the bathroom at what given time, beyond our own perverse voyeuristic reasons, such as killing time at a job we don’t like much to begin with? To be clear, I have nothing against Twitter, and all the buzz around it as a innovative Web app. Twitter as a technology is very interesting to say the least, but I believe it not only does not help you make money online, it might impair your chances if used in certain ways.
Twitter as I understand it works like an instant message application with a twist of emailing and text messaging for good measure. The fundamental problem with such a blended and abbreviated mode of communication is that it is too short to accomplish anything worth communicating when it comes to your business, yet too long to be ignored. If you are attempting to build a brand, does it really help to share with your customers that you had tacos for lunch? Would I be more apt to buy something from Trump or Diddy if I read their Twitters and found out either one of them just rented Indiana Jones on DVD? The answer is a resounding no. What could someone write on Twitter that would get me to buy something from them more so than if it were written in an email or on a Web site?
All this deep thinking begs the question, what, in a business / internet marketing sense of the word, does Twitter really do to help build a brand? This is a question I’ve struggled with as I drag my digital feet in signing up for such services. I’ve already deactivated my Facebook account for reasons that should be reserved for another post. A question I can answer about Twitter is this, what can Twitter do to ruin a brand? It can expose all those human sides of people that make their Brands less elite, less prestigious, and in some cases offensive to those that value it. Just heard a funny joke about people that live in California? Don’t share the joke on Twitter unless you want to offend and possible lose all your California based customers that happen to read it. Control is in the most valuable currency of the information age, and I for one like to have as much of it as I can when it comes to building a brand online.
I just finished the manuscript for my new internet marketing book called Strange Business. It's so weird the way it turned out, I had envisioned it being 45k words, and since I write my books chapter by chapter in unique MS Word files to keep things simple, I had no clue how long it would be when I put it all together. Sure enough, it was 44,733 words long. How crazy is that? I was almost spot on to where I wanted it to be.
After 3 rounds of editing I'm sure it'll balloon to around 50k words, which isn't that bad at all, should be around 200 pages or so when it hits shelves this spring. I should have the e-book up and running within a month or so.
Things seem to get easier when you do them over and over again, at least it seems that way when it comes to writing and publishing a book.
There has been yet another IM Rockstar t-shirt sighting online. This guy with obvious good taste and business savvy was rocking my shirt this weekend on his blog. Enkay is his name, and he runs one of the top 100 make money online blogs on the net as ranked by 45n5.com.
Of course if you want your own IM Rockstar tee all you got to do is click HERE. It's certainly a conversation starter.
So what in the world can you do when no football is on TV for the better part of Saturday morning and afternoon? Build a Web site for the heck of it!
I spent a bit today grabbing the domain ChowGermanShepherd.com which I was shocked was still available, and then building out a basic site using Wordpress. I think this site will rank #1 for the term in about a week from now, so when anyone wants to see what a Chow German Shepherd looks like, they'll see my dogs!
As many of you know I'm a dog lover, some have called me a dog nut! I love dogs, and have 4 right now, and seriously if I lived on a ranch like I want to, I'd have 10 or more! My lawn guy has 18 Beagles, but that is for another blog post.
My two rescue dogs are Chow German Shepherd mixes, at least that is what we think they are. Since I've had a lot of time to hang out around the house, I'm really loving on my dogs extra these days. These two really hit the jackpot when they were rescued, I have nothing else to do these days but hang with my pups, and maybe build them a Web site or two!
I put AdSense on the site so I could appropriately track search traffic, I wonder, is there anyone else searching for this rare mix? Only time will tell!
What a great title for a book! This author went for publishing on CreateSpace.com (Probably the cheapest POD company in the world) which is something I had just finished recommending to a consulting client, to getting a book deal with Simon & Shuster! About a year ago a writer of ours told me that he put a book through CreateSpace.com and it was a good experience. The company is owned by Amazon, which means that when authors publish there you can integrate with the Amazon marketplace virtually immediately.
Being that I spent over $5,000 on publishing my last book under my own press, the fees here are a little more reasonable. Try a one time fee of $40 and then $5 a year, and that's it! Haha, I really like the way these people operate.
A great video clip of the whole story, and how she wrote it in less than 4 months is here.
Man that is an awesome story, and inspiring to all those that are trying to get themselves a book deal!
I'm definitely practicing the art of delayed gratification these past few months. It seems as if the projects that I'm working on won't be out for while, which makes me want to sit on my hands a little bit...
The most challenging part of each day is trying not to ignore the 101 ideas I get per minute. I have this crazy idea for a crowdsourcing concept, which was really strange since just a few hours after finishing a hand written outline of the concept I ran into this Business Week article. They featured my comment which is pretty cool.
2 days 2 frustrated posts, hopefully tomorrow will be better, what's the old saying, frustration is a sure sign of progress???
The biggest pain in the a$$ when it comes to publishing a book is editing it. Not even giving it a firm edit, that’s done by an experienced copyeditor later on, just editing a book down to a workable piece of fluid information that the editor can go through and make perfect is a lofty task.
I found myself editing a few chapters of my upcoming book Strange Business tonight, and even with a good helping of food breaks filled with fresh fruit and gourmet granola I couldn’t help but want to set my laptop on fire. Just burn it down, I need a new one anyways, my dog ate the number 3 key a few weeks ago, so it’s due to be retired anyhow. But I persisted, I kept on, and of course it seems as if every page I edit comes drastic writing, and rewriting. The distributing thing is the chapters never get shorter; they only become longer with each edit. Isn’t the point of editing to rework and remove the useless stuff to begin with? Why do I find myself elaborating instead of slimming down each chapter?
At least I could honestly say I spent the evening doing some writing for my own purposes rather than for a client, which hasn’t been the case that much lately. It’s always good to do something for yourself now and again, it keeps things in perspective, that sometimes your words are best used to pursue your own argument, make your own case, or even write your own book.
Some people smoke, some people eat chocolate ten times a day, and some, like me, are totally, completely, absolutely addicted to coffee. Oh sweet Lord do I have a problem with Mr. Bean right now. I’m hooked and I don’t think I want to get off, and here is why.
I just drove 11 hours from Tampa back to Columbia after watching my Gamecocks get their butts whooped in royal fashion. The game was a total loss, my birthday was, well, interesting, and to top it all off, I’ve come to the realization on the long ride home that I am completely addicted to coffee.
It started at about 7:30 am this morning, with some crappy Marriot coffee, you know the kind that tastes a better than cardboard but not as good as plastic? That kind of coffee, and it wasn’t just one cup, it was two. Then a third before we hit the road, that would be all for the day right, I mean that should wake me up, it’s crappy Marriot coffee, the taste alone ignites the gag reflex.
Since I haven’t slept much since last Tuesday, which is a story for another blog post, I had to have more. When my pal Mike urged us to stop at Starbucks somewhere in Hicksville Florida, I couldn’t resist. I ordered the biggest cup they had, and slurped it down until my hands were shaking so bad they could barely grip the wheel. I started to wonder if I would be able OK to drive, the coffee made me feel kind of weird. After that I’d surely be done, right?
Not so fast my friend, the real caffeine started to rush through my veins IV style when we stopped at a redneck McDonalds four hours later known only as “South point MacD” if you go by the receipt, I ordered a large, and you know they really give you a large at the golden arches, iced coffee that was so big I had to hold it with two hands. It took like twenty minutes to make, and the guy brought it out to me from behind the counter, for a second, a brief second, I thought I was at the Ritz Carlton and the pool staff was bringing me a Pina Colada. I got back in the car, and drank like two thirds of that thing, and here is when things got weird, I started to feel better, like my body just needed that hundredth cup to really wake up. Three hours later, I’m home, I can’t sleep and I’m not sure of anything, except well, that I’m totally addicted to drinking coffee.
