How to Achieve Success with your SEO Career
My first entry into becoming a fully fledged member of the Internet Marketing community was way back in 2002 when I attended my first Search Engine Workshop training class hosted by the Search Engine Academy .
It’s kind of fun looking back to those early years of SEO and Internet marketing and I often find it quite amazing on the how far our community has grown and the successes my classmates have had in this short period of time.
I remember my first morning sitting in the seo workshop completely naïve about search engine optimization and Internet marketing.
The reason I was there was because I hired some outside SEO firm that called me on the phone several months prior offering me promises of taking over the number one position in Google in 60 days as long as I handed over a $10,000.00 check to them.
I’ve always felt that never in a million years being a retired cop with a background in white color crimes would I fall for a con artist. But for some reason I thought I could trust this caller, heck he offered me a 60 day money back guarantee if my site wasn’t ranked #1 in Google.
Then 90 days later disaster hit! My site was banned from Google because this firm used something called “black hat seo”.
Sitting next to me was Mark, a middle aged dentist from New Jersey. Mark was fed up screaming kids and people who hated to be reminded that it was time for their annual dental check-up. He was looking for a career change.
Sitting across from us were Jerry an Andy. Both were interested in offering Internet Marketing consulting services to their small client base.
A brotherhood formed between us since our first meeting and we’ve all become very successful in our own little niches.
Mark (whose tag line has been “Hey, I’m only a dentist ") went on to becoming one of the most successful affiliate marketing people I know in our community. His network includes industry giants such as Dish Network, DirectTV and Comcast.
Jerry went on to form the company SEO Revolution where he provides SEO and Marketing advice to advanced Internet marketers and corporations.
Andy went on to form Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim where his niche is online reputation management.
And of course there is my success in resurrecting from the dead my RadarBusters website after Google’s ban and building out a network of over 45 other websites that dominated my industry, which was later acquired by a competitor for over seven fiqures.
Now you may be asking yourself what led our little rag tag group to become so successful in such a short period of time, this is understandable because I have asked this same question myself.
Our brotherhood became successful because none of us made the fatal mistake of focusing on selling or products or services. Instead of what we focused on were our customers and their success.
To fully apply your talents to in developing your online presence you need to make sure you’re giving the very best you have to the clients you have because if you do, you’ll keep those customers for years and year.
Please remember this one golden rule if nothing else; “It is easier to sell your product or services to a customer you already have a relationship with, then selling your product or service to a new customer.”
Secondly, if you’re not fully on top of the latest search engine optimization trends, you need to make sure you are and fast! How much you know and how well you use what you know will affect how well you do with your clients. I’m learning every single day! What you need to do to stay on top of the latest trends and be at the top of your game is to get training, study on your own, or have a mentor. (Still today I have two mentors)
You need to keep improving your SEO and Internet marketing skills so you can help your customers in the best way possible. The more you know and can apply what you know to make money for your clients, the more money you’ll make.
To have good success you need to believe in what you are doing. How are you doing right now with the profit sharing idea? You wouldn’t believe how much money I’ve made from profit sharing.
Have you proposed profit sharing deals? By profit sharing I mean proposing a deal where you own a piece of your client’s company in return for helping them grow based on your SEO skills. Look, you can make some great deals if you start thinking this way. So start thinking about it now!
Along the lines of not just thinking about selling, another thing you should think about is helping a charity or nonprofit agency without charging for it. I’m the founder of an organization called Cops Who Care. Our organization is comprised of active and retired police officers that help at risk children. I developed their website and also provide free SEO services to the organization as a way to raise money for our charitable efforts.
Another benefit that I have realized is doing this type of free work can help you because many important people in your community work also with charities and word will spread to others about the good work you do.
Keep studying and learning about SEO and Internet marketing so you can keep applying the latest methods you learn about. If anyone would have told me I could be living the good life the way I am now, I would have never believed it.
When it comes to achieving success with your new career, consider taking live training- or taking training online. The time you invest in this training will pay you back big time!
Another key to success is something I learned in my career- make sure the people you listen to and learn from have the real knowledge to help you. There are many people who claim to be experts but aren’t really. Pick the right people.
One other suggestion, limit your time on the SEO and Internet Marketing forums, they are big time wasters.
Here’s another tip for you- don’t undersell yourself and undercharge for your services. Get paid what you’re worth if you know your stuff. But you need to be an expert. If you just charge high fees and don’t deliver the knowledge, word will travel quickly and you’ll lose customers fast.
You also need to set goals and track your success. Not doing that would be like me taking off in my plane without going over my preflight checklist and not knowing the destination. And when you do succeed as your customers have success, celebrate that success with your customers. Look, if it wasn’t for your customers, you wouldn’t have succeeded.
When it comes to your success, look for ways to genuinely help others. But avoid those who are just interested in picking your brain just because of what you know.
Always examine what you are doing and if you need to change. I constantly adapt and change my approach as I learn new information. If you are getting poor results from what you are doing you need to try something else.
Don’t make the mistake of some people who constantly complain about their life but they never take the steps required to achieve success. I achieved my success because I took action. You can succeed in your SEO career if you do it in the right way.
Now are you ready to step into a new and profitable career in SEO and Internet Marketing? If so take the next step and sign up for my free SEO tip of the day or register for my next SEO training workshop NOW!!
Creating Tribes of Raving Fans
Last night I stayed up late to publish the “Core Influence ” post about the importance of knowing who your core customer is. Then this morning I received an e-mail from a new member of my radar detector tribe who thanked me for taking the time to respond to HIS questions, commenting that I earned his business.
This e-mail from John is a perfect example of knowing who your core customer is and how to engage them especially since I’ve sold my Radarbuster’s network over two years ago!
My moniker “Radar Roy” became the third most used term in Google by perspective customers who were searching for radar detector reviews in Google four years ago. I was able to leverage my mark into this position over the years by becoming the world’s most recognized expert in the industry through TV and radio interviews the use of social media and press releases.
Once the per perspective client found out who I was they would seek out my website(s) and/or email addresses and contact me.
John first found out about me during my review of radar jammers and found out on my website radarjammer.com that I offer a $50,000.00 reward to anyone that could show me a radar jammer that actually worked.
John became interested in learning more about me and my reviews so he typed “Radar Roy” into Google and found my personal blog in the first position in Google. He read my reviews and sent me a rather long email late last night with specific questions about a lower end radar detector. I replied to him that for only a few more dollars he could get a much better model also discussed some safety features that he was unaware of.
This morning I received this following response back from John:
What I find interesting in John’s post is:
1 – He thanks ME for convincing him to buy a radar detector that costs two times as much as the first one he selected.
2 – That I’ve earned his respect and business
3 – He will have to explain this all to his wife (but I already gave him the ammunition on my website(s) on how to do this)
4 – That I’ve created a new “raving fan” who will recommend me to his friends
When was the last time one of your customers thanked you for up selling a product they had no intention of buying?
How long have those customers messages been sitting in your email box? When was the last time you spoken to the clients last year that bought something from you? Are your products and/or services still fresh in their mind?
On this site, SEOtrainingSW.com which only launched two weeks ago, I’ve already used this mojo to influence a new core audience who are interested in learning SEO and Internet marketing. Those who are interested in joining my tribe for free enter their name and email address in the “Free Tips” form.
But a select few who really want to become successful on the Internet (currently around 5%) sign up for my personal hands on SEO training workshop.
Are you committed to becoming a successful Internet marketer? If so become part of my SEO and Internet marketing tribe and sign up now for my next SEO training workshop .
Core Influence – Know Your Core Customer
I first heard of Frank Kern during his launch of the StomperNet program back in 2006, of which I am a member. This launch remains one of the most successful ever, bringing in over eighteen million dollars in only three days!
So after following Frank over the past several years I thought that I knew (and used) most of his training material on my websites and clients websites, so I was a little hesitant last Monday to shell out another $2000.00 for newest launch of Mind Control 2.0. However Frank, the master marketer that he is, finally convinced me to jump with his “early bird” special a few minutes prior it opening to the general public and today I’m glad I did!
This afternoon Frank’s package arrived and upon opening it one of his classic hand written (photocopied) letters was on top of the collection of DVD’s with an instruction to watch his “Core Influence” training DVD first. So I followed his instructions as a good student does and loaded the CD into my computer for an evening with Frank.
This first DVD was a presentation Frank gave in San Diego a few days after his launch of Mass Control where he discusses the power of influencing prospective clients using a process he calls “Core Influence ”.
Frank breaks down this process into two steps:
1 – Knowing what you really want and who you really are and;
2 – Knowing what your market wants and who they really are.
I found the second part of Frank’s presentation the most interesting because many of the suggestions he makes about knowing your market I could relate to, as they were very similar to the processes I had developed when I ran the RadarBuster’s network.
In an earlier post on using video to engage your market , I discuss that one “ah-ha ” moment in my marketing career back in 2002 while I was on vacation in Deadwood North Dakota with my family. My wife and I were approached by a man who yelled “Hey, your Radar Roy ” and after our surprised looks on our faces he continued “Hey I bought a radar detector from you yesterday on your website after watching your videos ”.
Bob related that the reason he made the decision to buy his radar detector on my website because he felt that he was able to relate with me on personal level, feeling that I was right there on his living room couch speaking directly to HIM .
Bob went on to explain that all those complicated performance charts and specifications that everyone else had on their websites didn’t mean squat to him. What he was really interested in was the result of using the product(s) I recommended in my ratings and videos.
This “ah-ha ” moment caused me to reflect during my 1200 mile ride back home to Arizona riding my Harley and how I could better master this one on one conversation on my websites.
During Frank’s “Core Influence ” video he discusses that 99.5% of the current Internet sites market their products or services to the masses at the surface level never reaching into the core of their customer and identifying their Bob’s.
Who are your Bobs, Jacks and Jills that visit your website? Are you talking at them or to them? Are you engaging them in conversation or talking at them?
How old is your Bob? What does Bob do for a living? Is Bob Married? What does Bob’s wife think of him having a radar detector stuck on the windshield? What is Bob’s biggest frustration in selecting a radar detector? What is the motivating force behind their decision on buying a radar detector?
Also remember that during the holidays; the peak buying season of the year, your Bob’s may turn into Jill’s. Does your conversation change?
Now that you know who your Bobs and/or Jills are and your engaging them in conversation you are half way there.
However if you want to take it to this process to the next level, you got to walk in Bob’s shoes and become a Bob yourself!
Let me explain by relating my transformation in going from a 20 year law enforcement career and jumping into Internet marketing career.
I loved my first nineteen years in law enforcement, rising in the ranks to that of Lieutenant and working select assignments in white color crime, narcotics and traffic enforcement. However the last year was a year of HELL!
A new Sheriff came into town and our differing management styles just didn’t gel. I was forty six, taking home $50,000.00 a year with one year to go to reach the minimum 20 year retirement window. When I announced to my wife and coworkers that I was going to retire and go into this new fangled Internet marketing thing they all thought I was nuts and that should stick it out.
But I knew to be at peace with my soul, I knew that I had to take this plunge and in 1997 retired at forty seven and started my first Internet marketing company developing websites.
Now I realize that chances are you’ve never been in law enforcement nor have the luxury of retiring at forty seven. However, I’m sure that there are Bob’s and/or Jill’s reading this right now who can relate to changing careers midstream because of this crappy economy.
This is what Frank discusses in his “Core Influence ” video and what I’ve used very effectively in marketing my radar detector products.
When a “Bob” decided it was time to learn about radar detectors or beating a ticket chances were they were male, in their 40’s and just received their first speeding ticket in twenty years.
First Bob wanted to know how he could beat this ticket. Bob wasn’t a criminal, he thought of himself as an average driver who got nailed by some rookie cop trying to get in his quota. So I provided Bob articles on how the International Chief of Police Association in their own studies estimate that over 70% of all speeding tickets are written in error and how to prepare for a court case.
I then suggested to Bob that he should also consider getting a high end (expensive) radar detector which would sniff out these rookie cops two to three miles down the road as the desired result would being able to once again drive ticket free.
Then reinforced my message by having a video were I use these same devices myself while competing in a cross country race called the Fireball (Fantasy Result were the expectation goes beyond the desired result).
And backed up my message using “social proof”, allowing customers to post their own ratings on each product.
By using this process that I developed and Frank also teaches coupled with the power of Search Engine Optimization is the reason I owned the entire niche for radar detectors with my network.
This is also why my fiercest competitor decided that they could no longer compete and decided to acquire my entire network for over seven figures and hire me as their consultant!
Now borrowing something right out of Frank’s presentation I want to ask you to think about something.
If you currently have a website of your own or manage a company website what would happen if it the site went into the top position in the search engines? Would your lifestyle change? I know mine did.
So consider taking the next step by either signing up for my Free SEO Tip of the Day or register for one of my SEO training workshops .
How to Create Your First Affliate Account
I had a few members of our Arizona SEO Training Meetup members contact me over the weekend who watched my last video on doing competitive research and commented that they felt it was a great video but asked if I could put together a similar video on how to create an affiliate account.
I thought what a great idea, so tonight I put a ten minute presentation together.
I comment in the video and I want to reinforce this prior to you watching the video that yes, there are lots of people that make LOTS of money doing affiliate advertising, however in my experience they are an exception to the rule.
My RadarRoysBuyersGuide.com is an affiliate site and generally it brings in around $500.00 to $800.00 a month.
I find the real benefit of having an affiliate site is to “test the waters” for your niche market before you dive right in. If you can get your website up to five to ten sales per week consider setting up your own shopping cart on your website and selling the product(s) yourself. Then instead of making say 10% per sale you can now make 40 to 50% of the sale.
If you’re just starting out with your first site set a goal of perhaps 200 visitors per week with a 2% conversion within the next three months. Then once you reach this level set a higher goal of say 400 visitors and a 3% conversion.
Poll your clients find get their feedback on how you can improve your website and other items that they would consider purchasing on your website.
What are your thoughts about affiliate marketing and/or this post? I would love it if you can add a short note in the affiliate comment area below…
Create a Buzz!
At last week’s Phoenix Internet Marketing and SEO Training Meetup I discussed the importance in creating a point of difference in your market place and power of using video and quality content to engage your audience to create desire and trust for your products and services.
One side benefit of doing this type of marketing is that you create a “buzz” in your niche and not only do perspective clients stand up and take notice but others in your industry take notice of your message.
In the previous post on how I use the Google news reader to monitor my name and business reputation by subscribing with Google Alerts. Well tonight I was very pleased to see that my video on “Finding Your First Niche” and my post on “Is Your Site on Target” was being referenced on other blogs and websites that also discuss Internet Marketing.
As an example the Blog “Learn Free Internet Marketing” embedded the Finding your Niche YouTube video in a post:
www.learnfreeinternetmarketing.com/internet-marketing-find-your-niche/
And a blog discussing Local Search blog entry that discussed low response rates linked to my article “Is Your Site On Target ” here: http://seorants.pageviews.com/localsearch/2009/02/happy-with-resp.html
I consider these references quite an honor as I first these link backs were not specifically requested and more importantly, I don’t have a clue who they are! (But I will as I’ll be sending them a thank you and a link back)
How to Find Your First Niche
One of the first questions I hear from new Internet Marketers is “How Do I Find My Niches?”
When I ran the RadarBusters network I developed a simple method to seek out prospective clients that were interested in my products/services and then engage them in conversation before they ever entered into the “buying funnel”.
Then as my network increased to over 45 websites, I needed to identify a process where I could identify new products/services that were of interest to these clients and then add to them websites.
For the first time ever during this ten minute video presentation, I reveal to the public on how I find niches and riches!
Competitive Research – SEO Recon
I learned one of my most important Internet Marketing tip from an outlaw biker who controlled the narcotics distribution network in western Arizona in 1985, while I was an undercover police officer.
After my introduction as a prospect for his organization, the very first thing he said to me was “Roy, learn everything you can about your competition and take them out.”
His remark to me shook me to my core, as I knew he would follow his own advice if he found out that I was a cop, intent on breaking up his criminal enterprise and arresting him.
After my retirement from law enforcement I began my new career in Internet Marketing. I often thought back to that biker’s remark and how it influenced my campaigns.
No, I didn’t take his advice in the literal sense on wanting to inflict physical harm to my online competitors, however I realized to become successful I had to know as much information their online business as possible.
Traditional “brick and mortar” businesses have done research on their competitors for years. They would scan the newspaper ads; have secret shoppers go into establishments. But how does one “spy” on competitors that operate online stores?
The following video reviews some of the methods I’ve used to identify the strong points and weaknesses of my online competitors using a program called SEO Recon.
During my advanced SEO Training Workshop I go into more detail on how you can use this program and others to gain an advantage over your competitors in your online marketing.
If you would like more information about this program please click here: SEO Recon Tool
Or, if you would rather that we do this type of research in your niche market, please contact me now for pricing.
SPIDER FACTS – HOW SEARCH ENGINE SPIDERS WORK
When it comes to the subject of search engine optimization, there’s a lot of confusion. One common area of confusion is about search engine spiders, commonly called search engine robots.
If you want your site to be found or indexed in the search engines, there’s several facts you need to understand. First, you need to know what Search Engine Robots are all about. What is a Search Engine Robot? Search Engine Robots are computer programs that visit your web page, gather information about your site and then provide this information back to the search engines.
How do search engines view your site when the robots arrive at your site? Do they view your site as one site comprised of a group of pages or do they compile information about your site as many individual pages?
The answer to this question may surprise you since the search engine robot neither sees your site as one web site or a bunch of pages.
Sometimes when a search engine spider comes to your site, it gets confused and cannot understand the organization of your site. This situation is often caused by what is termed a spider trap. What’s a spider trap? A spider trap is a situation where the spider thinks it is looking at a bunch of unique pages when it is really looking at the some page. This is caused by variable strings at the end of urls that are session identifiers. The spiders often get lost in a situation like this.
What determines what page your site will rank on in a search engine and how intelligent are the search engine spiders? They are actually rather dumb and can’t really think.
Another problem with the spiders is that they become outdated and the approach the spider software uses is no longer current and up-to-date. Some spiders are better than others in crawling more complex web sites but the spidering approach all the spiders take is somewhat identical.
Here’s some tips to consider:
- Your objective should be to keep the spiders returning often to your site because new content usually ranks higher. Since “content is king” on the Internet, you need to constantly add new material to your site such as articles, videos, and good high quality information. This new content should be consistently added over time as opposed to all at once. For example, you might add one new piece of content per day.
- Contrary to what many people think, it is not a good idea to include a robots revisit tag in your HTML code. This simply doesn’t work. You want the robots to keep coming back as you add new content. With new content they will stay longer and examine more of your site pages.
- Everyone knows blogs get crawled often by the spiders. The reason is simple- blogs constantly add new content- sometimes as often as daily.
- Although some website owners submit their site to the search engines using software. This is not a recommended approach. A better approach is for the spiders to find you from links from other sites which are already indexed and are pointing to you. Submittal is advisable, however, when it comes to directories humans examine these entries and decide how to handle them.
- Another tip is to use a site map. A site map is exactly as it sounds- a map of the relationship of your pages to each other and how they are linked. To maximize the use of a site map, The best use of a site map is to link every page on your site to the Stieglitz, a task which most people forget, according to Matt Cutts. The reason for this is that the spiders can find one of your pages (not necessarily the home page) and you want the spiders to find the other pages from any page. A site map set up properly will accomplish this.
What do you think the best approach is for having Google index your site- right away or after pages off your site link to you?
The best approach is to get other parts of the web such as directories linked to you first because these off page factors can help your rank in a major way. The rewards of off page factors is huge!
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Targeting Longtail Key Words
Have you ever heard of the word “long tail” when it comes to search engine optimization? If you haven’t heard the term, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to get search engine positioning without competing with as many other sites. Long tails refer to a category of keywords that are searched for on the Internet but not with the same search volume as other words.
An example would be when I owned the network of RadarBusters websites. My main target keyword was “radar detectors” however a few of my best converting long tail keywords were “best radar detectors”, “long range radar detectors” and “radar detector laws (state name). These words would be searched for less frequently than simply the word “radar detectors”. However I was able to target prospective customer needs by optimizing my site for these phrases by having a “landing page” that matched their search (intent). Also by picking less frequently searched words, you are not competing with as many other search engine optimizers and have a higher probability of getting ranked high in the search engines.
How do you pick the best long tail key words or phrases? This process is process requires identifying niches for the products or services you provide, competitive analysis and keyword research.
There are other important aspects of picking the right longtail keyword. For example, in picking long tail keywords, you should pick ones that indicate buying intent. A buying intent keyword is a key word that indicates the searcher is intent on buying a product or service the key word is about. For example, the key word term “price of Sony HD456 television” definitely indicates a buying intent because it is a search about a specific model and the word “price” indicates that the searcher is searching for that model.
During my basic and advanced Search Engine Training Workshops, I teach you the skills to do this type of longtail research for your own, or client’s websites.
We’re In the SERP’s Already?
I’m preparing for my official launch later this week as we still have some work to on the site and scheduling of our first class.
So I can hit the road running after we launch, last night I took one of my “traffic magnet” videos that was optimized for “AZ SEO Training” and “Arizona SEO Training” and uploaded it to several of the social media video services we use. My plan was to add a few social bookmarks to these videos later this week so I didn’t expect that they would or index till then.
So this morning I was a bit suprised of a few emails complementing our site and videos.
The following results is a perfect example of the power of videos, local search and social media that I teach at both at the Essentials SEO Training Workshop and Advanced SEO Training Workshops. However in this experience I do admit, I’m a little surprised at the results, normally it takes a little more effort to see these type of results!
