Are you buried in the search engines? Are visitors having a difficult time finding your website? Or maybe you’re not even listed in the search engines. Maybe you’ve heard about search engine optimization but not exactly sure where to start. These search engine tips will give you a good starting point to get your site noticed on the major search engines. Much of the SEO involves changes on a regular and constant basis but these tips are timeless and will provide you with a solid search engine optimization framework for your website.

1. Choose Your Keywords Wisely: Before you start your SEO strategy, you must first pick keywords and keyword phrases that relate to the core of your site. You must be careful in choosing your keywords as competition is fierce in many industries.For example, it will be much easier for a website to get ranked higher in the search engines with the keyword phrase, “arizona used car dealers” than it would be for the keyword phrase “car dealers”. The more specific your search terms are, the easier it will be to get ranked higher for those terms. We obviously know that there are many more “car dealers” listed than “arizona used car dealers”. Right now there are over 18,000,000 results for “car dealers” on Google and there are only a bit over 1,000,000 for “arizona used car dealers”. Focus your keywords and keyword phrases.
2. Content Is King: No matter how many times we say this, content is the key to your websites success. If you don’t have quality and unique content, why would visitors want to come to your site? Write unique copy for your website and write it as often as you can. The search engines love fresh content. They will reward you time and time again if you feed it to them on a regular basis.
3. Link Building Strategies: This is arguable the most important aspect of search engine optimization. It’s essential that you have other sites point to your website with a link. There are right ways and wrong ways to create a link building campaign. The wrong way is to just have any and every website out there link to you. This will do no good and you could be penalized or possibly banned from the search engines. Also, it doesn’t do much good to have another website link to you with the incorrect anchor text that doesn’t relate to your website. Anchor text is the link that the other website is using in order to direct people to your website. For example, if you have a site about dogs and someone is linking to you using the anchor text “animals”, then this is not going to be very relevant. You ideally want someone to link to you using the keyword “dogs” or a related term such as “big dogs”.Also, when creating a link building strategy try and get people to link to you without having you link back to them. This shows that someone is linking to you on their own will and that your website has relevant information and content. If it’s a reciprocal link, the search engines think that the link trade was done as a deal and that the websites involved might not actually be that important. If you provide relevant and unique content as described in Tip 2, people will want to link to you on their own.
4. Customize Your Title Tags: Title tags are the little phrases and terms located in the top left of your browser window such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. The search engines love title tags that are customized for each page of the website. So, if you have a website that is 5 pages, you would create a custom title tag for each individual page relating to the content on that page.For example, if you are writing about dogs and have 5 different web pages about different dogs, you would write a new title tag for each page. The title tag on the page about Labradors could be something like: “Labrador Retrievers are great pets”. The title tag on the page about Westies could be: “Westies are a great breed full of energy”. Try to use your main keywords for each page in the title tags. The search engines love to read the title tags to find out the relevancy of that specific page. Don’t bury yourself deep in the search engines by not having customized and relevant title tags for your website.
5. Create A Sitemap:Create both a human readable and an XML sitemap for your site. The human readable sitemap will allow users to see every page on your site within one page. The XML sitemap will tell the major search engines when you update your website with content or make changes. Both are important and should be added into your search engine optimization strategy.
6. Internal Linking Strategies: As we discussed earlier, link building campaigns are essential in creating a popular website for the search engines. This also holds true for linking within your own website to other pages on your website. For example, you could link from your homepage to an article that is deeper within your website. This is a great strategy and should be used to create interlinking between pages.
7. Keep Your Coding Clean: When you are programming your website, be sure to keep you code clean. The search engine spiders need to be able to get to the actual content on your site and if the code is messy and not organized the spiders will have a hard time finding that unique content and they might leave the page before they spider it. When possible, use external .css and .js files and link them to the pages that need the code.
8. Web Page Structure: When you are creating each individual page of your website be sure to be consistent in setting up the structure of the page. This includes a website template that is the same for all pages, page headings such as H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags, using bold tags and having a consistent navigation menu that is easy for users. If your website is set up with no rhyme nor reason, you will lose visitors due to sloppiness of the pages. Keep everything clean and organized and your visitors will come back for more…..that is, if you follow Tip 2 and provide unique content on a regular basis!
9. Submit Your Site To Relevant Directories and Search Engines: Make sure you submit your website to all relevant directories such as Yahoo and all major search engines such as Google and MSN. There are many others but these are the main players. If you’d like to find more, do a search on Google. Also, before you submit your site to these directories and search engines, make sure your website is 100% complete. Don’t submit a site that is under construction or needs more work. The search engine spiders don’t like sites that are not up and running 100%.
10. Create Your Website For The Visitors, Not The Search Engines: While it is very important to execute an SEO strategy, it’s also very important to not go overboard implementing SEO tactics. Make sure your site is developed with the user in mind. If it doesn’t make sense to your visitors, the what’s the point in having it ranked high in the search engines? Always please your visitors first and the search engines second.

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When you decide that you are ready to take the plunge and go into business for yourself, there are many questions to ask before you dive in head first. Here are some questions to answer before you make any business moves. The reason most businesses fail is due to the lack of planning and answering these simple questions below. Get a head start and make sure you can get through this list before you plan to take over the world with your new venture! This list can technically be used as a sufficient business plan if filled our entirely.

Download a copy of this document so you can fill it out: 50 Business Startup Questions To Ask Yourself

1. What industry will I start a business in?
2. Who are my competitors?
3. What are my skills?
4. Is there a lasting need for my service?
5. Is there a big enough target audience?
6. What is my entrance strategy?
7. What is my exit strategy?
8. Will I stay a one man/woman shop or hire employees?
9. Will I form a legal entity such as an LLC, S-Corp or Corporation?
10. Is the market saturated already?
11. Do I have the dedication and time commitment needed to succeed?
12. How will I fund the business?
13. How will I plan for future growth?
14. What if growth is slow? How will I handle hard times?
15. Can I balance the work and the everyday lifestyle I live?
16. What will my top 3 challenges be? How will I handle them?
17. Should I start out part-time and hope it leads to a full time gig or go full time from the start?
18. Will I have a physical location or will this business be web-based only?
19. Do I need any special permits?
20. Will I do business in the U.S. only or international?
21. Will I take a paycheck or save up the money and reinvest it into the business?
22. Who will handle my legal and tax issues?
23. What will my work schedule look like?
24. Will I have a dedicated office if I am working from home?
25. How will I provide my family with health and medical insurance?
26. How will I save for retirement? Mutual funds? Index Fund? IRA?
27. Will I purchase new office equipment or use what I already have?
28. How will I brand my business?
29. Do I have a marketing plan in mind?
30. Do I have the will power to work when the motivation is not there?
31. Will I mind putting in more hours than a normal 9-5? Possibly double?
32. Did I write down the pros and cons of starting your own business?
33. Do I know how to make a website?
34. Do I know how to market a website?
35. Do I have a business network that I can tap into?
36. Will I start a blog for my business?
37. Do I have prior experience within this industry or is this something totally new?
38. How is my patience?
39. How is my copyrighting ability? Can I sell myself or can I sell my product/service?
40. Have I done all of the necessary research/homework to start the business?
41. Is my business affected by different time zones?
42. What is my marketing budget, if any?
43. Do I have anything to fall back on if this doesn’t work out?
44. What will I do when people try to copy your great idea? How will I remain a leader?
45. Will I patent or trademark your business idea?
46. Can I negotiate with the best of them or am I a pushover?
47. What are my short term goals?
48. What are my long term goals?
49. How will I achieve my goals?
50. How much luck do I have?

Best of Luck!

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• Start Your Own Website and Make Millions!!? 5 Realistic Web Business Expectations

If you are a loyal reader to this blog, you probably have hopes of making money through the web… how can you turn that corner and make a living off of your ideas? It is possible to make 6 figures from the Internet, and there are many people doing it… we can help, but first you need to have realistic expectations of what you can achieve quickly.

Somehow and somewhere the misperception was born that the Internet is the best place to turn to get rich quick. Everybody knows they want to be the next web millionaire, but they don’t know how to get there.

Lets start by throwing out some realistic expectations for your website…

Realistic expectation 1- You will not have website traffic unless you create website traffic. Websites don’t just get found on the Internet by random traffic, you need to market sites actively. Everybody seems to think if they put up a website, you will instantly be found on the web. The truth is, most websites sit stale and don’t have ANY visitors. If you want traffic, you probably should consult with a web marketing firm and let them explain the different routes available to get visitors.

Realistic Expectation 2- You will lose money before you make money. You should expected to spend money for web marketing services right off the bat. You may also need to spend money for website development, advertising, and optimization services. It is very difficult (unless you can do all these things yourself) to have a legitimate website up and going for no cost at all. Dedicate some money towards these steps, and you will see your return come back quicker.

Realistic Expectation 3- You will have people copy what you do. If you really think you have a unique idea to make money online, expect several other people to copy this idea quickly, and they will try to do it better. Great concepts on the Internet are not popping up as quickly as they once were, so if you think you have that million dollar idea… make sure you do it right the first time. Otherwise, somebody will steal your idea before you can cash your first check.

Realistic Expectation 4- You will need to work… HARD. You have probably watched those info-mercials where people are making all this money from the web, while they are lounging on a beach drinking Coronas. The best line from all these commercials are “The website is in auto-pilot!” This is not the case and not how websites work! Profitable websites take a lot of work to create, update, and maintain. If you do not have somebody available to make updates you should figure this out before you start. Websites require maintenance the same way a car does. One day it is running fine, and the next it has stopped right in it’s tracks. Be prepared to put out these kind of “fires” on the fly. If you don’t want to worry about these types of problems, hire a firm to do it for you.

Realistic Expectation 5- You will probably second guess your decision to start a website business in the first place. This is natural because it does take so long to start to see profits come in. Most likely this will keep you up at night… but keep the faith! Web traffic will start to snowball if you are preforming the proper web marketing strategies. One day you might have 5 visitors, and the next day you may turn the corner and have 500. We have seen this happen so you must keep the faith and keep on truckin for that goal.

Good luck and feel free to send us any questions about how to get started!

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We deal with a lot of small and medium size businesses and many of these ventures start out as a one-man/woman shop with a flare of entrepreneurial spirit. Everyone at some point of their life wants to live the American dream and be their own boss. It comes down to the big question. Do you have the traits of a successful entrepreneur?

Many have them and don’t even know it. Many don’t have them but develop them over time. It really depends on your professional goals and objectives. Some enjoy working for a corporation with thousands of employees and taking a piece of the pie. But many want the whole pie for themselves and branch out into the world of small business.

Here are the top ten traits of a successful entrepreneur:

1. Entrepreneurs have a different mind set. Their brains are always spinning for new ideas and new ways to create innovation amongst their competition. They want to be the leader and not the follower and they will do what it takes to get there, no matter how much failure comes along the way. Sooner or later, they will find their pot of gold.
2. Entrepreneurs have a broad knowledge of business. When you run your own business, you might be the one who does payroll, sales, cleans the office, does the actual business work and anything else that keeps the company up and running.
   Entrepreneurs learn a lot on the job and by default gain a broad scope of the business world.
3. Entrepreneurs are not afraid of risk (at least they won’t admit it!). They can’t be. If you want to make millions, you must be willing to put yourself on the line. You know the old saying, “You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.”
4. Entrepreneurs like to drive innovation. They love to differentiate themselves from the pack. Whether it is a niche product or service, entrepreneurs keep their brains churning for the next big idea. Their minds never sleep. Sooner or later, after enough trial and error, something sticks and when it does, it can be one huge payday.
5. Entrepreneurs know their industry/market. The do the necessary research about the industry they are in and the industries that are involved in the line of business they do. They are well-informed on market trends and the behavior of the people who do business within these markets.
6. Entrepreneurs know their competition. They have scoped out their local competition and beyond. In order to innovate, an entrepreneur has to know what his/her competitors are doing in order to build a successful business. By studying your competition, you can gain valuable knowledge on how surpass what they are doing.
7. Entrepreneurs know their strengths and more importantly their weaknesses. All entrepreneurs have certain business strengths. Most entrepreneurs are unique in the skills they possess. They know how to utilize their strengths to maximize their productivity. Entrepreneurs also know their weaknesses and know that it’s important to get help in their areas of weakness. If you are not competent in the area of research, outsource it. If you don’t know about accounting and payroll, hire someone to do it. Focus on your core strengths and not your weaknesses.
8. Entrepreneurs have a plan, kind of! Entrepreneurs know exactly what they want when they set up in the business world. They have a broad scope of how to get where they want to go and how to be successful. This plan often changes due to the nature of the entrepreneur’s mind always spinning and new ideas coming into play. Entrepreneurs often have the thought of, “we’ll take care of it when it happens.” Often they don’t plan for the short term and things can become stressful and hectic but their end goal of success is always in mind.
9. Entrepreneurs know when to step out or sell. When things are not going well, entrepreneurs know when to fold the cards. They know indicators of selling a business and cutting their losses and they also know when to just shut down shop and move onto the next venture. Many people keep thinking things will turn around with a business. Entrepreneurs know when the market is dry and their idea has fizzled.
10. Entrepreneurs have a passion for business. They love the idea of business and creating a sense of need in the market. Entrepreneurs also love to keep themselves informed in the business world and they make sure to keep up on the latest trends, research, products and services as well as strategies. They love the challenges of business and this is what motivates them to keep working until they hit their huge payday. They love what they do and they will make sure they are successful no matter what circumstances arise. They are leaders.

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Oh, no, the BlackBerry email server was down today for a few hours and my world ended! I guess you can call this my rant for the day. It’s pretty sad that people can’t function for a couple of hours without their BlackBerry lifelines.

Seriously, just because your freaking Blackberry goes out of service for a couple of hours, life is not over! If you’re that busy of a person that needs to be connected 24/7, then get a backup phone. If not, then stop pretending that you are that busy and get over it. I have a BlackBerry and as nice as it is to be able to check my email and browse online, if I REALLY need to, I can find a laptop with a wireless connection if need be.

I guess this is just something you can add to your list of addictions.

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