These guys might have the answer… I won’t write a pile of detail, but this is the kind of tool that can really speed up your day
not constantly mashing the excel data round… and best part is… It’s FREE!
Check it out at http://excellentanalytics.com/how-to/

It’s amazing how many people try to leverage the internet while missing a key piece, or ignoring a piece because it’s too hard, too expensive or some other internal reason (personally or within the business) that makes them NOT want to do things right the first time.

HOW do you effectively plan your entire online marketing campaign RIGHT from step 1?

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #1 – TARGET AUDIENCE

First thing (and I myself have ignored this many times, and the effects are disastrous) is to identify, draw and sketch out every little detail that you currently KNOW about the person who buys your stuff… Or the person who frequently buys the product you want to sell the most right now. Could be because that product has your highest profit margin, or because you know folks who buy that first product often buy others. Either way, nail down who buys it… or who it’s right for…

WHAT TO COLLECT

• Age group
• Websites they visit (Sports sites, coupon trading sites, investing sites)
• What level of computer savvy they have
• What social networks they tend to be on
• How they word things when they search online (are they educated or ignorant?)
• What industry acronyms might they use?
• What other interests might they typically have?
• What gender are they? Males or females
• What kind of money do they have? Are they over $40k a year or under?

Once you have that kind of information ALONE, you can begin to write copy and build landing pages. Landing pages that target their hopes, dreams desires… That build on the critical 7 emotions that sell… (Lust, vanity, pride, envy, laziness, greed, fear) and you can offer them exactly what they’re looking for. You can select the right colors, the right call to action, the correct language (intelligent or simple) and really get maximum impact. You can ALSO easily start identifying search targets, content network targets (websites you can advertise on) that will hit close to home, but cost very little.

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #2 – COMPETITION ANALYSIS

You should know what your competitors are peddling, because.. Guess what? Your customers know! Most consumers research and dig around before deciding to buy most things. When they do, they’ll be met with many other offers that focus on different guarantees & benefits. Price (cheapest or most expensive), Quantity (more widgets or less), Guarantee (7 days or 90 days) and a whole host of other elements…

Google the phrases your consumers will type and see what they’re getting currently. Take screenshots if you have to of each so you can use those when you go to craft your own campaigns. This is one of the most critical elements because without this, you can’t really ACTUALLY come up with a good USP (Unique Sales Proposition) or what separates you from the competition. What makes you better? Why should someone choose you? Why are YOU the best out there?

Keep in mind, you can’t say “I have no competition, I’m the only one selling something…” because even Accounting Software had a competitor when it came onto the market. THE PENCIL. Why are you better than a pencil? Yes, you have to tell them that. They may not know.

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #3 – LANDING PAGE CREATION

When your target audience shows up, after looking at all those other competitors (brick & mortar or otherwise) what do they see? Does YOUR Page instill the critical ingredients gleaned from your research above?

• Credibility (BBB, Verisign logos, CNN Logos, Expert endorsements, clinical trial results, testimonials)
• Simple Layout (Simple benefits, headline and call to action, little other navigation or un-neccesary clicks)
• Email address collection (Your insurance, at least build a list so you can contact them later if they don’t buy)
• Strong offer that’s better than the competition (And here’s why!)
• Tracking – Obviously some form of analytics should be in place or your wasting your time
• Graphical or visual (video,flash) examples.

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #4 – TRAFFIC STRATEGY

Once you know who your audience is, you know what their 3am issue keeping them up at night is, and you know how to give it to them… The next part really can’t be much easier… When you go to execute your PPC strategy and your identifying keywords and writing ads for maximum click thru, use your research that you learned from competitors, consumers and what they WANT. You can attract alotta bears with the right honey.

When you consider your SEO setup, do the keyword research and ensure every bit of content that you want users to link to and chat about to be written STRAIGHT to Joe Smith we learned about in critical element #1 your research. Ensure your content is viralled out to the websites they hang out on, and visit most often. Ensure you’ve got a “share on this network” and it links to Linkedin or whatever network that audience uses most frequently. When you go to execute your media buys, your content network and other ads, ensure you target sites this audience is likely to frequent.

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #5 – ANALYTICS

Learn quickly how to identify your wins (optins or sales or both).  Adjust and split test and always be on the lookout for a way to improve what you have. There’s ALWAYS room for improvement and you should always be testing. Relaunch the successful tests into your existing marketing. Take successful headlines to email, twitter, facebook, content network and so on and roll out those pieces. Continually survey your email list ensure your material is hitting the right spots, helping them and showing them what they want to see.

Sincerely,
Daniel J Deyette

What makes an article so good that they tell everyone they know?

Benefits of reading this post:

• Links, people talk = rankings
• Reputation – People like you = sales
• Viral Tell A Friend Traffic

Why bother writing “Content for search engines?”

When’s the last time a search engine ever bought anything from you? Even if they did, ironically when’s the last time it worked?!? If users don’t find it valuable they don’t link to it, they don’t tell their friends, they don’t bookmark it or do anything at all! They just feel mis-lead and quickly go to a site with more value and more material that they *DO* find useful.

The critical parts of a “useful” article.

Honesty – I don’t just mean telling the truth and not lying (although that’s important) but sounding sincere and trustable. Telling personal anecdotes and giving real life examples. This is one key reason that Youtube does so well… I mean how can you not trust someone on a camera doing what they do right in front if you, you can see their face, their honesty, it’s all there!

Tips – Including tips and useful advice (even stuff that seems incredibly simple) that could help others  in some small way, sharing your insight and wisdom – or a tip you found somewhere else. The best kind of tips aren’t just the advice but also hands on WALKTHRUS with photos, etc or at least step-by-step.

New Information – Covering a topic everyone wants to hear about that you know something about or that you have the time to better research than others do. It’s super easy to dig up information and further expand on a fresh news topic or software bug, or guru launch or whatever’s going on in your industry and add your spin to it.

Pictures, Charts, Video – Some of the juiciest posts I’ve ever read, bookmarked, shared and practically yelled and screamed about had all kinds of visual resources helping make the information not so bland, I mean really the more images and examples (even if they’re just off a stock photo site) are very beneficial to making content feel interesting and valuable.

Humans – Oh yes, them too. Interviewing experts, asking expert’s opinions, interviewing by email, getting an audio, phone or in-person interview, any way that you can get some additional advice on a topic and round that out into a story or solve a problem with that information that your searchers are looking for.

Compilation – Find all the sources around the web talking about a certain topic and state their point’s of view and state your source (you don’t have to link back to them, just mention where you got the info) I did that same thing in my article about Google Caffeine. Yeah, sure it took a bit of time, but I truly believe that I had – on that day – the best Caffeine article there was on the internet covering what we know about the topic at this point. I haven’t researched it quite as thoroughly as I had then, so I can’t confidently say the same now… But it *WAS* that darn good.

Keywords – Yes, you must base your article, writeup or blog post on KEYWORDS you must do keyword research and discover what it is that people are searching for and base your topic on that, even (if you have time) go as far as to write directly about a specific phrase with little competition… BUT – yep there is a but – consider all the other phrases in the list and other sub-areas that those folks wanted to know about. Try not to get SEO paralysis in that you’re only writing for the search engines… Remember, search engine spiders don’t have credit cards.

—

Envision this article on your website that has:

• A list of resources from other sources using the compilation method
• A interview with someone
• Fresh news OR your take on fresh news and some backgrounder
• An Honest review or experience you had
• A juicy tip you discovered
• Pictures, charts, video or a diagram of some kind

Remember the last time you requested a link?

“Here’s a page I want you to link to… I’m selling something, but it’s REALLY good!”

Yeah – right! And they linked to you, didn’t they? NOT!

And now…

“Here’s a page that’s really valuable, and I think your readers will find it very useful and entertaining”

What do you think the response to THAT would be? Exactly…

—

Stop! Are you about to write an article because of some keyword you found on a keyword tool? If you are, and you’re basing it off just ONE keyword tool and not considering all related words, consider this…

We offer a service for $29.95USD where we examine 3 keyword sources, mash all the data together giving you a complete bird’s eye view organized by search volume and number of words…  You KNOW that Google doesn’t give you ALL the search phrases for your niche when you ask, neither do the other engines, but with results from all 3 COMBINED, you can’t lose.

Free Sample – Click the Excel Image to see what our keyword reports look like.

$29.95 – Order a keyword report right now! Just tell us the keyword phrase and you should expect your report within 1-3 business days (1 business day in most cases, but it’s important to be realistic if we’re busy…)

Before you read anything more – let me say that the course of my life has allowed me to offer this to you now completely free – where in the past I may have gone on to put something on clickbank and sell it for a ton of money. This material would easily sell for $20-40USD, but it’s completely free.

It’s an export of my brains to paper, a strategy that has personally given me hundreds of dollars in revenue and thousands of hits. Properly optimized this exact strategy followed as I explain it could produce you much more than it did me for a number of reasons I won’t get into here.

I had this happen twice, by accident!
I wrote a darn good article on purpose, but did a few things that accidentally gained it immediate attention and in some cases world wide press attention.
(Click the image for a full size copy)

This is a map I drew on a piece of a paper on my desk a few minutes ago, note my amazing artistic talent (Just kidding…) but regardless, if you let my drawing abilities get in your way, you’ll miss this. This map in itself probably has a value in the thousands, but let me break it down for simple folks – step by step so it can be easily understood.

Step 1. Ensure your ‘article repository’ is topic optimized

Basically, what I mean by this is make sure you group your subjects and topics that you cover on your website in a logical order and a logical link pattern on your website, blog or whatever you use to store all your articles online. Ensure they start with a main subject like “house building” and then below that it may cover roofs, structure, foundation etc.. under structure… You might cover screws, drywall, studs etc.

Make sure your site uses a proper URL structure.

I simply mean that it should be http://www.yoursite.com/post-title/ (IN wordpress that’s done by setting your permalink structure to %posttitle% or similar). This way an article’s title might actually be http://www.sermonadvice.com/sermon-on-the-amount/ for example.

Step 2. Setup your article or page for SEO and Viral Success!

There are a number of key elements that are so important to ensuring the page gets a ton of traffic that they are almost more important than the content itself! In fact, in some ways they really are. Things like having an exciting title that explains the benefit of reading it in the first place. Ensuring that title also has a keyword phrase that does get searched for using keyword tools.

Keeping The Humans Happy…

Yeah, they matter too.. Search engines are great, but it’s the humans that link back to stuff! I’m continuging to learn this the hard way, that it’s actually the humans that matter a little more than what Google MSN & Yahoo think. How do we keep them happy? Easy! Keep them entertained and educated with really nice pictures and really interesting materials. When humans find stuff that’s really interesting, really entertaining or educational and they find it super helpful… keyword being super .. They want to pass it on to friends, although some folks aren’t as tech savvy as others… and some are just lazy.. so having sharing buttons on the blog is super important! My favorite tool for that is SexyBookmarks, yeah – i know the name sounds nasty, but it’s totally safe for work and they look brilliant. I also think that the Tweetmeme button (I drew one in the top right of my fake page there) is a great tool.. There are also hacks to make tweetmeme faster too if you find that a problem. I don’t though.

I also mention adding page translation (Support other languages, and also other language search queries! More traffic!) and of course how important it is to have an email address collection box. I’ve always called them “Insurance” because they basically mean if SEO becomes competitive and Pay per click gets too expensive, you’ve always got your list to market to.

Step 3. Get your juicy content out there!

So, up till now all I’ve mentioned is “on page” strategy, nothing about getting your word out there. This isn’t Field of Dreams… “if you build it, they will come”. Fact is i’ve had some content i’ve written that i’d place a $1000 bet it’s the best there is on the internet about that topic, but Google doesn’t care! Google’s a machine with no ability to tell what’s good and what’s not, it leaves that part to the humans (Dumb silly Google!). Sad, what do we know? (kidding!). Anyway…

Get your juicy article talked about! Some markets (like internet marketing and computer topics) that’s easy! Nerds love to share nerdy stuff, so we’ve created lots of nerd link sharing sites, your industry may be different. So you might have to do different things to get your stuff to the masses, but here’s an overall gyst:

• Post on forums and mention your page..
  (if your page really is an article with juicy helpful stuff you won’t get in trouble for posting it… If it sells stuff you will get in trouble).
• Email and comment on blogs
  Interact with the owners and let them know about the killer resource you just wrote. If it’s that good, they’ll link to it too.
• Press Release – Journalists are always looking for new stories
• Relavent news sites – even they want in on this stuff
• Article sites – don’t do 200 of them, but a handful helps a bit
• Universities – Get some .edu links by telling students studying your industry about the article…
  Maybe they’ll click the share on facebook button on your article!
• RSS submission tools get the message to the search spiders if your article is on a blog.
• Socialmarker.com will post to all the social news sites free
• Reddit.com is easier to get the first page on than Digg is, but can help get you ON digg in the first place.
• Email friends, and other people in the industry about your new juice!
• Yahoo answers, I bet your article (if it’s really that good!) answers someone’s question out there!
• Pay Per Click – Yes, it costs money, but getting more people to an article with those share buttons could get it shared more..
  For a few pennies per click, couldn’t you use more email addresses and viewers and exposure? I Sure could!

If this article gave you a new idea, a new insight or helped in *any* way, please… do the right thing…

Click one of the share buttons below……

Can you really trust the online marketers who peddle “hope”?

With the conviction of James Arthur Ray still fresh as the trail of his victims lay in our eyes and being smeared in our faces by local media, you have to wonder. Can you really trust the “Gurus” who peddle hope in little golden boxes at thousands of dollars per download?

This has been a crazy year for well known internet marketers all over the United States with Perry Belcher’s issues, Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins and all kinds of wild things going on!

I remember a time when the “Gurus” were good people. I mean, 99% of those who claimed to be successful, rich and living amazing lives, really were.

A Christian and extremely ethical guy like me finds it difficult to recommend a website that’s filled with swearing, discusting humor and unforgivable NOT safe for work humor… But if you can imagine a statement like, that I submit to those with the stomach, open-ness and profane ignored… The Salty Droid….

When I first stumbled across this site, as mentioned by Ryan Healy in some of his “Exposing the Guru” posts, I have to say that I was really shocked by the attitude and information presented. I immediately ignore and *instantly* loose respect for anyone who swears both in person or in public. It’s just not acceptable (Yes, I’m in that camp…). That’s why I just can’t have any respect for a guy like Tony Robbins anymore. The guy has impressive energy and skill and motivational abilities, but his mouth – needs soap!

Anyway… I have to say that much of the information at The Salty Droid can be verified. It’s obviously a slanted one-sided view of the entire situation, but it’s equally interesting…

The big question is, who can you really trust?

Let me stretch out on a limb and make some bold statements that could easily offend and bother people…

#1. If it sounds too good to be true, it is…

#2. If it sounds easy, it’s probably not (without a ton of background knowledge on the topic)

#3. If you just got started in online marketing, you have at least a year (maybe more) of learning before profit is a discussable topic.

#4. Gone are the days when pictures with Gurus = Trust. Ignore that.

#5. Pretty much anyone who’s sales angle is “financial freedom” – “Work in your underpants”  – “retire in your 20s” or “automated cash” can make an excellent toilet tissue for your water closet <wink>. I’ve started unsubscribing from any Guru/Newsletter or company that promises GARBAGE like this.

#6. Social proof is power. Search Twitter, Search Facebook, Search Forums and groups and read all you can about someone before making a big purchase.

#7. Stay focused on your goals **AND** the direction you’ve chosen to achieve that goal.

-          If you said you were going to make your living thru affiliate marketing – do that.

-          If it was via selling a service – do that.

-          If it was selling an ebook, cdrom or download – do that.

But whatever you do, don’t deviate or chase money or ways of making money or strategies, or other people’s ideas!!

RANT OFF..

When I worked with Corey Rudl, and eventually Derek Gehl at The Internet Marketing Center in Vancouver B.C., I recall many times when ethics prevailed. The company and Of course Corey & Derek were highly ethical people and never promoted anything that didn’t work, or truly couldn’t help people. It was a culture I’ve never seen before – and never seen again. It was truly amazing and exciting and I actually couldn’t wait to get to work each day.

Every day, I was on the phone with clients and customers helping them build their online businesses and it was truly a dream come true. I met with other gurus while working there on the phone and in person. In fact, I remember when IM Gurus were truly *ONLY* known by other IM Gurus and not by their customers so much…

There was a time when Customers and sales made the GURU. Today, a Guru decides he’s going to sell IM garbage and becomes a GURU on his own. Corey, became a guru by selling kit car books and eventually thru the sales of the book Car Tips Revealed and of course, selling Ferrari Emblems and other such car gadgetry.

Still, earned reputations!

I dare gurus to show significant proof that they’ve actually sold products outside the internet marketing niche! Most certainly before I felt qualified to start posting tips, I constantly wrote ebooks like Classified Car Tips, Training Cats Easily, Removing Smoke, and others. I wrote a book on writing great newsletters, and then eventually moved into a few internet marketing products like unstoppablekeywords.com and such.

Anyways.. Interesting how this industry’s evolving. At this moment I’d say there’s very few IM products out there that are truly worth recommending so if you *ever* see me post on any (which there aren’t many I do) I’d strongly recommend buying them, as my word is the only thing I have.

It’s obvious that consumers see things differently than an educated online marketer, web developer or novice computer user see things. There’s no secrecy there. But, sometimes when you’re at wits end, or need a refresher – something to change up the usual, try looking at your pages from the customer view.

If you’ve been executing some form of online marketing for as long as I have, you know that’s not easy… But I have a few strategies that could help you in that regard…

#1. Buying Industry Magazines.

The other nite, I was at Safeway (A local grocery store) and picked up a copy of a novice computer magazine… It was relatively expensive, thick and loaded with newbie tips that I didn’t need to read, but what I saw sparked some SEO ideas, so I figured it was worth the investment. I think I see that completely differently than some. I can say that spending $16.99 on a brand new idea that could get me an avalanche of new website visitors is well worth the spend!

But, besides the SEO sparks and flames the magazine had other benefits. It gave me an insight to how the novice computer consumer sees the online marketing industry, the writing and blogging industry and a much more simplistic view. Such a refresher and really makes it easy to start writing to those folks on your sites.

FACT: The average person who will visit your site will have a grade 8 reading level.

#2. Your Internal View Of Others…

Huh? Yeah I know, it’s a weird thing to say, but stay with me here for a minute. One time I was super bored on the Vancouver SkyTrain (commuter train), on the way home. I was reviewing the salescopy for one of my ebooks and I thought to myself, what would my mother-in-law think of this copy?

Background: (She’s a senior who has no computer knowledge, and probably wouldn’t buy things online) but I know her well enough that I could just see what she would say in the back of my head, in fact nearly every answer she would give picking it apart.

I wrote down every objection she would have like wildfire, probably lighting my pen on fire right there! She gave me tons of ideas, and I didn’t even ACTUALLY ask her!!

#3. Cruel Comments From Your Friends

Hopefully, your friends like you! If they do, they won’t say anything mean or nasty about your website… They won’t be honest to your face, and if they’re not, they’re really no help to an honest feedback campaign, now are they?! BUT… print a copy of your website (or show them your screen) one day and ask them… “Get a load of this guy’s site…” OR  ”I’m thinking of investing in these guys..” and see what kind of feedback they provide then!

#4. Reading Reviews Of Similar Sites

There’s tools like Zing (some tool from the miracle whip manufacturers) and xmarks and a ton of other social tools like mcafee’s site advisor that let you see real world reviews of what other people think of related sites, they can be of use…  as well as “domain.com forum” in Google to see what others are saying about that domain…

#5. If Your Having An Off Day..

Ironically the way I started writing this post.. I saw myself looking at a landing page I just developed for a partnership deal I just signed, and I could see what a customer was thinking. It was a de-cafinated moment… A litteral mind-haze, but still! It was facinating and I realized I could easily figure out all these neat ways of getting back there.. But if you don’t feel yourself one day, go look at your website – see if you can jump out of your skin. Would you buy your own stuff? Would you subscribe? Why not!!

Cheers!
Daniel J Deyette

Making videos is often easy enough with all the technologies available today. You can easily do a screen recording, or video recording or even use your cell phone to record a video. However, getting a video to go VIRAL isn’t easy. I mean, lets face it – if your not the most important person in the world, who’s going to watch your video or visit your website?

The word Buzzworthy was used and abused by a number of marketers, and so was “Going viral, go viral, viral content etc..” and I don’t think most people really TRULY understand what that means.. So, I’m going to create a series of materials that I like to call “Tell a Friend” Content.

What is Tell a Friend Content?

Would you tell a friend about it? Then it’s definitely tell a friend content… That’s what it’s going to take to get your video to the masses at blistering fireball speed. You want your youtube video to get 1 million hits? This is how you can achieve it.

I’m starting in the realm of video but I will touch on viral content as well before this series is over.

The first video in the series

In This Short 8 Minute Video I Cover:

• Why you would want a video to go viral and have people spread the word
• What 3 common types of videos get the most views
• How to find keyword research that’s instant, 7 days old or 30 days old.
• Which videos are not viewed as sales garbage and are easy to create
• Over 8 different call to actions you can use

It also offers a bit of a tease as to what the next video will include. The next video we’ll get into how to submit the videos to multiple networks without signing up to any expensive tools or blowing your marketing budget. In fact, unless otherwise noted most of the strategies we teach are completely free.

WARNING…

You won’t probably remember to keep hitting refresh on the Youtube Channel, you won’t remember to visit my twitter account or much else, so If you WANT the video coming out next “Submit to 15 video sites on autopilot completely free”, then sign up to my newsletter on the right side. You’ll get a free book out of the deal (3,000 emotional words) so you can’t complain… You can always opt-out any time so it’s not like your signing your life away!

My friends, I made a bit of a mistake end of December in thinking that the Google Caffeine update was going to finally stop new websites and new links from taking crazy time to be utilized… It seems Google promised and even thru various developers I spoke to had PLANNED on making full use of instant news-style spiderage.

However, that’s simply not the case. Even with breaking news, we discovered last year when Michael Jackson passed away on us that Google was unable to keep up offering real-time results in it’s searches for appropriate terms…

What’s the big mistake?

From all the technical information I recieved thru various sources, and a few tests of my own… I saw websites popping up in Google within hours. Sometimes within hours of registration and zero links and starting to show up and rank… However this was not an effect of Caffeine taking action. This was a mis-leading fluke in some very non-competitive industries.

Spidering Indexing & Ranking

For the last 6 years I’ve been able to stand firm on the fact that it took 90 days to see the full effect of your effort in SEO, and it looked like in 2010, that would all change (As it should!). However, at least with this update, I strongly believe that’s not going to happen.

I noticed with some client websites in competitive spaces that the link strategies we applied are only now starting to take effect that are from nearly 2 months before… It’s hard to tell clients that to their faces when they’re so money starved, so anxious to make a buck that these long term investments will pay off… And in the SEO world, it’s easy to become unsure yourself! – But they do pay off.

I made the mistake of second guessing myself on that fact, and there are some general old-school strategies that are still getting results in low-lying markets and they will have a blip-on-the-radar effect on competitive markets… So it’s not without reason.

Anyway, enough ranting. Enjoy your day!

Rest assured that if your selling SEO even if you (By total fluke) see a bump in traffic in under 90 days it’s probably not intentional or should be expected…

I know I’m getting asked this by clients, I’m having friends and co-workers ask me this… It’s not an easy answer and it’s not something someone can easily just say… It’s one simple strategy…. Do this and you will be successful…

Fact is everything’s going Pink… (No-Follow), and everything’s getting censored and all the old white-hats and blackhat’s aren’t working the way they used to… To re-cap here’s a few strategies that won’t work well for you in 2010…

• Article Marketing (unless you plan to become the guru of the topic)
• Social Bookmarking (a few sites help, but unless your content is fantastic… this is dead)
• Paid Links (Google has ways of figuring these out even if it’s not ever published…)
• Blog Comments (yes, even the do follows don’t do much)
• Wikipedia Links (For SEO? Nope.. But for click traffic it’s still good)
• Social Profiles (for link building no, for ranking for niche phrases.. maybe..)
• Parasite hosting (not very ethical… and they do get deleted, then what?)
• Directory Submissions (the main directories and niche topic ones.. will help, but the smaller ones wont.)
• Hub page creation (for niche phrases, short term strategy perhaps but not long term as competitors creep in)
• Guestbook Signing (hello 2003, I was finding this effective for a bit, but now they’re so heavily monitored…)
• Online classifieds (45 days worth of link juice… if it doesn’t get deleted…)

So what do you have to do to get rankings and long term traffic?

Fact is that one of my favorite things to say for the last 6 years has been this… If it makes good business sense to get advertising from a certain site or join partners with a certain site, then it makes good SEO sense too. The best strategy that existed before modern SEO strategy is to get people talking. Write about topics people want to hear about… I think this will be the age of Real time search, where believe it or not… Tools like the Google keyword tool, Wordtracker and those others will be completely obsolete…

Your new keyword research tools are:

• Twitter (search “I want to know…” – “I can’t find..”)
• Yahoo Answers
• Google Answers
• Forums around niche topics

By the time 30 days rolls around and the search volume data is available to Wordtracker and Google, it’s 30 days old. It’s ancient news. It may not even *BE* In demand anymore. Oh yes, you’re going to see that real time answers are the next big thing. If you’re not on top of your game, your niche. If your finger isn’t on the pulse of your customer’s wants, needs and desires, you’re dead in 2010.

Am I being unfair? Nope.

Update from Wordtracker:

“The only point I’d like to raise is that Wordtracker’s data isn’t just 30 days old. While the US dataset goes back 365 days, new data is added every day, and this new data is between 16 and 30 hours old when it hits the servers.”

Many of the information and advice I post on here from time to time is straight technical traffic strategies and that was my original intention. However, it’s been on my mind to pass on some of the hard lessons of 2009.

For the last 6 years, I’ve provided SEO, Copywriting, PPC, and a whole heap of other services through my company, AnswersWanted Inc designed to boost client website traffic and of course, sales.

With the issues facing the american economy, I was forced to many jobs this last year that aren’t really my specialty… Things like accounting, sales, customer service, contract writing, and a whole host of other hats that I’d never had to wear… This forced me to learn some amazing lessons worth their weight in gold that I’d like to pass on to my friends and readers.

The Top Lessons in Offering SEO Services as A Freelancer…

#1. Always ALWAYS get a signed contract…

Yeah, small job, right? No need to get it all out on paper! I mean, seriously this job is going to be super simple and the client understands all the technicalities, and all the challenges etc… YEAH RIGHT!

Truth is, if you don’t outline what your offering, what your expecting from them, how much you expect to make, where you’ll meet, how often you’ll report, how many hours they get, where they’re money is going etc..

And.. plan for what happens if your strategy or plan doesn’t work… Sure, it worked the last 36 times, but that doesn’t matter. Plan for when it stops working and write a plan in your contracts for what then…

#2. NEVER offer anything free…

Seems so rude, rough and mean to say… In fact it’s hard for a guy like me to say that… over the years I’ve offered so many things free… Consultations, meetings, analysis, research… I want to help clients so badly that I’ll do anything to ensure they succeed…

Aaron Wall pointed out some time ago, and it’s a well known fact in business that the more you offer free, the more they want free. It never ends and it continues to de-value your work… Completely un-doing all the reputation earning and hard work you’ve done…

One day, you deliver an invoice and they scoff at it… How dare you charge? You’ve done it free all this time! Both you and the customer loose.

#3. Set expectations and deliver on them

Always create deadlines, and communicate them to your clients. Put things on the calendar, always give projects and jobs a timeline and stick to it. Just like being late for an interview, no one hires someone 15 minutes late. Always be on time, always set a deadline and meet or BEAT it.

Not only expectations within time, but expectations about the project…. How much traffic will a customer get with your strategy? How many keywords you focusing on? How many media outlets you distributing to? Seems like lots of work ironing out those details, but it’ll burn you if you don’t.

#4. Set specific hours, and take breaks.

Insanely important to not answer emails, phone calls or text messages related to work during your off time. You’ll never have a girlfriend or a wife very long if you’re taking calls, emails and texts during dinner, anniversary’s or honeymoons.

It’s not only that, having downtime helps you think, it helps you rest and prepare for a hard week. Some weeks might feel like you need less or more. In the end it’s like air, you don’t know how badly you need rest until you stop taking it.

#5. Don’t answer your phone

I’d even go as far as to say turn off your cell phone and office line durring business hours and respond to voicemails twice a day. Never answer calls… Why? When someone calls you if you respond while in the middle of a project they steal your time, your productivity and your energy.. They can blind-side you when you’re not prepared for it.. They control that call because they initiated it…

Let the voice mail catch it, educate your customers to leave DETAILED messages or they don’t get response… You can follow up via email if they phoned to check the number on an invoice or some other insignificant thing…

** Update ** – This isn’t really targeted toward 100% of clients, but i’m sure you have call display, and some clients can easily phone so much that you don’t get any work done. Anita and others are right though, there should be some hours you turn off the phone maybe 3-4 hours a day and just focus on work. Turn off MSN, Gtalk and other distractions too. Rich Schefren I think talks about the 45 minute egg timer of focused work for productivity too.

This isn’t my suggestion to IGNORE folks, or not provide good customer service. These are critical. What most probably don’t realize when reading this is that my business model often includes a weekly or every 2 week conference call. Not always, but often. With a setup like that, we’re always keeping in touch.

#6. Use some kind of online organization

One saving grace that has helped me over the last 2 years more than anyone knows is my Wiki. I use it like a CRM system for managing customers and clients.. I don’t always remember to use it for everything, but even just for passwords and contact info it has been a life saver. I can access it from home, office, client places and everywhere. It’s amazing.

#7. Trust your gut instincts all the way

Yeah, it’s hard if you don’t have a strong self esteem to trust your guts… and sometimes it’s tough to NOT take a deal or contract with a pushy client if your struggling for money, but trust me… Don’t do it. Your guts are the most useful business tool you have and the right opportunity will come along and you’ll know it, and when it’s not… your instincts are vital.

A few times I’ve looked at working with clients where it just didnt’ feel right, but I was in a position where I needed an extra gap filled to keep all my staff employed… and when my gut told me no,  I took the deal and it backfired.

#8. Startups…

In the contracting world, whether it’s SEO, PPC or any other service… Unless you own it, or own 50% of it… You really don’t wanna help startups in many cases. They don’t know how valuable your services really are, they may never understand, they may not have proven their product or have a good conversion rate… It could be complete garbage… Most independent contractors will tell you that the best clients are those who have spent $10,000 on a magazine ad “test” and failed.. living only to test again.. Startups spend $1000 and cry all the way the bank.

Some startups, organized and started by folks who have started many businesses before could be a perfect fit… but trust your gut before working with just anyone.

Anyway, to any contractor looking for advice re-selling internet marketing services, these are some of my biggest lessons that should make 2010 the best year ever.

Daniel J Deyette