• You’ve Paid Good Money For A Custom Designed Website Template …
And There Are NO SEO Tags In The Template’s Coding! •

OK, I had to stop what I was doing this morning (working on a mini-site for a new client) and write this post. I am astounded gang! Really … astounded. Why? I’ll tell you …

While doing research on the competition to my client’s niche, I was of course clicking on the competitors sites. Often, if I see a design I like, I’ll click on the designers link too, just to check them out. In addition, I am paying close attention to the search engine optimization of the competitors sites.

What made me stop to write this post is this … I found a particularly pleasantly designed site that was 100% missing the SEO of the Title tags and Description META tags on every page. (I find it amazing in today’s world of internet marketing, that a site designer could be ignorant of the need to include the HTML coded tags for optimization of the pages!)

Since There Was A Link At The Bottom Of The Pages For The Designer, I Clicked On It …

I was taken to a website boasting of the “fantastic” templates you could have designed for you, for a mere $199.00. OK … that’s darn reasonable, BUT!!  How could these designers overlook the simple insertion of the Title and Description tags in the template’s coding?

I guess once more the statement “you get what you pay for” holds true! lol

Egads! I’m going to say it again … in this day and age, how can anyone who claims to be a website designer not be aware of the proper coding needed in the HEAD section of the template? Come on! This is 2008, not 1998!

Well, once again everybody, my words of support continue to hold true to those of you who do pay attention to even the most basic steps of search engine optimization on your site. You WILL be ahead of 90% of the rest of your competition through the attention to SEO.

You know, I come across too many poor floundering sites every day during my SEO research. It really pains me at times when I find another sad site.  Normally, just by looking at the content and presentation, I can tell it is a very sincere person trying to be an internet marketer.  But they’re limping horribly with a totally unoptimized site.  I have to sigh, as I wonder how long it will be before either: (a) they give up (because they have no online presence); or (b) hopefully, the light goes on and they realize they are in desperate need of SEO attention.

Oh well … I’d better get back to my client’s site. And with a smile on my face, I know that by the time I am done putting my SEO magic to it, this client will be leading in the top-ten organic rankings in the very near future.

• When A Client Shuts Their Eyes To Sound Principles •
• Bare Bones SEO Can Indeed Make A Difference  •

It is sooooo frustrating! I have proven to this particular client over the past year that search engine optimization WORKS! That is if the ‘bare essentials’ (Title tag, Description META tag and content) are properly optimized.  Then there is a darn good chance that great organic rankings will follow.

Before I get challenged on the above statement, yes … certain niches are extremely competitive and the most basic of optimization techniques won’t always be enough to rocket the site to the top-ten, but for the client I am referring to, they certainly could rule the roost with attention to basic SEO

I hope that you gain a valuable morsel of SEO fact by reading this article. If you are new to learning about optimizing your site, then please listen up.

You have a fighting chance of having good search engine rankings if you PAY ATTENTION to the optimization of your Title tag, the Description META tag, and to the use of your keyword phrase (with a few modifiers) in your content. It sounds too simple doesn’t it?

But this client was doing pretty well for the past year with their rankings.  They could have done a better job in composing the tags.  It was obvious to me they hadn’t paid close attention to my pleadings to not exceed 70-characters with spaces for the Title tag; and not to exceed 150 characters with spaces for the Description META tag.  (Guidelines for Google that I closely adhere to.)

However, in spite of so-so Titles and Descriptions, they were never-the-less seeing nice rankings for many of their targeted keyword phrases and nice traffic was coming to their site.  They loved it when they were out-ranking the “big-boys” in their niche.

Then, the client came to me for a website redesign. It was time, as the existing site was very amateurish looking. After careful consideration of what they wished to achieve via the site, I recommended they utilize a blog format because of the built-in CMS capabilities. We choose WordPress for the blog platform.

Everything went fine. It was up to my client to place the old web pages of content into new posts on the blog. I even made sure the All-In-One SEO plugin was installed. I explained how IMPORTANT it was to copy and paste the respective Title and Description tags from the old pages into each post.

I told the client they had great rankings before, and one reason was that their web pages were nicely SEO’d whereas almost all their competition ignored SEO techniques.

Guess what? The client was uploading the old pages, but also taking time to write new posts. That’s fine, that’s great. But, they ignored my gentle reminders to stop writing new posts until they had tended to the SEO tags. They evidently didn’t hear me. I gently reminded them over the course of about two weeks.

And Then I Received An Email Last Night …

I am chuckling some, as I awoke this morning to find an email from the client, all bent out of shape, asking me why a one page (under construction it says) website was ranking #2 for an important traffic-generating keyword that my client used to rank in the top 5 for.

So … I took a look. Yes, I too wonder why Google would rank this site—if you can call it that—number 2. I know it will drop out of sight in the very near future, but it is one of the things that sometimes makes you scratch your head in wonderment about rankings!

My client’s post, which they had neglected to optimize, was #19 for the keyword in question. I know why it dropped that far, and understand that the transition from traditional website to blog caused a bit of downtime, and then the client didn’t start getting the old pages back up for about two weeks, so a drop in ranking was inevitable. I am very sure they be ranked highly again in the near future.

Anyhoo … we’ve had a long talk this morning, and I politely told my client that I just don’t know how to say it any other way … attention to the ‘bare essentials’ of optimization WORKS. And if you ignore that, then please don’t even wonder why any other site is out-ranking you, even if the other site STINKS royally.

So, please heed my words of advice: Don’t under-estimate the power of the basic SEO techniques!

• I’ve Been Reading Forum Posts About Newbie Frustrations •
• Internet Marketing Has It’s Share of Struggles •

Ok, so this post isn’t all nicey-nice. Maybe a little bit of a downer type of topic, but you know, I’ve been reading posts made by beginner internet marketers on one of the forums I like to visit that pertains to affiliate marketing and boy, I can sure relate to the STRUGGLES that these newbie internet marketers go through.

I think part of the trouble is that in the beginning we all have such enthusiasm and great expectancies … and then after a few months of not making much headway, many of us look at our wallets and see that a lot of $$ has gone out, but very little if any $$ has come in, and the bubble bursts.

I am by nature pretty darn skeptical, and I think that has assisted me in NOT forking over $$ for every affiliate product that comes across my computer screen. I know there are people out there that buy any and everything in the beginning, thinking that if they market a little of this and a little of that, well it’ll all come together and the big-bucks will just HAVE to start rolling in.

Trouble with this scenario is that they will more than likely end up a lot poorer, and still as confused as they were in the beginning as to how they can become a successful internet marketer!

I know, I am rambling and ranting here, but that is what this post is about today gang. I keep seeing the SAME pleas for help “what am I doing wrong … can anybody please tell me how to make money online?” posted over and over.  They say “I lost money with PPC”, or “I built all these landing pages but nobody is buying”, or “I spent a ton of money on these programs guaranteed to get me top rankings, or (fill in the blank here)”.

And you know what? The answer is really the same. To make money online you have to have a clear and concise game plan; you have to do your research — such as find and then focus on one niche at a time where you believe you have a stinkin’ chance at making some money; learn how to write compelling copy; know how to present your product(s) effectively; and so on.

In addition, you really do need to do keyword research so you know what words people are actually using to search; learn the ins and outs of utilizing landing pages, or articles, or blog posts (whatever your marketing tactic is) that CONTAIN the keywords in the “right” places to make the spiders happy effectively; learn how to keep track of everything; etc. etc. etc.

Then, you’ve got to work at your business like the most focused and determined person in the world!

OH! OH! Geez I have to say this … honest-to-goodness I am so sick of all the “last chance”, or “this package is worth over $1999.00 but I’m giving it to you for just $19.95″ or “I made $50,000 overnight with this killer secret marketing technique and so can you” that I could barf. Yup … how gullible do most of these marketers think we are? I guess pretty gullible ’cause I’ve been told these types of sales campaigns work. But it’s just not in me to market this way to people. Maybe I’m the dummy for not doing so.

Anyway, back to what I was ranting about, I guess I feel bad for the brand new internet marketer who isn’t as skeptical as I am and gets burned financially faster and discouraged faster than someone like myself. (I can honestly say I do not feel that I have wasted $$ on anything related to building my online businesses– –yes I have more than one online business.)

Just like everything else in life, it normally boils down to the fact that very few of us are going to strike it rich from the very get-go. Most of us will have to go through long and tedious learning curves.  I’m experiencing this at this very moment– –a NUMBER of “curves” are in my face if you want to know.  To be honest, once I tackle something, another big challenge pops up in it’s place.  I’ve learned to get used to it, it is all part of the process!

Most of us will bang our heads against the wall a lot … we will rant and rave to whomever is close by to listen (little children and animals please run for cover! :P)

In any business there is no magic bullet. There aren’t many short-cuts. (If you know of any, let me know, OK?)

There. Deep breath, I guess reading one more post about someone struggling set me off. I FEEL for these folks. But some of them just don’t want to face the fact that it is a slow and steady uphill, then downhill, then back uphill climb for almost all of us.  They expected interent marketing to be a cinch.  

It is, if you take your time and follow a well thought out plan ;-)  And scream every now and then …