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Two Techniques for Finding Little Known Keywords

Articles, Marketing Comments Off

Jan 062012

Surface-level keywords are a very competitive marketplace. Finding little-known keywords will enable you to generate traffic, and it’s a crucial skill to learn. While it requires a bit of attention-to-detail and practice, it’s not rocket science either. Learning these techniques will pay off, so here they are!

Stealing Keywords

Your competitors spend a lot of time and money researching what keywords work and what keywords do not. They know the potent few keywords that really work for them out of the hundreds or even thousands of keywords they might have tried in the past.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just… steal these keywords?

You can.

There are many tools online like Compete and Keyword Spy that allow you to do just that, and sometimes for free.

One great way to find little known keywords is to look at your competitors, their websites and simply search which keywords they’re getting all of their traffic from.

Compile a list of the most successful keywords, then do your research on each of the keywords. What’s the search volume and search competition?

Chances are you’ll be able to find a handful of keywords that you would have found or thought of using any other way.

Thinking “Sideways”

Another great way to find little known keywords is through “sideways” thinking. In other words, “What else could someone type in to get here?”

Most internet marketers take a lazy approach: typing in the top-level keyword and researching more keywords based on those results. Unfortunately, everyone’s figured that out, and that creates a lot of competition.

But if you go one step beyond, it can very likely pay off for you.

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. If you’re selling an eBook on teaching men how to get a date, your most basic keyword might be “dating”.

But what else should you try to rank for? These are just a few examples:

“Where to meet women”
“Lonely men”
“Simple dating”
“Pickup teaching”

And so on and so forth. This applies no matter what industry you’re in. There are so many potential key words or phrases that don’t have your base keyword in it that you may have never considered. You would be missing out on so much traffic if you just used keyword tools, or a couple basic keywords to do your research.

Think outside the box when it comes to keywords. The more you replicate what everyone else is doing, the harder it will be for you to succeed. If you do what everyone else does not know how to do or is not willing to do, you will succeed.

If you combine these two techniques – stealing from competitors and “sideways” thinking – you will surely be able to discover great keywords that others have not yet found or used. Utilize little-known keywords to boost your traffic and propel your business forward.

Exporting or Sending Google Contacts

Articles, google, how-to Comments Off

Nov 232011

I recently had someone ask how to send your Google Contacts to someone else. Here is a short and quickly done tutorial I gave them. At the bottom is a link to download the PDF version for you to keep.

Click on the down arrow and click on “Contacts”

Click on “More”

Then click on “Export”

Choose how you want to export your Contacts:
Select the Contact or Groups you want to Export and in which format then click “Export”. Depending on your Computer it will ask if you want to Open or Save the file. Remember where you save it.

**NOTE: If you only want to do one or two make sure you select them FIRST then do the above step!**

Want to download this for your records?

Here is a PDF for you. Right click and click “Save As” or “Save Link As”.

Lessons to Learn from Baseball (part 10)

Articles, customer service Comments Off

Nov 102011

Lesson Number Ten: The Game Reflects Your Preparation

When you watch a Major League Baseball game, it can seem like magic. The organ is playing, the crowds are madly cheering, the diamond is groomed just so, and the players are all in the zone. It seems impossible that they can miss a ball or not make it to the base on time to beat the throw from short.

What you don’t see is all the preparation that goes on behind the scenes. The steamy spring training scrimmages under the blistering Florida sun. The thousands of swings in the batting cages. The pulled muscles, the locker room pep talks, the sweaty socks. What you see is the best of the best – after all the hard work has gone in. The three hours of game time are really a drop in the bucket compared to what preceded it.

Business is the same. When you see someone’s “perfect” website, or watch their seamless launch, you aren’t witnessing the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it. You see the beautiful product displays, not the clogged toilets, piles of spreadsheets, and hours upon hours of hard labor.

Transfer this to your own endeavor: Any professional athlete will tell you that you’re only as good as your preparation. If you don’t practice hard, you can’t play hard. And if you don’t play hard, you can’t win.

How much effort you are willing to dedicate to the background work of your business will determine how far you will go. Everyone from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs to David Ortiz to Alex Rodriguez knows that it’s the hours that you put in off the field that determine how far you go on the field.

To be a success in business, you have to be willing to:

·         Practice. Do dry-runs of your processes to make sure they work.
·         Listen to your coach. Accept feedback from your mentors and coaches without getting defensive. They’re just trying to make you the best you can be.
·         Try new things. Adjust your grip on the bat, try a new marketing angle, take a few risks in a practice game to see how it works.
·         Work with your teammates. Team spirit is built in the hours on the practice field, in the dugout, and in the locker room BETWEEN games. What can you do to create a spirit of teamwork with your employees before you’re under the gun?

While playing to a crowd can be invigorating, exciting, and motivating, the real motivation must come from within. Remember that character is how you act when no one is looking – and character is what makes a real winner.

Conclusion

Baseball is life – the rest is just details.

(t-shirt slogan)

While the above quote is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I hope by now I’ve convinced you that baseball holds a lot of wisdom that’s applicable to life in general, and to business in particular. From setting an example of how to handle adversity, to teaching us how important it is to take risks, baseball is full of wisdom.

I hope you will look at our nation’s favorite pastime with a different perspective, searching for more ways we can apply the lessons of the players to our everyday business and entrepreneurial challenges.

I truly believe that when you’re ready to learn, the teacher will appear – perhaps in the form of a uniform-clad second baseman.

To your success – and to a winning season!

Lessons to Learn from Baseball (part 8)

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Nov 062011

Lesson Number Eight: Review the Statistics

Hidden in the announcer’s box is someone charged with a very special job: Watching each and every pitch thrown, ball hit, and play made, and recording it all in the official scorebook. Each ball and strike, walk and steal, are all duly accounted for in the scorekeeper’s book. Then, after the game, the scorekeeper calculates statistics such as batting average, earned-run average, slugging percentage, and a host of other mind-numbingly-precise details.

Not only do these statistics give the announcers something to talk about during the inevitable lulls in the game (“This batter is 0-for-3 against left-handed pitchers with an “X” in their last name!”), they also provide invaluable information for the coaches and the players themselves. The stats are reviewed and rehashed, posted and celebrated (or moaned) over. Statistics matter in baseball.

They matter in business, too. Knowing that a certain affiliate is bringing in the bulk of your sales, or that a particular product’s appeal has dropped off significantly, or that one sales page is doing twice the business another is, are all valuable bits of information. Sure, you can get lost in the numbers, but there are a few basics online business owners must track on a regular basis:

1.    Site visits/page views/unique visitors. How many people come to your site? How many pages do they view? Do they come back?
2.    Conversions. When they visit, do they take the action you desire, whether it’s making a purchase or signing up for your mailing list?
3.    Total sales and total expenses. How much are you bringing in, and how much are you spending?
4.    Referring sites. Who is sending you traffic and why?

If you don’t do business online, the same general topics can be tracked for any businessperson. Instead of site visits, you can track number of people who come into your store or who call your (800) line, and what percentage of those actually order. You can track total sales and expenses, and what brought the visitor into the store (billboard, radio ad, referral from a friend, etc.).

But tracking these statistics isn’t enough, just as knowing that your clean-up batter always walks the first time up in a home game. You have to DO something with that knowledge, and review it again and again over time, looking for patterns and trends. You need to know as much about your business as those color announcers know about the home team.

Lessons to Learn from Baseball (part 6)

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Nov 022011

Lesson Number Six: You Play Better with a Coach Who Knows the Game

Coaches matter. In fact, a so-so team can be taken to an unimaginable level based solely on the coach they have. Coaches serve many roles for a baseball team:

1.    They see the big picture. A catcher or first baseman may see the game only from their limited perspective; the coach sees everything on the field and how all the pieces fit together.
2.    They have the wisdom of experience. The average coach has lived through more games than the average player, and they’ve seen things that some players haven’t. They bring that experience to the team.
3.    They are invested in the outcome, but they are in it for the long haul. Just as kids can’t see past the end of the school year, players sometimes can’t see beyond the end of the season. The coach can put things into perspective.
4.    They inspire. Because they care deeply about the players and the game, they are able to connect with the team in a way outsiders cannot. (If you have any doubt of this, just check out some of the famous “locker room” speeches from great sports movies such as “A League of Their Own.”)
5.    They get you in shape. No one WANTS to do stadium steps or run wind sprints, but the coach knows that these unsavory exercises are what’s needed to whip the team into shape.

Just as you’ve never seen a winning ball team without a coach, you’d be hard-pressed to find a winning business person without a coach as well.
A business coach can perform many of these same roles that a baseball coach does. They can help keep things in perspective, guide you from their experience and wisdom, help you think past the next fiscal quarter, and motivate and inspire you to move forward. They know what needs to be done, and in what order, so they keep you from wasting time and energy on unnecessary tasks.

The best coaches get personal satisfaction in helping you succeed, so choose wisely. Find a mentor with a history of successes not just on the field, but as a coach as well. You wouldn’t want a baseball coach who was still reliving his glory days as a Major League fielder and felt in competition with the players on his team; you also don’t want a business coach who feels threatened by your success.

Ask around for recommendations; the list of talented Major League Baseball coaches is short, and the best candidates come from referrals. The same is true in the business arena.