(Looking for Part I? Here you go: The Top 3 SEO Tips and Tricks)

Links! Links! Links! I say!

The Chains that Bind...

That is what you hear, and it is correct for the most part – at least it is partially true.  But before you go off to every social site on the planet to build back-link love, you might want to concentrate on the most important part…

Content.

If your content sucks (and there are so many ways that it can suck) your links are worthless.  Yes, I know someone is shouting that there are tons of horrible sites that are currently getting good SERPS or even have a high PR – but don’t count on that happening for too much longer now that Google has started using their new Caffeine algorithms. The other search engines are sure to follow suit.  Content is King, and it will remain king.

That being said, you still do need to know how to build good back links.  So how do you do this?

Well, lets look closer at what a link actually is – it represents on its most basic level a relationship.  It is a relationship between one site and another – and it should represent a relationship that brings value, hopefully to both sites.

And that in a nutshell, what Google and all the other search engines are trying to tell you with the search results you gather.  Their whole reason for creating ever more complex algorithms is to bring the searcher just such results. For much of the time it has been marketers intention to game that system (not all marketers, but many).

So, here is my 2 cents on how to gain good SEO, and before I go on, let me challenge you.  Go to Google and type in “The Top 3 Copywriting” – and you will see that I hold both the number 1 and number 2 position for that key-phrase (as of the writing of this post Jan 28th).  I do know a bit about what I am talking about.  (By the way I currently have the number 3 position for “The Top 3 SEO” -not too bad eh?).

Other than good content, highly targeted keywords and key-phrases are a necessity.  Make sure they are in your content.  If your domain name has your keywords all the better (actually that is a real good help when starting out, but gets less important as you add content and good links).

Back-links from high PR sites: This goes without saying, but if you can get back-links from highly rated sites such as high traffic forums, blogs, and social networks, that is going to bring a nice bit of PR juice to your site.  You can also use reciprocal sites, however the juice goes both ways there and you build up more slowly (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

Traffic.  Google monitors the traffic to your site, and the more you have the higher your rating – yes, I know, that is a bit of a catch-22, I need ratings to get traffic, and I need traffic to get ratings! What to do!

Go back to the basics, that’s what.  Submit your site to every search engine including some of the specialty search sites (check out Search Engine Watch for lists of these at: searchenginewatch.com).

But you simply cannot beat real relationship links.  Just like business in the real world where you network with real people, on the net is no different. Behind every one of those great sites are great people – get to know them, perhaps by posting good commentary on their blogs, and eventually becoming a guest contributor.  Guess what, that kind of link is very powerful!

You can, of course, go the latest fad – massive spider-webs of low value links from dozens of social web-sites, “Link-Wheels”, etc.  That stuff can bring some immediate impact, but search engines are getting wise to these synthetic methods and are even penalizing and de-indexing sites in some cases because of it.

The truth is, if your site has real value – you will have real valuable visitors.  In the end, traffic is not as important as paying customers, and a lower volume but steady stream of paying customers is way more valuable than a massive stream of traffic that buys nothing.  And that is true any day.

-David T. McKee

Your Basic Blue Alian Life-Form

There have been many times where I have read a good story and wished that I could live in that story.  The Narnia series by C.S. Lewis comes to mind, and Lord of the Rings.  Harry Potter perhaps – and many others.  Nevertheless, while a good story can touch on heart-strings and even the deep spiritual longings of our soul, never have I entertained the idea that it would be better to be dead than not be in some story – as I reflect on it, I realize that even were it possible, those stories had their share of difficulties.  It would not have been an adventure otherwise.

But alas, now I read this…

Audiences experience ‘Avatar’ blues

According to this article, there are many people who have seen this movie about a race of ten foot blue people called the Na’vi who live in an idyllic world called “Pandora”. They live in perfect harmony with their environment – in other words they have no desire beyond their existence and are in essence no different than animals in a tropical rain forest. They are portrayed as intelligent and gentle, but can be violent when pissed off.

Now I have several beefs with the movie, not the least which is how it portrays humans as greedy “capitalists” intent on extracting valuable resources from this “exo-moon” without any regard to the indigenous life.  This is a tired plot, and frankly is proven untrue by the fact that the movie was made by HUMANS.  But I digress….back to the issue on human self esteem.  Still, the movie is certainly cool and despite the plot issues I mentioned, it has some very cool qualities.  Nevertheless, it is a movie of a utopia that does not exist, and in our current state, cannot.

We have a group of individuals who do not have the self-esteem to realize that their own lives in the real world is more worthy than this pseudo-life they have seen on the screen. They actually want to live as Na’vi and not as themselves – some even to the point of contemplating suicide!

To what can we attribute this kind of thinking? One who desires to become a master achiever in life certainly would not want fall into this kind of trap – so we should try to understand why someone might.

To me, this kind of thinking has two central areas: a dissatisfaction with their own lives, and an unrealistic understanding of reality. The sad truth is – even if their wish were to be granted, people with this sort of mindset would quickly be in the doldrums even on “Pandora” and would be seeking the next “thing to be”.

It is a mental “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” syndrome.

Now, I am going to say something controversial to some – too bad, this is my blog: The deep longing in the heart for a place of peace. love, and endless adventure comes from the GSV.

GSV stands for: God Shaped Vacuum.

Those people don’t know it, but they are longing for God who in fact can take you to Pandora – and is the only way you can get there (by his Son, Jesus Christ). If you want to know more about this, send me an email at : dave[@]celticcrosseng.com (I reformatted that so that email scrapers cannot get to it).

The other issue is not recognizing reality for what it is. Reality is a hard teacher – it does not give any cares for fools – and wishing you lived in an idyllic floating island Paradise will not make it so. Much better to be successful in life and explore the infinite things our creator has made for us in this world, and always to anticipate the next.

But lets get to the next only after we have squeezed every last drop out of our lives here and now!

David T. McKee

If you are going to be highly successful in business or whatever endeavor you decide to put your mind to, chances are you will need to write something, and if it is an advertisement you will need to know how to copywrite.

Copywriting is a huge topic for online marketing, SEO, and anything to do with direct selling, MLM, Online selling, etc. The problem is that Copywriting encompasses both writing, psychology, selling, visualization, and probably a dozen other things. The reason is simple, Copywriting is selling in print, and selling is a complex interaction between those same things. Grammar rules you were forced to follow religiously in school can be thrown out the window, while other things you might say or write naturally, are things to avoid in copywriting.

Bad Mistake 1: A Crappy Headline. There is nothing you can do more devastating to your copy that create a crappy headline. As much as 80% of you sales can be attributed directly to this alone. If eighty percent of your business comes from the headline, you better get that right or you will soon be out of business. Weak headlines give the impression that you don’t have confidence in your product. Confusing headlines send people off to sites where things make more sense. Dull headlines give the impression that your product is boring and not as useful. Ridiculous headlines give the impression you are a snake-oil scammer. All of these mistakes will rob you of sales.

Hot Tip 1: You need to agonize over your headline, create multiple alternatives, find the best ones through testing, and constantly look for ways to improve it.

Get the Top 3 Copywriting Software Products at www.TheTop3.net

Bad Mistake 2: Telling your prospects to buy, instead of them begging you to buy. Your copy exists to entice and ultimately get your prospects begging you to allow them to buy your product, not the other way around. Nobody likes a beggar, and a beggar online is a virtual no-win situation with your prospects flying off to other sites. Don’t do it. Do not have big “Buy Now” buttons, in fact don’t ever mention anything about the actual purchase until you get to the landing page. The landing page is a whole topic in itself and very large reports and e-books have been written just about that topic, but suffice to say, you want the user experience to proceed in such a manner that the prospect cannot wait to finally get to the landing page because all they want is your product right now!

Hot Tip 2: Every line in your copy, every sub-heading, every bullet list should exist to move the prospect to the next line, and the next conclusion which must ultimately move them to the place where they are convinced that they must have what you are selling. This is something that takes practice and study, and the very best way to do this is to get examples of some of the greatest copy ever written and copy it yourself, in long hand, with a pencil. As you do so, ask yourself, “why does this text convince me?” Do that and you will soon be writing compelling copy that will move product!

Get the Top 3 Copywriting Software Products at www.TheTop3.net

Bad Mistake 3: Not Knowing your Product or Your Audience. So you have avoided the dreaded pushy “Buy Now” copy, and you have polished your copy until it virtually gleams off the page. All of that is for nothing if you do not understand your product or your potential audience! If you have not done your research on the product it will show with glaring obviousness, and if you do not know the potential audience that you are writing to, you will again miss the mark. This takes due diligence and research. Nothing sends a prospect away faster than them feeling you either have no idea what you are writing about, or who you are writing to.

Hot Tip 3: There is no way around it, you must know your product, and you must know your potential audience. Now, in most cases your audience my be an average buyer, but not always. If you are writing to engineers in particular, you had better sound like you are at least familiar with engineering “talk”, that means acronyms, and perhaps even some “nerd slang”. And…you had better know your product inside and out. That does not mean you have to be an expert and be able to assemble the product in your own home, but you had better know all the features, the benefits, and why this product is better than the competition (So you need to know the competitions products as well). That takes research. Don’t skimp here.

That is it, the Top 3 Copywriting Mistakes, and the Tips to avoid them. If you can avoid these three mistakes and utilize the three tips, you will be far ahead of the Copywriting pack.

David T. McKee

Get the Top 3 Copywriting Software Products at www.TheTop3.net