Just testing some various SEO techniques.  Will post my results.

;P

Michael Roberts

Sure we all might not have the SEO know how as someone like Matt Cutts but did you know you can start making a nice income right now with what you do know?

I am sure you are all aware on how Google and other Search Engines have been shifting their focus to “Local” results. But, us as internet marketers, don’t have a local business…so how can we use this to our advantage? Well local businesses are clueless when it comes to optimization, getting content indexed, installing a blog, etc.

When I was 19-21 I owned a janitorial company that had 13 employee’s working for me full time. We had several company vehicles, equipment, etc. Sounds like a decent size company right? Surely bigger than your standard chiropractic office or small restaurant. However, even with my resources and company size I was still clueless about how to even begin to build my business online. I was strapped for time working in my business, didn’t have time to learn to do this stuff myself and there were so many “So Called” SEO companies out there who wouldn’t work with me…All they wanted to do was pressure me into signing a contract for thousands of dollars.
I would have killed to have someone cut through all that tape and help me build my business online!

You think my scenario was unique? Of course NOT! In 2008 there were over 29million small business in the USA alone. Talk about a big market! I will take a bet that all of you who are reading my blog have never targeted a keyword that big.

So there is a huge market for local businesses needing SEO and Web services and now that Google is moving things locally…it’s like Google is literally putting a golden nugget right on our lap. All we have to do is take action!

Some of you reading this still may be skeptical or hesitant. I can already here a few of you saying, “Michael that’s great and all but I just don’t know enough to take action. I am no where near Matt Cutts. How can I do this?” The truth is..sure there are people out there who know more than you about SEO and there are also tons of people out there who know more than me. But that is irrelevant. The services these small local business need don’t require some huge GURU’s knowledge. Think of it this way….These local businesses don’t want to hire Leonardo De Vince to paint a wall red! That’s overkill and ridiculous. But if these business approached someone like Leonardo De Vince to paint their wall red….all the artist would do is talk to them about how he could make this wall a piece of art. Something magnificent, something that would be remembered forever…..which all sounds good…but that artist would also be asking a fee that is likely more than the business is worth, let alone Leonardo De Vince would be using terms and techniques that would just confuse and frustrate the business owner.

I hope you are understanding the power and opportunity that is now sitting in front of us! However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There still are several hurdles you will need to overcome. I developed some techniques nearly a year ago to refine this process for myself, but then when I met Caro she showed me that she had so refined this process it works like a highly oiled machine!

Caro and her business partner are both very successful in the online marketing world. When they got together they teamed up to build OHM (Offline Hero’s Method) to make this process highly refined. I was blown away by how much attention to detail and how much hard work they have done.

I find So Called GURU’s all over the internet who try to sell stuff that they actually have no knowledge about. It’s very frustrating to know who to trust. With Caro, she already has a successful consulting business and she is already making this work! So you may ask then why is she willing to sell this secret? (Remember that number I told you about earlier? 29+million businesses in the USA alone a few years back. Who could possibly corner the entire world market of local businesses? It would be silly for her not to share and sell her techniques.)

Their mission is to assist other Internet Marketers, who may not have yet made the money they want online, and are looking for new opportunities to build a credible, sustainable and profitable consulting business, as they have. They have created a Training Center which is jam packed full of information on how to:

Identify the ideal Local Business Client
How to Obtain The Local Business Client
How to Retain that Local Business Client

The biggest mistake Internet Marketers make when approaching Local Business Clients is that they list their Services and expect the Business Owner to be impressed. Feeling quite disappointed when they are not. OHM focuses on teaching it’s Offline Consultants about providing VALUE for their Client, which is a HUGE shift in focus to what most have thought was the way to approach a prospect. The key is to know how to pick what is valuable for a prospective client, and how to get their attention so that they will listen to what you can do for them. All of which can be found in OHM’s Training center

There’s no magic pill. It is about taking action. And it’s about knowing the, Right‚ way to do it. All of the materials offered in OHM are exactly what Caro and her business partner use for their Offline Consulting businesses. So there is no need to guess what works. Or go through the painful trial and error process. It’s proven as they’re doing it!

Consulting to Offline Clients is a real opportunity. Yes it is, the next big thing,- and it is still at it’s early stages, which means there is plenty of Local Business Clients needing online marketing assistance. All you need to know is how to approach and win them!

Michael Roberts

Now this is no ordinary sign holder! The story could have easily ended here as we have all seen sign holders on a common occurrence. In fact we see them so often that we almost train our eye’s to ignore them. Yet this sign holder was more extraordinary. The woman has shorter blond hair and is well advanced in her years. She holds a big guitar shaped sign with an even bigger smile on her face. Atop that fluffy blond hair is a set of big headphones, a pair you might see right out of the 90’s, and a long cord plugging into what looks to be an old cassette or CD player.

I can only guess as to what she is listening to, perhaps some Pink Floyd or Jimmy Hendrix, but one thing is for certain…it makes her wanna boogie! She is rockin out with that sign like she is performing on stage. Her dance moves rival that of moves seen in Flash Dance. Watching her for those brief minutes put a smile on both my wife’s and my face.

From time to time when we arrive at the “punishment light” now we look for her. In fact we no longer dread this busy road but look forward to seeing if she will be dancing. Honking as we go by her and seeing her wave back.

A month later my wife was curious about her and actually found that she had her OWN Facebook fan page! I was astonished and to make my surprise even bigger she had over 1,700 Facebook likes! 1,700!? Now my town of Bend’s total population is roughly 70,000 people. So in a few short months she was able to generate 2.5% of the entire city to follow her on Facebook. (Talk about power)

Her Facebook page is quite active as she has taken a cold business front and has made people become friends with her. People stop to get pictures with her so they can upload it to her profile, people have made CD’s for her and my favorite quote on the page is, “My husband and I just tried Little Caesars for the first time because of YOU!”

So if you have ever been skeptical if connecting with your customers on a more personal level can really help your local business please take a lesson in life from the Bend sign lady. She has made 2.5% of the city fall in love with not just her but with the company she promotes.

If you already have a website then I encourage you to immediatley figure out how to connect it to your Facebook profile or Fan Page!
If this sounds hard don’t fear….I have shot a Youtube Video for you on How to Integrate Facebook’s Features into your website.

Keep on rockin on sign lady….keep on rockin on!
Her facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/BendLittleCaesarsLady

I want to send a warm thank you out to Caro McCourtie from OHM and 30dc.
I also want to send a thank you to her partner who helped set up the camera equipment and helped produce the OHM method.

If you want to learn more about the Offline Hero’s Method please go check it out here:
OFFLINE HERO’S METHOD

The OHM course teaches you how to attract business clients and teaches you how to help them build an online presence. I used many of the same tactics taught int he OHM course and I was easily able to bring in a very nice income. I think Caro and her partner really hit this course on the head when they laid it all out!

Some of my favorite quotes from Caro’s speech was:

“If you have any level of IM experience currently, you ALREADY know more than they do!

Remember to ask the client questions, not make statements, as the power is with the person who asks the questions (as you become the informed one).

You are NOT selling services; you are providing VALUE, this is a HUGE shift in thinking and how you approach your prospective Client – it’s about helping them get more customers, not demonstrating all you can do for them. ”

Here are some very solid tips everyone who owns a local business should be utilizing.

1) Register your business in Google Places.
a) When you register your business in Google Places be sure to fill out your profile as throughly as possible. Connect as many pictures as possible, video, etc. Also be sure to use your keywords in descriptions and for the IMG ALT tags on the photos.
b) Get as many reviews to your Google Places listing as possible. Offer new customers a discount in exchange for a review or contact some old clients that you have a good relationship with and ask for a review.

The more complete your profile is and the more positive reviews you have the better your listing will preform.

2) Build local back links!
a) Goto Google and type in (Your State) (your niche) blogs. Then start doing blog commenting on all the blogs in your niche for the state. After you do many of these narrow your search even down to seeking blogs in your city or adjacent cities.
b) Start finding all the directory type sites in your niche and create profiles and drive a few reviews. (A good example would be to get a profile up on Yelp if you are a restaurant.)

3) Try migrating your website to a server that is closer.
a) I talked about this in one of my news videos. In our testing we saw a small difference on rankings depending on where your server is located. Chances are your server is States away or possibly even in a different country. Locate where your server is actually at and move your website to a more local server.

4) Put these three steps above into action.
a) From my experience, finding good information to learn is not the problem. I could go on listing more tips, but the problem I see is people don’t put what they learned into action! I want you to take these three steps and really work hard on these. Build local back links and fill out a Google Places account. Even if you already have a Google Places account I want you to go in and review it. Can you add more pictures? Can you drive more reviews?

5) For USA readers…try filling out an Angie’s List profile.

Check out Caro’s own video now!

CARO’S  VIDEO

Michael R Roberts

The Caro interview I did will be up by Monday and I appreciate your patience on that, but for this post I wanted to cover everything interesting in the conference that was taught.

When you goto one of these…people start throwing website names out there…..
names you have never heard of. So you write the name down to research it later. Well at this conference so many dang cool things
were said… that before I knew it I had a full sheet of paper filled up with cool sites and ideas.

So without further ado…..here are some of the coolest sites and things talked about.

1. Start migrating Flash off your websites. iPads can’t support flash, neither can a lot of smart phones. There are already 17 million devices out there that can’t view flash. This number is only going to grow. So contact your graphics guy and start coming up with new solutions to replace the Flash on your website. (If you are clever or have a clever web guy….then you can actually insert a piece of code that detects when a mobile type device visits your site and displays something other than the flash.)

As Ed Dale says, “I hate Flash more than I hate the….” well I won’t finish that one. Fill in the answer in the comments section below if you were there! ;)

2. Wonder how much content your viewers can see on their monitor? Well Google has solved that problem. Check out this fancy Google Labs tool that will help you see how to improve your opt in pages or sales pages. Keeping content so 90% of browsers can see it is a good thing!

3. Voice Follow Up . Hmmm not sure what to say about this one other than it’s PURE AWESOMENESS. It allows you to have people opt in via the phone. You can literally broadcast your number and people can text that number with there email and name and they will immediatly join your auto responder sequence. This will be a killer for anyone doing radio ad’s. I will be adding this to my business cards when I goto events. I don’t want people actually calling my cell phone or home phone. Why not give them a numeber they can call where they reach a cool recording of whatever you like….with the option of learning more about your products or opting into a email sequence.

4. If your an iPad user then there is a very cool app you should pickup. Evernote. It can sync with your mac and you can simply write notes, keep track of ideas, etc. It’s an iPad Must Have.

5. The rules of a blog. During the conference they touched on a very good point. The three fundamental rules every blog should meet.

a) Simplicity – One Page = One Job – Look at the iPhone and iPad apps. They are so successful because they can do one thing very well.

b) Speed – Google is factoring page load speed into rankings and it has been proven over and over again if your page loads slow you loose customers. If you haven’t watched my video talking about ways to speed up your site go look at it now! Page Load Speed Video

c) Beautiful – No more producing shoddy quality! Spend a few bucks and get a graphics guy to design you some quality content. Take a look at my new video intro’s for example. (Yeah yeah I know this website still is very ugly but it’s in the process.)
***
To find cheap quality graphics people goto:
freelancer.com or fiverr.com

6. Tips for writing a sales page by the master John Carlton. Your sales page should fill in these three blanks.

We help (this group of people)
….do (this benefit)
…even if (worst case believable scenario)

Example:

We help aspiring artists
sell their art for millions of dollars
even if they have no agent and have never sold a painting before!

Simple yet effective!

7. Mashable. Most of you probably know about this one but I had to put it down for those of you who haven’t. Probably the easiest way to stay up to date on Social Media and Tech.

More tips are on their way as well as the video from the conference.

Michael R Roberts

Lot’s of people spoke today but I left my notes in the conference hall and to be honest
my brain is too fried, from the long day, to remember the order of everyone who was up there.

The highlights of the event was shaking hands with Frank Kern and meeting Andy Jenkins. Those guys are legends!

I have fairly good connections with a lot of the internet marketing Guru’s and all these connections were self made.
I had to work hard to meet these people, but Frank Kern is a nut I haven’t been able to crack!

I tried to talk to Frank Kern twice today and failed miserably. I managed to come off as a creepy stalker the first time,
and then the second time I was the awkward lingerer.

But that is what networking is all about! You have to build up the guts and just go out there
and talk to people and make those connections. I got rejected today by Frank Kern sure….but
I managed to talk with a few really cool people and got the ball rolling with them. I estimate the connections
I made today will easily be worth $20-50k in profit over the next year.

You simply can’t be afraid of rejection! I went out to dinner and sat next to two total strangers,
and the next thing I know we spent the next 4 hours together brainstorming and talking IM.
It was Awesome!

My favorite picture moment for the day was seeing Caro wearing a bib!
…….In her defense the restaurant made everyone wear one….well that’s at least what she is saying!
mmmm hmmm…sure Caro! ;)

Tomorrow we will be shooting all the interviews and then I will send them off to my video guy to
get them ready for you all to watch for free. I don’t think I will be in the mood to edit them
myself after another long day and a flight back home.

Wishing you were here!

Michael R Roberts

The day kicked off at 9am and lasted until about 8pm…and after that everyone gathered to network and do dinner.
I didn’t wind up making it back to the hotel until 10:35pm and I think my group was one of the tamer ones.

The line up was:

Ed Dale <--Dropped some big news (I will tell you below)

"The Legendary" John Carlton <---Talked sales copy tactics

Lunch

Eugene <---Talked about Market Samurai

Caro <---Talked about using local business marketing to make a killing

"The Dreaded Hot Seat" <---They put audience members sales pages up on the big screen and then dissect them. (It took some brave souls to volunteer for this one...but a lot was learned by this exercise.)

Probably the biggest news of the day was what Ed covered in the beginning.

This years 30day challenge
will be starting on July 1st!

and

It's no longer a 30 day challenge. They are changing up their entire layout.
It will be 7 days on, 7 days off, 7 days on, etc.

In all I believe it will be around 49 actual days of working
and then the rest weeks in there to make it around a 3 month course.

This is massive news for those of you who have done the 30 day challenge in the past.
With these rest weeks it will really allow for the sites and work you have done to mature.
(Not to mention a time for people to recharge their batteries.)

This was big news in the industry, but I had actually heard this many months prior with
a meeting with Guru Bob. For me the true highlight was the great people I got to meet.

I got to talk with Mike Filsaime, Paul Colligan, Ed Dale, Guru Bob, Eugene Ware, Caro, Dan, John Carlton, and a few other big names!

If you ever get the chance to attend a great IM conference, no matter what stage of learning your in....DO IT!
The connections alone are worth it.

If I pick up just one measly connection from this trip then it will have paid for the trip ten fold!

I am shooting a lot of B-roll for you guys to show you a behind the scenes video and tomorrow I am filming
my interview with Ed Dale and hopefully Paul Colligan as well.
(Both will be uploaded onto YouTube later this week, once I get a chance to edit them.)

Wish you all could be here!

Mike Filsaime & Michael Roberts

Michael R Roberts

I hope you liked the awesome intro! I had a blast making it, but I think I need to take up smoking and drinking whisky so I can perfect the movie intro voice.

What you will need during this video:

1) The WP plugin I installed is called: Digg Digg

2) Facebook developers page

3) Like button code:
(The raw html code didn’t want to display so I uploaded it in a pdf which you can download for free here: http://www.michaelrroberts.com/facebook_code.pdf)

WP ADMIN — Appearance — Editor — Single Post (single.php)

Your not going to blow up your site do don’t panic if your scared by all the code. Just try to scan the code for things that look famaliar, such as; Author, Date, Category or Comments. These things will provide you with refference points on where to place the code. Also avoid sticking the code in the middle of other code. Place it just after a closing statement (

4) Code for fan page like box:
(This code is also on the pdf which you can download for free here: http://www.michaelrroberts.com/facebook_code.pdf)

Be sure to replace my ID with your own fan-page ID. Also you will want to change; connections, width and height to fit your preferences. If you want your fan page box to show your stream of what’s going on in your fan page then place “true” after stream. If you turn the stream on then you need to make the height alot bigger.

I hope that has helped you guys…and I just formed my own Facebook fan page where I post all sorts of awesome FREE SEO information. So please click the like/share button on this article and go over on the right hand side of my website and join my fan page!

Lastly, I am nearly done re-doing my blog. The new layout, graphics, plugins is going to be awesome! So sorry this sore thing is hurting your eyes!

Michael R Roberts

FACEBOOK CHANGES:

Universal “like” button: One of the major new changes that users will see is the “like” button which will be shown on Web sites outside of Facebook. The “like” button on Facebook broadcasts what comments, photos or posts a user likes. These like buttons are already showing up all over the web and it enables users to share items with friends even when they’re not actually on facebook.com.

As an example if you went to IMBD.com and clicked “like” on “The Matrix”, that movie will automatically show up in your movie interests section of your Facebook page. Liking a football player on ESPN.com will put up-to-date information about that player in a user’s news feed.

The “Become a Fan” button has been changed to the “like” button as well.

FaceBook is even expanding their reaches further with a new developer tool bar you can easily add to your site. This “social bar” allows third-party web sites to access some FaceBook features without even leaving your site. With this bar they can even chat to their FaceBook friends right inside your website.

Facebook is also changing users’ profile pages so that the “pages” section will no longer appear in a separate section on the bottom of the “info” page. Those pages will be brought up to the “interests” section.

Users will be asked to convert their interests into fan pages: Is one of your interests “Green Day?” Well, now you can become a fan of Green Day in a single click. By default, users will receive notifications from their fan pages in their news feed.

Facebook also added new privacy settings that allow a user to control who sees all of these connections.

Community pages: So what about interests like “Martial Arts,” “SEO” or “Cooking,” which don’t have Facebook pages? Now they do.

Facebook unveiled about 6.5 million new “community pages” this week, which take the “fan page” concept and apply them to ideas, locations or interests.

Currently, community pages are pretty lame. A user can see posts from friends related to that topic as well as what the overall public is saying about it. There is also a link to a Wikipedia article on the subject. Users can’t yet add any content to these pages, but that ability is believed to be on the way.

Real-time search: Also among the biggest announcements is real-time search on third-party search sites, similar to Twitter’s service. Facebook announced that users’ public posts will be available for search on sites like Google and Bing.

FACEBOOK AND THE BAD:

Many of the changes take advantage of big revisions that Facebook made to its privacy settings in March. Those changes opened the door to allow select third-party Web sites the ability to access and store some users’ personal information.

Those sites can use that information to show what a user’s Facebook friends have been doing on their sites. CNN, IMDB.com and ESPN.com are just a few of the sties who have already signed up with this feature. So if you’re a Facebook user reading CNN.com, you’ll be able to see what all your Facebook friends are looking at, view recommended stories and see which friends liked which stories.

But even before the announcement, critics expressed concern about the privacy implications of such a service. A similar program called Beacon, unveiled in 2007, caused such a stir among users that the company removed it last year. FaceBook is moving forward strongly with these new updates and are acting quite confident learning from their mistakes with Beacon.

From a user standpoint this is a bit annoying in my opinion. You really can’t even make a joke in your interest section anymore without having a “Community Page” dedicated to it. All FaceBook is doing is lumping users into marketable bins, so advertisers and app developers can poke and prod you to buy something with more efficiency.

Also with the live search feature you will need to be more careful what you post to your FaceBook account more than ever. I have already heard of one story where a person was turned down for a job because the company looked them up on FaceBook and found some pictures they didn’t’ believe to be appropriate or aligned with their business. So if you are in the job market or if there is a slight chance you will be returning to the job market in the future watch what you post and adjust your settings in your profile.

However, If you think everything you do on the internet is “private” to begin with, you’re in for a big surprise. If you truly don’t want your information to be out there, stop using the net all together. You just need to be smart, educate yourself on how to navigate the settings you desire and use common sense before freaking out. Because ultimately these changes could mean a lot more money to be made for you and I!

FACEBOOK AND THE GOOD:

FaceBook Advertising just leapt to a whole new level! FaceBook overnight is offering the best targeted marketing you can buy. It’s not just targeted marketing but UP TO DATE targeted marketing!

As human beings our interests often can change quickly. Six months ago I was interested in snow boarding but now my hobby and passion is Martial Arts. So as my hobby has changed so has my web surfing. I will be visiting more martial arts sites and of those sites that have like buttons to FaceBook on them…there is a good chance I will be clicking those like buttons and my profile will be updated automatically. Now a savvy Martial Arts supply advertiser could easily reach me on exactly what I am looking for with ads right in my FaceBook profile.

So as from an advertiser standpoint using FaceBook has just become very powerful!
If you have never looked into FaceBook for advertising in the past NOW is the time to start looking into it!

Even if you are not interested in advertising with FaceBook that doesn’t mean you should ignore these changes. I am sure you all have seen those share buttons on every blog post all over the internet. These share strategies are great for a blog, but now they are all being creamed! If you could have only one share option it should be a FaceBook Share button! Go look for your self! I just looked up one video and captured the results which are displayed below.

Nearly anywhere you go now you will see FaceBook share beating out all the other types of share buttons. Obviously more people are using and want to share on Facebook than any other social media plat form. There are over 400 million active users on FaceBook currently and that number is still growing. If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd most populous country in the World!

The good news is with FaceBooks new changes it is easier than ever for us marketers to get people to follow us on FaceBook. With a single line of code you can now add a like button to your website. Trust me this is going to make your sites more viral than twitter, buzz or digg ever could!

I will be shooting a video and uploading it soon on some of the techniques to help protect your information and how to add these lines of code to your website!

As Mark said in FaceBooks F8 conference….Google knows about phrases but FaceBook knows about people and what they like!

Michael R Roberts