Anyway – I’ve written about Product Comparisons as a content generation strategy before. Here’s a really simple way to ramp up your results from that:

Just put a “Vs.” in the title.  As in “Red Widgest Vs. Blue Widgets” – you’d be shocked how important that “Vs.” is to search engines, and how few people have optimized for that.

Just don’t do it for any niches I’m working in. Please.

There is the chance for some gray area (from what I can tell) – but it seems like the focus is on bloggers endorsing products “in post” – so I’m going to guess that items that are clearly ad units are exempt from this.  Most everything I have out there is labeled “Advertisement” anyway. This leaves me with some products I’ve recommended on this site.

I have never accepted products or money to make a post on any of my current sites.  However, in an effort to maximize revenue, I have established affiliate relationships with products I’d recommend anyway. While the ads/offers on my other sites should be pretty clear cut as to their nature – things here are a bit different. I make recommendations to readers of this blog (both of you), and my 7xo Academy members. I have been up front that the products I recommend offer me a commission of anything I might sell (nada so far, for what it’s worth).

My take on recommending affiliate products in the online marketing realm is simple – I have to use them, and they have to work.  I have been plugging all these things for a while – and finally decided to try and make some latte money off it if folks decide to purchase because of me.

This lead me to update the “About Us” with a disclosure of marketing relationships – and I’ll be careful going forward to make sure that I disclose any sort of affiliate relationship on a blog post (that isn’t a clear advertisement – like the Thesis Theme ad blocks).

On my other sites – ads stay labeled pretty clearly. I feel that more than a legal issue, it’s also the right thing to do – although now that I think about it – I’ll probably go back and make sure that is clear as well, because I am paranoid.

Besides some minor annoyance in having to take the time to do this – I’m ok with the ruling. I’m hoping this slaps some of the “big dogs” that peddle their snake oil internet money making schemes, and slaps them hard. I can thing of a couple guys out there right now that I’d love to see shut down (I’m looking at you, Fats) -both because they are scamming good (if not overly committed to due diligence) people out of hard earned money.  They are also clogging up marketing channels for guys like me, that might make a few bucks off recommending stuff like ShoeMoney Tools – which is really high quality stuff.

(in case you’re completely oblivious, the link above is an affiliate link, and on the less than 1% chance you click it and make a purchase, Jeremy will send me some monies)

Why? Well, it looks cool.  It’s easy to add, and it comes with a built in distribution network that is off the charts. Since this is a “Quick Tip” I’m not going to go into how to make good videos, or what you should use to produce them – that’s another post entirely.  I have two big points for you:

1)If you want to add video to your blog, you should be using Thesis.  The multimedia box makes for the easiest integration you can have in a Wordpress theme.

2)If you don’t want to tick your users off – don’t JUST offer video.  This is another reason Thesis is great – there’s no way to just offer a video without looking silly. People DO like video, but a lot of people don’t as well.  And, even folks that do like video don’t always feel like watching it. So, make sure you add some coherent, relevent, and scannable copy on the page as well.

On a side note – occasionally, for entertainment purposes, we’ll sit around and check out the new landing pages of all the overweight “Get Internet Monies” gurus out there, shooting videos from their mom’s basements.  Especially the ones that point to a conversion element on the page – hilarious. In fact – if someone is pointing to a conversion element on their page from a video…they’re going to rip you off. That’s a free “quick tip” :)

It is also a lot easier just to link you out to folks that are much better than me at sharing this info :)

Here are some good articles to check out:

Turning non-customers into customers (SEO specific, but still good theory for anyone)

SEO for Public Relations – Good info on how SEO and PR interconnect

PPC Copywriting for Quality Clickthroughs – Vital for PPC Conversion Rates

I could seriously go on all day – but you’ll have to join the Academy to get more.

We’d all like to think that we can manage on our own without any help – and, eventually, maybe you can. But, if you want to move quickly – and get your site out there and ranking (or make some drastic improvements to your site) it helps to have several tools at hand to make life a bit easier.  The beauty of it is, none of these things are all that expensive, and they aren’t garbage “Secret SEO Software” that will rip you off for  a couple hundred bucks. Each of these tools has paid for itself in time saved and results.

Be forewarned though – you still have to put in some work to make things happen here, but this is a really good start. Here’s the cocktail I’ve used to get to the top 5 in several competitive categories:

Shoemoney PPC/SEO Tools.  Hands down the best deal in intensive niche research. Jeremy is letting you try this out for $3.95…so it’s cost effective way to test it out.

Thesis Wordpress Theme. Wordpress is the best blog engine out there, and Thesis is the best way to leverage it. I credit the super-SEO readiness of this theme with about 60% of my recent success. Watch the video and see for yourself.

Nichebot Keyword Research. It’s not the prettiest, but it’s the best value.  Lots of ways to generate more, and better, keywords for SEO and PPC.

Cheap/Awesome Hosting Services – Hostgator has provided me with incredible customer service – and more importantly, has a push button Wordpress Installer that is second to none. You can’t beat $4/month for high-quality hosting.

Lastly, you want to makes sure that you get active in Google Webmaster Tools – it’s great intelligence for further optimization, and is a huge benefit in getting your entire site indexed.

(disclosure – I should tell you that if you purchase any of these products, I’ll be paid a small affiliate fee.  If you’re not cool with that, just take the affiliate code out of the link…I’d recommend them anyway, because we’re friends)

On the other hand – this often leads to lots of potential money making projects left to die “on the vine.”

So, how do you force yourself into action?

Well, if you’re a business owner, you set goals and create a system to make yourself accountable for them. If you happen to be an Internet marketing geek whose most regular work day contact is with his dog, you blog about it.  Nothing sets you up for success like the risk of abject public humiliation.

So – what is my goal? It’s pretty simple – I have $2,000 to use over the next 6 weeks. I have to turn that into $3,000 in 6 weeks, using absolutely nothing that is currently in existence.  (I’m making a small exception for a couple sites that already exist, but aren’t generating revenue, as those are the stimulus for this whole idea).

Let me break it down – no campaigns are set up, no SEO foundation has been built for these sites…with the exception of already having a couple domain names purchased, and a glimmer of a plan – I’m starting from scratch.

I have to choose my next steps carefully – more importantly, I have to move forward – no way I reach that goal from scratch without making some big time progress early on.

By the way – did I mention I’m getting married next week? HA.

I’ll update my progress here – several posts describing more in depth what I’m doing will be protected…so you’ll need to join 7xo Academy to get access to those.  (see the signup box in the upper right?)

There’s a lot to be said for the effectiveness of mailing a postcard to potential customers.  In fact, for many smaller businesses, this can be a LOT more effective than online advertising.

I strongly suggest you give it a try – the offer on the right hand side of this page lets you get 100 free postcards to test out – how can you beat that?!?!

1) You Vs. Competitors – Use a comparison page to show why your Unique Selling Point (you have one, right?) is powerful enough for your customer to purchase your product or service over your competitor’s.

2) Product Option A vs. Product Option B – Use a comparison page to show different features of your products or services.  A good example would be if a landscape company created a page showing the differences between, say, organic and inorganic fertilizers…and the pros/cons of each.

3) Affiliate product comparisons – It’s possible that you’re running an ad supported site, and are selling competing products, create a comparison of them to increase your sales of both!

So, what are the benefits of comparisons?  For one, you can clearly and concisely illustrate why your website visitor needs to purchase from you vs. your competitor.  On a deeper level though, it is an opportunity to create content that will rank well for a number of longer keyphrases.

For example, my site receives a good bit of traffic because I did a comparison of SEO and PPC – so now I get Google searches for “SEO vs. PPC”.

This is just one more step you should be taking to enhance your web prescence.  Keep up the good work, and be sure to check back for more!

The CEO asked me, “Is it better to have several pages that are always changing, or to have a site that is constantly growing with new content?”

The VP of Sales laughed out loud when I answered that question, “Yes!”

We all know that fresh content is vital to SEO success.  It’s also important for visitor conversion.  And, it’s important to not only have your most prominent pages (home page, etc…) “freshen up” every now and then, it’s also important to push out new content on a regular basis.

From a search engine standpoint – it gets spiders coming back more frequently, which gets you indexed more thoroughly, more often, and often better.  From a visitor standpoint, it gives you the opportunity to excite and engage the visitor more.

More and more, we are seeing that visitors need more than a catchy landing page, a great offer, or a slick form to turn in to leads or customers.  Search is becoming less and less a direct conversion tool, and more of a sales process that you need to nurture in order to get the customer.

Of course, this rings true a little more for larger ticket item purchases than for, say, a book or pair of shoes.

What does this mean for your business?  For one, you need to craft all your content with an eye for the ultimate goal – conversion.  You need to come up with a schedule and stick to it (this is much harder than it sounds).  You will need to create content that is interesting and useful for someone, even if they aren’t your customer.  You need to give options to share your content (social bookmarking buttons, email this buttons, etc…) – and encourage people to use them.

In short – your website needs to start to become a combination of promotion and enhanced conversion strategies, and real substance.

Sorry, I work up early this morning and ended up cooking breakfast while an infomercial was on.

Anyway – here’s a quick idea to drastically improve your business’s website: Improve the image quality!

So many great businesses have websites that look awful – a big reason for this is fuzzy, poorly sized, poorly managed images and product photos.

Here are some things to look for in choosing an image:

1) High Quality/Resolution
2) Color matching with the rest of your site
3) Does it “Pop”
4) Is it “selling”

What this means: Use only High-res images that have been sized appropriately in an image editing program.  Make sure it matches somewhat with your website’s colors – and is sharp enough to draw attention on the page and guide custmers to do what you wan them to.

Old Marketing Pro Tip – visitors love pictures of people – and they will look at the spot on the page the people in the photo are looking at! This means, if you want someone to read a certain section of your website, a picture whose eyes are looking in that direction will help.

For product photos, there are a few things you can do to make sure your site:

- Crop in to show the most interesting detail of the product.
- Remove backgrounds, replace with a white or gray background
- Use a drop shadow to make the image pop
- Auto-Adjust Color levels and use a sharpening filter in your favorite editing software
- if you don’t have editing software, get some!