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OK! We’ve all heard that there are many “secrets” to success in Network Marketing and MLM. We’ve also heard that your upline is lying to you and not sharing their “secrets” about the business and industry. That’s all just horse hockey! The biggest secret about success in this business and industry is that there isn’t any secret. Surprised? I thought you might be, but it is very true. Oh! And by the way, your sponsor has a vested interest in your personal success so he is not going to be lying to you about what it takes. More on this later.

- Key #1: You! That’s right, you. Here’s what I mean about “you.” The success or failure you experience in network marketing and MLM is totally reliant upon you, your beliefs, your attitude, and the direct actions you take toward success. You must have a very strong “why” you want to be in this business and what you want to attain as the benefits or your efforts. The stronger the why the greater chance of success. I determined my “why” by completing a vision statement of how I want my life to be as a result of my efforts. What my life will look like, smell like, be like, experience and advantages I will have that I don’t have now. Vision statements will be covered in detail in another article.

There are many areas of your life you will need to evaluate to determine what type of product or service you wish to represent and market. Along with that, the choice of company is paramount in keeping yourself aligned with your wants and vision. See yourself as a success with this company and product. If you can’t see it then it won’t happen. Keep searching. You have to be the driving force behind your success. Yes, there are many other elements that come into play but “you” are the ultimate key to your own success.

- Key #2: Product or service. What products or services get you excited or do you already have a firm foundation of experience and knowledge? This may or may not take some time on your part to crystallize. It is as an important key as any of the others and must be addressed from a business point of view. Can you make a profit with this product or service? Is there a ready made market? Is there exclusivity in the product or service not found in the general consumer market? Exclusivity is nice but is also short-lived in this consumer market.

Network Marketing has hundreds of quality products and services available to you including travel, nutritional, health, long distance, VIOP, communication, energy, and many others. Don’t make the mistake of following the herd but then again, don’t be too unique that no one has ever heard of it either. Choosing a product or service to represent in your home based business is as personal as the company you select to partner with that has your offering.

- Key #3: Selecting the company that represents and markets your chosen product or service. This is so important and requires research, due diligence, investigation, interviews with existing reps, interviews with potential sponsors, and following that, oh so important, “gut feeling.” To keep it simple, I will list for you the requirements that I used to pick my current company and this may shed some light on what you need to look for in your company.

• Solid company of five years or older
• A fun, professional, and enthusiastic “culture”
• Competent corporate staff with business management and NWM/MLM experience on the front lines.
• Exclusive product by quality unmatched in the marketplace
• Products supported by real life studies for efficacy and quality
• A robust comp plan that is quick to see results and easy to understand
• Ability to retail products at a reasonable price for “right now” money
• A quality marketing plan and support tools in place
• Solid and increasing annual sales and distributor growth
• Qualified Upline with proven success and willingness to share information
• A plan for a successful system to plug into and NOT reinvent the wheel
• Both company and product recognized in the community for quality
• Easy online signups and prospect back office tracking
• Company websites provided at no or minimum cost to the distributor
• Outstanding customer support in knowledge and helpfulness
• No voicemail, phone trees, but “real people” answering the phones
• Company MUST be distributor oriented with income based on volume and not on the backs of distributors in the form of fees etc.

- Key #4: Selecting a sponsor may or may not have a direct effect on your success but, it may definitely affect your failure without the correct choice. Many people in the industry will tell you that your sponsor will not dictate your success or failure in the business and industry. This may be true however; I believe having all of the proper support and guidance is to your best advantage. Once you’ve selected a company then begins the process of determining who is the best fit to have as your sponsor? Is this person currently working the business? Are they successful to the point you would like to be someday? Can you relate to this person and like them? Are they forthcoming with information, knowledge, experiences so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel but learn from their experiences?

A final and very important question regarding the selection of a qualified sponsor, would you want to take a 30 day cruise with this person? Think about that for a moment and the answer will be very revealing.

- Key #5: In addition to the above, is there a viable and robust training/marketing system in place and a viable and robust team for support and interaction? All of this lends itself to a further advantage toward success provided the previous keys have been taken seriously and good decisions made. You don’t want to be left out to stand on your own but want a group of like minded people to interact and learn from their experiences. You want to feel part of a successful team, almost like a family.

As for the training/marketing system, do you want to have to create that all by yourself or would you rather have it up and running and productive from day one. Look for video and audio training, sizzle lines, 800#s, contact management back office, auto responders, existing sizzle messages, emails, and auto responder messages. All of this will save you a great deal of time, shorten the learning curve, allow you to focus on building your business, and increasing your ROI (Return On Investment).

OK then! By accomplishing the above keys you have started out on a strong path to becoming successful in your own home based business in network marketing and MLM. I know this looks like a great deal of effort but starting a business is not a flippant decision and needs to be researched in many areas to give you the best chance of success. Above all, you want to have fun in the process of doing. In a later article I will discuss “learn, doing, learn, and being.”

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Craig Mattice is totally disabled and works his home based business in network marketing with Vitamark International from his home in Richmond, VA. His works include quality content, personality, humor, and are all personally written. To learn more about the author visit his personal website.

Tags: Marketing, network marketing

That’s what I used to ask myself as numerous acquaintances kept tagging me to be part of their realm of contacts in FaceBook.com or LinkedIn.com. It seemed a nuisance until I sat down with an old contact, Don Tinney from EOS Worldside (EOS=Entrepreneurial Operating Systems). Don is an EOS Implementer whose job is quite simple. He says simply, “We make millionaires out of owners of small to medium size companies”. So maybe he has something to say I should know.I was in both LinkedIn and FaceBook and didn’t see the significance. My business was humming along just fine and didn’t need the distraction. Don forced my mind open a bit and so I took it upon myself to find out if there was some gold to mine there that I had missed. Like hunting for Morel mushrooms, it went from “none to be found” to being surrounded with all kinds of uses. Here is my quick rundown of uses in the hopes all our business partners can begin to take advantage of these tools.

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Tags: facebook, linkedin, Website Promotion

Ever since whispers of Web 2.0 started in 2004, rumors have flown fast and furious. Within two weeks of Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media) coining the phrase, there were over 100 guesstimated definitions for Web 2.0. So what is it? Web 2.0 is basically the concept of using the Internet for bigger business purposes than simple Websites. It includes a wide range of areas like shared multi media, social networking, online collaboration and adding the human factor back in to the Web.

Primary tools of Web 2.0 include video sharing sites such as YouTube; Wiki sites like Wikipedia; blogs and various “live face” technologies. We’ll cover three of the fastest and easiest ways to optimize for Web 2.0, beginning with blogs.

1.) SEO for Blogs

Optimizing a blog is one of the absolute best ways to capture Google’s most coveted top spots very quickly. You can hit number 1 on Google in a matter of days. Here’s how you do it…

1. First, find a good blogging tool. There are plenty out there. I use WordPress (http://www.WordPress.org.) I originally picked it because it was so quick and easy to setup. And soon I realized the platform does 50% of SEO by its very nature. It’s free and you can get thousands of themes, to fit any style you wish, also for free.
2. Next, make sure your hosting provider can support your blog. I’ve never seen one that can’t. If you are starting fresh, do a Google search for “WordPress blog hosting” and you’ll find great packages that only cost $25 for a whole year. Just avoid the freebie hosts since you are almost guaranteed to be sharing server space (and likely an IP range) with sites banned by Google, which can cost you your ranking.
3. Once your blog app is installed, turn on the “permalink” option from the control panel. This ensures each posting you enter will also get its own URL. And finally, start entering postings of 200 words or more, focusing on only one or two keywords per post. Try to begin each post title with the primary keyword for that topic.
4. To best optimize your keywords and content follow the steps outlined in SEO cbt’s release “Google Domination” (http://www.SEOcbt.com). This is a free computer based training module for SEO do it yourselfers that works extremely well. It was not written specifically for blogs but all the information is perfectly suited to them.

Inside Tip: Register your domain name for a five year period or longer. Just extend it if needed. Google has been known to check “whois” records and assumes the longer the domain is registered in advance, the more “real” the site is.

2.) SEO for YouTube Videos

YouTube accounts for more than 60% of ALL online videos watched in the US. And your YouTube videos can be found in Google’s search results just like any normal Web page. This means they can rank number 1 in just days, with the right SEO.

If you’re looking to capitalize on SEO for Web 2.0, this is a fast and free way to do it. I won’t get into how to upload the videos and optimize the frame size, etc. That said; let’s assume you have signed up for your free account at YouTube.com and are ready to upload your first video using their easy to follow instructions. This is all the SEO you need to know…

1. When forming your title, think in terms of “long tail” keywords, meaning keyword phrases of three or more words. Be sure these are in the same order people would search for them (eg/ “long tail keywords” not “keywords long tail.”) Also try to anticipate what the user will type in his search. “How to” is one of the most common search phrases people use in Google and YouTube to get answers quick.
2. Think of “tags” as keywords and enter them like you would the Meta keyword tag of a web page. Select only the most likely search terms people are using and keep the words in the order people use them. Don’t just use random words separated by commas. Use full length search phrases exactly how people search for them. And don’t go too crazy here. Excessive tags tend to confuse the YouTube engine. Incidentally, if you have “how to” as a tag, also add “howto” (without the space.) If “how to” returns a bunch of unrelated junk your “howto” tag can better cut to the chase in YouTube’s search engine.
3. The description is where you have the most freedom. It’s best to begin the description with your main keyword (and title) as close to the beginning as possible. Something like this works well… “Learn how to…” then follow up with several sentences rich in long tail keywords (the same ones from your tags.) Grammar is not the most important thing in the world but try to make it friendly for people who might read the description before they decide to watch the video. Also remember that Google uses a natural text algorithm that can spot unnatural keyword spamming a mile away.

Real Life Example: I just saw a commercial on TV for a spy movie and someone threw a knife. I went to Google and entered “how to throw a knife” (without quotes.) The top three matches include a YouTube video and Wiki entry. Wow! Welcome to Web 2.0!

3.) SEO Using “Live Face” Technology

One of the biggest reasons for the dot com crash of ‘01 was that Websites became way too impersonal. One of Web 2.0’s strengths is the ability to help people relate to people once again. And one of the hottest technologies leading the way is “Live Face.”

Live Face allows a video spokesperson to meet, greet and inform your Web page visitors. As far as SEO benefits, any sort of video has usually involved heavy RealTime or Flash files that block search engine spiders and hurt rankings. Now however, there are services like Live Face for Web (http://www.LivefaceForWeb.com) that can add full length videos to your site without it interfering with onsite SEO one bit (due to the file’s location) while greatly enhancing offsite efforts such as acquiring the highest quality one way and reciprocal links.

Most sites employing this technology report conversion increases of up to 5x. This means they are converting up to five times the number of sales they did before using Live Face technology.

Real Life Example: The SEOcbt.com site mentioned earlier uses Live Face for Web and they hit number one on Google for all of their major keywords within two weeks of site launch.

That’s a good start to SEO for Web 2.0. Good luck!

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Mike Small is a ten year veteran SEO specialist with thousands of top search engine rankings to his credit. He is the author of seven SEO books and founder of SEOpartner.com.

Tags: seo, Web 2.0

This article will show you how to run a simple promotional marketing campaign that has an unusual side effect; Top placement on Google for your most important keywords. With one quick and easy task you can:

1. Get top ranking on Google,
2. Build incredible brand or company awareness
3. Earn an additional passive income while doing it, if you wish.

The concept is pretty straightforward. You post a piece of software (along with a simple PAD file) to shareware download sites like Download.com. They provide inbound links to your site. Simple right? Definitely! But that’s only part of it. If you know a couple inside tips you can have the link to your site contain your most important keywords as anchor text, which will skyrocket ranking on Google. And you can have your links point to any page you want using that keyword rich link! By the way, there are well over 1,000 well known download sites there for the linking!

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Tags: inbound links, one way links, seo

Just like writing a sales page for your product, program or service, writing successful email promotions can be easier than you think. There’s a science to it, more than an art, and to get you started, I’d like to share a tested formula for you to follow.

Taking the time to consider and answer the questions below before you write your email promotion will make it easier to write, easier for your reader to engage with, and easier to turn your prospect into a buyer.

Here are 5 essential elements to writing email promotions that will increase your sales:

1. Who’s your audience?

It’s important to know exactly who your audience is before you start writing the copy for your email promotion. Obviously, you’ll be sending your promotion to your list. But will it be for your entire ezine subscribers list? Or are you making an offer only to the people on your list who have bought from you before, your customers? Or are you targeting your one-on-one clients only?

Getting really specific about who you are writing your email promotion to will allow you to make it as personal as possible, and the more personal you can make it, the more sales you’ll make.

2. What action do you want to your reader to take?

Decide what it is exactly that you want your reader to do. Is it to subscribe to your ezine? Is it to join one of your group programs? Do you want them to invest in a new product or take advantage of a sale you’re having on an established product?

Choose only ONE thing for your reader to do (remember, ‘a confused mind always says no’) and they are much more likely to do it!

3. What benefits will your reader get?

If your reader purchases your product, how will they benefit? If someone subscribes to your ezine, what will they get out of it? If a reader signs up to work with you one-on-one, how will that make things better, easier, more fun or whatever it is that you can do for them?

Make the benefits your reader gets crystal clear in your email promotions. If you have more than one, use bullets to make them easier to read and digest, and lead the reader smoothly to your call to action.

4. What’s your ‘take action now’ lever?

For each promotion you do, you want to choose and use a tactic for getting people to take action. We’re all procrastinators, so you want to strongly encourage your reader to take action right away.

Some tactics you can use are to offer a limited availability, a limited time, limit spots, special price, free shipping for a limited time, etc.

5. What’s your format?

Couple of notes on the format of your email promotions:

• Testing shows that HTML emails with bullets tend to generate higher response rates, as long as they are between 1-2 pages.
• Make sure your call to action (’Buy Now’, ‘Visit This Page for More Info’, ‘Order Today’) is near the end of your email promotion, after your list of benefits and your ‘take action’ lever.
• Include contact information at the bottom of your email promotions, with an email address and/or phone number for people who have questions.
• Don’t forget your unsubscribe information as well, to comply with CAN-SPAM laws.
• Include a PS, which is the second most read part of any sales copy. One effective use of a PS is to ask for the order again, including the link.

Use these 5 elements as a framework for your next email promotion and track your conversion rates. You should see more results and make more sales by doing so!

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Alicia M Forest, MBA, Multiple Streams Queen & CoachT, founder of ClientAbundance.com and creator of 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success SystemT, teaches professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com .

Tags: , email marketing

Making your Web Pages Download Fast is the Most Effective way of Keeping Visitors Browsing your Website. With the Web being the all encompassing, slightly anarchic, global phenomenon that it is, there are no set standards about how to design Web pages. But there is one overriding principle that every Web designer should chant like a mantra as soon as they awake in the morning. ‘Speed is everything’.

Getting your website’s information on to the browsers of your visitors as quickly as possible is still the number one skill to learn when it comes to building web pages, but it often gets overlooked because it doesn’t seem as much fun as fooling around with Java applets or animated GIFs. But don’t be swayed by such fripperies - master the art of building sites that download super-fast and you’ll get people coming back again and again.

With the arrival of broadband, it’s tempting to think that designing web pages to download fast won’t be a concern. People will multitask on the Net as they do with their computers, pushing their internet access connections to the extreme and cursing your Web page if it doesn’t appear instantly. The need for speed is here to stay, so knowing how to optimize your HTML code and graphics will never go out of fashion.

Here are some Tips to help make your Web pages Thunder down the Information Highway

Grease your Graphics

While understanding how to make your HTML super-sleek is vital to streamlining your Web pages, graphics are the single biggest culprit for slow loading websites. The hard and fast rule has to be, if you don’t need a graphic, don’t use it. For example, using graphics for text is a no-no - HTML text looks great if you use a bit of color and judgment.

Try to rescue the graphics you do need on your site throughout your pages. That way, the image gets cached in the user’s web browser and the image isn’t downloaded again. Don’t be afraid of repetition - for example, if you have a groovy logo to use on your site then put it in the same place on every page. It reassures the visitor that they are still on your site.

You should ensure that the full size of the graphics you use are as small as possible. Imaging editing programs will deal with this for you to an extent, but you can’t beat running an image through an online graphic compression tool to get the lowest possible image size.

Keep it Simple

When it comes down to HTML code, the first thing to do is design a look and feel for your site that isn’t massively complex. Simple layout equals slimline code. Ask yourself if you really need that scrolling ticker or Java applet - chances are you don’t.

Frames are also a bad idea for fast pages. Every frame within a frameset is effectively adding another page to load simultaneously when the user arrives at your site, rather than just one page. Coupled with the navigation, search engine and bookmarking nightmares that frames can cause, they’re best avoided.

Nested tables - that is, putting one table inside another - are the main way diligent designers achieve a good layout to their Web page, but be wary of overdoing it. As long as the tables are simple, with only three or four cells, nesting is fine. If you find yourself nesting the equivalent of a chessboard, it might be wiser to start again. Tables take a while to load in Web browsers, and the more complex the code, the longer your visitors will be staring at a blank screen.

Remember that just because your Web page might look simple doesn’t mean that it was simple to put together. Simplicity is not only good for speed but also ease of use which has to be the other design concern.

WYSIWYG Weirdness

WYSIWYG editors are great for quickly assembling Web pages without the chore of typing HTML code by hand. However, these editors often add lots of extraneous code which is not actually needed to make the page display correctly. This is why it’s important to have at least a basic grasp of HTML even if you do use a WYSIWYG editor. Knowing what’s going on under the bonnet means you can spot a multitude of sins and streamline your code so it runs faster.

Tag it and Bag it

Times New Roman is the Web’s default font, but Verdana and Arial have become extremely popular too. If you like these fonts enough to want to use them throughout your site, a nifty way on cutting down on coding every paragraph is to use the <BASEFONT> tag. This changes the default font of your pages.

For example, <basefont face=”Verdana” size=”2″> will make all the text on your page appear as size 2 Verdana, unless you specify otherwise using the usual <FONT> tags that doesn’t have a closing tag, so you don’t need to insert a </BASEFONT> tag anywhere. Best of all, you can avoid the hassle of having to format the majority of your text in one fell swoop, saving coding time and keeping your HTML streamlined.

A Space Odyssey

This is possibly the easiest way of improving an existing site’s download time. Every space in your HTML code isn’t empty spaces to a browser - it’s another bit of info it needs to interpret and process. Many WYSIWYG editors generate indented code with line breaks. Removing all those indents and line breaks will shave several K off the size of your page so it loads much quicker.

It’s here that a half decent Web page editor comes into its own. Using the search and replace function, you should be able to do a sitewide search for spaces. Type several spaces into the Find box, make sure the replace box is empty and it’ll whiz through the whole site eliminating any spaces it finds.

Sandra Prior runs her own websites at http://usacomputers.rr.nu and http://sacomputers.rr.nu.

Here in part three of “Linking Practices” we will cover how to maximise the benefits of those links we discussed previously (check out part 1: “Links Defined” and part 2: “Links Applied“).

This section could also be classified as: Tips, Hints and Cheats. While I recommend and try at all times to adhere to ethical and honest practices there are many webmasters out there that do not. While PageRank still remains a prize in eyes of many webmasters there will always be a handful that will do anything to try and game the system. These are some of the usual ways in which they do this:

Robots.txt

The robots file is a little plain text file that resides in the root directory of a website. The purpose of this file is to notify the search engine spider of which pages should be indexed and which should not. After all you wouldn’t want the backend to your website indexed in the search results. This file stands alone and you cannot know its contents by looking at a standard webpage on that site. I know many webmasters have now started using the robots.txt file to exclude their link pages from the search engine spiders. By doing this they are effectively preventing the search engine from seeing the link to your page. This in turn makes your link back to them seem like a valuable one way link.

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Tags: linking practices, Linking Strategies, links

The importance of evaluating the effects of SEO over time using analytics is imperative for your optimization efforts.

For example, it is a well known fact that the modifier “How To” is a great hook. Both for the reader and for search engines. This was inspired by a post I wrote approximately 9 months ago entitled “How to Optimize New Web Pages”, shortly thereafter it hit the #1 spot and remained to this day.That’s great, if that were the case “all of the time”, but in reality, you have to go back and reassess each of your contributing keywords to ensure that they are properly nourished and don’t just drop out of sight.

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Tags: keywords

Last week I wrote about how the SEO industry is growing up. Tremendous growth and low barriers to entry are / will attract many new entrants to the market.

But with formal SEO training not yet available on mass (i.e. taught in colleges), this growth is going to leave us with a talent shortage.

Essentially, large companies who want to get into this business are going to be forced to buy their way in.

In order to prepare your shop to possibly benefit from this increased M&A activity, it is helpful to have a sense of what factors will make you attractive to a perspective purchaser.

But one size does not fit all.

The evaluation of a one man shop is entirely different from that of a large Agency .

THE ONE MAN SHOP
There are many one man shops that are hugely successful. In fact many of our most authoritative industry experts are sole proprietors.

Like it or not, YOU ARE the business. Your business has little value unless you come with it.

Potential buyers - Your potential buyers are likely those looking to “buy talent” and/or credibility. A new entrant to the SEO Industry can say that they’ve been “doing SEO” for as long as you have.

What makes a one man shop desirable?

1) Reputation / Brand - To be attractive to a potential buyer in this scenario, you MUST have a well known name in the industry. Ideally, you will have case studies from recognizable brands. Further, active participation in the industry increases your credibility as an authority.

2) Re-occurring Revenue Stream - A re-occurring revenue stream will also be important to your valuation as it is likely that your price will be a multiple of your revenue. Moreover, your established business (re-occurrent revenue) should be sufficient to pay for your future salary.

3) Top Line Revenues - An EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) calculation doesn’t make a lot of sense to a one man firm as sole proprietors typically realize their profits as they are earned vs reinvesting.

In this case, a calculation should be made based on a multiple of top line revenues.

SMALL TO MID SIZED SEO FIRM (2 - 30 people*)
If a new entrant is looking to fast track it’s success by”buying the talent” that it requires then considerations around the size and strength of your team will be important.

1) Team Attributes - How many years of experience does your team have? Do you have high turnover? Do you have senior people filling key roles in your business?

2 Process - Process is also an important consideration. A new entrant doesn’t want to just buy talent, they want to buy the secret recipe……

• How do you sell SEO?
• How do you manage the work flow process?
• Who is accountable for what aspects of the process?
• Do you have checks and balances in place?
• What does your reporting look like?
• And to what degree is it automated?

3) Cash Flow - Cash flow will be an important consideration (nobody wants to buy a sinking ship) however if you’re having trouble collecting on your receivables, many companies will assume that once they take over, they can do a better job than you are (rightly or wrongfully so).

LARGE SEO AGENCY (30+ *)
For a large SEO Agency, factors that make you attractive to acquisition focus much more on hard calculations than the softer considerations of small to mid sized firms.

*Note: There are lots of web design firms who claim to be in this category when in fact only a handful of their 30 person shop actually do SEO. This article differentiates between firms with an SEO component versus a dedicated shop of 30+ people who only do SEO.

1) Scalability - The strong team you were proud of as a small to mid sized SEO firm is expected of in a large firm. For a large SEO agency to be attractive for acquisition, organizational structure is critical.

Can the structure be replicated easily for growth? Are there established training programs in place?

2) Cross Sell Opportunity - New entrants will be looking for “fit” with their existing markets.

• Is there an opportunity to cross sell between the acquiring company’s existing clients and your products?
• Is there an opportunity to sell between your clients and the acquiring company’s products?
• What about clients? Do you predominately service mom and pop shops while your perspective buyer mainly targets enterprise sized clients? Your firm will be less attractive if the purchaser is discounting too large a proportion of your business due to “lack of fit”.

3) Technology - Have you invested in proprietary technology that would benefit the buyer either by providing them with a competitive advantage or reducing costs?

Not only does an investment in technology give you an edge against the competition but it also shows long term strategic thinking.

The actual calculation
Keep in mind that there is a difference between book value and market value. A traditional “by the book” valuation will typically end up being a multiple of your EBITDA. Six times EBITDA on the low end and twelve times EBITDA at the higher end.

But EBITDA isn’t always the most fair way to measure value. When companies are growing really quickly, profits tend to be lower or non-existent. This does not mean that your company’s value is non-existent.

This is why in a pressurized environment like SEO, a calculation based on a multiple of your top line revenue may be the more appropriate measure even for large SEO Shops.

At the end of the day, what you’re worth really boils down to how much you’re willing to sell for. And with the industry booming, algorithms changing, new markets emerging - it’s still very much the wild west out there.

so, how do you put a price on fun?

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Tags: Advertising, seo industry

It is no secret that to gain a competitive edge, you need competitive SEO for your business to thrive. How many times have you went to sleep singing praises about securing a new high ranking position only to wake up in the morning to see it vanish into thin air?

The is nothing more disenheartening than this experience (if you rely too heavily on a narrow group of keywords or phrases). To maintain a competitive advantage in the SERPs (search engine result pages) and reach the top unscathed, training and diversity should be part of your SEO regiment.They say that competition to brings out the best in us, as a martial artist for the past 29 years, the analogies between SEO and martial arts have various characteristics in common. Survival in the SERPs and gaining a competitive edge is a full-time responsibility, so if you cannot commit, it is better to find an SEO company that can. SEO and martial arts are like tea, you have to keep them warm.

Fundamentals such as:

• Knowing your limitations of your technique
• Having impeccable timing to block and overcome the advances of your opponents (through scaling content or links).
• and Knowing how to look for the weakness in the armor of the opponent (overconfidence, over-commitment to a weaker of outdated technique or not enough depth to see the bigger picture).

These basic steps will provide security and stability amidst the numerous bouts that will ensue as a result of your competition. The impending fear or rather concern of a knock out (from your position) while you are engaging your opponents teaches you how to move with stealth and how to block the attacks (on your position) from your competitors as you gain relevance and momentum in your niche.

For some competitors, their weakness is stance (site structure) or poor tags, for others, it is relying too heavily on one technique (link building without content or content without relevance). The fact remains, if your pages are in the top 10, then you have a target painted on your back from all of the pages beneath you, who are relentless in their assault to reach the goal (claiming your spot). So you need to stay busy unless you want to start at the back of the line.

It is no secret that search engine optimization is competitive. Some keywords are so competitive in fact, that weeks or months can pass to bring them up steadily in the rankings (either through links, relevance of trust).

Once you do, there is no guarantee that they will stick (unless you continue to monitor and refine your SEO technique). The moral of the story, stay nimble, diversify your methods (since everything leaves a trail) and never give up until you overcome your objective and master the obstacles standing between you and your goal.

Because if you do, you might as well step aside while one of your competitors steps over your position to claim your keywords and your spot as you sit on the sidelines trying to maintain your composure.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Tags: competitive seo