Mobile SEO is a common misnomer in both the search and mobile industries. It simply doesn’t exist.

Why? When most people say “Mobile SEO,” what they really mean is local SEO. They’re talking about optimizing your website for users on their mobile phones doing searches on the go. For example, if you own a pizza shop and someone types in “Pizza” when they’re in your city, you want your result to show up first.

Is Local SEO the Same as Mobile SEO?

Yes. 

Teaching someone to build links can be quite challenging. Not only do they need to learn a lot of technical skills, but they also have to have the tenacity to follow through with potential leads. They need to also be able to convince people to build the actual link.

If you’ve been working in the internet industry for some time, it can be easy to underestimate how much specialized knowledge you actually have. Before teaching someone how to build links, you’ll often have to go over a lot of things that you consider basic.

All that said, here’s how to take a brand new link builder and turn them into a pro.

Basic Training

The first step to teaching someone link building is to teach them the fundamentals.

What is a high quality link? What is PageRank? What is anchor text? What is the difference between an in-body link and a footer link, the difference between a no follow link and a do follow link?

The best way to teach them the basics of link building is to expose them to concepts gradually. Don’t just dump a 200 page eBook on them or send them to read 50 articles. Instead, teach them one concept a day or have them read one article a day while they’re learning the rest of what they need to know.

Software and Procedure

Next teach them about all the software they’ll need to know how to use, the basic procedure and linkbuilding techniques that you plan on employing.

Have them watch you do it several times before asking them to do it for themselves. A few of the most important things to cover include:

• Data gathering tools. Tools to check PageRank, tools to check traffic, tools to check nofollow status of backlinks and so forth. Make sure they know how to use the tools and have the tools installed on their own computers.
• Status of current projects. What kind of links are you targeting right now? What are the bottlenecks and what are the next steps? What was the mentality or philosophy that went into cultivating these links?
• Linkbuilding tools. Make sure they know how to use any tools necessary in the actual link building process. The exact tools depend on your methodology, but can include social media submitters, backlink checkers, content spinners, etc.
• How to find and make contact with websites. Walk them through the process and make sure they understand what it’s like before trying it themselves.

Teaching Them the Sales Sequence

The first 30 days on the job will usually give you enough information about the candidate that you’ll be able to tell whether or not they’ll succeed in the long run.

Though technical skills can be taught to a lot of people, the most important skill when it comes to linkbuilding is sales. The ultimate question is: Can this trainee convince other people to link to your website?

Within about 30 days, you should be able to find out.

Teaching your candidate the sales sequence depends should be part theory part practice. In the beginning, you’ll want to hold their hand through the process. Once they know what the process looks like, you’ve got to let them go to see whether they sink or swim.

The most important aspects to cover in the sales sequence include: 1) Finding potential sites to get links from, 2) Researching those sites, 3) Making the initial contact and 4) Closing the deal.

Throughout the whole process your trainee needs to be keeping great notes. If they hit a block in the road, it might make sense to have another team member take over the correspondence. If that happens, they need to know exactly how to pick up where the first person left off.

Do several links together in the beginning to make sure they understand everything from front to back. Then give them a few assignments and have them report back. Finally, once they’re up and running, create a set of metrics that you want to track and let them do their job, using you as a resource if they have any questions.

Your landing page is more important than any other page on your website. Why? Because if you don’t sell someone on giving you their email, purchasing your introductory product or learning more about your services, then the rest of your sales funnel will be completely wasted.

A great landing page will instantly grab a reader’s attention and get them interested in what you’re offering.

The following infographic sums up all the points discussed below and mastering these will help you craft an absolutely phenomenal landing page with off-the-roof conversions.

Tip #1 – The “Reader Callout” Headline

Your headline needs get your readers to feel like you’re talking to them directly. They should feel pulled towards the screen. They should instantly get the sense that their life can improve if they read your page and learned a bit more about what you’re offering.

Spend as much time as necessary on your headline. Most top copywriters write 50+ headlines and choose the best one, rather than just writing one headline.

Tip #2 – Play Up the Problem

Describe the problem and try to turn up the dial on the pain. If you can get the reader in the emotional state of being angry, frustrated or fed up with their current situation, you have a much better chance of getting them to take action to change it.

Tip #3 – Use the “You Perspective”

Write your copy from the perspective of your user’s benefits, rather than what makes your product or service great. For example, it’s much better to say “By using X, you’ll get A, B, and C benefit, solving your Z issue” than to say “Product X has E, F, G features.”

Tip #4 – Use Proof Elements

Why should someone believe the claims you’re making? Can you actually prove that you can deliver on the promises you made? Proof elements include before and after photos, celebrity endorsements, testimonials, video and audio proof and so on. The more the better.

Tip #5 – Reduce the Action Commitment

Try to make the first action you ask someone to take as easy as possible. For example, it’s much easier to just fill out a name and email than it is to fill out name, email, phone number and address.

You might get 20% of your readers to fill out the former and only 2% to fill out the latter. Make the first commitment as light as possible.

Tip #6 – Remove the Navigation

Don’t have navigation on your landing page. That directs the reader’s eyes to only the copy and the call to action that you want them to take. Pages with no navigation usually have significantly higher conversion rates than pages with navigation.

Tip #7 – Professional Design

Having good design isn’t essential for a landing page, but having unprofessional looking design will kill your landing page. If a page looks like it was built in 1995, your users aren’t going to feel comfortable typing in their credit card or even their email address.

Tip #8 – One Clear Call to Action

Don’t try to get people to take more than one action at a time. Your landing page should have just one thing you want your users to do, no more. Choices tend to reduce conversions.

Tip #9 – Use an Attention Catching Image

A before after image, an image of a celebrity using your product, or even an image of an attractive woman can often increase conversions.

The image must be relevant to your product and it should be attention catching. If it does these two things, it’s worth testing it to see how it affects your response rate.

Tip #10 – Split Test

To build a great landing page, you’ll need to test several different versions to see which converts the best. Often time’s a small change to a landing page can result in huge differences. The only way to really figure out what’s best for your landing page is to test, test, test.

Video marketing is one of the hardest hitting, most powerful marketing tactics in today’s fast paced online world. Videos take a lot less effort to consume than reading text, they can be a lot more fun and they can spread like wildfire through the internet.

There are two main ways to use videos: To bring in moore traffic to your website, or to build relationships and credibility with existing vistors.
 

Using Video Marketing to Bring in New Traffic

Websites like YouTube, DailyMotion, MetaCafe and many more have millions and millions of visitors visiting them every day. A good video can easily get a few hundred thousand visitors; and a great video can even get several million.

In addition to the “going viral” effect, you can also bring in traffic to your website simply by creating videos that people in your industry want to share.

For example, if you’re in the weight loss industry and you did a top notch video on what scientists say about the top 5 diets in the world, it’ll probably get passed around. It’ll be “shared” on Facebook, “tweeted” on Twitter and reposted on message boards all over the world.

Videos spread, whether it’s through viral marketing or through individual shares.

Using Video to Improve Brands, Relationships and Sales

Another place where videos can come in handy is in communicating with your existing customers. Using a video allows you to convey a lot more than if you were just using text.

Videos where you’re actually on camera talking to the audience can do a lot to build trust. People now actually have a face they can put to the brand. They have someone they can relate to.

When it comes time to make a decision on which product to buy, they’re much more likely to buy from someone who they feel like they know than someone who they’ve only interacted with over text.

Even if you’re only using PowerPoint-style presentations, videos can be very powerful. It allows you to communicate in images, audio, sub-videos and more.

How to Create an Effective Video

The most important part of getting good video is to get good audio. If you produce a video where the image is a little fuzzy, it won’t kill the video. However, if the audio is fuzzy and people can’t hear what you’re saying, your whole video goes down the drain.

Invest in a good set of microphones. If you’re appearing on camera, consider investing in wireless mics.
Filming the video can be as easy as creating a PowerPoint presentation or using other presentation software to create the video while you do a voiceover. You can also have someone film you speaking from one or more angles.

The whole production can be done for under $500.

Editing can be done on high end software like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier by a professional editor, or using free software like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. For simple videos, the quality difference won’t be big, though it’ll make a big difference for more complex projects.

Once you’ve filmed and edited the video, the final step is to launch your video with a kickoff. Send it off to your email list, as well as your Twitter feed and Facebook page. If you have a blog, post it on there as well.

Are you using videos in your business yet? If not, now might be a good time to look into it. Video marketing is an exciting way to both bring in new traffic, as well as to build a relationship with your existing fans.

Directory Submissions are one of the easiest methods of getting links. The practice has been in place since the concept of link building came into effect when Google started judging a sites' ranking potential based on the number of incoming links it had.

From SEO pros with years of experience to relatively new website owners, a host of people with varying levels of expertise turn to Directory Submission everyday, because they all realize that it is one of the first few steps needed for a website to get indexed by the search engines.

Many of us forget to consider just what Directory Submission involves and how it can best aid our SEO efforts – indiscriminately submitting a site to a bunch of directories will hardly prove to be effective or helpful. There are a number of of factors to consider before you have your site submitted to a directory. Smarter search engines, tougher-than-ever competition and ever-changing SEO trends have made it very important that directory submissions are done with a lot of care and any possible help from experts.

Listed below are the basic do's to consider while submitting to a directory, follow the pointers below to make your submissions more effective.

Directory Submission Tactics

1. Submit only to directories that are recognized by the search engines. The directory should not have their link pages with the 'rel=no follow' attribute for a link, this will prevent the search engines from finding your site in the directory.

2. Submit to the most appropriate category available in the directory. Sites submitted to inappropriate or unrelated categories may be rejected or removed.

3. Read and follow the guidelines before you begin the submission process.

4. Include your target keywords in your anchor text, but don't resort to 'keyword stuffing'.

5. Keep a detailed record of your submissions. You want to avoid submitting to the same directories again.

6. Use relevant targeted keywords instead of popular broad-based keywords as your title. E.g. "Duplex Houses for Sale in Florida" instead of 'Real Estate – Florida'.

7. Have as many titles and descriptions as possible.

8. Keep submitting to directories from time to time – do not stop.

If you find all this too complicated and cumbersome, you could consider using a directory submission company like Directory Maximizer to have all this taken care of you while you focus on other methods of promoting your site.

Anyone can get lost in the world of SEO, it doesn’t matter how experienced you are, there are so many things that you might not know still. With so many sites dedicated to SEO, searching for relevant (and more importantly correct) information is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Of course, there is no dearth of information but they’re usually outdated myths or just a repetition of 1-2 articles.

I decided to compile a list of informative and useful SEO resources. I’m sharing it with you so that you need never go back to those days when you spent hours looking up a single piece of information. This list is going to give you each and every conceivable bit of information about everything from A-Z of SEO. The list includes free sites as well as professional sites that charge for information, tools or services.

To make things easier for you, I’ve listed them under the following headings: Basic Info, Video Tutorials, Forums, Blogs, Articles and News, Tools and Conferences.

So, instead of Googling and checking out random sites, you can now use this list for all your SEO needs!

FREE RESOURCES

Basic Info

1. SE Roundtable

You no longer have to hunt for interesting information and discussions, hopping from one site to another. SE Roundtable chooses reports on interesting threads from many SEM forums all across the web, in addition to providing a forum for its own members. The mission of the Search Engine Roundtable is to provide you with a single source to locate the best search engine marketing threads on the Internet. It also adds its own synopsis, giving you greater details on these threads.

We recommend:
•   On Page SEO VS. Off Page SEO: Which Trumps?
•   Are Competitors Stealing Your Links?

Video Tutorials

2. Google Webmaster
This is a collection of all videos in which Google’s most famous and visible anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts answers questions sent to him by people.  He discusses how to optimize your site and what you should avoid while optimizing.  Matt Cutts has released many Webmaster Help videos that are simple and clear to understand even for beginners. His videos are one of the most sought-after resources in the SEO world.

We recommend:
•   Is there such a thing as building too many links?
•   What is the best way to check your own site for keyword rankings?

Read the rest of this entry »