Complete The 2011 Course At Your Own Pace

I finally put together a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and/or Word doc that links the lessons in their proper order. You no longer have to subscribe to the emails and wait for the next lesson. You can now work at your own pace.

I recommend the spreadsheet because it has check boxes so you can track your progress through this 31 day / lesson plan.

You can download them here:

If you don’t have Excel or Word on your computer, there are many applications that read .xls and .doc files. I sometimes use ““OpenOffice.org” for both.

Feel free to email the spreadsheet or doc to your friends. If you want, you can even upload them and make them available from your own website. I hereby grant unlimited permissions! (Is that anyway to run a business?).

Be Blessed.

Yours Truly,

Dr. Michael Haley

Bonus: Here are the links if you just want to Bookmark this page:

Have you ever used Google and noticed that something was different than it usually is. sometimes it is for a period of time, and then it goes away after a day or two or three. When that happens, there is a chance that you were in the Google Sandbox.

So what is the sandbox? Think of it not so much as a place for Google to play… but rather test. That is, they often “test” changes in their search engine results, their display, what they may display (or not display) and the likes of such. That is, they test it among a group of users, but not against the whole population. They then measure how users interact with the changes. They might measure how long it takes the user to make a decision. They might also measure how long a user interacts with the decision. And they measure various other metrics.

The information provided by these metrics are useful to them. They use the data to accept, reject, or refine changes to the way they deliver content to the user.

But to the internet marketer, recognizing the subtle changes from the sandbox is an opportunity to foresee the potential future of internet marketing and improve the way content is being created and delivered.

I consider the images below as a possible sandbox experiment.

non-sandbox

Probably Google Sandbox Result

And since images can’t be tested… I have copied the potential “Sandbox” content with links intact:

—————————————————————————–

Agape Chiropractic Pompano Beach (954) 545-9750
www.agapechiropractic.com/ – Cached
Agape Chiropractic, Dr. Michael Haley, Chiropractor serving Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale. (954) 545-9750. See our Video! Quality care at affordable …
Meet The Chiropractor – NanOmega 3 – Office Hours – About Us
500 S Cypress Road, Pompano Beach  - (954) 969-8800

“Dr. Mike Haley has amazing hands, and so far has not only helped my …“ - arizonahighways.com (3)
citysearch.com (2) - judysbook.com (1)

—————————————————————————–

In one image, we see the usual September 2011 results one would see if they search for a chiropractor in Pompano Beach. There is a Google places listing with Google reviews. But in the other image, we see Google reviews and reviews from non-Google review sites! There is also plenty of other content to consider in this combined places / organic combination of a result from the likely sandbox.

This is particularly interesting because recently non-Google reviews disappeared from the Google places pages. All of the sudden reviews from places like yelp, citysearch, and jusysbook became less important.

But if the next image is indeed from the sandbox, then it indicates that Google is probably working on getting non-Google reviews back in the mix. Therefore, Google probably does value non-Google reviews. So encouraging customers that like your product and service to review on the network of review sites is probably a beneficial thing.

So if you notice a change on Google, consider the potential for benefit such insight can give you when it comes to marketing your business or the businesses of your SEO clients.

Google +1 is out! I don’t know how it will affect your search engine rankings… but it makes sense that if it is used naturally, it will help (I said naturally… don’t click your own plus one buttons… you never know, Google might be watching you right now).  The Google Plus One should help your site be seen within the social circles of those that click on it.

In this video, we install the “Google Plus One Button” by Michael Fields.

To see this video on YouTube, please Click Here.

Oh, about my button… Go ahead… I DARE YOU!

Click to Get Pretty Link

Pretty Link makes “pretty links”, that is, attractive links using YOUR domain that can link to EXTERNAL places on the internet. The links you make can be short like tiny urls and descriptive. Because they use YOUR domain name, they help build YOUR name… that is, they help brand YOU.

The paid version of pretty link also offers “CLOAKING”. This means that the URL on top in the address bar still shows the pretty link even after it takes you to the other domain it points to (see the picture on the right). In this video, I only demonstrate the free version. You will notice that the URL changes in the address bar in the free version to the actual URL that is pointed to by the prettty link.

To get your copy, download PRETTY LINK and “upload” it from the plugins portion of your dashboard. Then, activate it and your ready to go.

Don’t forget to leave comments. Tell me what you like / dislike about this lesson so I can make it better for the next person.

To see this video on YouTube, Click Here.

Did this video spark interest in Beyond Organic? Go ahead, sign up, and I’ll be sure to get you plugged in.

I recently started using Traffic Player – the video plugin for embedding youtube videos. Did you notice how the video started playing all by itself? That is just one of the many options. Get your free copy (the same version I used on this page) by clicking HERE.

Update 1/24/2012 – I removed the traffic player plugin from this wordpress install – it worked fine, but I decided to simplify my wordpress program… but you can still see the video here:

In the past, I did video the hard way – working in the raw HTML.  I didn’t have the flexibility I needed like autoplay, hiding controls, a sleek skin, and the like. But then I got Traffic Player.

Get Yours: http://www.thetrafficplayer.com

I have been playing around with the YouTube Video Plugin from Traffic Player. Get it here.

The video below is a “test”. That is, it is the first time I used the plugin.

UPDATE 1/24/2012 I deleted the plugin from this website to simplify things… though it worked fine. But the video I embedded is still here using the basic wordpress method of just pasting the youtube long url into the html.

If you get the plugin, the one thing that I got hung up on was not having the “TP” video button on my wordpress post toolbar. You have to go to settings and subscribe to the authors email to truly activate the plugin. I thought it was odd, because I already subscribed in order to get the plugin. I have no problem subscribing again. It is really just good marketing by the author. Besides, I can un-subscribe any time. But I’ll show you how to do it HERE.

By far the most important tool I use is Aweber. In fact, it is probably the reason you are reading this right now. I use it to build my list and to stay in contact with those that sign up. I make sure I give content away that is way more valuable than any amount they might spend on my website. I can do this because once the content is created, it really doesn’t cost me much to distribute.

I also use a couple other tools to promote my content including Twitter and Facebook.

Today’s lesson is about promoting content that you create. A few simple keystrokes will introduce your work to others. Don’t get me wrong… social media is not only for self promoting. If you use it only for this, you will discredit your name to the point where no one follows your content anymore. You want to use social media to interact in your niche and friendship circle. But introducing your excellent content that was created for their benefit is an important part of that interaction.

Get Aweber.

Watch the video on YouTube.

*Important Tip*
If you are making a new YouTube account, it is probably best to make your user name the same as your domain name (“seowebmeeting” for seowebmeeting.com) or something with your keywords in it.

In this free wordpress tutorial, I demonstrate adding a video to your wordpress blog. That is, I cover the entire process from start to finish including:

• Creating a Video
• Uploading a Video to YouTube
• Embedding the Video on your WordPress Blog

I did a very low budget production to make it obvious that anyone can do this. I will even use the video created on my personal blog and promote it in the usual fashion… but I’m gonna save that for a future lesson!

To visit my blog page where my new video is displayed, you know… the other video that the kid recoreded, go to http://drhaley.com/?p=81

As always, let me know what you think in the comments below.

Today we dig deeper into the SEO competition module of Market Samurai to dig up potential backlins. When other sites link to yours, it is an indication to the search engines that your site is one of authority. But everyone knows that initially backlinks don’t come automatically unless you really have something phenomenal that everyone wants to blog about. So it is usually up to the site promoter to be engaged in the process of building backlinks… by being active in the relative market place. This might mean blogging, submitting site information to directories, writing articles and press releases, guest blogging, commenting on other relative blogs, participating in forums, submitting RSS feeds, tweeting, posting to facebook, exchanging links with friends and business associates and the like… and the list goes on. Sometimes it is difficult to find quality sources to get links from. This video discusses finding potential backlinks by looking at the competitions backlinks. Often times you can get links from the same sources they did. But as you’ll learn in this video lesson, you can choose to spend your time chasing the quality backlinks by looking at their pagerank.

Watch the video directly on YouTube.

Recommended Resources: Market Samurai

Please add your questions and comments below. And if you are finding these free online wordpress tutorials to be helpful, please share them with a friend.

This bonus video is about analyzing and evaluating the “Top Ten” in your market. I want you to know your competition so you can figure out what you need to do to take them out. I will be using the Market Samurai program to help me do this.

You can watch the free wordpress tutorial video right on YouTube by clicking HERE.

Recommended Resources: Market Samurai

In the video we looked at:

• DA – Domain Age
• PR – Page Rank
• IC – Index Count
• BLP – The number of backlinks to the page
• BLD – The number of backlinks to the domain
• BLEG – How many backlinks are from .edu’s or .gov’s
• DMZ – Is it listed in the DMOZ directory? (DMOZ.org)
• YAH – Is it listed in the Yahoo Directory (costs $300/yr.)
• Title – Is the key word (phrase) in the page title?
• URL – Is the key word (phrase) in the URL?
• Desc – Is the key word (phrase) in the description meta tags?
• Head – Is the key word (phrase) in a header tag?
• CA – How many days since Google cached the page?

Google alerts has many uses. I’ve used it to monitor the web concerning my name and company. I’ve also used it to keep an eye on the competition. My Google Alerts subscriptions can keep me well informed and help me maintain my market leadership position in the niche’s in which I am engaged. I can do all of these things and be engaged in the web 2.0 world in which we live in with the help of Google Alerts. In this video, you will see how I use Google Alerts to do these things AND at the same time create more backlinks to my website. Doing this increases the respect that Google has for my website and also creates direct traffic when people click the links that I create using this technique.

To see the video directly on YouTube, Click Here.

As always, don’t forget to add to the conversation.

I recently read a document by Dan Raine outlining the plugins he uses and the reasons which might change the way I do things a little bit. They include:

pubsubhubbub - to increase indexing speed.

SEO Ultimate – might be quite the update to the seo pack I currently use and even replaces pretty link as well as adds some awesome keyword auto-interlinking features.

WP No Category Base

Google XML Sitemaps with Multisite Support

W3 Total Cache

WordPress Silo Plugin

RSS Bomber - I suspect this is the “affiliate” link he was going after in his pdf. When copying the pdf link, it gave me the actual text instead of the url it was pointed to… so if you click this link in my post and buy the plugin, nobody gets the affiliate commission. He probably should have done it in HTML so I could have copied the actual link from him!

Akismet - to get a free API key, click here.

Ultimate Google Analytics

WP-DB-Backup

ThemeFuse Maintenance Mode

WPtouch

Facebook Comments for WordPress

Topsy Retweet Button

For Dan Raines write-up on these important plugins, click here.

In this lesson, we discuss the Anatomy of a Web Page. That is, we will cover the basics when it comes to writing a web page. We discuss the title, description, keywords and keyword research, and the content including headers and sub-headers.

Choosing the right keywords and writing content properly is a major key to getting good rankings and internet traffic. Content is written first for the reader… but also for the search engine aka robot aka spider.

To see this video on YouTube, Click Here.

And, to get the Recommended Resources used on this WordPress video tutorial: Click Here

This is one of the most important of the free wordpress tutorials. It is about email marketing. Chances are an email brought you to this web page. I used to do it the old way. I would collect email addresses on clip boards and raffle slips and use my regular email account to stay in touch with clients and prospects. I even grew a sizeable database. But one day a friend of mine in the nutrition business called me with a problem. A loser Chiropractor in Georgia was suing him for sending an email that he didn’t subscribe to. It cost my friend a few thousand dollars to clear up. So I realized that it was time to start using Aweber with their double opt-in email system and their proper unsubscribe links. I offered my database of over 1200 email addresses the option to opt in. But only about 75 of them did – so I was starting from scratch. I wished I had done it right from the beginning

But a neat thing happened when I switched to Aweber; I used their subscribe forms on my websites and started to build a database of subscribers on auto-pilot. I offered something for free – like a downloadable report or a coupon for their first chiropractic visit, and people subscribed for the free gift… which usually ended up bringing me business anyway. In fact, if you found this page from an email, you probably subscribed to my free online tutorials. And by now, I probably recommended a resource or two that you found to be a good value. You may have already purchased or are considering purchasing something I recommended. That is how good business works: you provide the solution to a need they have. But you might start by providing something for free to gain their trust and prove the value of your products. The free product is like the taste test or test drive. Some things you don’t just buy until you tried the specific product or at least something else from the seller.

Just like GoDaddy, you will also find great customer support at Aweber. I’ll give you a quick demonstration in this video of one way I use it. If you are pretty good with computers, you can pretty much figure everything out. But if you need help, they are easy to get on the phone to help you with your project.

To see the video right on YouTube, Click Here.

Oh, one more thing… did I mention that Aweber has a WordPress plug-in to make adding a webform to your wordpress website real easy? Go ahead… check it out.