Episode 94: Increase Your Google Rankings, Traffic and Sales with SEO

ʿDo your link building correctly by being clever and creative. Create really amazing and compelling content.ʾ -Chloe Spencer Click To Tweet

Building your online presence is critical for every business in today’s world. In order to scale, you don’t just need a high-quality website–you need a powerful SEO and online marketing strategy. Today, we are going to discuss how to scale your business online with SEO, along with killer tips, tools and techniques, with SEO prodigy and expert Chloe Spencer.

Chloe Spencer is the Marketing Manager & SEO Specialist for Live Out Loud. Chloe started her first company when she was 14 with a fan site that ranked at the top of Google and made her thousands of dollars a month. She started speaking professionally at 16, and has been running an SEO and online marketing agency since she was 19. She has been featured on MSNBC, ABC, 9News, Huffington Post and more.

You can find Chloe here:

Chloe Spencer
Chloe’s MSNBC Interview
Ask Loral

ʿBlack hat links might work for a little bit but sooner or later Google will find out, and it will come back to bite you.ʾ -Chloe Spencer Click To Tweet

Show Notes

[01:46] Chloe is an SEO expert. Today, we are going to talk about how Chloe got into SEO.
[02:16] Chloe’s dad is Stephan Spencer, one of the top SEO experts in the world. He was a great mentor, but he didn’t build her company for her.
[02:26] Her first site was a fan site for Neopets.com, a virtual pet site, that she monetized with Google AdSense ads. It ranked at the top of Google and she received tens-of-thousands of daily pageviews.
[03:08] When she was 16, she started speaking professionally, and she started doing SEO for clients at 19. She is also a brilliant SEO coach.
[03:59] How high quality websites and podcasts should utilize SEO. Components that contribute to really great SEO.
[04:14] Search Engine Optimization has two pillars; on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
[04:27] On-page includes content, keywords, technical SEO, page speed, etc. Off-page is about link building and building authority. Content quality has to be compelling, but off-page SEO is almost more important, because Google is concerned with trustworthiness determined by who is linking to you.
[05:24] You need high-quality sites linking to you in order to have the ability to rank.
[05:38] Majestic is the top tool to check link authority. Look at the Trust Flow metric. Aim for a 20 or 30 at the very least.
[06:55] You build Trust Flow by building up your links. Be careful that you don’t hurt your SEO with link building.
[07:31] Spammy links are going to be really detrimental to your SEO and your rankings because they lower your link authority.
[07:37] Spammy links can actually get you a manual penalty from Google.
[08:03] Black hat links might work for a little bit but sooner or later Google finds out and it will come back to bite you.
[08:10] Do your link building correctly by being clever and creative. Create really amazing and compelling content.
[08:22] Don’t just post your blog content on your little corner of the Internet. Push it out to the world and get eyeballs on it. Work with influencers, advertising, and SEO your articles.
[09:21] Black hat link building is going against Google’s guidelines and doing things like mass article generation and low-quality link schemes. Things like; submitting to spammy link directories and link farms, mass blogpost comments, and mass low-quality blog posts.
[10:10] The worst is comment spamming blogs. Often, these are no-follow and don’t pass any link juice anyway.
[11:07] Shady link schemes will get you penalized. The difference between black hat and white hat is really just following Google’s guidelines.
[11:18] White hat focuses on creating awesome user content.
[13:07] Ask your potential SEO firm if link quality or link quantity is the most important. High quality links are the most important; quality over quantity.
[13:53] The Yoast SEO plugin is good for optimizing title tags and meta descriptions, but don’t worry about the whole red light/green light aspect that it gives you. Your title tags are the most important spot for your keywords, and usually shows up as the title of your listing in the search results.
[15:49] Focusing on keyword density could get you close to keyword stuffing. It’s about where your keywords are. Title tags, headings, subheadings, once or twice in the body copy.
[16:20] SEO and social media. SEO is critical to rank in Google. While social media marketing is still necessary, don’t neglect SEO. SEO is not dead.
[18:41] Using social media to drive traffic to your website can help with SEO. Google does look at how much traffic you are getting.
[19:55] Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These are necessary for every website.
[20:33] Moz Keyword Explorer.
[21:22] One of the biggest mistakes people make is not using keyword research tools. Moz is fantastic.
[21:41] Rank Ranger is great for tracking rankings. It’s important to track your mobile rankings as well as your desktop rankings. It’s also important to make sure that your site is mobile friendly.
[22:13] Link Research Tools is awesome for looking at your link profile and toxcitiy.
[22:35] Use Link Research Tools to run a Link Detox report, and then disavow any spammy links.
[22:40] Pitchbox is really great for reaching out to bloggers and influencers.
[23:26] The number one thing that everyone needs to know about SEO is that it takes time, and is an ongoing necessity.

ʿSpammy links are only going to be detrimental to your SEO and your rankings because they lower your link authority.ʾ -Chloe Spencer Click To Tweet

Links and Resources:

[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”#” ]

Cold calling vs. Inbound marketing

The Internet has brought with it too many advantages to count, especially if you’re a business.

Thanks to the digital age, you can now reach all kinds of customers all over the world. However, this doesn’t mean every company in the world is excited about giving up the standard ways they’ve become accustomed to using to accomplish things. If, like so many, you’ve had a tough time letting go of cold calling tactics, here are some reasons to finally move on to inbound marketing.

For one thing, inbound marketing simply costs less. Studies have shown that in order to get the exact same result, you only have to spend 60% as much on inbound marketing as you do on cold calling. In this economy, that should be enough to get you thinking about making the switch.

Another huge benefit is that it allows your salespeople to do what they’re best at: selling.

Whether this means over the phone or in some digital way, the result is still the same – namely, more sales. The problem with cold calling is you’re taking shots in the dark. Even the world’s best salespeople will come up empty handed the majority of the time when they’re essentially dialing random numbers and hoping for a warm reception.

One of the reasons inbound marketing makes life easier on your sales people is because customers do so much of the heavy lifting for them. Inbound marketing makes it possible for customers to research the products or services beforehand and get acquainted with them well before they ever speak with a salesperson. When they do, that time can be spent answering individual questions or otherwise putting the finishing touches on a successful sale.

Perhaps best of all, inbound marketing is working while you’re fast asleep and your salespeople are away. As it’s a predominantly digital option, you can rest assured that potential customers can access it at any hour, when it’s most convenient for them. So there’s never any real downtime where your marketing is concerned.

Lastly, inbound marketing doesn’t give your company a bad name. It’s not intrusive and annoying like most cold calls are. Considering how many calls an employee could make in a given day, it would be pretty easy for just one bad apple to give your company a worse reputation. Multiply this by however many cold callers you’ve hired, then over the course of a year and your choice should be a simple one. Inbound marketing doesn’t have a bad stigma attached to it for good reason.

So if you’ve been resistant to leaving cold calling in the past, hopefully this will be enough to convince you. Inbound marketing is by far a superior option, no matter how you look at it.

Internet Marketing Tips for Today

Everyone who is running a business today – from small businesses with just one lonely entrepreneur to large businesses – knows that marketing on the web is going to be vital for success. It’s important to know some of the different ways that you can market and to find the methods that are going to work the best for you. Put your efforts into the areas that are going to give you the most return on your investment.

Buying Advertisements

Since the dawn of the Internet, it’s been possible to buy advertisements. After all, you didn’t think all that space was going to be able to avoid the clutches of marketers, did you? Since you have a business, it’s a good thing that there is so much space out there. Buying ads online can still be an effective way of Internet marketing, but you have to be very careful about how you buy your ads. You want to make sure that you have focused and targeted ads. Otherwise, they are not going to be very effective at all.

Blogging for Exposure

Blogs are a great option, too, and everyone should have a blog site. However, you have to make sure that you write effective posts that do more than merely sell and market. You want to entice people to come to your site and to purchase things, and that means that you need to have posts that are actually going to be useful for people.

Social Networking for Sales

If you are online, chances are that you participate in at least one social network. Selling and marketing on the social networks is something of an art form. You have to provide good quality content and helpful posts, and you cannot spend all of your time talking about your products or services. The ratio for marketing to social posts should be about one marketing post for every ten total posts. Even that might be too much for some followers.

Internet marketing is one of those areas that seem to change with quite a bit of regularity. From the different technologies to different algorithms on the search engines, keeping up with the changes is going to be important. If it gets to the point that you are just unable to keep up with the Internet marketing for your business, you can always choose to outsource and hire another company to handle your marketing for you.

What do you think about the changes that are happening with online marketing? Is your business able to adapt and keep up with all of those changes, or do you find it a chore?

Bring your entrepreneurial skills to the next level…attend a free event!
Put more cash in your pocket using your skills and hobbies
Act, Think, and Make Money the Way the Wealthy Do

Online Fast Cash…It’s Real and It’s Spectacular!

As a general rule, those who typically become successful entrepreneurs are the people who come up with unique solutions to problems or challenges. This rule has continued to be proven true, again and again, in the technology space, especially as the world becomes more accustomed to the “here and now” provided by the increasing ease and portability of devices.

Along with the innovation model, technology has enabled the “fast cash” model to start popping up in completely new ways. As a result, a completely new wave of start-ups have appeared that allow all of us to make money on the side with our spare cash, our extra space, or our vehicles when we’re not using them.

Just as in the Three Days to Cash Workshop, new “micro-economies” are forming around using the resources we already have to bump up the bank account.

What types of marketplaces already exist? Take a look at these sites:

AirBNB has recently received quite a bit of publicity due to an angel investment by the King of Twitter, Ashton Kutcher, but the service flourishes because it’s simply a great idea. The service allows you to rent out your spare bedroom (or your entire house) by the night to travelers at the rate you set. For the most part, visitors are searching because the cost is far less than your average hotel room and allows for more of a “close to home” feel. Travelers are able to search and book a room from the web or via a mobile app.

Mobile car rental and sharing has also become a huge market, particularly for those living in urban areas. The most known service in the space is Zipcar, which allows you to rent out your vehicle in over 50 cities in the U.S. or the U.K. If you’re not in an urban area, Getaround allows you to get in on the action regardless of your location. In addition, Getaround recently took first place at Techcrunch Disrupt, a popular start-up and tech industry conference.

If you’re not looking to gain from your extra space or stuff, perhaps you’d just prefer to make a small loan to an up-and-coming business. If so, sites like Prosper or Lending Club may be your cup of tea. These services allow anyone to apply for a loan with some details and a credit check. Lenders are then able to determine whether a particular project or loan is worth the risk, or simply invest in a “portfolio” that allows diversity across various projects that are pre-screened by the services. The majority of these loans tend to be for small business capital, but they can be used for virtually anything that qualifies.

These are just a few examples of the hundreds of new sites and start-ups that can make you some fast cash online. What examples have you found? Do you have a success story from any of these services?

Share your experiences with us below!

5 Easy Steps to Effective Online Marketing

Do you think effective online marketing is difficult to learn? It doesn’t have to be. In fact, if you plan your learning, you can master it in a very short time.

Get started with these five easy steps:

Step 1: Choose Your Path

There are many systems and methods to use for effective online marketing. Some people focus on SEO, others on Joint Ventures and/or social networking, and still others focus on paid marketing. It doesn’t matter what you start with first. What’s most important is that you pick one system, method or tool to learn first and master it.

If you have a natural inclination towards one method, or if you already know one method pretty well, then use that method to start. Study a variety of different methods and decide on one that you want to learn first.

Step 2: Design a Four-Week Plan

Start with a four-week plan to learn about and execute your chosen system. Include books to read and people to talk to. If you know others who have succeeded in using the system, contact them. Most people are willing to help. If they can walk you through it, that can be a big plus.

Make your plan aggressive enough to inspire you to action without being so ambitious that it would intimidate you or result in procrastination.

Your plan needs to be fast enough that you’ll know whether or not it’s working in four weeks. It would be best to invest at least two hours per day in the project, five days a week.

Step 3: Execute, Execute, Execute!

Take action! That means actually taking steps that have a fair chance of resulting in more sales (i.e. making more money).
Actions include things like setting up campaigns, building links, writing (or outsourcing) articles, etc. Action is NOT planning, learning or thinking about strategies.

As a general rule of thumb, the more action you take, the more money you’ll generate. Action is what separates the people who don’t make money online from those who do. Keep that in mind!

Step 4: Track Results, Adjust and Improve

By week 3 or 4, you should have enough data to analyze the effectiveness of your marketing.

If you’re using paid advertising, you should be looking at your ROI (return on investment) and cash flow to figure out whether it’s worth continuing, making adjustments, or moving on to another medium or strategy.

If you’re implementing SEO (search engine optimization), look at your rankings and backlinks to see how you’re doing. Don’t aim for a top five position in the search results right away; if your site moved from page 20 to page 2 or 3, that’s a success!

Step 5: Duplicate What Worked

Once you know what’s effective, repeat it. Drop what didn’t work.
Multiply your success and keep learning about one method or technique until you get really good at it. Then, expand into other areas and different ways of making money and generating traffic.

Trying to master “online marketing” as a whole can seem like a daunting task. But when you approach it method by method, small step by small step, you’ll find it’s not that difficult after all.

Microsoft Acquires Skype, What The…?

Unexpected news emerges from Microsoft, as they announce that they have acquired popular instant messenger and video conferencing service, Skype, for a reported $8.5 billion dollars.

Skype is a technology that we use heavily in the Live Out Loud world for the production of our web-based video shows and is largely considered the leader in Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology. After parting from their previous (and bizarre) former owner, Ebay, Skype has continued to innovate in the space with extremely affordable internet calls to land lines, mobile phones as well as group video conference calling.

Speculation (and confusion) are gripping techies and online media companies worldwide as to what this blindsided play by the traditionally corporate powerhouse might mean for Skype’s future:

Microsoft’s part-ownership and partnership with Facebook will allow the integration of Skype’s superior technology onto the Facebook platform. This outcome keeps the technology from the largest rival of both companies, Google, who was also a suitor for the company.
Microsoft leverages this technology in the corporate space (their bread and butter) to rival technologies like WebEx, GoToMeeting, or other web-based conferencing solutions.
Microsoft heavily leverages the technology on their Windows Phone 7 platform to compete more effectively in that space.

Many in our international audience may also see a boost from the integration of this type of technology into Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, which is still among the most popular IM clients in the world with 330 million users reported as of June 2009.

Do you use the Skype service or any type of Voice Over Internet Protocol service (such as Vonage or MagicJack)? Why did you choose to switch to that particular service – accessibility, price, or features?

Share your opinions below and join in the conversation!

Some recommended reading on the business side of this topic:

Wall Street Journal Article – Includes a full history of Skype’s acquisitions and business.
Mashable Article
Huffington Post Article
Techcrunch Article
GigaOm Article

Did the Social Networks Just Lock Down the Feed?

Over the weekend, a number of blogs and news sources reported that both Twitter and Facebook both quietly eliminated some of the RSS (Real Simple Syndication). Whether this actually happened or not, it certainly highlights the need to reexamine the use of social networks within your overall business strategy and how that role plays out within your business.

So let’s start with the basics. First, let’s profile the players in the game:

Real Simple Syndication (otherwise known as RSS) is a technology that allows for exactly what it says – the syndication and distribution of content from one source to many sources. The most common use of RSS is bringing in “feeds” from sites (i.e. their new updates) and aggregating them within one central source. The most commonly known RSS reader is Google Reader, which allows you to select and import feeds from any site that has the technology.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, used by hundreds of millions of people. However, they regularly draw criticism for creating a data “silo” very similar to America Online (AOL) in the mid 90s. Put simply, most of the data that goes into Facebook is then locked within Facebook’s proprietary system. Facebook tightly controls the flow of that data and has far more avenues for data to come in (like Facebook Connect) than it does for data to go out. By closing off RSS, this would further solidify their desire to control the data, information, and capitalize on it internally.

Twitter is the scrappy, young prize fighter of social networks, but it has recently undergone a change in business culture with the purpose of actually creating some value in the business (similar to Facebook). This has created large ripples within their developer community, as Twitter has already started to shut down outside applications that do not “add” enough features to the core service.

So, now that the players are introduced, it’s time to look at the bigger game. Who actually owns and controls the data that goes into your social networking sites?

As demonstrated pretty clearly, the social networks actively base their business models on the information provided to them by their users. Facebook advertising, in particular, is completely hedged on this bet.

Should your reaction to this article be paranoia or fear of what these networks might do next?

As a participant in the Live Out Loud Community, the answer should be a resounding “no.” In fact, you’ll notice we profiled why you should participate on Twitter only a few days ago.

The core lesson of all of this returns to your internal business systems. In the end, if you do not have the solid foundation of necessary systems to not just operate but OWN your process, you are essentially playing at the mercy of larger forces.

In all of our courses, we highlight the importance of understanding your business process prior to making technology selections. This especially holds true when engaging in any external networks whether they be the social spaces, YouTube, or anything else.

Furthermore, if you’ve been utilizing RSS to publish your social data elsewhere, how big of an impact could this change have on your business?

As William Shakespeare (never) said, “Tis better to control your data flow than never to have created flow at all.”

It still breaks down to the question of: What do you want to accomplish and what tools do you have in your arsenal to really make it sizzle? Furthermore, how much control do you need over that system to keep it as robust as possible?

As always, we’ll be keeping our eyes out for the latest on this going forward…

Google’s World Wide War… on Spam

Spam Attack!

Over the past few weeks, our humble friends at Google have been at it again with tweaks to the secret code that rules our search world.

With the past two updates to the algorithm, the last known as “Panda,” Google has clearly demonstrated that they are no longer taking their deteriorating search results lightly. Amidst rising complaints of poor search quality, junk content, and Search Engine Optimization strategists (SEO) dominating any statistically relevant terms, some of the long-time safe havens are also feeling the heat.

The biggest one we’ve heard about in our world is Ezine Articles, which has quickly had to adapt to the change in conditions. Despite adding some quality control measures, many established authors who have used this site as a hub to publish expert content have been feeling the heat.

In the Live Out Loud community alone, I’ve met with at least 5 individual authors and experts who have seen their traffic almost completely disappear due to the changes.

So, how do we combat Google’s epic smack down?

1. Be Legit.

MC Hammer - Internet Expert*

As renowned internet and cultural expert, M.C. Hammer (formerly just “Hammer,” now once again M.C.) once said, let’s be “Too Legit To Quit.” This means that your content should actually BE content, not just fodder for the SEO gods. This means that you have to go back to being creative about your keyword selections and embed them within content that the search engines won’t classify as “empty.”

2. Follow the Guidelines of Ezine Articles (or your hub) itself.

Ezine Articles just posted a blog in the past few days that discusses their new content filters and how to navigate through them without burning the bridges to Google. In short, it points you back to the first point listed here.

3. Organic SEO is the most reliable SEO

Playing chicken with Google by putting on your “black hat” (flying under the radar) can be a dangerous game if you don’t know how to play it well. This certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t short term strategies that can be in your playbook, but the trusted and true advice is to stay on the right path.

In the end, you’ll find that quality content developed consistently with an actual marketing strategy is still going to be the tried and true formula for Internet Marketing Success.

*MC Hammer Photo used under
Creative Commons from
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mmemarilyn/474544624/

You can find Chloe here:

Show Notes

Links and Resources:

So let’s start with the basics. First, let’s profile the players in the game:

Should your reaction to this article be paranoia or fear of what these networks might do next?

What's the #1 Obstacle Holding You Back from Ultimate Wealth?