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Hi Bob,

Well I have to tell you that it would not be fair to all the good folks who have joined our coaching program over at Live Blueprints if I started giving out free coaching to all that ask. However, here’s a 5 minute head start for you:

Look at your Title and Meta Tags – they are poorly constructed

Url: http://www.workoutsab.com/

Title: Ab Workout

Meta keywords: workout body, workouts ab, lose belly fat, abs exercise, ab exercises, ab crunch, abdominal fitness, ab workout, exercises ab, workout abs, diet abs, workout lower abs, tone abs

Meta description: The fastest and easiest way to get amazing and perfect abs ever invented!

This is what I copied from your site. Now the title is poor, the keywords are stuffed and your description is ultra light. In fact it doesn’t even include the work ‘workout’ that you have in the sparse title tag.

At least change the title tag so something that could get you somewhere:

Elite Ab Workout System – Perfect Abs in 12 Weeks

Now that is better and it’s more likely to get a click through from a human when you do get good SERP listings.

Nancy

My onpage is pretty good. For my off page, I need high quality ranked backlinks. I’ve noticed article,directory,and reciprocal linking are not effective. Article and directory mostly give page rank 0 backlinks since they are deep in their archives of many other links. So please tell me how and where I should get high ranked backlinks.

Thanks

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Hi Bob,

You sent in a comment just yesterday (8/31). Comments must be approved and since I actually read and respond to comments, I don’t always respond within 24 hours – especially during a holiday weekend.

As for your situation, you are the recipient of the usual poor information out there. Sure page rank is nice but it’s not what it used to be. Even Google itself has publicly admitted this. Freshness is the big new edge in the Google ranking game. Getting one way links from blogs is highly desired but don’t go around and leave spa*my comments on other people’s blogs – start your own. Sure it’s more work but it will get you further if you do it right and you control the ‘real estate’ instead of just hoping a link on someone else’s property (site) sticks.

Also articles can still work but you need to do it right. I’ll be releasing a new version of my vNews shortly and I’ll tackle this issue with the next issue. If you are not signed up for that yet, go visit http://www.liveblueprints.com (our main site) and sign up there.

Nancy

Like you, I’m speaking at the System Seminar this weekend. And I thought I’d say hi. I think we’re speaking at the same time on the same day–so I’d probably miss your event–but all the same, I thought I’d say hello.

See you in Chicago
Sean
http://www.psychotactics.com
(I think you’ll like the site–take a look)

Great info and tips! You say forget the longtail, low traffic keywords and focus on the high traffic ones.

My question is, what constitutes a high traffic keyword in your world? What are the min/max ranges on number of daily searches and competing sites.

The “baseball gloves” phrase has about 18,000 competing sites and an estimated 134 searches (from Wordtracker) per day. This is vastly different then say a keyword with 635 daily searches and 78,000 competitors.

I look forward to your reply with the understanding one may not come simply because of time constraints.

Reply to Mark from Nancy:

Hi Mark,

Good question. I would like to point out two important considerations. First (and this is very important) Wordtracker currently only tracks queries on a 90 day historical trend. For seasonal terms you can get grossly misled. I was, in fact, lucky enough to have lunch with Mike Mindel of Wordtracker just yesterday (Saturday) as we were both in San Diego to hang out at Frank Kern’s Mass Control workshop. Anyway this very subject came up between us and he fully agrees with me. They are working on a longer term cut of data (maybe as long as 360 days). But for now they have a cool interface with Gtrends that does something I’ve been doing on the side myself for quite some time. You see they now go in and compare the Gtrends rate with ‘known’ search volume on selected terms they’ve been gathering for some time now. If you go to http://www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/ and type in your query you’ll see a little graph icon to the right of the returns under a column labeled ‘G’. Click on that and you get what I believe is much better data. For softball gloves, that shows about 250 visitors a day for an average for the year. That’s closer to reality on that term although, of course, the reality is ups and downs due to seasonal factors.

The second issue is that I tell my Live Blueprints members to go after 2 or 3 terms. With PrimeTimeSportingGoods.com we went after 4 terms – softball gloves was just the first we scored on. Today that site is on page 1 Google for 3 of the 4. Softball Gloves, Softball Bats and BaseBall Gloves. And the fourth term, Baseball Bats is above the fold on page 2. So that’s what I mean about going after competitive terms. Pick a couple (4 may be a bit too aggressive for most but 2 – 3 is a good target). I like to see at least 2 terms with potential in the 450+ range.

Make sense?

Nancy

P.S., I have some good videos you should watch (especially the one with Mr. Garfinkel over on http://www.liveblueprints.com/seotalk/ if you want to know more about how I beat the Google Sandbox.

I really need your help to start my business. I have tried and failed many times using all the so called gurus. You are for real and I need to get into your program. When are the doors opening.

Thanks
Rich
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Reply from Nancy:

Hi Rich,

Were you over at http://www.liveblueprints.com/seotalk leaving a comment over there the other day? I thought I remembered your name. Anyway, we are getting close – real close to opening. If you haven’t yet, the best place to sign up is on our home page http://www.liveblueprints.com for the ‘Keep me in the loop’ list because that’s the one that will get early notification.

And thanks for the comments – I really appreciate them. We have some case studies we’ll be releasing shortly and some of them are from folks just like you who floundered for awhile and then signed up for our initial launch last September and now they are found on Google, making money and happily building their empires. What I teach is a repeatable process for anyone.

Nancy

As I was going over the various plans and seminars you offer, a thought occured to me.

Is the cost of your program SEO Blueprint tax deductable?

I appreciate all you are doing and I hope to get in on everything you are providing soon.

Take care,

Ken

Nancy’s Response to Ken:

As a general rule, training or education expenses that are incurred to further your business are deductible. If you have established a business, whether it’s as simple as a sole proprietorship or more complex like an LLC, S-corporation or C-corporation then you can deduct training for that which could include our training program. While I’m not a tax expert I do just want to point out that the deduction would be for the year in which the cost and training were incurred. So for training expenditures you make now, that would be a deduction on 2008 tax return.

Nancy

I am in the process of building my new site. My question is about setting up the bank account.

Is it better to use the name of the website for the bank accounts or should I create a different name that I might be able to put more websites under?

I appreciate your patients and time.

Thanks,

Ken

Reply to Ken from Nancy

Hi Ken,

Good to hear from you again. As far as your bank question it depends on the type of websites you’ll be setting up. If you are going to have multiple ecommerce websites, we find it far easier to keep the bank accounts different websites. It’s so much easier to reconcile website reported sales to the deposits made by your processor.

Now if you have a lot of websites this may not be practical. We are currently balancing about a half dozen accounts. The most important thing if you think you may end up with multiple accounts is to be assured that the bank has a good online banking system whereby you can see all your accounts from a central page. Sort of like a dashboard. When I log into my bank’s system all my accounts come up with balances. If I want to transfer from one to another it’s really easy (and no charge) and immediate. So that’s what you want to ask about – the online banking system and any hidden fees in transferring funds from one account to another within their system.

You didn’t ask about this but we use a local bank. I’m big on that because they are far more likely to take an interest in you as a person. When we first started we (hubby Bob and I) both stopped in to fill out the forms and talk to them about what we were doing. I regularly go into the bank just to deposit a check – not because I need to – it’s just an excuse to talk to the employees. Trust me this can really pay off. One day about six months ago I got a call from the bank manager who said she was reviewing our accounts and had some recommendations to increase the interest we were earning on our accounts. She had some great ideas and we implemented them and I can safely say we probably have another $1,000 to our name just in additional interest she helped us earn.

I’m pretty sure I’d never have gotten a call from Bank of America.

Make sense?

Nancy

Jackie