Imagine 30 days from now having

• Your website or blog at the top of Google for your keywords

• Thousands of one-way links leading back to your website

• 30 – 400 word articles indexed by Google on your website or blog
  

• 30 problem/solution based articles syndicated on thousands of websites

• A complete understanding of how to use Google to generate traffic to your website.

Day One: Keyword Research

We’re going to give you seven day access to a keyword tool that will help you find the words and phrases your customer use to find you on the Internet. Once you have these words you’ll be able to use them to:

• Spy on your competition
• Write articles that will attract your customers naturally
• Write keyword rich anchor text in your author description box

More importantly, you will be able to use these keywords and keyword phrases to rank high in the search engines. We’ll explain how that works on day three.

Day Two: Article Title Day

On day two, you’ll learn how to use your keywords to write 30 compelling article titles that your target market can’t wait to read. We’re also going to show you how to write your article titles in such a way that your customers can find them easily through the search engines.

Day Three: Author Block

This is the most valuable and overlooked aspect of article marketing. On day three we’re going to show you how to use your keywords and the author block to:

• Position yourself as the expert in your field.
• Drive readers and potential customers back to your website.
• Place your website at the top of the search engines for your keywords.

By the end of day three, you will have five compelling and keyword rich, search engine optimized HTLM resource blocks ready to attach to each article you write.

Day Four: Article Submission Sign-up Day

On day four you’re going to sign-up with the major article marketing submission sites and learn how to use their system to get your articles syndicated on thousands of sites. You’ll learn how to create an SEO friendly user name and 24 other things to make your article writing and submission a snap.

Day Five: Article Writing Day

On day five you’re going to write and submit the first of your 30 articles to the article submission sites. You’re going to do this with the knowledge that every article you write is written with the following goals in mind.

• Your article will be optimized for your target market.
• Your article will be optimized for the search engines.
• Your article will position you as the expert in your field.
• Your article will get your website or blog to the top of the search engines.
• Your article will to drive traffic to your website or blog.

Day six through day 35: Article Writing

For the next 30 days you will be expected to write a compelling 400+ word article each day. By the end of the class you will have written a minimum of 12,000 words of valuable content. You’ll also have all 30 articles published on the Internet with potentially thousands of links leading back to your website or blog.

After your articles are written, you will be able to re-purpose them in the form of:

• Audio Podcasts
• Video Podcasts
• An auto-responder program
• Blog posts on your blog
• An e-book
• An audio CD

You could have all of this 30 days from now if you decide to run with us.

Due to scheduling conflicts, and to allow as many people to attend as possible, we’re going to have two starting dates.

Monday, June 29 at 6:00 PM HST

Monday, July 6 at 3:00 PM HST

You don’t want to put this off.

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In a perfect world, your website would look the same on every computer. Unfortunately, this is not the case.  Here are a few examples of what the IMAHawaii.com homepage looks like on other systems.

Click on the icon to make it bigger.

Whoa! Those look way different!

Notice how the IMAHawaii.com homepage looks different on different systems … and we know what we’re doing!

Most people have no idea what their website looks like on their visitors computer. You may discover that your site not only looks bad, but it doesn’t function properly.

Browser/operating system combinations that matter most.

We acquired these numbers from a sampling of 500,000 page views from our websites that we pulled from our Google Analytics account. This is the criteria we use to prioritize the testing for IMAHawaii.com and all of our other websites, consider using the same criteria when testing your website.

1. Internet Explorer / Windows: 44.91%
2. Firefox / Windows: 35.75%
3. Firefox / Macintosh: 7.84%
4. Safari / Macintosh: 3.94%
5. Chrome / Windows: 2.37%
6. Firefox / Linux: 1.45%
7. Opera / Windows: 1.36%
8. Mozilla / Linux: 0.54%
9. Safari / Windows: 0.38%
10. Mozilla / Windows: 0.22%

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Test Your Website Here

1. Go to Browsershots.org
2. Enter your website address and view what your site looks like in as many as 80 different browsers!  The screenshots above are from a test we ran at Browsershots.org
3. If your website doesn’t look the way you think it should, it might warrant a call to your web developer.

What Do I See

So, what does your website look like on my computer? Check the results for Firefox 3.1 on Linux (Ubuntu 9.04) and you will see what I see.

Aloha, Josh Sommers
IMAHawaii.com President and Technical Advisor

P.S. Please comment below after running your test. I’m anxious to read what you discovered.

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Run your website through this amazing marketing tool. In less than 30 seconds you’ll discover what you’re doing right and where you can improve. Then, post your website and score in the comment section below along with any questions or comments you have.

RUN TEST

Highest IMA-Hawaii member scores

• Lahaina.com 97.9%
• RecognizedExpert.com 97.8%
• AMauiBlog.com 96%

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If it was not a 5 Star presentation, please email me instead, and let me know what we can do on future programs to improve the quality of the workshop.

Thank you again for your very nice comment.

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• Location of searcher
• Location of business
• Search query terms use
• Number of reviews
• Quality of reviews
• Frequency of reviews provided
• Propinquity of reviews
• Quality and quantity of information provided by restaurant

So, after you’ve given the search engines as much relevant information about your business as possible, you must rely on your customers to provide the rest … and the rest includes a high volume of quality reviews.

• The better the reviews, the more likely you’re business is going to show up at the top of the search engines.
• The more reviews, the more likely you’re business is going to show up at the top of the search engines.

It’s in your best interest to get as many five star reviews from your customers on as many of the different local search engines as possible. Some of those sites include:

• Google Maps
• Yahoo Local
• Citysearch
• Ask City
• MSN Live Local Search
• Yelp
• YellowPages.com
• Merchant Circle

Here’s what I suggest you do.

To start, it’s a good idea to survey your customers anyway. You can either do this in person, on the telephone on via email. If they like your service, great. Encourage them to tell their friends. If they had a problem with you service, make it right. You’re not going to stay in business very long if you have customers who are disappointed with your service.

The same holds true in the digital world. If customers give you great reviews on the Internet, they’re in essence telling their friends and the rest of the world to use your service.

Step 1

Send an email to your customers and ask them to critique your product or service and rate their experience from one to five.

They can either respond to your email address or better yet, to a testimonial page you have set up on your blog. Here is an example of what we do.

Hi Bob:

Will you please take a moment to write two to three sentences about the workshop you just attended in the comment section of our blog? The intent of your testimonial is to encourage others to attend future programs. Please post your comment at the bottom of this page.

http://www.imahawaii.com/coffee/blogging-java-gym

Thank you.

If they give you a score of anything less than a five, make it right immediately. If they give you a score of five, move onto step 2.

Step 2

Send your customer an email thanking them for making the time to give you their feedback. (Normally I would suggest you send them a personal note, but in this case it’s best to do it via email.) Then, provide the link and ask them to paste their comment in the review section of one of the local search engines.

Here’s an example of a follow-up note we send to the people who have rated our programs a five.

Hi Bob:

Thanks for taking the time to write a testimonial on our website. I’m glad you were happy with our service.

May I ask one more favor please? Will you please copy and paste your comment in the Google Business Review link below?

“The Internet Marketing Association of Hawaii is your one stop source for Internet Marketing information. If you want to get your Hawaii business to the top of the search engines, these guys know how to get you there quickly.”

Please CLICK HERE to paste your comment on Google.

Allowing others to see your comment on the Internet has a very positive impact on our business.

Aloha, Bob Sommers

P.S. To say thank you, I would like to give you a discount of 20% on your next workshop with us.

Step 3

Mix it up. It’s not natural for the search engines to see 20 reviews sent to the same review site. Send your customers to different review sites or provide a link to all of them and ask them to upload their comment to the review site of their choice.

If you want to learn more about local search, or if you want someone to do it for you, we can help. Please call either Bob or Josh Sommers at 808-891-0449 in Hawaii or contact us via our contact page.

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In order to generate a high volume of customers to your blog, you must understand three things. You must understand:

1. What Google wants; which is to help searchers (your potential customers) find answers to their questions as quickly as possible.
2. What your customer wants; which is an answer to their question as quickly as possible.
3. And how to give it to them; which you do by writing a blog post that answers their question.

So, if you want potential buyers to quickly find your blog or website, all you have to do is write a blog post that answers their question. It’s really that easy.

For example, I know that people who are interested in learning how to market their products and services want answers to these questions.

• How to get Your Blog Ranked High on Google
• How to Sell Your Services on the Radio
• How To Run A Successful Direct Mail Marketing Campaign
• How to Attract Local Customers with Local Search
• How to Earn Money Selling Digital Products

If you were to do a search on Google for any of those questions, you would quickly discover that Google decided that the best answer to each question is located RecognizedExpert.com. When you click on the link, you will be directed to the blog post on our site where you can find the answer to what you’re looking for.

It’s also a good idea to title your blog post in the form of a question, just as we did in the above examples.

Hawaii Example

If you sell activities on Maui for example, you would write blog posts that answer the questions visitors are asking on Google.

It’s important to understand that people on the mainland do not use the term, “on Maui,” they use the term, “in Maui.” You want to use the same words your customers are using when they type in their question on Google.

• What Can I Do In Maui?
• Fun Things To Do In Maui
• Things For Children To Do In Maui
• Fun Activities For Adults In Maui
• Best Dive Shops In Maui
• Where Can I Swim With Turtles In Maui

Getting organic traffic to your blog is as easy as offering the answers to the questions your customers are asking. And as I mentioned above, once you see customers coming to your blog to read your posts, why would you waste your time writing anything else?

In my next lesson, I will show you how to get your customers to create content on your blog that will generate traffic to your site and put money in your pocket.

If you enjoyed this post, will you please comment on it below?

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This is one of my favorite slide show programs from RockYou.com. They offer you the ability to create a slide show with and without music.

This is a slide show of a Local Search Java Gym we held in on Maui in March 2009. Considered adding a slide show to your website that has to do with your business. It’s fun and simple to do. More importantly it gives your customers a reason to visit and share your website with others.

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Animoto

This is a new service from Animoto that is a big hit with the kids. It’s much more like a photo video than a photo slide show. I also like the fact that you can set it so that the slide show and music don’t start on-load. The viewer has to click the start button first.

I also like the fact that when you click on the photo it does not automatically take you to Animoto’s website. The only way to get there is to click on their logo.

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FlipTrack – Free

Fathers Day at the Beach

FlipTrack has the most choices for your slide show. You can include over 100 songs, slide transitions, skins, backgrounds, captions, styles and more. But, like all the free slide show software you must put up with the accompanying ads. Other than Animoto, this is my favorite free software.

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Google Picasa – Free

This is the free slide show software from Google Picasa. It is very simple in that it only allows you to make a slide show similar to what you see here. The other slide show sites including Photobucket.com, FlipTrack.com offer many more options, but they also carry more advertising. I like Picasa for its simplicity and its subtle advertising
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PhotoBucket – Free

If you’re viewing this on FireFox or Safari, you can play the guitar by dragging your mouse over the guitar strings.

This is a very unique slide show offered by Photobucket. As with most of the software we suggest, it is free and therefore comes with ads surrounding the slide show. I would not suggest paying the $3/month or $25 year to have all of your slides appear without ads. PhotoBucket does not consider their logo an ad and it will appear on all of your slide shows. If you don’t mind paying extra to promote PhotoBucket on your slide show, this is what you can expect.
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SWF ‘N Slide Pro – $69

I love this software. It produces great flash slides without the advertising that accompanies all the free slide show software. You can purchase the software from Vertical Moon for either Windows or the Mac for $69.

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Free Website Software and Hosting

How would you like to build your own beautiful website and have it hosted on the Internet for free? Better yet, how would you like to have 5 free websites, and not have to use a lick of code to produce them. It’s really that easy.

We have multiple website that we use to promote our Maui Vacation Rental Property and another site we created, the Recognized Expert Guest site to help our guest prepare for their interview.

Free Weebly Video Training For IMA-Hawaii Members

We were so taken with this free service, that we created a set of 36 videos showing the Internet Marketing Association of Hawaii members how to use it to build your own website in minutes. You’re going to love it. Just click on the links below to get started. If you do nothing more, watch the first video to see what you can do with this amazing free service.

If you find the videos are too small, you can invest in the high resolution version (that we have to pay for when people use them) and get 30 day access for $19.95, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Click here for an Example of the high res video version.

Get started on your free Weebly websites now!

Please invite your friends to join the Internet Marketing Association of Hawaii.

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The big deal is this; if you’re trying to attract customers from the mainland and you’re building web pages and blog posts using the term “on Maui,” your mainland prospects are going to have a very hard time finding you in the search engines. If you use the term “in Maui,” you’re going to sound like an outsider to kamaaina, but you’re going to make it very, very easy for mainland visitors to find your website and blog.

What about the other islands?

What’s true for Maui is also true for Oahu, Hawaii, the Big Island, Kauai, Lanai and Molokai. If you’re trying to attract off island visitors to your website, don’t force them to use the term “on” when they’re going to use the word “in.” It pays to pay attention to the words and phrases your customers and potential customers use to find you.

In order to prove my point, I did a keyword search using Market Samurai for the keyword phrases

• real estate on Maui / 11 searches per day
• real estate in Maui / 33 searches per day

There are three times as many people using the term “in” then there are using the term “on.”

If you don’t know what people are searching for …

If you don’t know the words and phrases your prospects are using to find the products and services you’re selling, they will never find you. You need to know these keywords to:

• Select an effective domain name
• Title a web page
• Title a blog post
• Create content for your website or blog
• Create the text for your links
• Write the text for your ad campaign
• Select the keywords for your ad campaign
• and more

The really cool thing is that once you know the exact words and phrases people are using to find your website, you can create separate web pages, blog posts, articles, and ad campaigns for each group. For example.

Working example

I created a video training program to help people write and give a dynamite acceptance speech. After I did my keyword research I discovered that there were just as many people searching for the terms “thank you speech” and “award speech” as there were people searching for the term “acceptance speech.”

Knowing that, I was able to create three separate web pages, ad campaigns and landing pages making it easier for people to find me on the search engines.  You can do the same thing.

Keyword Research Tools

There are some wonderful keyword tools available to do this research. You can find my list of favorite keyword tools in the Resouce section of the site.

If you would rather have IMA of Hawaii run a keyword search for you, the fee is between $75 and $197 based on your needs. Learn more about the IMAHawaii Keyword Research Service or contact us at 808-891-0449 to talk about your project.

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Scammers prey on the weak and the ignorant. They have an uncanny ability to spot a patsy from a mile away. Are they targeting you?

What To Look For

Yesterday I received a call from a search engine optimization company guaranteeing that they could get my website on the front of the search engine results page for 100 search terms (first red flag). According to the salesman, no other SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company had the capability to do what they did because they had a special association with Yahoo (second red flag) and they had their own 30 step proprietary program that no other company could duplicate. (third red flag)

“That’s amazing,” I said, with the enthusiasm of a boy who was about to learn where the family treasure was hidden from his dying grandfather . “Tell me more.”

Bingo! He tagged me for a sucker and openly told me one lie after another. But it wasn’t until I asked if he needed access to my website to accomplish this amazing feat that I realized the depth of the scam. Had I not know any better I could have easily been persuaded to invest in their special today only price of $2,500 for six months of service.

“This is the best part of all”, he said. “We don’t need to access your website. We make a copy of it and post it on our server where we work on it. Then we direct all the traffic back to your website.” (forth, fifth, sixth … red flag)

After a few seconds of letting this concept sink in, I was only able to come up with 54 reasons why this was a very, very bad idea. Not only will it destroy my credibility with the search engines, but the moment I stop paying, all the SEO work I paid for is gone. I would have paid them $2,500 to do SEO work on their duplicate of my website. Hmmmm!

How To Spot An Internet Marketing SCAM

It’s important to learn the signals of an SEO scam artist and run like hell when you see them coming. If you want more information read, What’s an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?

Not all SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Internet Marketing companies are scammers. Most will do a very good job for you as long as you know what to expect from them. It’s always a good idea to do a Google search for the name of their company followed by the word “review” You will be amazed at that you’ll discover.

“Company Name + Review”

Internet Marketing SCAM Prevention Team

One of our goals here at the Internet Marketing Association of Hawaii is to help you identify marketing scams. If you want to talk to an SEO expert before hiring an SEO company to promote your business, feel free to contact our Internet Marketing SCAM prevention team here at IMAHawaii.com.

If you’ve ever had a bad experience with a black-hat (dishonest) SEO firm, please comment below. Let’s help our Internet Marketing Association of Hawaii members keep their hard earned money. Just say No to bad SEO.

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