Kathy Smith’s Blog and Your Gateway to Success

Meta Keywords Tag is Dead!  The sky is falling – the sky is falling.  This is what you’re seeing blasted out on the internet.  What does this mean?  Well, one of the biggest topics for anyone in internet marketing is search engine optimization.  From your websites to blogs to lens to articles, etc.  Many people have put a lot of weight on Meta tags.  First of all, for what are meta tags?

Metadata is information about data. The <meta> tag provides metadata about the HTML document. Metadata will not be displayed on the page (except for the description and you’ll see the title at the top of your browser), but will be machine parsable.  Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata. The <meta> tag always goes inside the head element of your html. The metadata can be used by browsers (how to display content or reload page), search engines (keywords), or other web services.

There are three key meta tags:

1)  Title
2)  Keywords
3)  Description.

Title has the heaviest weight so you always want to have your primary keyword in your title.  Keywords are another story.  Many people do what’s called “keyword stuffing”.  That’s when you list tons of keywords thinking you’ll get your website or whatever you’re submitting higher on in the search engines.  And you might for a short period of time, but then you’ll see it disappear.  Why?  Because it’s considered spamming or what some people call “Black Hat SEO”. You really only want to have about 5 keywords listed.  The Description should be keyword driven but offer a description of what your page is about and have it compelling enough for someone who reads it to want to click through on it.

Now, Google has said they don’t use the meta keywords for ranking and they haven’t for some time but Yahoo did.  In fact, September 21, 2009, Matt Cutts published on the Google Webmaster Central Blog that “Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking”, and stated even more directly that Google could care less about the meta keywords tag.  Well, now Yahoo is on board too and that’s the big announcement right now.

During the a Search Engine Q&A session at the SMX East conference in New York this week, Yahoo officially announced that they have stopped supporting the meta keywords tag as an ranking factor in their web search algorithm. Yahoo was the last major search engine to openly admit that it was an element of their search ranking results.

So many people are worried but it’s really not a big deal.  First of all, should you change your practices?  No.  I just wouldn’t spend as much time worrying about it.  The description does still matter because Google will pick it up to describe the page (as long as it’s written based around the keywords in your page).   One consideration when writing the description is to watch your length because if Google does list it, you don’t want it cut off.  The title tag still matters and I would still populate the keyword tag with some primary keywords.  There are other search engines out there that may pick up on it.  The Golden Rule is to make sure your meta keywords tag contains keywords and phrases that are relevant to the page content.

What you have to realize about search engine optimization is there are many key factors to being listed in the search engines.  Google will never reveal all their criteria but there are some that are common sense.

Google still looks at title tag, on-page content (including Header tags) and of course – linking – internal and external as well as other factors.  Page Rank is important too but the first criteria to me is content.  Write something worthy to read about and be focused.  When you are writing something you want to have a keyword that you know would interest people, e.g. they are searching on it and then check the competition.  If there is a lot of competition, then you want to have a long tail keyword.  Now write quality content around the long tail keyword and that will help you get listed just based on that.  Add to that quality links and anchor tags and authority and that is what will drive your site’s potential.

One final note – meta keyword tags may not be as important but keywords are and that’s where you want to be able to write with your information keyword specific.  Also, I have someone who I mentored who was frustrated because they felt what they were writing was sounding unnatural because they were trying so hard to insert the keywords into their material.  That means that you’re writing around your subject, not about your subject.

If you have chosen a keyword (long tail keyword preferably) to write about, then it should be appearing naturally with the keywords’ weight to be around 3%, which is every 100 words, the keyword (phrase) should be repeated 3 times.  If you are struggling trying to insert it, it means you’ve chosen poorly. 

For example, I am writing about meta keywords and you’ll see that this blog does not appear to be “forced to write about meta keyword tags”.  That’s how you know you’ve written a good article with content that is keyword driven.  Just focus on 1 or 2 keywords on a page.  If you have it in the title, description and h1 tags and body content of the page with anchors, and the competition is low for those keywords, you will be listed high in the search engines, and of course, still add in the keywords in the meta keyword tags.

So don’t worry about those people who are running around screaming the sky is falling.  Yes, meta keyword tags are not really a consideration but there are many other factors that will help you and if you create a well written piece with taking into consideration some of the key elements, you’ll find you will get listed organically.

More information to come on this and if you’d like to get a jumpstart on Internet Marketing, enter in your name and email and take my course.

To YOUR Success!

Kathy

I have been receiving calls from many of my friends on their YouTube accounts disappearing and so I decided to share this information on my blog for those of you who may have also been effected by this and maybe you’ll find something of use.

The YouTube Slap.  If you are trying to find your YouTube videos and can’t find them, there is the potential that YouTube has shut you down if you have been using unethical ways of promoting your vidoes.  Hmm.  Maybe I should just say aggressive; or black hat techniques.  Basically if you have been downloading someone else’s videos, creating multiple channels; using massive tags that have nothing to do with the content of your video, spamming, etc. expect to be shut down.

Recently YouTube has been more aggressive about enforcing their rules and guidelines and confused YouTubers are wondering where their videos have gone.  One person I know tried to reach support and was told to go to the forum and ask questions and that got nowhere fast.

There are networkers out there already scrambling and coming up with ideas on how to circumvent this but if you choose to jump on the next bandwagon, I have some advice for you.  Set up one account where it is tied to only 1 IP address and you are advertising “within the guidelines”, so if you end up having your other youtube accounts shut down, at least you won’t have lost ALL your advertising efforts.

What are the guidelines?  Here are some recommendations to follow:

1)  Have just 1 YouTube account per ISP
2)  Don’t use automatic software to add comments, ratings, etc.
3)  Don’t upload duplicate content.
4)  Have videos that show value
5)  Don’t buy views – this is one of the red flags
6)  Have relevant tags to the content of your video

If you haven’t yet been found by YouTube, you might want to make changes now. If you’re like most people you want to be as aggressive as you can but still fall within the safe zone.  Make your priority to deliver value and build your presence with integrity and you’ll have a sustainable business.

Let me know if you hear anymore.  I would love to hear other people’s views.

And by the way, there is a business where you don’t have to worry about marketing.  The company does it for you.  If you’re interested, let me know.

Kathy

Hi.  I am sorry I haven’t written in a while.  I started a new home based business and I have been so immersed in helping my team.  Right now I have over 100 folks on my team and over 3,700 customers and I started in August 2008.  They have just launched a new product that has been proven to reduce inflammation and what’s amazing is people are having results within days!  But I’m back and I am going to try and be more consistent.

It’s funny because in my last blog posting, I indicate the most important thing to do is blog daily and guess what I haven’t done – blog daily.    I need to follow my own advice.

Let’s move onto my next topic.  Lead Generation is the basis of any business.  How do you generate leads?  Without customers, you don’t have a business.  Without bringing in other distributors, you are limiting your growth.  Of course, you want to have as many customers as you want and with the business I’m in, I can just acquire them from the company but I always believe in multiple ways of building a business.  This is how you tip the scales to your advantage – it’s all about the marketing system!

One of the ways that I am generating leads is through a company called Veretekk.

This system will allow you to fill your pipeline of prospects indefinitely! If you have already heard of Veretekk and feel it’s too complicated to set up, I can help you with that.

Now, let’s talk about Veretekk.  With Veretekk, you have prospects and leads coming to YOU!   Veretekk includes the traditional autoresponder system, but then takes it to the nth level.  You have a multitude of emails you can create to use with different autoresponders and then create groups to track the campaigns. Veretekk’s real strength is with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Veretekk gives you the ability to link all over the Internet. You receive dozens of websites, many of which you can offer free products enabling you to capture contact information, which is then put on your autoresponders.  With Veretekk Gold you get about 35 “traffic portals” and you can link them together with what’s called “daily chain linking”.  After you have linked them, which adds more weight to your site, then you can promote them.

Many of the traffic portals are designed to attract the sort of people who are either actively searching for ways to make money online, or looking for ways to promote their business.  Veretekk allows you to build a list of people who will be receptive to making money.

In addition to SEOing your website; you can track each website as well as having a multitude of emails with tracking to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns.  All incoming leads are captured with customized emails sent to them promoting many different money opportunity sites as well as the Veretekk system and when they raise their hand and enter one of your sites, it can automatically switch to sending them email campaigns promoting your business.

You also receive “Profit Portals” which are the same as Traffic Portals in that they are fully developed lead generation systems, but they also offer their own affiliate program.  You can sign up and create an additional stream of income – your choice.

And you receive “SEO Portals” which are designed specifically to aide with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

With all the portals, you have full control over the content with displayed text, meta tags and here’s what’s important – you can even include your feed so if you have a blog (which you can receive with Veretekk) or any other blog you have and you update it – all your portals are updated.  So you have fresh content on ALL your portals when you update your blog.

Utilizing these portals allows your to expand your control out to over 40 different domains and with these portals, you are able to attain the best, unique and premium leads.

Its a great system and anyone serious about online marketing should invest the time to learn the system by attending their free online training but you can also follow my step-by-step system.

I know I have promised to provide business tips and information on Internet Marketing but I truly feel that if you add Veretekk to your portfolio, you have an unfair advantage over what everyone else is doing.

Look to my next blog on more advice and information on building your business and I promise to be posting daily!

To Your Wealth & Wellness,

Kathy

Blogging is becoming more and more popular and more people are seeking blogging advice as they start their first blog.  First I am sure you have heard about social networking.  For those of you that have not, basically social networking is about connecting with people and or information using web-based tools or software.  It’s a way of meeting other like minded individuals on the internet.

A blog is one such tool and has become very popular but many people start a blog with the wrong idea about blogging and that’s why I decided to impart some blogging advice to help you to get started.

First of all, you need to decide what software you are going to use and then you need to understand about the information you’ll be putting on your blog.  I prefer WordPress.  Many people will suggest Blogger because it is free.  WordPress is free too but I would recommend getting a hosting site because then you can use the SEO plugins.  If you choose to use Blogger, or any other free service that is hosted on their site, then you are subject to their changes without any control.  When you host a blog on your own domain, you only have to worry about the restrictions of that hosting site, which, by the way, I recommend Blue Host.  With blogger, it’s very simple but you don’t have as much flexibility in customizing it whereas with WordPress there are so many ways that you can modify it from the themes to adding plugins and widgets, that it makes it so much more powerful.  Some people feel because Google owns blogger that you will have your blog optimizied faster but there are many SEO plugins you can use with WordPress to be able to optimize it and have it in the search engines pretty quick.  It goes back to knowing your keywords and what to write about.  The blogging advice I am providing today is more about getting started but make sure you read my blog about keywords because that’s the foundation of anything you write for the internet.

After you have chosen which software, you want to select a theme and personalize it.  Many people ask me about this because they’re not sure what type of theme they should choose.  My advice to you is to pick what you like, not what “you think” someone else will like.  You want to attract to you like-minded people and so be yourself.  I helped my sponsor in one of my businesses get an internet presence and he chose a beach theme blog.  That’s not me, but hey – he liked it and that’s what counts.  By the way, a great place to get started with blogging is wordpressdirect.com.  They have great themes and you can host on their site for free.  That’s the recommendation I would make for anyone who isn’t really technical savy.  Some people choose to have one blog and write on many different topics and just categorize them or add pages.  I like to have different blogs depending on the focus and then just include them in the blog roll.

Okay – so now you are ready to start blogging.

Here’s the most important piece of blogging advice that you will ever hear.  Are you ready?  Write this down:  Be consistent and persistent with blogging.  Blog every day.

If you don’t write every day, there’s no reason for people to come back and you won’t have your blog optimized – remember Google likes fresh content.

The next piece of blogging advice is don’t be constantly selling.  That’s just as bad as when people create a list and instead of sending emails in their autoresponders that inform and establish creditibility and trust AS WELL AS having autoresponders mixed in that sell, they just sell sell sell and people just opt-out; opt-out; opt-out.  With blogging, it’s not that they will opt-out, but they just won’t come back.  Think of yourself as a reporter and provide information that people will want to read.  Go to other people’s blogs and post comments and reference back to your blog.  There are many different ways to have people find your blog, but when they do, you want them coming back and the only way that will happen is if you provide something of value.

Have a blog that is not completely covered with banners and ad-sense.  When you have too much on your blog like that, you are actually distracting people from your message and in some cases, it shows people that your only intent is to make money and not provide anything of value and that offends people.

Use the blog to tell your story; to help people; to provide valuable information and you will attract people who will come back to your blog.

What is Twitter

Twitter has two purposes. It can be used just to keep in touch with friends or families or it can be used to help your business.

Basically, Twitter is like micro blogging or even think of it as sending a quick IM, (instant messaging) but you’re able to see all the updates (known as tweets) which are text based and have up to 140 characters in length.

For those of you who are asking what is twitter, you may not take it seriously at first. That would be a big mistake for many reasons. First, you may be surprised at the number of high profile people you have access to and can keep up to date on the latest news. Someone who I admire greatly in the network marketing field sent me an update welcoming me and yet he’s never answered any of my emails and I’ve had access to him and some great information.

According to the State of the Twittersphere report, each day 5 to 10 thousand new people join Twitter. Current estimates of total users top out around 5 million. That’s a lot of opportunity.

Second, for those of you who are seeing this as just another social networking tool and continue to ask, ok, I get it, but what is twitter? Twitter allows you to post updates as often as you want (again – limited to 140 characters). You can follow people and people can follow you. When they follow you, they see your updates (otherwise know in the twitter world as “tweets”).

Basically, it’s a constant flow of communication. Now for those of you who are overwhelmed as it is with the contact access and flow of communication available with our current technology, you’ll be happy to know that you can turn it on and off as often as you like. And you can also search through Twitter because they keep a public record of all updates so you’re not going to miss anything.

So what is twitter and how can it be used if I have a business? (Because for the social aspect, it’s very clear that it’s a great tool to keep everyone updated on what you’re doing). Duct Tape Marketing founder John Jantsch identified 3 big advantages of Twitter. From getting insight to the questions asked to traffic and people can spread your thoughts to new places.

Your tweets can become viral and more people can find out about you.

Let’s say you have a product and you want to find out what others think about it. You can search Twitter and see the responses. Bestselling author David Meerman Scott said, “I have personally connected with hundreds of people I otherwise wouldn’t have, and I booked an interview on NPR and a big daily newspaper using Twitter.”

When you tweet, if you are trying to build a business, 90 percent of the time, you should be providing valuable information. This will have more people following you to see what you say. You can use tweets also for surveys and questions.

There are a few tools to help better your Twitter Experience and I hope the information I have provided will have you stop scratching your head as you were asking, and what is twitter?

Here are some of the tools you may find useful:

TwitterFox: This Firefox web browser plugin allows you to view Tweets within your web browser so you don’t have to go to the twitter site.

TweetLater: With this service, you can schedule tweets and you can receive email digests of keyword activity in the Tweetosphere so you can join a conversation or track trends.

Ping.fm: If you have accounts with many services, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, you can post updates across ALL of your social media in one single step.

Twitter for Facebook: If you are on Facebook, this application forwards your Twitter updates directly to Facebook as status updates.

If you have a website, you can install a widget and everytime you update your twitter, the information is there. Google loves fresh content and you’re adding fresh content everytime you twitter.

Let me know how twitter has helped you.

Have a great day!

Kathy

It doesn’t matter where you want to start marketing on the internet, whether it’s your first blog; a lens; facebook; building a website, the first SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tip is understanding keywords.

What is a keyword? Every time you search on the internet and enter in words describing what you’re searching for — that’s a keyword. Ideally, you will want to identify the keywords that your prospects and potential customers are actually typing into the search engines, and create content on your website based on those keywords. There are many more SEO tips I will be blogging about, but if you learn this first, you will be successful in whatever you choose to do.

Keywords are the foundation to your building a successful presence on the internet. The keywords or phrases (long tail keywords) you choose will determine how your posts (pages, blogs, etc) rank in the search engines. This is the most important SEO tip I can give to you.

If you consider all the SEO tips you will learn, it will always go back to what is your target and you identify your target by your keywords. Think about reading an article in the newspaper. The reporter’s keyword is their title and their article expands on it. That’s the same way with Internet Marketing. Another SEO tip is to consider your competition. You can find many keywords when seeking your target, but you also want to make sure there’s not too much competition. An easy way to see if there is a lot of competition is to go to Google and start typing in the keyword and you will see results next to the word. For example, if you typed in weight loss, you would find 84,500,000 results for weight loss and if you put quotes around it, it brings it down to about 8,000,000 but that’s still a lot. Do you think it will be easy to get to the top of the search engine where people can find out about you with that type of competition?

Of course, there are ways you can narrow this down from searching on title; looking at what your competition is doing, etc. but that’s for another blog. Right now I want to focus on the first SEO tip which is keywords. Let’s take this a step further. What if you had a great plan for weight loss and instead of choosing a keyword weight loss, you chose weight loss plans. When I check to see how many people are searching for it, I find 479 actual visitors in Google per day and there’s 2,250,000 results in Google and if I put it in quotes (meaning people are looking for it in that order) there is only about 518,000 in Google Competition. If you just type in weight loss plans, you’ll notice you’ll find results like weight loss diet plans or meal replacement plan, etc. By typing it in without the quotes, Google finds all or part of the words. When you include quotes, Google only returns the exact match.

Another SEO tip is to know your search engine. There are tools on the internet that will help you in finding competition and keywords but they may be pulling from different search engines. Google is the standard that you should use. There are many other search engines and when you want to get involved with PPC and other internet marketing, I’ll talk about the other search engines but Google is, hands down, the most popular one.

Finding keywords or phrases that people are currently searching for and with low competition will help you to be listed organically in the search engine. You can write a blog or lens or whatever vehicle you choose on weight loss plans. The next SEO tips is you want Weight Loss Plans in your title and within the body you want to have the keywords’ weight to be around 3%, which is every 100 words, the keyword (phrase) should be repeated 3 times. You don’t want to repeat it too much because Google will consider that keyword stuffing and you could be banned or tagged as using black hat SEO techniques and you don’t want that. Black Hat search engine optimization is customarily defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. What’s funny is it will work at first, but then you’ll end up getting penalized and that’s not fun.

I’ll go into creating blogs; best services and how to optimize your blog in another post, as well as talk about getting traffic.

Another reason not to choose single word keywords is it won’t get you targeted traffic. For example if someone was searching for tourism and you were a travel agent for destinations in Australia that may or may not be the customer for you. But if someone was searching for “tourist destinations in Australia”, he/she is your potential customer.

Also, the latter is called “long tail keywords”. “Long Tail Keywords” is another important SEO tip. When writing information for the internet, you want to have content and bring something of value to your readers, but you also want to be smart about it and optimize it for a keyword or preferably a long tail keyword. A long tail keyword is someone who could be your potential customer. There are two types of people browsing the internet – the curious and the serious. You want the serious because they will opt in to your website or even better, purchase your products or join you in your business. Just because you have a long phrase does not make it a long tail keywords. It means having the right combination of words reflecting someone who is getting ready to make a decision.

When starting to learn about SEO and reading tips and information on the internet, I want you to realize that Keywords and SEO is not rocket science. It’s just being aware of it and knowing the tools to use to help you to get the information you need.

To find out more about what keywords to use, you can use a free version of WordTracker. They have a new one where you can look at the trends.
It’s: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/

You may notice that the results that WordTracker displays is different that what you would see with Google. WordTracker assumes the “quotes”.

If you detail down on the results, you can check the search volume. If you have hardly any competition but there’s no one searching for those keywords, it doesn’t matter if you are in the top of the search engine because no one will be looking. Kind of like having a McDonalds in the middle of the Sahara Desert. I am sure there may be some lost soul who will be grateful to come upon a McDonalds but the bottom line for that McDonald’s store would be terrible!

So to summarize, before starting to write anything for the internet, you want to know the keyword(s) you will be focusing on and you want to make sure those keyword(s) are reflective of what someone is searching for and that there isn’t too much competition. You’ll also preferably be using long tail keywords instead of single words.

More information to come on this and if you’d like to get a jumpstart on Internet Marketing, enter in your name and email and take my course.