SEO Igniter | Search Engine Optimization

Problogger has opened up a premium forum for a special introductory price of $1.95 US. This is a great deal to help you on your way to making money online by reading forums. The cost is next to nothing, so it’s practically risk free. 2 bucks? You could probably find that much inside your couch cushions.

If you really want to make money online, you need to get serious about spending several hours a day reading forums. I say, quit your day job, unless your day job is reading forums, because otherwise you are just being unnecessarily distracted from the important work of reading forums. Reading forums is free and easy. Well, in the case of the Problogger.com forums, they cost about 2 bucks, which is almost free. Cheap and easy. How does that one work?

How to Make Money Online Reading Forums

You may be thinking that this sounds too good to be true. “Can I really make money online by reading forums,” you might ask. The process goes like this:

1. Read forums
2. ???
3. Profit

It’s foolproof. Just make sure to fill in step #2.

If spending time on forums full of noobs asking stupid questions and getting stupid answers seems like it won’t actually make you any money, give yourself a gold star. We all know that when you get there you will see questions like, “How can I get more traffic to my site?” Followed by pathetic answers like, “Leave forum posts that are thoughtful, helpful, and really fucking long and time consuming, and forum visitors will click through to your site.

That will get you visitors alright. It won’t make you a single cent, but it will get you visitors.

If you really want to make money online, then I suggest you keep the extra 95 cents and sign up for the Keyword academy. There, you will learn a methodical, replicable system for making profitable sites. It includes step by step lessons, the ability to consult with the experts, Mark and Court, and additional features, like article directories and monthly webinars.

However, You’ll need to work hard, follow the system, and ditch the social media time sinks.

See, probloggers post on the forum here.

I have to laugh every time I see another Make Money Online blog. There are like a gazillion of them too. I really don’t know what it is that gets into people’s heads. I think a large part of it is the stupid Steve Pavlina post telling everyone that we should all earn a “passive” income from having a blog, unless your an idiot. Steve depicts people that have an actual employer as unintelligent drones. Then again, Steve has a penchant for depicting nearly everyone as brainwashed, unconscious zombies.

He’s very condescending that way. Of course, it is Personal Development for Smart People™. Which is nothing but a marketing tactic to make his readers think, “Smart people! Hey! That must be me then.” To quote Homer Simpson, “I’m smart. S-M-R-T.”

Do people simply not realize that making money online is just like making money anywhere else? It’s a business. Internet Marketing is a serious and highly competitive business. If you aren’t going into it with the understanding that you are starting a business, and that means it is not going to simply be easy money, then you are doomed to fail even before you start.

Another irresponsible reprobate that has duped many people into thinking there is some sort of easy money silver bullet is shyster Yaro Starak. Yaro tells his adoring readers that they too can make thousands of dollars a month, with only 10 hours a week of effort. It’s not a total lie, per se. You can do it, but in order to do that you need to pay people to do the other 60 hours a week of work. The Internet is a great place that you can often find people willing to work for substandard wages, for free, or for barter, but it is still a cost. Time, or money. You get to choose, but it’s going to cost you.

Of course Yaro is personally willing to take a few hundred of your hard earned dollars to show you how to make money online. What he doesn’t tell you is that what he’s really teaching you is how you can make him money. That’s the whole point of his MLM pyramid scheme. And when you turn out not to make any money, that’s just because you’re doing it wrong, because the only thing Yaro has taught you is the wrong way to make money.

“Hurry up and sign up for my blog mastermind program and learn to shovel wads of your own cash into my pockets! Don’t wait for the price to go up. Act now!”

Thanks Yaro! I didn’t realize I would need to bring my own lube to your program. It’s too bad Hancock is a fictional character, because I would really love to see Yaro’s head shoved up his own ass, where it belongs. He wants you to believe in the lie of passive income, but the truth is that it’s a freaking business, and it takes risk, perseverance, and work, just like any other type of business. If you want to make money online, then what you are doing is starting a business.

Some things you will need to ask yourself are:

• Do I have a head for business?
• Do I want the stress of owning my own business?
• Do I want the uncertainty that comes with being my own boss?
• Do I perform well without being told what to do?
• Can I motivate myself to really do the work when it’s not the fun stuff?
• Do I understand search engine marketing?
• Am I willing to pay for or learn any of the skills I don’t yet have?
• Do I have the aptitude for the needed skills?

In spite of Steve Pavlina’s assertion that you have less job security by being employed by someone else, you have to consider that it is not just the job security itself. It’s not only the job that you have, but the level of difficulty finding new work. My experience is that a job is a job, and one is just as easily replaceable as the next. You will need to understand that your employer will see you that same way, but if you understand that, things will be easy.

There is also the issue of perception. The saying goes that perception is reality. This influences your thinking, which then influences your actions. You will live the life you imagine, and if you feel secure in your job, you most likely will be. If you feel that even if you do lose your job, another opportunity is just around the corner, it will be. You will make it so.

On the other hand, if you feel like things are unstable, because you are working for yourself, and if you feel like disaster is just around the corner, you will also make that so. That is independent of who your employer is. You can work for someone else, and sabotoge your efforts by constantly worrying about losing your job, and believing that you will not find new work if you do lose your job. You can also sabotage your own business with the same sort of defeatist thinking.

Unfortunately, perception is only reality when it drives you to take action, or becomes all consuming. It doesn’t matter how convinced you are that your blog will earn 5 grand a month while you play Xbox 80 hours per week, it will not come true. You can click your heels all you want, Dorothy, it’s not going to happen. You will not make money online without putting forth the work, energy, and effort that it takes to run a business.

You can make money online, but there is a reason that so many people fail. That reason is that so many go in with unrealistic expectations. They don’t think of Internet marketing as a business, and the outcome reflects that.

In order to have an understanding of SEO, we need to know what is SEO, and do I need it?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of creating or transforming websites to conform to the best practices that will allow a website to rank highly on search engines for it’s selected keywords. This is both a science and a bit of an art.

SEO consists of two main components:

On site optimization, which includes title tags, topic and keyword selection, keyword density, internal linking structure, subtitles, URL configuration, and domain name selection.

Off site optimization, which includes backlink building, external linking structure, networking, and brand building/reputation management.

These are just a few of the factors that go into Search Engine Optimization. Although there is a bit of a shroud of mystery over just what the secret formula (algorithm) Google and other search engines use, there is still enough information to layout some basic SEO strategies. There has also been extensive testing of what does and doesn’t work, also contributing to a good knowledge base for what works and what doesn’t.

Do you need SEO?

Most likely, it will be to your benefit to either understand search engine optimization, or hire someone who does. Search engine optimization will allow you to rank highly in search engines. Since most people find what they are looking for on the internet by using a search engine (Mostly Google), you will receive a bulk of the traffic for a long term by having a good SEO strategy.

You could simply buy PPC (pay per click) or banner advertising to drive traffic, but when the ad campaign is over, so is your traffic. SEO keeps you ranked for a much longer term. Additionally, it can reflect poorly on your brand if your brand is outranked for it’s own brand name. Can you imaging if Nike couldn’t rank on the first two pages of Google for it’s own name? It simply would not be good reputation management. Worse would be if Nike were outranked by an anti-Nike website. How’s that for poor reputation management?

So I would say that if you are a webmaster, it is very important to employ good SEO strategies. On this site, I will discuss the basics of search engine optimization, as well as the many facets that flow from owning and managing a successful website.

Everyone in the online publishing world should have at least a basic understanding of SEO – Search Engine Optimization. Whether you have a static site, a blog, or some sort of non-blog site that uses a blogging platform as it’s CMS (Content Management System), search engine optimization can be a key ingredient in bringing the right visitors to your site.

There was a period of time when search engine optimization was considered to be evil, and was summarily dismissed as the haven of spammers and self-absorbed, self-promoting, black hat darkworkers. It’s so easy for people to get caught up in the rebellious rhetoric of A-List marketers, and join in with “Yeah! Screw Google!” I don’t need them.

Things seem to be turning around. I think that’s a good thing. The web really does need sites that

• have good content,
• are easily navigable,
• are user friendly,
• are search engine friendly.

Whether you like Google or not, search engines are one of the primary ways that people look for information on the internet. Contrary to this short term rebellion against SEO, search engine friendly and user friendly are really the same thing. That’s because search engines are designed to serve users. They employ highly trained algorithmic geniuses to try and better serve their users with a result that solves the users problem.

SEO got, and still largely has, a reputation of being “Keyword stuffing.” People think of spam pages they’ve seen that have the word “Latex” splattered all over it, with no helpful content whatsoever and associate a practice like that with SEO. What isn’t understood is that those spam pages are not good SEO, and they are not even indexed in the search engines.

What you really want is keyword density. This means to use your keywords with enough frequency to make it clear what the topic of the page is, but it is not splattering a word all over the page thinking that search engines will even rank that sort of useless content. Algorithms are imperfect, and are tweaked constantly to try and become more and more precise, but the foundation of the entire premise can best be summed up with the statement:

Real people recommending real brands.

On that basis, links pointing to a page are counted as “votes” for that content. It’s not that simple though, because not every vote is equal, or even counted for that matter. Google, and other search engines seek to filter out spam, duplicate content, and worthless links. On the search engine end, you can believe that it’s on par with astrophysics in term of being complicated.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. The basics are quite basic, especially if you are willing to follow the guidelines of being a reputable publisher. In it’s true essence, SEO involves everything, from reputation management, marketing, customer service, public relations, writing skill, web design, and more.

Some people try to spin this as holistic seo, or advanced seo, or seo 2.0. Really it’s simply good SEO. Being self-absorbed, wondering what’s in it for me? when dealing with others, and all those other supposed evils associated with SEO aren’t good seo. They are poor SEO and poor business from people with poor judgment, and worse business sense.

Good SEO involves all these things. Link building is an essential part of Search Engine Optimization. You can build links to yourself, and I recommend that you do, in “white hat” or by the book ways. But link building becomes a synergy of momentum when you have what?

Real people recommending real brands.

Hmm. It’s almost like that would be easier with real people recommending… Hey wait a minute. I need people to like my brand to do that!

See how public relations is SEO?

There’s certainly a lot of information to sort through on the topic. It’s certainly not going to be covered in this post. I just wanted to make clear that the journey here at SEO Igniter is one that will be built on a well rounded and informative view of SEO.

So, how does search engine optimization work?

I’m glad you asked. I’ll cover the actual basics soon, as we get started building good brands with good seo, recommended by real good people. Thanks for visiting SEO Igniter. Comments are welcome. Feel free to post questions on what you would like to see covered.