SoloSEO

Free SEO Report

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on April 16th, 2012

We are sprinting ahead again at SoloSEO. We have learned much over the last 6 years and felt it time to do a refresh of our SoloSEO tool suite. As many of you know, SoloSEO was the first to provide the public an online suite of SEO tools, which allowed our clients the ability to work on keywords, links, content and competitive analysis with the most up-to-date and effective SEO tools, all in one place. We now see more competitors entering the market, which is to is to be expected, especially with something as important as SEO.

To remain the leader in the online DIY SEO world, we are proud to announce we are currently putting the finishing touches on the SoloSEO 2.0 Do-It-Yourself tool suite. This 2.0 version will include updated versions of our most popular tools, with some fresh new tools, including some social media help, to provide clients with more real-time information about their sites, and their competitors. The new interface is clean and fresh, while the framework is more streamlined and intuitive. We believe SEO research, through the use of the SoloSEO 2.0 DIY tool suite, will prove to be much easier than anything you have seen in the SEO marketplace previously. Even the newest website owners will feel comfortable moving along an instinctive, yet robust SoloSEO process.

We have also decided to expand our horizons a little bit. We have always been a Do-It-Yourself shop, providing the best SEO tools, while never delving into the business of working with others on their own SEO strategies. We understand that SEO work can be hard and time consuming, especially if you are in a tough and competitive online marketplace. So we have decided to now start offering SEO packages, where we will use our SEO tools and experience to manage a SEO campaign for you. So if you just don’t have the time for a true DIY SEO experience, or would prefer we jump in and help out, we can now offer this option. Over the last 6 years we have grown up in the SEO world and learned much; our experience is now available to you… go ahead use us.

SEO Packages

1 Key Word $125/mo
3 Key Word $245/mo
5 Key Word $445/mo

Please contact us at info@soloseo.com if you would like to learn more.

In the meantime, please enjoy our Free SEO Report to obtain some information on how some of the keywords on your site are ranking in the search engines. As soon as we launch SoloSEO 2.0, we will be sure to let you and the rest of the world know.

Happy SEOing.

Add comment Visited 667 times April 16th, 2012 Aaron R Stewart

Related Posts:

The Power of Persistence: Seriously, it may be all you need

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 27th, 2012

Doing SEO is hard. It’s long. It’s challenging. It’s technical. There is so much out there that you don’t know. Tap into any informed blog about the topic, and you will be hit with a firehouse of information. Whether you are building your first website, or your sixteenth, you can rest assured that you haven’t yet begun to “grok” the many myriad facets of the SEO biz.

Okay. So, fine. Given all the obstacles you face — technical, psychological, physical, and financial — what can you do to move the ball down the field?

The answer is a single word: persistence.

That persistence yields results is a cliché. When you hear the word, you think of one of those office motivational posters of a bald eagle soaring over a cliff with a lightning bolt in its beak or something. Still, the power of this concept should not be undersold.

Consider all the new research that’s come out, indicating that persistence is far more important than natural talent in determining success. One great book on this subject is Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, an editor of Forbes Magazine.

Colvin makes the case that great performers in history succeed NOT because they possess innately better genes but simply because they work harder and persist through obstacles.

Of course, persistence isn’t just about grinding through difficulties. It’s about doing so SMARTLY. If you practice incorrectly, you will end up like one of those wind up toys with a broken wheel — going very fast, indeed, but going in circles.

Keys to successful persistence:

• Get good coaching.
• Learn from the mistakes and successes of others.
• Sharpen and review your process.

The SEO monster can be mounted and tamed. But you will not do it in a day, and you will not do it without significant tolerance for failure.

Tips on Persistence

Okay. So you want to bulldoze your SEO process forward. But how? Here are some ways to withstand the inevitable forces of attrition, fatigue, self-doubt, and angst.

1. Set small goals that you absolutely can accomplish. Small successes are crucial.
2. Get feedback from people you trust. Perspective can blind you to things you do wrong. No one has twenty-twenty vision all, or even most of, the time.
3. Pay attention to longer-term horizons of focus — if you are caught up in the Sturm Und Drang of the day-to-day, all the time, you may end up like our broken wind up toy — generating lotsa energy but no forward momentum. Point your compass in a direction that will get you somewhere good. Then GO!
4. Knowledge is power. Another overripe trope, but so true. Understand the landscape of your business — in particular, your niche. Establish yourself in your community, and build solutions your customers will need (but don’t know they need yet).
5. Develop a core competency. What can you do better than ANYONE else in the entire world? Find something you are passionate about (that you would still do if you didn’t have to earn another cent in your life). Become the ruler of the roost.
6. It can’t be just about the money. Your passion must come from somewhat deeper, somewhat more sincere and human. Only then will you find the internal resources to push through the (many) unpredictable obstacles that come your way.
7. Expect the unexpected — you can have the most ace business plan in the world, but the universe will find a way to blow it out of the water. You need to able to find a way to, in the words of the poet T.S. Elliot, “be still and still moving.” Be flexible enough to respond to dramatic changes to your SEO or business plan but steady in terms of your long-term vision and principles.

Remember: It’s a balancing act. But persistence is the great equalizer. With it, even the most uncredentialed novices can outgun Fortune 500 companies.

Go to it.

Never rest.

Add comment Visited 589 times March 27th, 2012 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

Delivering Value for People as well as for Search Engines

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 3rd, 2012

SEOs come in all colors. The black hats game the system. The gray hats sort of game the system. The white hats play by the rules.

SEOs constantly assess the mood of Mother Google (as well as the lesser search engines, such as Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, etc). And, yes, it pays to pay attention to what the search engines like and loathe — what spiders find interesting and what they pooh-pooh. But don’t lose sight about what this whole game is about. Your SEO should deliver something of real value — that doesn’t yet exist on the web — to a niche group of customers. That something could be a service, a product, or even just good information. But whatever you do, do it (ultimately) to benefit people in some way.

Think about it. Say you spend all of your time just focusing on the search engines. You might win short-term victories by “beating Google at its own game.” But that is ultimately a rat race. To build a real business, you need customers who love your brand and who will want to return to you again and again for more services/product/information. To that end, if you clutter up your website with Google-pleasing stuff that turns off your visitors, your business will suffer over the long-term, even if you do see those short-term bumps.

So how do you provide the good stuff for people?

Organize. Get input from your visitors. What do they like about your site/blog/whatever? What do they find cumbersome or frustrating about it? Correct those problems. Is your “core competency” clear? If you are writing a bodybuilding site, is it clear from your home page that you have built a bodybuilding site? Or do visitors think it is a diet pill website or something? With clarity, organization, a clear statement of purpose and credentials, you stand to win.

Finally, do you provide unique and useful stuff for people? It’s not enough to “be Wikipedia.” There already IS a Wikipedia. You need to offer something different and better and special. Otherwise, people will just go to Wikipedia. This sounds obvious, but you would be surprised at how many websites simply deliver ho-hum, poor-mans-Wikipedia content in the hopes that they will win at the SEs. You need to do better than that. You need to create something that people will love and that they will love for a long time to come.

Think about what the search engines are designed for. They aim to deliver excellent information to people searching for specific keywords. If you build a website specifically to deliver that excellent information, Google wins, you win, Google’s advertisers win, and your visitors win. It’s win-win-win-win. Think about that as you craft your SEO approach.

Add comment Visited 729 times March 3rd, 2012 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

Great Read: How to Get an Influencer’s Attention

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 24th, 2010

Add comment Visited 12186 times March 24th, 2010 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

Finding Motivation When You’re “Not Feeling It”

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 20th, 2010

SEO is rough, let’s face it. One minute, you feel like you’ve found the key to long-term wealth and high keyword rankings. The next minute, you read an article that makes you rethink your entire plan. It’s easy to get caught up in the emotional roller coaster — changes in attitude that can disrupt your business plan and leave you feeling stressed out and constantly panicked that you are missing out on “the latest thing.”

To top it off, no one really knows “everything” about this industry, and every industry certainly has new ways to pull in traffic and conversions. To succeed at this game, you need to persist through inevitable failures. But how do you find the motivation?

#1. Slow and steady wins the race

Remember the old tale of The Tortoise and the Hare. The hare sprints ahead, assuming an easy victory. But he gets distracted and meanders off course. The tortoise, meanwhile, slowly plods ahead, ignoring the hare’s progress (and his lack thereof). Eventually, the tortoise passes the hare and wins the race. SEO is a marathon. By acknowledging its marathon-like nature and refreshing and reviewing your business plan and process regularly, you can keep yourself on course and beat all of the hares that are currently miles (and search engine rankings) ahead of you.

#2. Do it for the love, not for the money

Studies on motivation suggest that entrepreneurs who pursue their passions tend to do better in the long term than do entrepreneurs who pursue goals strictly for financial ends. If you don’t love what you do, the bumps in the road will destroy you. True passion is the cure.

#3. Keep an even keel — emotionally and financially

As your SEO practice gets underway, expect ups and downs. Protect yourself by buffering your budget. Build a stable income stream (preferably more than one) to support your venture, and save up for “rainy days” that for some can last many months. If you lack this anchor for your budget, you will feel more pressure to act “quickly” instead of “intelligently” and this can lead you to make costly long-term mistakes.

#4. Take care of your health

Get exercise, eat healthy, take time to be with friends and family, meditate, get enough sleep, get some sun, and don’t spend too long at the keyboard at one stretch. Remember, you are in it for the long haul. If you burn out too quickly, or push yourself to meet unrealistic deadlines, you will exhaust yourself and your business will suffer.

We all have the spark of success inside us — awakening this spark requires showing compassion towards yourself and towards your business and planning realistically and conservatively.

Add comment Visited 6729 times March 20th, 2010 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

How to handle SEO client problems

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on March 9th, 2010

As an entrepreneur and SEO professional, you crave credibility and good relationships. This is all well and good. To nourish any business relationship, you should go “the extra mile” – not just because it’s savvy business but also because it’s the right thing to do. I know in this day and age that might be a concept most don’t embrace anymore, but I think it is paramount, even just to sleep at night.

On the other hand, we’ve all had hair-pulling situations with SEO clients. Phone calls in the middle on the night requesting next day edits on a random white paper. Mandatory six-way conference calls that meander and have no point. Heated e-mails randomly directed your way.

So what should you do in these kinds of situations? More importantly, how do you determine when to give in to weird client requests/demands and when to jump ship?

Here are some good working tips:

1. Get opinions from other people whom you trust

Often, we get so knee-deep into these SEO situations that we cannot see the forest for the trees. Talk to friends. Get an objective read on the situation. Take yourself out of the equation to arrive at a more professional and resourceful decision about how to proceed. Getting the emotion out of the situation can be the first step to properly rectifying it.

2. Break ties honorably

If you decide to break ties with a client, do so professionally and honor the terms of any contract or agreement, if at all possible.

Always be a good guy (or girl). Even if a client has behaved unprofessionally or even abusively, that doesn’t give you an excuse to return the favor. I always want to feel like I came out of a situation doing all I could to make it right. You always sleep well at night if you do.

3. Remember: A bird in hand is worth two in the bush – not six or seven

Sure, it can be a pain to lose any client – and not just because it throws your budget out of whack. No one likes dispensing bad news. But beware of the tendency to overvalue what you already have. Sure, an abusive client may provide a steady stream of work. But every ounce of energy you waste attending to the abuser’s tyrannical demands is one less ounce you have to lavish on a new prospect. We have found the often heard saying of 10% of clients take up 90% of you time to be true, unless you make the hard decisions to dump some of them, or never take them on in the first place.

This tendency to overvalue current assets is all too human, by the way. For instance, who hasn’t had a friend who has been mired in a terrible relationship? This person will admit that he/she should get out of it but ultimately refuses to break things off because of a fear that he/she will never again find anyone “that good.” It’s nonsense. But sometimes you can’t see it if you’re too close to it. That’s why reliable outside feedback is so key.

4. Serenity now

To paraphrase (and butcher) the serenity prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the SEO clients I cannot change but want to keep; the courage to change/get out of dysfunctional SEO client relationships I can change; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Well, that’s really clumsy and ineloquent, isn’t it? Hopefully, it still drives home the point. Doing what is best for your company, and doing it the right way, can get tough, but in any small business, it sets you up for greater things in the future.

Add comment Visited 6674 times March 9th, 2010 Aaron R Stewart

Related Posts:

Avoiding Problem SEO Clients

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 2nd, 2010

As an SEO professional, you are always on the prowl for new business relationships. There are many great people out there to work with. But there are also many “problem clients” who for whatever reason turn out to be more of a hassle than they are worth. These type of clients will disrespect your contract or call you at 3:30 am with random questions about some minute issue. How do you stay away from the bad clients and keep the good guys on the bus?

Here are some tried-and-true rules of thumb to separate the wheat from the chaff (or the curd from the whey or whatever other metaphor de jour you want to use to describe this process):

1. Eyes out for red flags

- Does a new client keep you on the phone for 30 minutes to talk about her dog? Red flag.

- Does the client repeatedly reschedule calls/meetings for arbitrary reasons? Red flag.

- Does the client complain to you at length about a previous writer or partner – and his complaints make absolutely no sense? Super big red flag with sugar on top.

2. Listen to your “spidey sense”

Do you get a strange intuitive sense that something about a business or client is not quite right? 99 out of 100 times, this is but the tip of the iceberg. Don’t waste time hooking a fish that’s going to die once you get it into the aquarium (sorry, again, a pretty weak metaphor there).

3. Incomplete references or credentials? Bad news

Everyone on the Web is in some sense flailing. This medium is so very new, and we all wing it to an extent. That said, sometimes a leap of faith is just jumping off a cliff. Protect yourself. Check references and credentials whenever you engage a new client (or have questions about an existing one!)

4. Get it in writing – and get it clear.

Set clear expectations. Tell the client precisely what you will deliver and when and how you will deliver it. Remember to keep expectations low and then over-deliver too.

5. Baby steps.

Don’t do $5,000 worth of work before getting your first check. It’s okay to spec out on what might ultimately only be a $50 assignment. But before you invest too much time/money/heartache into a project, make sure that the client shows you the money!

4 comments Visited 6993 times March 2nd, 2010 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

SEO 101: How to crank out content for SEO

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 1st, 2010

It is a cliché in the SEO world that “content is king” – that to feed the hungry search engine beasts of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, you need to churn out targeted, keyword focused, and most of all useful content. This leads to the long-term passive pay-off that is the SEO pot of gold.

To succeed, you don’t want to get stuck fine tuning content and rewriting blog posts forever. You need to get stuff out the door so that you can get indexed, get ranked, and make a living.

So what’s the secret? How do you quickly create high quality content – stuff that’s really good and useful and that’s optimized for the search engines?

1. Get stuff out the door

Fritter away time fine-tuning your web pages, and you will eventually get discouraged, and your writing will also suffer. Do NOT be afraid to make mistakes. Build web pages, write your blog posts, tweet your tweets. Do whatever you need to do. But just get content produced. You will learn by doing.

2. Focus on keywords, but make it natural

Content needs to be first and foremost natural and good for readers. When you optimize and emphasize for keywords, keep each article focuses on one keyword or phrase, but you can also include variants on that. You spread your article too thin when you focus on 10 keywords.

3. Get input from coaches

Even if you majored in literature at an Ivy League College, you no doubt have a lot to learn about how to write for the web. The internet is a wild world with its own rules for what constitutes “good” or even “acceptable.” You can’t do it alone. You have to talk to people who’ve made a living at this business. Read about how SEO works and how the web writing community functions. Attend SEO and Internet marketing conferences, specifically go to sessions on copywriting and content.

4. Group your assignments

Instead of just doing 1 page for a topic at a time, try doing 10, 20, even 50 pages on the same topic. This may sound like a terrible chore to some people – who wants to write 50 pages in a row about long-term healthcare insurance, for instance? But if you are going for volume, then grouping helps. You can get into the spirit of the topic easily. You can also do research upfront and then have it all laid out in front of you when you write your pages. Take notes while you do research of different article ideas, and use keyword research as a tool to create pages for your topic.

5. Protect your hands

If you plan to bang out more than a few pages a day, you need to be aware of the ergonomic dangers of overtyping and keyboard misuse. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and repetitive stress injuries run rampant among web professionals. Take breaks, stretch, eat well, and maintain a good keyboarding set up. Listen to your body.

6. Develop and refine your system over time

You are not going to get it right the first time. You are not going to get it right the second time. Hopefully, a few days into the process of cranking out good SEO pages, you will begin to develop a rhythm. Get feedback from everyday people as well as SEO professionals to better develop your style, attitude, and routine. Keep reading. Keep building your skills. Focus on easily attainable short-term goals to string you forward.

7. Hire writers if you can’t do it yourself

If you don’t have the time to write your own content, consider hiring a content company like Applied Content, our content writing company. We have a team of very skilled writers that can do lots of high quality, unique content, very fast. If an hour of your time is worth more than the cost of an article, you should seriously consider assigning out your writing.

2 comments Visited 7497 times March 1st, 2010 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

The Only Constant Online is Change.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 24th, 2010

As many of you know, Michael and I have put a great deal of time and effort into building SoloSEO as an important service, a recognizable brand, while hopefully providing our clients the best Do-It-Yourself SEO tools available. We were the first to offer a comprehensive set of online SEO tools, all located in one place. It has been a great learning process, and quite a bit of fun. We both love learning new industries, and obtaining as much knowledge as our pee brains can handle.

Over the last few years we have pursued a number of new opportunities, and recently came to the realization that SoloSEO’s tools are a perfect fit within one of our other online service/products. After much thought and consideration, we have decided to take the SoloSEO tools private and utilize the SoloSEO tool suite in a different manner.

The company mentioned above is called EdgeAbove. A service and system we believe is revolutionizing the network marketing industry, by addressing many of the online challenges these companies face daily. SoloSEO’s tools will now be incorporated into this system, providing EdgeAbove clients a seamless and simple method to SEO their own sites. It is an exciting opportunity.

We will continue to blog on SEO matters here on the SoloSEO blog, especially on changes and interesting developments in the industry. We will also leave all our previous posts up indefintely for anyone looking to learn a bit more about SEO in general. It is a fascinating industry and very important to understand if you have desires of launching a successful online buisness.

It has been and will continue to be a great online ride, happy SEOing to each of you.

1 comment Visited 7136 times February 24th, 2010 Aaron R Stewart

Related Posts:

Twitter & SEO Keyword Research Tools

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on March 13th, 2009

As some of you know, I have recently been trying to get into Twitter. It has been a very interesting ride. I have met many incredible people, and learned much about a variety of business models and ideas. The Twitter community is growing rapidly with Mashable reporting an astounding 752% increase in 2008. Many project 2009 will be even higher. Who uses Twitter is a question I had in my mind when I first dove in. The best explanation of Twitter I have ever heard, was from twitter user @wisekaren who tweeted to me the following:

“FB (Facebook) is for people you used to know; Twitter is for people you’d like to know.”

Which is a comment I have learned to be absolutely true.

As I see it now, Twitter is a social media platform that provides opportunity for real business growth, understanding, learning, and networking. In social media realm Twitter is like the infamous lunch date tactic all we young executive types use(d) when we were expanding our careers, working 80 hours a week, but still wanted to meet someone worthwhile, without blowing a whole evening and serious $$ on someone who was not quite right. Twitter gives everyone the opportunity to sample ideas, musings and knowledge of others, not only in your same area of expertise, but in areas of expertise where you have great interest, but lack knowledge.

There are some great Twitter help aides out there, that assist in getting the most out of Twitter data. Some of the Twitter tools I am now using include: TweetBeep, created by my biz partner Michael Jensen. TweetBeep allows you to save keywords and keyword phrases, then the TweetBeep service will email you tweets containing your keywords at predetermined times. Imagine putting in some important keywords for your business and receiving the resulting tweets with those keywords every morning. You can easily see emerging trends, and pick up other related keywords that should probably be considered in your SEO keyword strategies. It is a marvelous SEO tool.

I have also been using TweetGrid. This is a web based tool/system, which allows the selection of 6 topic keywords, and then streams all tweets containing these keywords. If you want to learn about a topic quickly, pick a keyword you are interested in and watch the data fly by. This is also a great way to find and engage Twitter users directly who have similar interests, and perhaps strike up a relationship for future work together, or at least someone we can bounce ideas off. It is an excellent tool to leverage Twitter.

For folks on the go, there are many amazing Twitter tools that provide the benefits of Twitter on the road. I personally use Tweetie on my iPhone to tweet, but there are many others, including: Twittelator, Twitterrific which offers all of Twitter’s functionality and TwitterFon, which is a free, but very basic iPhone Twitter client.

Some other cool Twitter tools for the iPhone include Fastweet, which allows for quick reading of many tweets. GeoTweeter which adds GPS coordinates to your tweets, GPSed, lets you share maps of your travels to Twitter and Twitter Trend which gives you a snapshot of what topics are really hot on twitter for the last 24 hours. Very cool.

I know many of those that use SoloSEO are small business owners, and are working diligently to get their online business screaming. We can see how much work is being done through the use of the SoloSEO SEO tools. Please also consider using Twitter to bolster your online exposure, and knowledge about your online market, it will make a difference.

Just a quick note on some Twitter rules of engagement (suggestions really). When someone “follows” you on Twitter, it is a good idea to follow them back. How many followers you have is a big deal to many. It doesn’t indicate exactly if you are a good Tweeple, but does show how popular you are on Twitter. Following people who show interest in you makes good sense, as many will have something in them you will be interested in. I have learned this tidbit over time, and am now in the process of ditching those I follow that don’t follow me, and following my followers. Its just good Karma. Also, on Fridays there is a custom of recommending good Twitter users others should follow. You simply list the user’s usernames with a hashtag (def. a keyword with # at the beginning of the word, which allows organization a group of tweets) of #FollowFriday somewhere in your tweet. For example, I tweeted earlier today the following:

#followfriday @brucecarlson @tamar @mattlaclear @chrisbennett @mdjensen @wisekaren @LoriLeavitEvans. Great folks, great follows.

Which essentially tells those that read my tweet that I recommending these 7 users as worthy to follow.

Those are just a few things on Twitter. The best way to learn and love Twitter is to just jump in and get going. Sign up for Twitter here. At anytime, if you have a questions about how to use Twitter, just tweet about it, and you will find just how helpful and responsive the Twitter Nation can be. Hope to see (follow) you soon.

Finally, we would sure appreciate a follow once you get up and running. @mdjensen & @aaronstewart

Twitter graphic above provided by AddDesign

Add comment Visited 19635 times March 13th, 2009 Aaron R Stewart

Related Posts: