SEO Strategic Planning

March 7th, 2009 by Phil Weslow

When considering a niche for a new website, based on SEO factors, one of the first things to consider is the number of monthly searches you hope to be able to drive to your site. The first step I would suggest is to find the 50 keywords you feel are most relevant to your niche and insert them into a spreadsheet.

In order to find these top 50 keyphrase opportunities I suggest you use Google’s Free Keyword Tool and base your search on the average number of monthly searches each phrase has been receiving. The next thing you want to figure out is the relevance of your niche topic in relation to each of these keywords. Relevance here refers to the possibility that two distinct niches could be competing for the same keyphrase.

For example, if I was considering starting a new website about training guard and attack dogs, one of the keyphrases I might select would be “protection training”. The problem is that when I search for this term on Google, I receive search results for both “executive protection training” as well as “K9 protection training”

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COW: Remove Noise from Your Video with Audacity

March 4th, 2009 by Phil Weslow

As the title suggests, the challenge of the week, is to remove the audio noise from one of you video files using Audacity. Audacity is free software (shareware) availing for Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms. You can download Audacity here.

In last weeks challenge, we talked about inexpensive options for shooting online video. Depending on which option you choose, audio noise might be a serious issue for you. Last week I completed the challenge using a regular digital camera and there was a lot of audio noise. So I’m looking forward to cleaning it up this week.

For tips on using the software I highly recommend the following YouTube video by Bill Myers.



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COW: Post a Video to YouTube

February 27th, 2009 by Phil Weslow

This exercise is designed mainly for those who have never uploaded an online video before. The idea of the challenge is to complete it with as little cost as possible or ideally at no cost at all, by using equipment that you already have lying around your house, such as a digital camera.

Any form digital camcorder, whether it be MiniDV, DVD, or HDD should be fairly strait forward to upload onto your computer. Usually this will be done through a firewire cable and will require a computer with a firewire input jack.

If on the other hand your camcorder runs on an analog signal, then the task of posting online video can be significantly harder. One option is to borrow a friends Digital Camcorder and connect your camcorder to theirs through the AV wire. By having your camera output to theirs you can set your camera to play and theirs to record. Once your footage is stored on a digitally formated medium, their camera can be used to transfer it to a computer.

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Finding Value on the Cheap

February 21st, 2009 by Phil Weslow

Here at Feedback Secrets were all about starting businesses at minimal expense. A great way to do this is to look around your home in an attempt to salvage any value you can find. In one of our recent posts we discussed the concept of “MTQ Analysis”, which is about applying the assets you currently have, in such a way as to increase the equity of your online business.

With this concept in mind I’d like to encourage you to undertake an audit of all the physical and virtual assets lying around your own home which could be more efficiently applied toward growing your online business without extracting any cash from your pocket.

This might sound like crazy talk so let me start with what I think is a somewhat strait forward example. If you have a ton of books lying around your house on a particular subject, then you have a natural comparative advantage in doing research on that subject compared to anyone who does not own such a collection.

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COW: Downloading Ubuntu with Wubi

February 18th, 2009 by Phil Weslow

I realize that some of you might be thinking, based on reading the title, that I’ve lost it and am now speaking in gibberish! Rest assured that I have not lost all my marbles, just yet.

Ubuntu is a distribution or “distro” of the Linux operating system. It’s open-source software distributed under the GNU General Public License. Without getting into all the nuances, what this means is that you can download the software onto your machine, and use it for free!

There are many ways to install Ubuntu, however the newest method, called Wubi (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer) is arguably the easiest instillation option for new users.

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How Online Business Imitates Chess

February 14th, 2009 by Phil Weslow

We’ve just posted a new article here at Feedback Secrets inspired by Gary Kasparov’s book How Life Imitates Chess. As the book’s title implies the theme of Karsparov’s book are the parallels between various arenas in life and the game of chess.

In the book he devotes a chapter to analyzing strategic situations in terms of “material, time, and quality”. In order to examine how online business imitates chess we have we have adopted this metaphor in our post “‘MTQ’ Analysis in Online Business“.


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COW: Find an SEO Niche Begging For a Blog

February 11th, 2009 by Phil Weslow

The Challenge Of The Week is to do some keyword research to discover a least one keyphrase opportunity that could be exploited by the creation of a new blog.

If that last sentence sounded like gibberish to you, don’t worry, our recent post entitled “Blogging as an SEO Busting Technique” outlines the concept.

We suggest you start your research with Google’s Free Keyword Tool by looking for keyphrases which are receiving between 20,000 - 100,000 searches a month and don’t have too many sites competing for the same term. This can be guestimated on Google’s Free Tool, by looking for keyphrases with a little green bar next to them that is less then half way full.

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Blogging as a SEO Busting Technique

February 10th, 2009 by Phil Weslow

In our recent post on the subject of “Picking a Domain Name” we discussed using Google’s Free Keyword tool as a place to begin SEO research. Let’s say you’ve been looking around and have discovered a keyphrase opportunity.

If the top contenders competing with you for that domain are static web pages then you should consider using a blog as a means of creating a competitive, SEO advantage.

A lot of people have talked about the SEO value that blogs bring in terms of fresh content. But as Darren Rowse of Problogger points out in his post, “How Much Does Fresh Content Matter in SEO”, fresh content is not the end-all and be-all of SEO.

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Week Five Homework Assignment

February 7th, 2009 by Phil Weslow

The homework assignment for week five is to write and submit 5 articles to five separate article directories.

All of the back-links from all five of these articles should be directed to a single web page and the anchor text in each of these links should all targeted for the same keyphrase.

For extra credit consider writing your five articles in order to promote the name-squeeze page which you made for week four’s assignment.

For a good list of article marketing directories to choose from, check out this post from Mert Erkal of the “Search for Blogging” blog.


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Week Four Homework Assignment

January 31st, 2009 by Phil Weslow

The homework assignment for this week is to create a new name squeeze page to generate leads for your email opt-in list.

For some suggestions on name squeeze page layout and construction, feel free to check out our recent post, “Anatomy of a Name Squeeze Page“.


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