In the “SEO geekdom” its sometimes difficult to get straight talk on using SEO. White hat, black hat, grey hat techniques… Who really gives a shit about the color of your hat?

The simple facts are that the only way to know if a particular SEO technique works is by trial and error. Google does not tell anyone how their algorithm works, they just impose it on us. However, enough time has past and plenty of failures have lead to some success. One such success is using youtube videos to send traffic to your site.

Many times you can rank a youtube video in a small niche just by using the proper title tag… In more competitive niches that won’t happen, but you can still rank your videos using link strategies and the traffic that ends up there can result in traffic back to your website: which is the goal.

So check out the vid for basic on page SEO factors that you can use to either rank your youtube video page or gather live link traffic from your youtube video pages.

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video

 

Maybe you’ve had trouble writing good quality content in the past…

Maybe not…

Either way, in this tutorial you will learn how to create solid content fast and easy. And, learn what I have coined the “Cosmo Method” for creating article titles. And, here’s another secret: The super secret “cosmo method” really isn’t that secret, but isn’t your curiousity piqued at this point?

Give this video a look-see and give me your feedback in the comments section. Enjoy the lesson and put this to work for you today!

PS. If you want to view the content in a larger window, click the button in the lower right corner of the player.
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Recently, and by recently I mean right around Christmas, one of my clients called requesting a print ad for The Music Business Registry, Inc. to promote his companies line of Vintage Masters music.

Normally I’d put off such foolishness until after the holidays… However, these guys helped me a lot when I was starting out by sending work my way and have referred other business since so I figure I owe them the holiday time. Plus they are great guys.

Anywho, this is what inventiveWebs did for them in a pinch for The Music Business Registry’s rag.

inventivewebs print ad for vintage masters

 

 

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The Wild Whirled Music Xmas Card Proof

by Jason on December 12, 2011

Each year the fine folks at Wild Whirled Music want a custom card created for the holidays that they can send out to their clients.

And, this year was no different… I just finalized a couple proofs that are being sent over to their head honcho so here they are for you to peruse and critique:

The front looks like this:

print design

Xmas card front designed for Wild Whirled

And what card would be complete without the simple message on the inside… Lol! The inside carries a simple message and all their branding. See below:

graphic design for print back

Inside of the Wild Whirled card

This project is designed to go to print. Done at 300dpi using a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop. What do you think? Feel free to offer up any comments…

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SEO Versus PPC: The Tell-All Heat Map

by Jason on November 8, 2011

The debate rages onward! Who will win out? Will it be SEO or PPC?

Well let’s see… These 2 forms of marketing accomplish very different objectives.

With PPC or pay per click marketing that you can setup on Google, Bing, or even Facebook what you get is the ability to setup ads and begin driving traffic almost immediately. Sure you may have to wait a few days to get your ad approved by the “PPC Gods” who run the platforms, but as long as what you are selling is above board and honest, you should encounter little in the way of obstacles.

PPC requires a good copywriter. Not just any ad will convert… you will need to know how to write a compelling “story” in limited characters. This is a skill that has taken me years to “somewhat master”. But, once you have your ad in place, the results are easily tracked and measured using your favorite service providers metrics platform. If using Google, you would see your results in your Google Analytics or Adwords account.

Let’s look at SEO though…

SEO can give you everything that PPC can and more! Take a look at this heat map…

seo heat map

The click through hotspots are pretty easy to see, eh?

The “red stuff” is telling us where the activity is… Notice that its concentrated on the organic results and not the right hash where the PPC ads typically run.

This is the result of a common phenomenon called “banner blindness” or “ad blindness”. This occurs when your prospect is accustomed to seeing an area on the page that is consistently laden with ads, and thus begins to ignore them. The prospect assumes that there is no value in the ad itself and goes straight for the organic search results.

This heat map of clicks is telling us that the organic search results are the most preferable results on the page! (Look where the red stuff is located)

So how do you get the most preferable results to work for you? You begin an SEO campaign with an honest SEO provider. (More on that later)

With SEO, you get proper click tracking, you get a definite result in that you rank or you don’t, and you get the most desirable screen real estate in the eyes of your prospect.

But here’s the real kicker.

You also get MARKET SHARE!

Let me explain… At any given time there are only 10 spots on page 1 in Google. Every spot you occupy is a spot that your competition can NOT occupy! And, if you push them off page 1 to page 2 or 3, you can effectively ensure traffic for you niche will come to you. This is because very few people will go past page 1 when doing an organic keyword search!

Ideally, you want to rank for as many existing keyword niches as possible that relate to your niche. Emphasis on existing… Some dishonest service providers will rank you for keywords that actually have no search volume and then claim that they did what they said they would.  Well, maybe they did… But SEO should come with traffic! Traffic that is related to your niche. If you rank for a term, yet your traffic does not change, then you probably have been sold a line of bull.

You can check up on niche based terms using the Google Keyword Tool External. I’m going to show you this tool in a coming post…

But in the meantime remember this:

SEO is a zero sum game… There are only 10 spots on page 1! Do you occupy one of them or not?

 

 

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