Feature Product Review:Digging out profitable keywords for superior quality search engine optimization is one of the toughest and most important aspects of affiliate marketing. And, in order to help you do that, David Viniker a unique program, Keyword SEO Pro. The tool lets you find highly targeted keywords with low competition and allows you to
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Keyword SEO Pro
Those who stalk me (and you know who you are) know that I’ve been talking a lot lately about “ Storyselling ,” which is a way to sell stuff using stories. But nothing is infallible, so I wanted to publicly announce some flaws I’ve found with it: Don’t use Storyselling with the police. Tell them about Uncle Phil’s hairpiece and they’ll still put you in jail for running over a Photomat booth with a city bus. (Don’t ask how I know this.) Don’t tell your story after being pushed off a building by the person you were trying to convince not to push you. Tell it before. After is too late. It’s amazing how many people get this one wrong. Don’t watch The Story of O with your grandmother, unless you enjoy uncontrolled squirming. Now, with that out of the way, let me tell you the story of what happened this week on Copyblogger: Monday: 50 Can’t-Fail Techniques for Finding Great Blog Topics I could give you an elaborate summary of this one, but really, the title says it all: it’s a collection of 50 can’t-fail techniques for finding great blog topics. Instead, I’ll spend this summary talking about Hollywood gossip. So… do you guys think Lady Gaga is a dude? Read the full post here . Tuesday: Want People To Read Your Sales Page? Make It Scannable To prove how true this post is, I scanned it only briefly to write this summary, and did so while driving a race car off a cliff. A lot of people are like me, so if your sales page is full of dense text that requires people to read every word, you’re going to turn us off. Also, after scanning this post, I’m pretty sure it was about waffles. Read the full post here . Wednesday: 8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity And Stifle Your Success I totally get this one. Most people have the potential to be creative, but they do these 8 things that stifle creativity and make them boring. Don’t want to be boring? Then stop doing these 8 things, and also get a multicolored hat with a feather. Read the full post here . Thursday: Scribe 3.0: SEO Made Simple Hey, everyone, Scribe just got even better! I like Scribe. It’s cool for people like me who hate SEO because they think it gets in the way of your writing style, but then you get Scribe and it goes all ninja and suddenly you’re ranking well and life is grand. NOTE: Scribe does not include a pair of those little ninja slippers, exploding powder, or those shiny little stars you throw at people. Yet. Read the full post here . Friday: Why Getting Attention Won’t Make You Rich I was in a pink full-body suit, climbing the Sears Tower to drop lemons on pedestrians when I read this post — and just in time. Attention may be the first step to building a lucrative business, but it’s not the only one. In this post, Sonia Simone outlines what else you need to do in order to convert attention to currency. For me? I’m selling “I got hit with a lemon by a pink guy and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” t-shirts. Read the full post here. This week’s cool links: Signs That Blogging is Not Only Alive, But More Critical Than Ever : Think that blogging is dead? Um, no. That would be a stupid thing to think. Digg Founder “Burned Out,” May Leave by End of 2010 : Kevin Rose has had it, and reading this, I think I’d be expecting a “postal” reaction out of him. Can we get Pete Rose in there instead? Trouble Choosing a Niche? Start a Personal Blog : If you’re not sure what to blog about, Darren Rowse suggests starting a personal blog as a testing ground. (Note to self: It’s possible to have a business blog that isn’t all about yourself? Strange, but possibly true.) 14 Incredibly successful ways to stand out from the crowd : Like monster * posts? This one about finding a way to stand out in an otherwise crowded space will suit you well. * Does not contain Cookie Monster. ‘Cluetrain Manifesto’ Comes True In Age of Twitter, Facebook : The book The Cluetrain Manifesto , written in 2000, is totally being proven true a decade later. (Also, it describes a train on which you can play the game “Clue.” My money is on Professor Plum in the parlor with the candlestick.) About the Author: Johnny B. Truant wants you to know that his new course Storyselling 101 is half price this weekend and says “You should totally get it now.”
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Copyblogger Weekly Wrap: Week of September 27, 2010
Some people think search engine optimization is a dark and mysterious art. But for online writers and content producers, it’s really as simple as 1, 2, 3: First, you need the right keywords, so you understand the language your readers, customers, or clients are using when they search. Second, you need compelling content that people love and search engines know is relevant to those searchers. Third, you need incoming links so search engines treat your site as a trusted and relevant source. I’m proud to announce that version 3.0 of Scribe now goes beyond on-page content optimization. We’ve added upfront keyword research (in addition to our keyword suggestion tool), plus three great link-building features that help you cover all your search optimization bases. Scribe 3.0 makes these three SEO fundamentals easier and more efficient than ever: First, the Scribe keyword research tool tunes you into the right language before you write. Once your content is created, the Scribe keyword suggestion service shows you keyword phrases you might have missed. Second, Scribe analyzes your natural, reader-focused content, and tells you how to gently tweak it to spoon feed search engines based on 15 SEO best practices. Third, Scribe’s link building tools help you build back links from other sites, crosslink the content within your own site, and identify influential social media users who want to share your stuff. With Scribe on your side, you’ll: Discover the correct profitable keywords Stay automatically up to speed on SEO best practices Optimize your content better and faster Avoid content that reads like it was written by a robot Build quality links with less hassle and confusion But most of all, you’ll achieve higher search rankings and increase the targeted traffic to your site! As part of your subscription you get Scribe Web, plus integrated versions of Scribe for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. We’ll even throw in free educational seminars to help you get more out of Scribe. Check it out . Scribe Web: Scribe Web allows content creators of any type to optimize any web content for search engines, regardless of platform or content management system. It’s especially popular among professional writers who create search optimized content for clients, and that’s why Scribe Web allows you to generate detailed content optimization reports so your clients can easily understand the work you’ve done. Scribe for WordPress: Scribe for WordPress allows online publishers and bloggers to optimize their content for search engines directly from inside the WordPress interface, by tapping into the Scribe software service on our servers. This means you’re constantly getting new-and-improved, state-of-the-art keyword research, content optimization, and link building tools. Scribe requires the ability to enter a custom title tag and a meta description via your WordPress interface. Most popular themes and plug-ins, both free and paid, enable these two functions so you can use Scribe directly from WordPress. Themes that work with Scribe for WordPress: Genesis Thesis Headway Hybrid Frugal WooThemes SEO Plug-Ins that work with Scribe for WordPress: All In One SEO Pack (free and pro version) FV All In One HeadSpace2 wpSEO Platinum SEO Pack SEO Ultimate Scribe for Joomla and Drupal: Scribe also helps you win the search engine game with the Joomla and Drupal content management systems. The keyword research and link-building features have been built in by our respective Joomla and Drupal ninjas, and are in beta testing as we speak. We expect the new and improved Joomla and Drupal plug-ins for Scribe to be live and kicking by next week. New design, new videos, new offer: Because these new Scribe features are kind of a big deal, we’ve done a complete makeover in their honor. We’ve got a completely new site design, new copy, a new video tour, and new demo videos. There’s also a special offer that makes Scribe an even better deal (if you look hard enough). Hint: Look at the “test drive” page. Check out Scribe 3.0 for yourself . About the Author : Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Copyblogger Media. Get more from Brian on Twitter .
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Scribe 3.0: SEO Made Simple
“The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts the moment you get up and doesn’t stop until you get into the office.” ~ Robert Frost It’s a myth that only highly intelligent people are creative. In fact, research shows that once you get beyond an I.Q. of about 120, which is just a little above average, intelligence and creativity are not at all related. That means that even if you’re no smarter than most people, you still have the potential to wield amazing creative powers. So why are so few people highly creative? Because there are bad habits people learn as they grow up which crush the creative pathways in the brain. And like all bad habits, they can be broken if you are willing to work at it. Here are eight of the very worst bad habits that could be holding you back every day: 1. Creating and evaluating at the same time You can’t drive a car in first gear and reverse at the same time. Likewise, you shouldn’t try to use different types of thinking simultaneously. You’ll strip your mental gears. Creating means generating new ideas, visualizing, looking ahead, considering the possibilities. Evaluating means analyzing and judging, picking apart ideas and sorting them into piles of good and bad, useful and useless. Most people evaluate too soon and too often, and therefore create less. In order to create more and better ideas, you must separate creation from evaluation, coming up with lots of ideas first, then judging their worth later. 2. The Expert Syndrome This a big problem in any field where there are lots of gurus who tell you their secrets of success. It’s wise to listen, but unwise to follow without question. Some of the most successful people in the world did what others told them would never work. They knew something about their own idea that even the gurus didn’t know. Every path to success is different. 3. Fear of failure Most people remember baseball legend Babe Ruth as one of the great hitters of all time, with a career record of 714 home runs. However, he was also a master of the strike out. That’s because he always swung for home runs, not singles or doubles. Ruth either succeeded big or failed spectacularly. No one wants to make mistakes or fail. But if you try too hard to avoid failure, you’ll also avoid success. It has been said that to increase your success rate, you should aim to make more mistakes. In other words, take more chances and you’ll succeed more often. Those few really great ideas you come up with will more than compensate for all the dumb mistakes you make. 4. Fear of ambiguity Most people like things to make sense. Unfortunately, life is not neat and tidy. There are some things you’ll never understand and some problems you’ll never solve. I once had a client who sold a product by direct mail. His order form broke every rule in the book. But it worked better than any other order form he had ever tried. Why? I don’t know. What I do know is that most great creative ideas emerge from a swirl of chaos. You must develop a part of yourself that is comfortable with mess and confusion. You should become comfortable with things that work even when you don’t understand why. 5. Lack of confidence A certain level of uncertainly accompanies every creative act. A small measure of self-doubt is healthy. However, you must have confidence in your abilities in order to create and carry out effective solutions to problems. Much of this comes from experience, but confidence also comes from familiarity with how creativity works. When you understand that ideas often seem crazy at first, that failure is just a learning experience, and that nothing is impossible, you are on your way to becoming more confident and more creative. Instead of dividing the world into the possible and impossible, divide it into what you’ve tried and what you haven’t tried. There are a million pathways to success. 6. Discouragement from other people Even if you have a wide-open mind and the ability to see what’s possible, most people around you will not. They will tell you in various and often subtle ways to conform, be sensible, and not rock the boat. Ignore them. The path to every victory is paved with predictions of failure . And once you have a big win under your belt, all the naysayers will shut their noise and see you for what you are — a creative force to be reckoned with. 7. Being overwhelmed by information It’s called “analysis paralysis,” the condition of spending so much time thinking about a problem and cramming your brain with so much information that you lose the ability to act. It’s been said that information is to the brain what food is to the body. True enough. But just as you can overeat, you can also overthink. Every successful person I’ve ever met has the ability to know when to stop collecting information and start taking action . Many subscribe to the “ready – fire – aim” philosophy of business success, knowing that acting on a good plan today is better than waiting for a perfect plan tomorrow. 8. Being trapped by false limits Ask a writer for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves words. Ask a designer for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves visuals. Ask a blogger for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves a blog. We’re all a product of our experience. But the limitations we have are self-imposed. They are false limits. Only when you force yourself to look past what you know and feel comfortable with can you come up with the breakthrough ideas you’re looking for. Be open to anything. Step outside your comfort zone. Consider how those in unrelated areas do what they do. What seems impossible today may seem surprisingly doable tomorrow. If you recognize some of these problems in yourself, don’t fret. In fact, rejoice! Knowing what’s holding you back is the first step toward breaking down the barriers of creativity. How about you? What mental habit has been hardest on your creativity? Let us know in the comments how you’ve handled it. About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s most creative advertising copywriters. He shares his writing and freelancing experience at Pro Copy Tips .
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8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity And Stifle Your Success
There are two types of sales page readers: those who faithfully read every word, and those who skim until they get to the end. Since you want to sell to both of these groups, you have to know exactly how to capture and hold the attention of each — and doing so in the same sales page is no small feat. The good news is, you can use the same writing strategy to get each group to engage with what you’re reading … and ultimately to buy what you’re selling. One very simple way you can increase the “scannability” of your sales page is by making effective use of subheads. Subheads are a sales page’s best friend If you blog at all, you know the power that a good set of subheads commands over your readers. You take special care to make them stand out, capture attention and intrigue your readers — and most important, to give those people who give your post a quick “once over” a reason to slow down and read every word you’ve written . Sales pages are no different. Good subheads allow your readers to stay grounded in the context of what they’re reading, while building a sense of anticipation of what’s to come. So let’s talk about a few subhead strategies you can use to make readers sit up and take notice. How to strengthen your sales copy with promises We’ve talked before at Copyblogger about how a good headline delivers a promise to the reader that makes them want to read further into your sales page. But if you don’t deliver on that promise quickly, readers can lose interest and either scroll down to the end or give up on your copy entirely. This is why you want to set up each subheader to include a smaller promise — a taste of what’s to come in the next few paragraphs, if only they will continue reading. For each section of your copy, ask yourself: What result will my reader be closer to after reading the text in this section When you find the answer, build that into the subheader text. (If you can’t come up with something, that’s a sign you need to improve that section.) Want an example? Look at the subheader above. I just did it. Why benefit-based subheaders get your readers to stick Naturally, readers want to know what’s in it for them. Here’s where you tell them how the promise you’ve made can make their business (or their life) better. To figure out the positive changes that will happen after they take you up on your offer, look at the promise and ask yourself: How will things be different for my readers after they take in this information This works so well because it makes the reader hungry for a specific outcome. Where a promise simply hints at a basic result, (“You will be more successful”) the benefits speak to the experience that people will have after they get that result (“You will double your current income in two weeks”). Tapping into the desire for a specific experience does two things: First, it forces you to tighten up your copy so that it delivers on the promise. And second, it triggers your readers’ motivation to read every word of it. After all, that’s what happened with this section, isn’t it? How I used story elements to hit the front page of Digg (and how you can too) When I first started learning about copywriting, I found the most popular headlines from places like Digg and Copyblogger and physically wrote them out by hand so I could get a true “feel” for what went into making a compelling opening for my blog posts. The act of writing with pen and paper made the copywriting lessons stick in a powerful way, enabling me to hit the front page of Digg six times. And as I talked to others who used this same technique I realized that it wasn’t a fluke — it’s an important part of learning by doing. It’s so important, in fact, that my first Copyblogger guest post was about this exact subject. It’s opened the doors to many guest posts since then. That’s my story — which, interestingly enough, you’ve just read to the end. Keep in mind the story doesn’t have to be about you — it can be the reader’s story (for example, “How you’ll get twice as many people to read to the end of your copy”). In some cases this can be even more compelling than a story elements that refer to you or your customers. Look at the subheader above and see how I’ve included the idea of story, a promise, and a specific benefit to keep you from clicking away. When you do the same, you readers will appreciate it. Why solid subheadings stop scanners in their tracks Now, all that we’ve talked about so far explains how to keep interested readers moving from section to section of your sales page — but what about the “scanners” who quickly scroll their way down to the price? How do you get them to stop and read what you’ve written? Well, as I said at the beginning, the techniques that keep those interested readers reading can also make scanners feel like they’re missing out on something — a key motivator for taking their finger off of the scroll wheel. If your subheaders are heavy on promises and benefits, and have an element of story to them, scanners will notice them as they move down the page. As the subheaders “stack” on each other, with promise after promise, benefit upon benefit, and a story that just won’t quit — just as I’ve shown you how to do above — scanners will decide that they’ve just got to slow down and really listen to what you’re offering them, because they’ll be convinced the rewards are just too good to miss. (And just in case you scanned your way down here, that last sentence was for you.) About the Author : Dave Navarro is a product launch manager who can’t wait for you to join the 7,000+ people using his free workbooks in the Launch Coach Library (a crowd favorite in the Third Tribe forums).
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Want People To Read Your Sales Page? Make It Scannable