Wed Jan 09 07:02:42 PST 2019

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Forums
You cannot expect to learn everything, especially when you are new. One of the
fundamental flaws when I started learning was that I thought it was my job to learn
marketing, HTML, graphics, SEO, PHP, ASP, MySQL, etc. In trying to learn
everything, you can spread yourself too thin. The time I have spent editing ASP
code would have been spent much better doing other things. ?
The nice things about forums are that you get to learn and teach at the same time,
while building friendships and your reputation. Some of your posts can act as mini
sales letters that will drive targeted leads your way. Reading other threads will help
you learn nuggets. On top of selling and learning, you also get to make friends and
learn who knows what. This can help immensely when issues come up that you
are unsure of how to handle, and I have referred many leads to friends I met from
SEO forums.
I usually try to stick with smaller to mid-sized forums off the start as they are easier
to get noticed in than in large forums. Forums like Cre8asite and SearchGuild
might be good places to get started.
Writing Articles
Not everyone is a good writer, but I believe most people can be trained or practice
to become at least decent ones. I do not write articles as much as I did in the past,
but for a while, I was featured in WebProNews almost weekly.
The key to writing articles is to write something so compelling that people will
want to link to it or write something decent and work to get it syndicated on
networks with many eyeballs.
When I started SEO, I was exceptionally poor. It took a while for me to get
around to writing articles, but when I did write one, I noticed a flurry of leads the
next couple days. Three hundred dollars was a lot of money to me back then, and
it was not uncommon to make that in consulting to leads generated from each of
the articles I wrote.
Well-executed research articles tend to get significant media coverage:
? Kalena Jordan did a study on the lack of search engine visibility of the top
100 New Zealand companies and got many leads from it.
? Fathom Online created a Keyword Price Index rating that tracks PPC ad
prices by category each month. Many search-related sites give Fathom
Online free exposure every month by mentioning these statistics.
? SEO-PR was the first SEO company focused purely on public relations. It
is easier for them to get links from other SEO sites than it is for most
other SEO businesses because they are not viewed as direct competitors.