New SEO Instructions Coming from HereNextYear

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Nov 1, 2012

HereNextYear will announce to its Level 1 members tomorrow, Friday, 11/2/2012, what changes Google has made this time. Yes, it’s that time of the year again where Google is changing their search engine results positions (SERPs) ingredients for organic search.decides to throw us all off kilter by  I call them ingredients because getting any and every page of your website is like making a cake. You have to have chocolate in a chocolate cake or you can’t call it a chocolate cake, right?

Well, Google changes their recipe every month it seems so that no one can ever seem to make the same chocolate cake as the next guy. Get signed-up if yo’re not already a member. It’s free and it’s free for life.

Problems Sending Email?

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Mar 8, 2011

I’m pretty sure the most complex function on the Internet is the process of sending email. It seems like such a simple thing. But, if you’re experiencing problems sending email, you know first-hand how all of a sudden this seemingly easy function can become extremely difficult to handle. I’m no email expert, but I’ve certainly had my share of problems sending email. And, that’s where the problem always seems to be…in the “sending” of the email rather than the receiving side of things.

If you’ve proven emails you send are not getting to their recipient, try these 3 steps to make sure your bases are covered.

1. Setup reverse DNS on the IP your domain name runs off of. Don’t worry, I don’t have much of a clue what this means either. Just call your hosting company and have them check on if this has been done.

2. Set the SPF record. On my server, I would login to my WHM account to change the setting.

3. Make sure you’re not on any blacklists by performing a quick (and free) blacklist search.

Another Great Turnout at Profit Again in 2010

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jun 25, 2010

Zakary Barron from Constant Contact and I had another great turnout at Profit Again in 2010. Our workshops are typically just 3 hours from 9 to noon during a weekday so you can get your work done during the rest of the day. Looks like we might start doing these once a month as we always have a waiting list. Keep checking our Denver Internet marketing workshops page on the HereNextYear.com site and sign-up for the Tuesday Triplet and receive notices whenever we have another upcoming workshop.

At every session, we cover social networking, blogging, WordPress, SEO, video, email marketing strategies and other essentials. And, yes, that’s just 3 hours of jam packed content. Hope to see you at the next one!

Profit Again in 2010 Workshop

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jan 7, 2010

Using the Internet to grow your business has dramatically changed since the beginning of 2009. If you’ve been misled into thinking all it takes to be successful online today is getting a few hundred followers on Twitter, spending hours a day “Facebooking” or gaining top placement on Google for your book title or business name, we’d like to offer you a reality check…and a path for hope…for the new year!

Throughout 2010 I will be offering a new workshop called, fittingly, “Profit Again in 2010.

If you’re not familiar with me, I’m a 15-year Internet marketing “lifer,” co-authored of “Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies” (Wiley 2009), and I’ll be using this workshop to update you on the radical progression of WordPress websites, blogs, traffic building, social networking, rss, podcasting, Federal Trade Commission restrictions and Google banning since just a year ago.

I don’t just “write and speak” about Internet marketing. I create and promotes my own products, manuals, and membership sites, with more than 100 of my own websites. Myself, along with a team of 7 at HereNextYear, Inc. have serviced more than 300+ clients nationwide.

For just one of those clients this past August, we launched just one website that enjoyed 99 product pages indexed on top of Google within 3 days. By the end of the first week, the site brought in more than $3,826 in sales. By Thanksgiving, the site delivered its first $100,000 in revenue.

Coincidence? No way. It’s the same process for any business, author or speaker…every time. All you have to do is find where you are in the process and plug in.

True success of any financial measure for your book, product or business will be no accident or stroke of luck. And, in today’s economy, you can’t afford to shoot darts at a wall in the dark!

You won’t find overnight riches or make that elusive “money while you sleep” with a casual, ho-hum approach.

And it won’t happen by changing a few meta tags on your home page.

What’s the answer? P.T.A.

1. Plug-in
2. Team-up
3. Accelerate

That’s right, just three simple steps.

First, you must identify where you are in the Internet marketing process and “plug-in” to that process. The success plan online is almost exactly the same for every business, author or speaker and hasn’t changed in almost 15 years! All you have to do is discover the process, find out where you are in that process and plug-in.

Second, team-up with those that can help you implement the process. Hiring a random website designer from Craigslist or someone from a foreign country just because you can get services for 20 cents on the dollar might have helped five years ago, but outsourcing today only helps you if you are an experienced Internet marketing project manager. You need to start now to form a devoted team that will be at your side for years to come to help you with technical challenges and smart and calculated marketing planning.

Third, only after you know the process and have a team to rely on can you expect to accelerate implementation and see the rewards.

Specifically, here’s what I will cover during any Profit Again in 2010 workshop, seminar, full-day training, or 20-minute speech:

-My 3-step process to predict whether your product or book can even be sold online or whether you should just throw it in the trash and move on

-Why Google has banned more than 150,000 websites for life in just the past month…and how to avoid being next!

-The FTC’s crackdown on misuse of testimonials and affiliate marketing and what you need to do to protect yourself from being accused of false claims…The CAN SPAM Act was only the beginning to this!

-Why every business owner, author and speaker should have “5″ websites or more…even if your competition already does!

-What keyword phrases the human population is searching online for and how you can stand in the way and benefit from that traffic

-The “new” evolution of websites and why it doesn’t even make sense to have anything else

-The secrets of social networking automation that only those with 2,000 Twitter followers or more even know about.

-How to get 300 minutes of social networking benefit for every 30 minutes you spend

-The Article Marketing Underground Triangle: How to write an article once and use what you’ve written for explosive reach to more than 30,000 websites, video directories and bookmarking sites for obscene traffic flooding whenever you want it.

-Plus, I will reveal my most closely held secret to managing what should be 10 hours a day of promotion productivity that gets accomplished in less than 60 minutes…every day.

As we roll out this essential program, look for specific dates and locations to be accessible through our main website at HereNextYear.com on our Workshops page.

Improve Internet Marketing Results for Your Business or Company with These 7 Tips

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Oct 29, 2009

Either have your own business or work for a company if you are reading this post. You’re beside yourself why your Internet marketing efforts have produced stagnated results. You’ve spent hours building followers on Twitter but no one seems to care about what you tweet. Your lead generation has come to a screeching halt and product sales through your shopping cart are even worse. Is this what you can expect for the remainder of the year?

No! Stop the bleeding right now.

Here are 7 tips to give some much needed chest compressions to your dying Internet presence:

1. Look at Your Website for the First Time – If you could suddenly step out of your body and become 1,000 visitors to your website, what would you “expect” to see? Does your website offer what your visitors expect? Be honest and then add the missing pieces that come into mind. Does a strong “upper right quadrant” (URQ) exist on your website? Do you top navigation buttons inspire people to take action by clicking on them? Do you provide content of value on your website that doesn’t always throw the hard sales pitch? Are you absolutely positively sure that a visitor knows exactly what they are supposed to do next after they have found what they’re looking for on your website? I’ll ask it again: Are you really sure?

Why try for 100,000 visitors a month to your website if you’re not able to convert the visitors you do get to leads or customers?

2. You Get One Click – In Steve Krug’s book, Don’t Make Me Think, he gives a great walk through of website usability and how websites should be constructed. Read his book, but at the same time, think to yourself “I lose 50% of my visitors every time I make them click on anything.” So, if you want to only make one change to your website, add a quote form or contact form to your most important product or services pages…and especially to any landing pages where you are running pay-per-click ads to. If you only get a single click, you want that to be a prospective customer completing a quote form and “clicking” the submit button.

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3. Purpose Your Content - Don’t just add a page to your blog or website for the heck of it. Have a direct purpose for everything you add. If you’re going for getting more pages indexed on Google, for example, find what people are searching for related to your industry or topic first, and then write your article or page to speak to those visitors. Use free tools like Google’s free keyword search tool or Word Tracker’s free search tool to find search volume for any given phrase. These tools will also act as a thesaurus to give you ideas of other related phrases people are searching for.

After all, it’s a lot easier to be hit by a car if you go out into the street! Create your content for what your visitors are searching for.

Now, you don’t always have to produce content only for Google search. This post, in fact, doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting in the top 10 search results with a giant keyword phrase “improve internet marketing” as my leader phrase. And, it’s not worth my time to go through the heroics of what it would take to make that happen. But, that’s okay, because my intention is to promote this particular post on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and a variety of other social networks where the headline itself will hopefully be intriguing enough for people to want to pay a visit. After all, Google is only 1 of more than 100 ways to get traffic to a website.

4. Expand Your Traffic Options – Once you have tested and tweaked your website to increase your conversions, evaluate all the ways to increase traffic to your website. My most downloaded white paper on my company site is called 101 Realistic Ways to Get Traffic to a Website. It’s a 30-page free download that walks you through all the traffic generators I know of. What’s better is that they’re all sorted by cost, ease of implementation, time to implement, and ROI. You can make your entire Internet marketing plan for the next two years using that single document.

5. Get More Involved – When a struggling business owner, author or speaker comes to me saying their website is not performing to their expectation, my first question is 1, how many leads or sales did you get last month. That one is easy. They usually say zero. Next I’ll ask, how much visitation did you get last month? Almost always, “I don’t know” is the answer. Knowing the answer coming next, I still ask it…”Can you make changes to your own website?” A long pause usually occurs and then I hear, “no” as the answer.

If you still have to send even minor text changes to your designer to be added to a page, right now is the time for you to take steps to change that! Joomla is a free content management system that designers like because of its design flexibility and visual editing features. Programmers prefer Drupal for its power and clean code…but you’d better have a programmer in tow if you go with that system. My personal favorite is WordPress. At the Thrive Internet Marketing Super Conference in Chicago, I’m going to show you some uses for WordPress that you might not even imagine are possible! Even if you’ve heard of WordPress before, you haven’t seen anything like this! It’s the new evolution of websites.

6. Perform Mind Magic – It seems easier to introduce this topic using those words than it is to tell it like it really is. People get all bent out of shape when I say “Spy on your competition.” So, think of it as performing mind magic instead. Truth is, in this day and age, you really need to keep up with what your competition is doing. One great tool for doing this is Keyword Spy. There you can plugin your competitors domain name and see all (well, most anyway) of the organic search phrases that come up on Google pointing to their website. You can also see if they are running Google AdWords campaigns as well as the wording they’re using in those AdWords and how much they’re spending per month.

This is by far illegal. It is simply market research. But when you use that information correctly to apply to your own website and promotions, people will think you’re performing some kind of “mind magic.” So, that’s what you want to tell them…or, risk being accused of spying!

7. Create Something Memorable – On my HereNextYear site, you’ll see my mascot. It’s a picture of a dog. It’s not my dog. It’s just a picture. The picture has a name. His name is “Action.” The idea behind Action is that I can teach you everything I’ve learned about increasing leads and sales on the Internet, but unless you’re willing to “take Action,” it’s a waste of time for both you and me.

When I present that at seminars and workshops, people simply go CRAZY! It’s a great opener and it is very sticky, meaning, it sticks in peoples’ minds for a very long time. I get calls from people months after they see me speak. They’ll say, “Marty, I don’t remember what you do, but you’re the guy with the dog, right?”

It’s memorable. It’s sticky. It sells. Action sells! Action even has his own Fan club on Facebook (which you are welcome to join here)! And, I take “Action” in everything I do and everywhere I go.

What character can you create that is related to your business that can be sticky and memorable like Action is to my business?

So, these are just a few of the things I’ll be covering in much more detail at the
Thrive Internet Super Conference in Chicago. Why not join me there on the 19th and 20th? I’m sure it will be worth your while.

If you’re just not into going to seminars anymore for fear of getting those dreeeeeaded sales pitches, well, checkout my recent blog post where I give you 101 reasons to attend a seminar. They each far outweigh any fear you may have of getting pitched.

Hope to see you there in Chicago!

Click Fraud for Paid Search On the Rise with Bahama

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Sep 30, 2009

It’s been rather quiet on the click fraud front for the past few months. Either less people are worried about saving money and factoring it into their conversion rates, or they’re just so worried about the economy that they just figured less people are buying per click. ClickForensics thinks otherwise as they have discovered a sophisticated botnet they’re calling “Bahama.”

Essentially this is an automated bug that latches on to the web server and sends automated clicks to paid search like Google AdWords. The problem with this beyond just an automated click fraud device is that this one carries quality score with it. So, that further masks Google’s ability to see that it’s not a human making the search and the click.

Watch your pay-per-click campaigns closely folks. If you see a sudden surge in clickthrough’s, it could be you’ve fallen prey to the great “Bahama”

Getting Leads and Sales with LinkedIn Without Even Trying

Posted by Marty Dickinson on May 1, 2009

LinkedIn has finally revealed to me how it can produce more leads and sales for a business and I did it without even trying. I started my LinkedIn profile in 2007 and setup my profile just like the pros. Got a bunch of connections and then just sort of left it be. I thought the whole purpose of LinkedIn was to just wait for connections to happen. Boy was I way off!

Since starting my LinkedIn profile, I’ve spent far more of my online social networking time with other systems like forums, Facebook, most recently Twitter. I’ve had leads, made sales, increased my opt-ins with every single one of those systems…but nothing from LinkedIn…until the last two weeks.

Here let me show you!

Today is Friday. On Wednesday night, I sat in my recliner for the second half of the Denver Nuggets once again destroying New Orleans in the basketball playoffs. During the last 10 minutes of the half-time report and commercials, I read questions people were making in groups I had signed up to be a member of (free member of course).

After the game was over I just sat in my chair for another 30 minutes joining another 3 groups and posting a few questions of my own and answering others.

The next moring, this is what my email box looked like:

#1 is a lead, someone asking me about what kind of Web site work my HereNextYear company does for clients. #2 is an opt-in to a subscriber list for my Ultimate Blog Setup Checklist site. #3 is a product sale where someone bought one of my e-manuals and #4 is an invitation to join someone’s linked in profile.

The rest of what you see in my email there are from comments made to the groups I belong to after I made comments to them. So, about 80% are people commenting about my comment.

What does all this mean?

It means the secret to using LinkedIn as a lead and sales generator is to participate. You need to do the following:

1) Create a profile in LinkeIn if you don’t have one already
2) Add links to your Web sites in your linkedIn profile so that when people do decide to find out more about you from your participation in groups that they will have a place to go
3) Click the “Groups” link from within your profile to search for groups where your target audience might be already members.
4) Join 10 or more groups if possible and choose some groups that have more than 5000 members. It’s okay to belong to some groups that have smaller membership numbers, but you need to be part of some larger groups just for sake of volume. For any group member that has the “email me every time a comment is made to this group” activated, when you make a comment, an announcement will go out to everyone on that group list. That’s what you see in my e-mail inbox image above besides the #1,2,3,4 is notices that comments have been made to the group I’m participating in.
5) Every time a notice DOES come in to your email, read the reply and engage in more conversation.

One conversation I was participating in is about LinkedIn spam. It was such a popular topic that there were 4 pages of comments within a week’s worth of discussion. I shared my opinion on the first page of the comments but then added more comments to make sure I had visibility on other pages too.

So, keep track of those discussions and participate frequently.

Should you ONLY participate in LinkedIn groups with the intent of getting sales or leads? YES is my opinion! That’s why we spend time on the Internet for social networking. But, the WAY in which you do it is important too. Don’t just be salesy about it. Simply make comments and share your opinions and expertise. When you write good responses, people will send you emails saying “Hey, great comment to that question and thanks for the help.” And, that’s when you know you’ve made a great first impression. Someday, a person like that could turn into a client, an opt-in, or even a recommender for your services.

And, that’ is the power of how LinkedIn can help you get leads and sales without even trying.

Join me on my new Linked-in Group where discussions are already underway for a variety of subjects related to how blogs interact with social networking. We’re calling it

The Social Blogger Group at Linked-in:

The Net Effect – How Your Blog, Social Networking and Websites Work Together

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Apr 30, 2009

Web sites used to be designed with the primary intent to push pages of content onto the public through search engines. But, when social networking began, the traditional Web site became more of a second, higher-level form of introduction. First people would meet each other on the social network and then your newly found friend would eventually click on something to get to your main Web site.

But, traditional Web sites still today are too slow to keep up with the traffic and conversations that result from the many forms of social networking available on the Internet. When someone becomes introduced to you on Twitter, Facebook or Linked-in types of sites, and THEN they visit your Web site, they are usually wanting to interact with you more.

If you don’t know how to use Dreamweaver or have given up trying to learn your high-end Joomla or Drupal install, it’s just not that motivating to offer to pay someone to make changes or additions to a Web site every day. This potential for interaction is gone unless they pick up the phone to call you or send an email to you.

I’d like to suggest that the importance of a blog has reached a whole new level. Your blog is now at the heart of your entire social traffic flow as shown in this diagram:

Whatever interaction you have on social sites eventually should flow to your blog where you can encourage further interaction. Then, once someone is ready to really look at the services you offer, they are directed to your main Web site.

Note too that the “Net Effect” of using your blog as the very heart of your social gathering place is your ability to add new content quickly and even automate it to be pushed right back to the very social networks you are already receiving traffic from.

Join me on my new Linked-in Group where discussions are already underway for a variety of subjects related to how blogs interact with social networking. We’re calling it

The Social Blogger Group at Linked-in:

I hope to see you on Linkedin soon!

Why Your Goal Should be to Get 2000 Followers on Twitter

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Apr 21, 2009

If you don’t already have 2000 people following you on Twitter, that should be your primary focus until you have exceeded the 2000 mark. Get there as fast as possible now so that you don’t have to worry about it later. Why is this so important?

• Size does matter – Many experienced Tweeters will automatically follow you once you follow them. They will checkout your profile later and likely unfollow you if you look like you’re just starting out with 100 or less followers.
• Twitter limitations – You can only follow more than 2000 people after you have more than 2000 people following you. Twitter does this to prevent people from abusing the system as it’s easy to just click the “follow” button over and over again in hopes people will follow you in return. Hey, we’ve all done it sometime in our Tweetlives.
• Proof of higher stature – One of the great uses of Twitter is to follow people you admire. But, if you follow someone with 50,000 followers, you probably won’t get much notice or attention when you have only 100 or 200 followers. Sure they’ll follow you, but that’s likely just an automatic setting and you will probably get unfollowed within a few weeks.
• Better results – If you Twitter for business, you can expect on average to get one or two people clicking on a link you might feature in any given Tweet. With 2000 followers, you will start to see higher clickthroughs ranging between 15 and 50 of your followers clicking on links per Tweet.
• Inspiration – When you get more results from your Tweets and find yourself meeting and conversing with high profile people in your industry as a result of Twitter, you will be inspired to participate more in Twitter. And, that’s what your 2000 or more followers will be expecting of you.

For almost everyone I’ve met or talked to about Twitter that has less than 500 followers, the entire process seems like such a waste of time for them. But, something changes when you get to 1000 followers. You begin to see Twitter in a different light; one that offers the true potential everyone is always talking about.

If you have less than 2000 Twitter followers, take the challenge right now to develop a plan for getting 2000 and more followers on Twitter.

Overcoming Disinterest in Conducting Webinars

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Apr 20, 2009

Every day I get at least 5 e-mail invitations to attend another
“don’t miss it” webinar and I’ll bet you do too. Nearly every webinar I’ve attended in just the past six months alone, I’ve found myself checking e-mail, making Twitter posts, letting the dog out and even taking phone calls “during” the webinar!

Maybe that’s why I’ve been reluctant to dive-in to the webinar scene with full force figuring attendees wouldn’t even be paying attention.

But then, last month I sat-in on a webinar that changed everything as I (along with an audience of about 200) was completely engaged—for almost two hours—and even wanted more!

Now, here’s an important fact: In this crazy economy, there is more NEED for people to learn new things QUICKLY and they don’t have the money or time to attend as many (or any) live in-person conferences and workshops.

As a result, more people than ever before are turning to webinars to both learn from and deliver content to the public and you and I MUST learn how to conduct webinars the right way and NOW.

Ever since that ah-ha moment last month, I’ve been on a personal crusade to find the ultimate process for delivering the most impactful webinar imaginable. And, I found it right in my back yard in Denver Colorado.

Join me, Marty Dickinson, as I interview Mike Zabinski and Judith Briles of the Denver-based company, Webinar Mentor, and together we will discover the true secrets and correct process of conducting webinars to promote your book, speaking, consulting or product business.

This rare and complimentary webinar event will be on Tuesday morning, May 5th at 9:00 AM (Mountain Time) and will last about 45 minutes with 10 minutes of question and answer time.

Of all the “don’t miss it” webinar promotions you and I get by e-mail, it feels kind of silly for me to suggest that THIS is the one most critical, absolutely essential webinar to attend of the year.

But, it is! Especially if you have been avoiding getting involved with webinars like I have. This could be your turning point and it definitely will be for me.

Claim Your Spot Now as you must register to attend.

I hope to meet you on the webinar.

All the best,
Marty Dickinson
President
HereNextYear, Inc.
HereNextYear.com

P.S. Special Bonus!

I’ve worked out a special arrangement with Judith and Mike to give each attendee access to a brand new tool created by the Webinar Mentor. We’ll tell you more about it on the webinar, but for now, let’s just say the tool was designed to help you evaluate the potential of your webinar program…before you even conduct the webinar. This tool alone is worth $100 or more and you get it as an added bonus. The only way to get it is to attend the webinar on Tuesday morning, May 5th, at 9:00 A.M. (mountain time).