I think about this a lot. In fact not a day goes by that I don’t ponder this subject.

Oddpodz has experienced a 70% increase in readership. Our SEO report card score is over 96 out of 100. We post content daily. And believe it’s smart, worthy stuff.

I have set high standards for the blogs’ success. I want traffic 10 times what we are getting. I want to generate more revs from Google ads and  from affiliate partners and I want to sell more our products.

What is the magic move to make this a reality?

A killer best selling book?

More inbound links?

A big publicity hit?

Social media swarm of 10,000 friends?

Pay per click?

Advertising?

More content posting?

Befriending other popular bloggers?

Comment luv?

I will keep you posted.

Need some ideas on social media or SEO. Check out our ebooks. Want more small business and entrepreneurial insight read our other business blog. Interested in restaurant marketing visit our latest initiative.

My wish list for the Branding Diva is fairly simple: make my projected profit numbers, live a high standard life, beat most of my opponents in tennis, have fun, stay healthy and earn the #1 organic search result on Google. The first five I mastered and was not surprised. The last one (a pleasant surprise) happened this last quarter.

I earned the #1 spot in Google results under Branding Speaker.

So how did I do that?
I did not invest any money with an SEO specialist or ranking company.
I did not call Google and beg.
I did not do the search result dance around a bonfire.

Here’s what I did.
The 10 steps that got me the #1 listing on Google for Branding Speaker.

1. I did my own keyword research.
2. I added as many of these keywords into my web copy as I could.
3. I updated my meta tags.
4. I secured my URL for more than three years.
5. I tagged all my images with ALT tags.
6. I wrote relevant keyword content and posted it everywhere, creating links back to my site.
7. I set up and tagged all of my videos on YouTube which is owned by Google.
8. I repurposed every piece of content I ever wrote and posted it everywhere.
9. I set up all of my social media that link to my site.
10. I set up RSS feeds on my site.

If it worked for me, it can work for you. Good luck!

For more on how to get search results, view: Making history in Saudi and 5 lessons from the experience.

Want return visitors, got to provide fresh stuff. I’m guilty. Been busy working on content and other things and failed to see the mold growing on my site that hadn’t changed much since the relaunch in early 2010. Wow how time flies when you are having so much fun!

This week I’ve been in the learning cave. I joined Marketing Profs, bought the PRO membership, which offers a heck of deal for $300. You get tons of awesome learning from webinars to premium content. I tuned in this week to the seven deadly sins of landing pages. Presented by Tim Ash, a guru in website conversion. It was well worth the entire annual fee. I learned so much about what matters if you are looking for action on your website. In addition to the seven sins which you don’t want to commit, I learned about a very cool free tool that Tim’s company offers. It’s called Attentionwizard.com. It’s basically a heatmap of your site and it’s FREE. This is way worth checking out. Just send them a jpeg of your landing page and they show you where the eyeballs are going. And what I learned about our site was the focus was not directed to our desired call to action.

That’s going to change. I just sent a bunch of tweaks to my web designer, so you you get some fresh stuff and no stale website from Oddpodz. Infact, after the webinar, I’ve decided to freshen our homepage look monthly, like a hot fashion boutique that moves around merchandise often.

The big take-aways from the MarketingProfs webinar by Tim Ash were:

1) Make  sure your call to action is clear and pops out!

2) Don’t have too many choices for your readers, it wears them down

3) Don’t ask them for too much info, it’s not needed and you will loose em fast.

4) Watch the amount of text you dish out, too much will give you a headache.

5) Don’t make a promise you can’t keep

6) Watch the visual distractions that blur your message

7) Always include evidence of credibility, media coverage, partners other kudos

It didn’t stop there. I’ve also enrolled in the Clay Collins Pre-launch Formula mentor program, which also totally rocks. It’s a three month class that focuses on how to build and launch digital products. It covers product development, list building, video marketing, conversion, SEO and so much more. The content is great, but the bonus is how he delivers and organizes it with video modules, downloadable PDFs and a weekly call in session with other students for an incredibly low price of $1500 and change that you can pay out in three months. I can’t share everything in this blog, cause that just would not be right. But here’s two of top take-aways and I’ve not even finished the class.

• Did you know that blogs generally only convert 5% to opt-ins.
• And landing pages can deliver up to 50% in opt-ins. This is where your focus should be.
• Asking for too much info in your opt-in form will loose your sign ups faster than the hotels and guest with bedbugs.
• And while SEO is great, however, it’s not the life raft unless you are already sailing in some pretty big winds.
• Joint venture partners are sweeter than honey. In the program you learn how to find them and attract them.
• If you use WordPress you can set up many pings in the backend that will help spread your content while you are sleeping.

With in the next couple weeks, you’ll see some changes to our site and I will report back on how they impacted our list building, product sales and traffic.

Stay tuned.

Internal linking is the most practical way to increase page views and traffic to a website. Many SEO experts believe that external linking from other websites is more effective than internal, but it’s quite the contrary. Visitors tend to stay longer on websites that use internal linking, rather than those that do not, because internal linking makes the site more user-friendly. They also make navigation more simplistic while clicking links on the website. Adding internal links throughout a site allows more control over pages and content. These links are monitored by ‘search crawlers’ that improve search engine ranking which, in turn, makes the website easier to find. Be sure to use the checklist below for your internal linking strategies.

1. Link all of your keywords
2. Link text from new posts to older posts
3. Write up bi-monthly or monthly summaries of your most popular posts, linking back to them
4. Write a series of posts that link to each other
5. Link to other related posts throughout your site
6. If you have an FAQ page or a sitemap, link to other pages in your siteNeed more ideas on improving your search results, check out our SEO Ta-Do list.

“Do not panic. This is not the revolution. But you should pay attention and find your Place on Facebook. Your business or place may not be in Facebook Places, and that means someone else can define you in this giant network of mobile users.

Facebook’s making a play for geo-location dominance. It’s not revolutionary because others are already here. But Facebook has a large and growing audience, and that means more people will start using this and you need to think about how that affects your social profile as a business, an event or a movement.

If you depend heavily on social outreach, then get to know Facebook Places, “Facebook blog: Who, What, When, and Now…Where”.

As you may know, when social networks integrate geo-location, we get social navigation. Games and check-ins through apps by Gowalla and Foursquare allow mobile and smart device users to announce their location with quips or to search for friends, deals at restaurants and collect cute stamps in their profile.

Whether this is a business or a feature is debatable.

What is not debatable is that Facebook just launched a geo-location enhancement that immediately has an audience of 100 million users, according to Facebook on Feb. 10, “Facebook Mobile: 100 Million and Growing,” .

Find whether your place is on Facebook Places.

If it’s there, check the accuracy and completeness of the listing.

If it’s not there, make an entry immediately. Any user can create an entry on Facebook Places, and it starts with adding a name and a description of the Place. So if you’re business is a restaurant, imagine someone adding your Place but getting the name wrong or not giving your menu a good review.

In all likelihood, you’ve been paying close attention to how your location appears in the current geo-location social apps. If you fit this category, then Place is just one more check on your social marketing list.

If you are just waking up to this, then go directly to Facebook Places. Check your Places profile. Make it accurate. Take care of your profile in the other apps later. You can no longer ignore social navigation. This is not the revolution, but this is your time to join mobile marketing.”