Introduction

[StephenT]

It's good havin' ya around, Tom

[angienewton]

Welcome Tom! Glad to have you here.

[KarenMcG]

Hi Tom (waves :) )

Welcome to SSWT.

If Lynn's not listening in, I'll bet someone will Twitter her or get the word out to her some other way that you mentioned her. She's really very responsive.

Now about your new blog site! For someone who's just not too techy (as you said), you've got me fooled. Looks to me like you've got a good handle on your blog site. And you can make changes as you go along, if need-be.

I hope you find time to join us on the Tuesday SSWT calls at 12 noon EDT. And then perhaps (if you haven't already), you can join the Elite membership.

There's no shortage of information and helpfulness.

[Lynn Terry]

Welcome Tom,

Sorry for the delay - busy day of recording here! :)

Glad to have you aboard. This is a great group, and you'll get tons of feedback and resources here. I'm actually about to hop on a recording for the IMTW podcast and then I'll check it out myself.

I'd be interested to hear your experience with Google and/or SEO if you don't mind sharing?

[Lynn Terry]

Hey Tom,

Just got off the podcast, so haven't had opportunity to check out your site yet - but I totally get what you're saying. I was 'slapped' with the update to affiliate linking policies several years ago. One of the first Affiliate Slaps - and lost almost $40k in annual revenue overnight. So I feel you on that one.

For me it was a side project, not my core business, but still a sting. I no longer use Adwords, and rely heavily on SEO and organic search traffic. It is not at all hard if you are following the basic principles. It IS hard if you are following tactics and tricks.

I highly recommend Dan Thies. He has a free guide on SEO that is a must-read: http://www.seofaststart.com It's less than 100 pages, and may give you a fresh perspective of SEO again.

For Twitter, start here: http://www.clicknewz.com/1953/twitter-marketing/ :)

[retta719]

Hi Tom, great to meet you :)

[AlexNewell]

Welcome Tom

i've been through redundancy from a community college too, so you're in good company buddy!

Traffic is basically easy.

People go online to get information. They want answers to their questions. "How can I be more confident?", "how can I fix my acne?" , "what is the best web host?" etc.

If you set your blog up properly - it will get some of those visitors and you will make some sales.

And what does "set up properly" mean? It means - good content focused on a keyword phrase that is searched for online say, 1,000 times per month with not too many web pages competing against you for that phrase - say, 10, 000.

These are simply example numbers not guide numbers!

Good content and a good logical structure to the blog helps too.

:-)

Then you start link building to your posts.

find a self dev forum and post there. People will check out your signature file.

Post here too!

Put articles into article directories

And socail media work too.

They are more casual. No selling is a basic rule - no pitching too.

Just be social, be nice, help people, be yourself. And you can mention your blog...of course people will check it out.

The traffic grows.

Honest!

There's more to it but that is enough just there!

Good luck!

:-)

[Lynn Terry]

I'd love to hear your thoughts after reading both. I think SEOFS 2009 will really change your perception - in a good way! I've been through slaps and penalties too, but that was mainly on "tricks n tactics" I was testing on the side.

I enjoy very good rankings and traffic with Google - and have been consistently doing the same thing for more than 3 years. No jumping through hoops if you do the white hat method ;)

[Lynn Terry]

Both actually - I have a combination of static HTML websites, and wordpress blogs, and enjoy great rankings on both. The internal/on-site optimization you are reading about is important and good to know, but it's the off-site optimization (ie your linking strategy) that will carry the most weight.

There are things you can do with a blog, such as internal linking between posts, creating pages that serve as topical resources, etc. But the basics are generally the same.