He ended up on the number two spot for his article’s main keyword, but isn’t seeing any traffic.

He wrote a couple more articles, but hasn’t done any back linking. Then he asks why he should do more, since he’s number two on Google. As if he’s reached the pinnacle and his work is finished. And his subject line asks why he’s not making any money. From one article.

After all, it is number two on Google.

(I’m not going to name the poster or link to the post in order to spare embarrassment. This is a newbie issue, so no reason to cause hard feelings.)

Total Searches Is An Average

There’s one thing you must understand when researching keywords. The number of searches listed in the keyword tools is an average over time. Because of this, you shouldn’t get upset when you don’t see dozens of daily search engine hits on your article right away.

Number Of Searches Has No Connection To Actual Traffic

Also, number of searches has zero connection to your ability to pull in traffic from that search. You could have a great keyword, get ranked on page one, everyone else could be getting tons of traffic, but you might get none.

The reason lies in your page title and the description displayed on your search engine result entry. Now if those things are terrible, you probably wouldn’t get ranked on page one anyway. But if the other nine spots are filled with benefit laden copy while yours made it that high only for technical reasons, you probably won’t get many clicks.

The clicks are going to flow to the other sites because they look more promising to the searcher.

Three Steps To Traffic Success

With these ideas in mind, there are three things you can do right now to improve your flow of traffic. First, figure out how to write tempting headlines and compelling opening paragraphs. This will enliven your entry on the search engine results pages and entice people to actually click on your link. It does no good to be on the front page if no one is moved to visit your page.

Second, one article isn’t going to cut it. Write more. If you write just one article, you may have picked a loser keyword, even if it looks good in the keyword tools. So don’t tie all your hopes to a single article. Writing lots of articles increases the odds that you’ll hit on a few solid traffic magnets.

And third, don’t be like our poster here. Plan for and build out a network of back links to all your online properties. Back links are a big part of the traffic equation, so do NOT leave it out. You don’t have to enslave yourself to building a mega backlink farm, but you will need at least a few for each piece of writing you publish.

Seth Godin discusses his ideas about the sabotaging influence of the lizard brain. The lizard brain is the oldest part of our brains and is responsible for basic, instinctual reactions such as revenge, fear, and the desire to escape danger.

We still carry these instincts into our online marketing efforts and projects. And if we let it affect us, the resistance produced by this ancient neural hardware can derail our success.

Our business objective should be to get something out the door. If we don’t ship a product or service, we’re not in business and won’t make any money.

There’s a common problem with creating and shipping a product, however. Somewhere along the way, we think about what we’re working on and we begin to critique it toward the end of the process. We chisel at it…add to it, take away from it, change it in some way. Some of this can be helpful, but if you’re not careful you’ll use this to delay shipping and therefore delay success.

Our lizard brain smells the completion of a project and it becomes fearful. The closer we get to shipping the more it panics. It’s afraid of ridicule, complaints, critics, getting into trouble, and it’s simply afraid of change.

Now, the lizard brain is just fine with repetitive, safe, non-creative, and status quo work.

But when you work at producing something beyond your comfort level, this brain starts to panic. When panic sets in, it creates resistance. It’s fearful of project completion because it’s unsure that what you’re doing is safe. Since it’s fearful of a bad outcome, it generates resistance to short circuit your efforts.

And it’s a master at coming up with a million excuses to derail your goal to ship your project. It will remind you of all your shortcomings and will give you precise reasons why you can’t accomplish what you want to accomplish.

To achieve success, we need to ship. So we need to silence this part of our brain. Watch the video to hear what Seth has to say about dealing with the lizard brain’s sabotage and how to break through to success.

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain

Also check out an interview between Seth Godin and 43Folders.

And here’s an article by Seth Godin on 99% about beating the resistance: The Truth About Shipping

Essentially, these kinds of text editors strip away all of the distractions on your desktop by making them temporarily invisible. When you fire up one of these programs, it’s just you and the words on the screen. There are minimal formatting options also, so you won’t get lost in trying to typeset your piece as you write.

Of course you could just do your writing in vi for Unix/Linux. That’s probably out of reach for most people, so I’ve included a few more accessible apps below. There are two editors for Windows, one for Mac, one that runs on Java (and so can be used on any OS), and one online version. Try one out and see if it helps.

Windows

Q10
http://www.baara.com/q10/

Dark Room
http://they.misled.us/dark-room

Mac

Write Room
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

BONUS: Make Your Mac Sound Like A Typewriter!
http://alphaomega.software.free.fr/typewriterkeyboard/Typewriter%20Keyboard.html

Java

Typewriter
http://www.lifehackingmovie.com/2009/05/18/typewriter-minimal-text-editor-freeware/

Online

Writer
http://writer.bighugelabs.com/

UPDATE: I just used this to write an article for Taylor Journals. It’s pretty nice…you can wipe out the rest of your desktop by hitting F11 for full screen mode.

On A Related Note…

With Simple Text you can store all your writing, to do lists, etc in one place online and sync them between devices. You can even install this on your own web server so you’re not tied down to someone else’s service.

http://www.simpletext.ws/

So, if you read the first post in the sneak previews section, you’ll see some of my early plans. I wanted to charge a hundred bucks a month for access to my private business ideas and actions. Well, I’m still going to post those details, but now they’ll be free.

No Cash For The Newbie Schmuck

I figured that I wouldn’t want to pay anything for some newbie schmuck who’s just now taking action on money making ideas. I’d pay Frank Kern money for his insights these days, but I wouldn’t have when he was a nobody. So, that’s the reason for the change.

Plus, if I eventually gain some recognition from my activities that I post out in the open, that credibility will help sell things down the road.

So what exactly has changed between last year, October 18th, and today? Well, zero charge for the Private Journal, since there is no such thing any more. The product alerts, niche alerts, and trend hit list will all be freely available as well.

Future Classes

I will probably feature occasional classes on Taylor Journals. These will be limited to a certain number of people and held over a number of weeks. Just like a real class. I may hold several of these each month.

Find A Topic

Consider your reader for a moment. What is he looking for? What’s bugging him? Go to his favorite online hang outs and look for questions. Fire up keyword tool and find out what he’s been typing into search engines. Make a short list of your findings.

Look over your list and see if there’s one idea that you know about. If you can answer questions about that subject without doing too much research, then you’ve found your article topic.

Now, you may find that you’d rather write about other ideas because they seem more interesting. But maybe with these subjects, you don’t have much experience. That’s not too big of a problem; you’ll just have to do a bit of research.

Brainstorming

Take out a sheet of paper and a pen and write down anything that comes to mind about your article…ideas, concepts, words, symbols, doodles and phrases. You’re not writing the article at this point, so don’t worry about making sense or being neat. Be sloppy and scribble if you’d like.

Three Point Outline

Once you’ve dumped a bunch of insights and thoughts onto your paper, take a look at the mess you’ve made. Remember, all these scribbles should be directly related to your article idea. Look for three points that you’d like to cover in your writing. These should be closely related ideas that are simple and that look easy to explain to your reader.

Words, Sentences, Questions

Write these three ideas in a simple outline; just one to three words each. Don’t make it complicated…no more than three words for each element of the outline.

Now expand on each phrase in your outline. Flesh out the idea behind the word or phrase and write a complete sentence.

After you’ve turned each phrase into a complete sentence, change those sentences into questions.

Answer Each Question

Once you’ve completed your questions, answer them.

This preparation takes a bit more time than just jumping into an article and writing free form. But, after the prep work is finished, your article will be far easier to write. All you have to do is react to the questions as you would were someone to ask them in an interview or on a forum.

Using this method, you may find that you’re able to produce more writing in a shorter period of time. You may also find that you have fewer problems with writer’s block.

Write Headline, Intro, And Summary

All that remains is to write the introduction and summary.

I’ve saved the intro and headline until this last step because it’s easier writing them at this stage, since you know exactly what your article is about.

To write the headline, read your article once more and think about the central idea. Connect this idea to your reader. What’s he really going to get by reading what you’ve written? Turn this idea into a reader centered statement or question and you’ll have your headline.

For the introduction and summary, simply state in a few brief sentences the subject matter the article covers. In the introduction, you will use future tense language…”This article is about so and so.” (Just be a bit more creative than that.) And for the summary, you’ll use past tense…”This article covered so and so.”

Include in the intro and summary exactly why your reader should care about your main idea…how this information impacts him or benefits him.

So for your next article, pick three points on a topic you’re familiar with, turn those three points into questions and then answer them. Give the article a simple introduction and summary and move on to the next article. How much easier can this get?

A good article length is between 600 to 900 words. In this article, you should focus on one keyword instead of dumping a ton of keywords together. Focus makes it easy for Google to figure out the subject of your article. If you try to saturate your writing with a grab bag of loosely related keywords, your ranking will suffer because the search engines won’t be able to determine the main niche idea.

To stand the best chance at ranking well in the search engines, your article should be original content. Rich talks about the perils of duplicate content and even says to avoid material from Ezine Articles. I disagree with him here. Duplicate content is a problem if the duplication is happening on your own site.

There doesn’t appear to be a duplicate content penalty between sites. In other words, there could be an identical article that is posted on two or three sites and all three could be indexed and ranked on page one of Google. I’ve seen it happen over and over. But if you post identical articles on your own site, then one of those pages will probably be penalized within Google.

Having said that, original content should be your first choice. Use syndicated content to supplement your original work.

Also, as you’re doing research and synthesizing a new article from other people’s work, be sure to give proper credit when including direct quotes. And run your article through Copyscape to check on possible duplication. (This concern for duplication is different from worrying about the duplicate content penalty. Here, you’re writing your own original content. When you do that, you want to avoid accusations of plagiarism.)

But imagine if you had 1,000 raving fans waiting for your next piece.

Do you think it would be easier to write, knowing a group of loyal readers are there waiting for you?

But you don’t have 1,000 readers, yet. Don’t let that stand in your way.

Instead, consider it to be true and see these people in your mind’s eye.

Write as though there are 1,000 people just waiting to hear from you right now.

Hold this in your mind everyday, month in and month out until it becomes a reality.

You may be sitting there objecting to this whole idea.

Fine.

Have it your way.

But perhaps you’re sitting in your chair, trying to write. You find no motivation because you imagine you have no one who wants to read your work.

And so you find every reason to avoid writing. When you finally try to force yourself to write, you even feel physically uncomfortable. So you don’t write.

And since you end up writing nothing, you ensure your audience stays at zero.

If you’re desperate for change, try something different. As long as you’re imagining that no one is reading your work, you may as well imagine a thousand people are reading it.

As loony as it sounds, pretend you have some readers.

Imagine there are at least 1,000 people out there who love your writing.

And that’s another thing you must come to believe. That they really enjoy and look forward to your writing.

When you believe there are 1,000 people in the world who love your writing, you will write. Your output will increase and the quality of your writing will improve.

Keep this up and one day you really will have 1,000 loyal readers. And that number will grow.

But first, you have to believe you have those people right now.

At the very least, include a short description of that video. Search engines depend upon text to do their work, so having a bit of text on your video’s page is important.

You could go a step further and publish a full transcript of your video’s audio track on your webpage.

And if your website has a tagging system, be sure to tag up your video with relevant keywords.

Taking these steps will help your video’s web page get indexed and ranked in the major search engines. Otherwise, all they have to work with is the title you give that page.

“Optimize the video pages – Search engines aren’t great at knowing what’s in a video (although they are getting there) so make sure you thoroughly describe what your video is about on the page or blog post where it resides on your site.”

This tip was inspired by a blog post from Duct Tape Marketing.

There are some pretty large photo collections available online…some are free and some charge a small amount per photo.

Since you can’t legally grab any old photograph from someone’s website, you should check into these stock photo resources. They’re royalty-free, which means you pay for them once and can use them without paying anything further, all nice and legal.

Of course, usage rights depend upon the license attached to the photos…in certain projects you can’t use them absolutely freely and without limitation. But for most ordinary projects, you can simply pay the fee, download the pic and drop it into your article or ad. As with anything, be sure to read the usage limitations.

This post comes from the following discussion found on the Warrior Forum…

Google Image Search

The first place you may want to look is on Google’s Image Search.

Once there, go to the advanced search page put your search terms into the appropriate box and select “labeled for commercial reuse with modifications”.

Here’s some info on usage rights.

Commercial Stock Photos

My favorite stock photo site is iStockPhoto.

And here’s a handful of quality commercial sites…

http://www.shutterstock.com/
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/
http://www.jupiterimages.com/
http://dreamstime.com/

Free Stock Photos

Photo Rack appears to be a higher quality than usual free stock photo site.
http://www.photorack.net/

Here’s an interesting free collection of photography intended for web site designs…
http://www.designpacks.com/

Bonus: Free Stock Video Footage

And here’s one for stock video footage…
http://stockfootageforfree.com/

His video about this follows after the jump…he’s kinda weepy in this video, so be warned.