IN-YOUR-FACE SEO ADVICE FOR THOSE THAT REALLY WANT THE TRUTH

I’m back on my SEO rant again. For those of you who don’t know, that stands for “search engine optimization“. It’s an important thing for people trying to use the Internet to do business.

To explain SEO in a nutshell, you want your business showing up on the first page of the search engine results pages (or “SERPS“) to give you maximum exposure and thus, maximum potential sales.

For busy business owners who can’t figure out how to accomplish the task of landing on top of the pile of results, they seek out consultants. Funny thing, though, most consultants don’t know jack squat about SEO.

I will call out these fake SEO experts all day long, and I have the experience and inside knowledge to back it up. The crazy thing is, I truly believe that 80% or more of people who claim to know how to rank sites in the search engines are so far off base that they end up hurting their clients more than they help them.

First of all, my experience stands on its own. Right now, I can land page 1 of the SERPS on most topics in my niche, and usually within a matter of hours. The fastest time? 10 minutes. And that was on a competitive keyword that gets millions of searches per month.

There’s a popular upcoming smartphone that I have been hitting page 1 for over the past month, and if you’re smart enough, you’ll figure out which one it is. And if you think I did this using the latest and greatest techniques of the experts, think again.

I do not have thousands, or even hundreds, of backlinks to my blog site. I only have 28. By most SEO experts’ definition, this would be a total failure. They claim that you need thousands to rank on Google properly. That’s bunk. 100% bunk.

I also didn’t land my high search results by loading my domain name with any particular keyword. My site name, www.carltonzone.com, is generic. By the advice and teaching of the so-called experts, I shouldn’t be able to rank as high as I do on any topic I wish with such a generic non-keyword-specific blog URL.

Again, claiming that you need keyword-loaded URLS is 100% bunk. Garbage. And it’s high time that someone took the garbage out!

That’s not to say that backlinking and domain name keyword stuffing are not working methods. They may give you a boost. All I’m saying is that you can get on page 1 of the SERPs without it, and I am the proof.

If you are wondering, I don’t use any blackhat methods (that’s cheating), or grayhat methods (cheating but in a sneaky way) to get my pages high in the SERPs. I don’t recommend it, and I won’t ever try it. Period. My recommendation is that honesty is the best approach.

But on to the other reason why I’m telling you that these SEO eggheads don’t know jack squat… my job experience.

I am not at liberty to give the details, but lets just say that for a certain period of time, as I worked for a large contract consultant, I was downgrading the very sites that utilized the methods of the SEO experts to get their clients higher SERP placements.

If you think there’s no human aspect to cleaning up the mess of web page indexing and automatic activity of the algorithms, think again! I am so shocked that people actually believe that only the complex computer programs are used to get sites indexed and ranked in Google.

Even if there was a shred of truth to the lie that only the algorithms do the work of ranking sites, there’s still no guarantee you can game the system. For example, we are all very aware that Google came out with “Panda“, a recent algorithm update aimed at cleaning up the content farms and low quality websites from the SERPs. Even the algorithms will trip up the cheaters.

All-in-all, I just wanted to get it off my chest one more time that you SEO experts don’t know jack squat, and you need to stop bilking your clients by using questionable methods that gain temporary results and long-term punishment from Google.

My advice to you, budding business owner? Watch out who you listen to when it comes to search engine optimization. Honesty produces longevity and continued success. Taking the shortcuts will potentially put you in the permanent Google penalty box. Use your heads!

One of these days I am going to get angry enough to write a $10 report that gives all of my methods and advice, and I’m going to pit it against all of the shysters out there selling their garbage $297 SEO seminar products. I wonder if anyone would buy it…

Carlton Flowers
Bustin’ the Chops of the SEO Hucksters

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QR CODES WILL REVOLUTIONIZE YOUR BUSINESS MARKETING

The future of local business marketing is here. There’s a small black and white box with a strange pattern in it that will change everything. They’re called “QR Codes“, and you need to know why they will impact your business for the better if you utilize them.

If you are a small business owner, your local advertising and marketing will be revolutionized by incorporating QR codes in your flyers, print ads, billboards, and every single place that you display your business identity.

The days of traditional advertising are over. I will even boldly say that marketing your business on the Internet or on Facebook without QR codes are going to quickly be useless. Why? Because there’s a new mega trend about to hit. And it’s mobile marketing.

Smartphones are everywhere. More of your customers are packing iPhones and Android devices than ever before. When they want to check out for options eating out or shopping, they’re not sitting at home on their home computer to search. They’re reaching for their smartphones.

Within one year, there will be more searches conducted using a smartphone than the home computer. Studies say that 240 million searchers will use their cell phone, while 200 million will use a PC. The gap will widen as more and more people utilize their smartphones as their primary Internet device.

In fact, mobile marketing will give you your biggest bang for your advertising buck. It is a wise investment. You can forget about wasting time and money designing fancy web pages that aren’t optimized for viewing on a cell phone.

The new formula for reaching your potential clients and bringing customers back on a consistent basis will be combining a mobile optimized landing page with traditional advertising and QR codes (plus a little bit of stealthy marketing).

More and more smartphone carriers have free QR code-reading apps, and they are using them. The newness scanning QR codes piques interest and curiosity, and it is quickly becoming popular. Just imagine the rush of new business that could generated by using this new technology right now, while it’s hot.

Just when we thought Twitter, Facebook, and social media marketing was the big new thing, technological advance brings us another paradigm shift in the way we will interact and do business on a local level.

Are you a small business owner or leader of a community group or association that depends on driving new customers and clients to keep your business thriving and growing? Then you better get on this now, and strike while the iron is hot.

You have two choices: figure all of this out on your own, or keep your mind and focus on the daily aspects of your business and let an expert handle it for you.

For the busy folks in the latter category, I suggest you contact me immediately and find out how you can be up and running within days with QR Turbo. I’ll even give you a free 30 minute consultation and live demonstration.

But if you hesitate, I’ll be swamped, and you’ll be left paying a consultant 5x the price for what I can provide for you.

Just pop an email to carlton.flowers@gmail.com with “QR Turbo Fee Demo” in the subject line, and I’ll contact you and schedule a visit.

I’ll also throw in a super free insider tip on how you can use Google Local to set up a free listing that will land you on page 1 of the Google search engine results for your locality.

You will want to get this info before your competitors crowd you out, leaving you on page 2 or 3. And believe me, that could mean the difference in massive traffic to your business (or your competitor). It is mission-critical.

If you want to keep your status as “top-of-mind” for your niche, or kick your competitors off the roost while they are sleeping, I’ll expect to hear from you soon.

All the best,

Carlton Flowers
Your High-Tech Marketing Strategist

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DUPLICATE WEB CONTENT – DOES IT HELP, OR HURT?

I have noticed that there is a rash of duplicate content on the web. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Most Internet marketers are notorious abusers of copying content on the web.

But what gets me is how I am finding so many “reputable” organizations using duplicate content. Whatever the reason, people are copying stuff on the web faster than a classic green-ink mimeograph machine could crank out in the early 70’s. But why?

There are several reasons why people copy and paste information from sites like Wikipedia, HowStuffWorks, or Nexus. There are similar motivations behind purchasing “PLR” articles, or private label rights articles for reuse. I’ll get into that later, but for now, I must rant…

First of all, I have a low opinion of those who promote and use duplicate content. My reason? It doesn’t make the web a better place. It just mucks it up. When you are searching for legitimate information for a research project, it is frustrating when you find valuable information repeated verbatim on seemingly reputable websites. That tells me that there are many more websites thrown together for selfish reasons than those that are truly contributional.

For those of you who have no earthly idea of what I am speaking of, here are some reasons why people post duplicate content on the web:

• to provide “fresh content” that drives traffic to a page selling something
• to keep a blog site current and active when the writer can’t come up with new posts on a regular basis
• to establish yourself as an “authority” on a topic by posting factual information on hot topics under your own name
• to raise the SEO (search engine optimization) value of a web page by loading it up with keyword-optimized articles

Those are just a few of the selfish motivations to copy other people’s information that they worked hard on, providing all of the research and grunt work. But the duplicate content tactics will will blow up in your face and hurt you more than they will help. Plus, it does nothing to make the Internet a better place. Consider these facts:

• search engines like unique content, not copied content
• the original article poster gets the most credit from the search engines
• duplicate content gets skipped during search engine indexing
• duplicate content can sometimes lower your SEO rating
• using duplicate content will not build your reputation as an “authority” on any subject
• duplicate content mucks up the web and frustrates searchers

SO… IS THERE A BETTER SOLUTION TO USING DUPLICATE CONTENT?

Internet marketers and bloggers who are trying to build notoriety might disagree with me regarding the use of duplicate content. Most people argue that they don’t have the time or skill to write their own material. But I am convinced that junking up the web with copied rehashed content will not promote your cause or earn you big bucks in attempting to sell your stuff.

So, what is a person to do? What are the alternatives when you are trying to build up your web presence and reputation when you can’t seem to crank out your own original content? Here are a few ideas that will certainly work, and will make the Internet a better place:

• place copied content in quotations, and then post your short opinion of the information
• summarize articles in your own words instead of copying them wholesale, and give credit to your source
• post copied content in quotations and then tell your readers why this information is vital to their niche
• post an article and give credit to the source, then post discussion questions to spark interaction

That should give you a start. The idea is that you should at least add something of value if you have to use duplicate content on your website. Adding value makes the Internet a better place, and it makes your web page more unique. But keep in mind, the more you learn to contribute original information, the quicker you will establish yourself as an authority or respected blogger.

You want the best short cut to rising to the top? Get over your laziness, do some real grunt work, and start posting your own original information. You won’t be sorry you did.

Carlton Flowers
Guardian of Web Goodness
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MY JOURNEY TO UNDERSTANDING BACKLINK SEO STRATEGY

I’ve been studying search engine optimization (or “SEO” for short) for about 3 years now. SEO is important for people who want to drive natural traffic to their websites from people searching the Internet via a search engine. Most commonly, they are in pursuit of potential customers for their e-commerce site. Up until recently, I never did spend much time focusing on one of the best strategies around, which is creating backlnks that point to your website.

A backlink is simply a link on one website that points back to another website. People will post links to useful or informative sites, or places where they can get good deals. The world’s top search engine Google figures sites that have the most backlinks must be important, so they give them greater weight on the search engine results pages (or “SERPs“, for short). When people search for a certain key term, the web sites with the highest Page Rank (or “PR“) are the ones that come up first. This is of utmost importance to a business for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, back to the topic at hand… I am learning about writing backlinks as a service, and I am studying several businesses and consultants that provide this for varying amounts of money. Here is what I discovered…

Many people offer to post backlinks on your behalf to high PR websites (the rankings go from 0 to 10) but the high rating is usually only on the main domain or root directory. The places on the site where comments can be posted are usually sub pages that have either no PR or a few notches less than the main page. I’ve seen people promising backlinks on a PR8 website, but the pages within are PR3. Maybe this is acceptable, and maybe it is not. I’m not sure. I’d love to have a definitive answer to this.

I’ve found several people offering bulk backlinks to your site, in numbers ranging from 500 to 5,000 or more at a time. These are generated using automated processes. Individualized comments to blog sites or news stories are not being made. Many are generic randomly generated comments or listings to Internet directories. People tend to believe that it takes around 1,000 backlinks to get your site ranked on page 1 of Google for competitive keywords. I have less than 200 backlinks on my blog site, yet I have been able to attain page 1 status for some seriously competitive terms. My worry about the bulk backlinking is the fact that Google could penalize sites for cheating. This is often called “Google Slap“. I have heard reports of people having their sites completely banished from the SERPs for using “black hat” or “gray hat” methods that try to scam the system.

Sometimes backlink consultants will make it clear that they will research and find sites to make comments and links that match your keywords or niche. I suspect that most novice backlink “expert consultants” don’t do this. They are merely posting to any general site that allows backlinks and “dofollow” status (we’ll explain that on another post). This doesn’t bring the same result. If you have a backlink from a high PR site that is an authority on your niche, you will stand to benefit greatly. But how much work would it take to match a person’s site up with dofollow blogs that are only within their niche? Is it worth the trouble? Or do you stand to equally benefit from high PR backlinks from general or unrelated sites?

As far as posting to dofollow blogs and news sites, some people promise to include anchor text keywords within the posts made. This evidently strengthens the the overall effect. But it can be difficult finding a popular blog site that carries a high PR value that will allow you to embed HTML code within comments. The main reason is that people abuse the privilege and drop dangerous links within their post. Overall, posting to popular blogs that are within your niche is well worth the effort. This also holds true for discussion forums, especially the ones that allow you to include a tag line or “signature” at the bottom of each post that contains a backlink to your site or page.

One thing I have learned is that writing articles to Ezine Articles, Hub Pages, and Squidoo does in fact carry a lot of weight when it comes to SEO efforts. I’m not sure about the comparable weight carried from writing short blog posts on free blog sites like Blogger, Typepad, or WikiSpaces, but they do seem to work well. I have had excellent results and high Google placement from using these methods.

I am studying the whole idea of using social bookmarking sites for SEO, but have not fully learned everything I want to know. Using dofollow microblogging services is something that has always gotten my interest, and I have become quite well versed in this area. Lastly, I’m looking at Internet directories. That has captured the least of my interest, and I wonder if it is even worthwhile.

Overall, I would say that you cannot ignore implementing a backlink strategy when doing SEO work. If you want to seriously compete on Google, it’s something you’ve got to learn. Do you have a hot tip or valuable insight to share on these topics? Join the discussion and post below!

Carlton Flowers
Up & Coming SEO Genius
www.carltonzone.com
www.microbusinessplans.com
www.twitter.com/carltonf

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THE MID-MISSOURI SOCIAL MEDIA WATCH TURNS FOCUS TO COLUMBIA

I’ve been writing about the impending social media tsunami that is about to hit local businesses. As many of my fellow experts predict, it will be 6 to 18 months before we see the changing of the guard of local business advertising strategy. But while we wait, let’s turn our focus to the college town of Columbia, Missouri. Does anyone realize the huge untapped goldmine sitting before us for this special town?

The City of Columbia is special. It’s a college town. We have Mizzou, Columbia College, and Stephens College that make up a large portion of the population and culture of the area. Take into consideration the fact that the students of these institutions make up the largest participating percentage in social media websites of any generation, and then think about the enormous size of the pot of gold left untouched by local businesses as such. There is a huge open door of opportunity for all the local businesses in Columbia to dominate and capitalize on the social media route to connecting with its potential young customers.

Until today, I had not thought about the special mix of people in Columbia, and the obvious opportunity it presents for social media marketing. I really think that the impending marketing shift is going to be stronger in Columbia than anywhere else in the state of Missouri, largely due to the student population.

It will be interesting to see which law firms, clubs, restaurants, clothing retailers, or grocery stores make it to the “top-of-mind” pinnacle before their competitors wake up and realize what is happening. In the meantime, the social media prognosticators and consultants like myself will be quietly standing by waiting for the first clients to come by screaming for help!

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WHEN WILL THE WEB 2.0 EXPLOSION IN JEFFERSON CITY MISSOURI HIT?

I live in Jefferson City, Missouri. Right smack dab in the middle of the state. In fact, we are in the middle of the entire country. When you are as land-locked as we are, and as far away from the fast-paced left and right coasts, you tend to be the last to pick up on the trends.

Case in point, web 2.0 marketing has not yet hit in Jefferson City. Sure, there are a handful of businesses using social media sites. But would you believe that there are absolutely NO businesses displaying social media information in our local Ad Sheet, or in the Newspaper?

I guess it comes as no surprise, because some of the media sources view the internet as a threat. But what I will be watching for is this: Which businesses will wake up and take the lead on social media marketing in their sectors?

I still stand strong on my prediction that the social media revolution will hit strong and fast, once business owners wake up. So what makes me so sure of this? Well I’ll tell you what makes me so sure! It’s the simple fact that about 98% of young people (25 and younger) are using social media sites. What is even more shocking is the fact that about 50% to 60% of “older” people are now using social media sites, right here in Jefferson City!

So here you have more than half of the population chattering and jabbering away each and every day, and into the night on the social media sites. And not one business has figured out that their entire market base is spending the majority of their time away from the traditional advertising media.

Somebody is going to wake up and spark off the revolution… and I’m going to chuckle when I see this happen.

Carlton Flowers, self-proclaimed Social Media Marketing Expert

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People have often admitted that I know a whole lot of stuff about technical computer-related subjects, and also motivational speaker/trainer stuff. But recently, someone asked me why I have proclaimed myself as a Social Media Expert. I’m glad this person asked, and ready to share the answer with everyone!

Besides the fact that I spend way too much time studying social media until  all hours of the night each and every day, imagining all the different ways that businesses and professionals could be doing twice the volume of whatever it is that they do if they just woke up and noticed the social media revolution, there are also two other very important reasons that I have become an expert, and a few more reasons to boot. That said, let us now cover the reasons.

2 Reasons why Carlton Flowers is a Social Media Expert

plus 4 bonus reasons…

1. Carlton learns from the best – the only way to build credibility in any business is to associate with those that are experts in their field, and wisely choose the best possible mentors. Carlton’s main mentor of choice is Dr. Ron Capps, better known as “The Niche Prof”. Dr. Capps taught at the University of Wisconsin, and currently teaches at Northwest Missouri State University. He is an expert in communications, sales, education, and everything Web 2.0. He speaks at conferences and events all over the country on the subject of social media. Carlton uses Dr. Ron Capps’ guides, studies, articles, and training materials as he consults businesses on leveraging their market penetration via social media.

2. Carlton is a student of SMUG – Social Media University Global is a consortium of the best individuals in the field of social media worldwide. They offer top-rate course materials, and are constantly growing in this brand-new field. Only a handful of the world’s best are students of this new media learning institution.

BONUS REASONS

B1. Carlton is a former computer geek - he had a computer business for ten years up to 2001, and has extensive experience in computer hardware, software, programming, and multimedia production. It is a naturally strong foundation for social media.

B2. Carlton is a motivational speaker and seminar trainer -  He teaches on a wide variety of subjects ranging from Championship Customer Service to Transformational Leadership. Again, a naturally strong foundation for the new social media revolution.

B3. Carlton is a former business owner - having owned an auto repair shop, a body shop, and a retail tool store, Carlton understands what businesses are going through, and how important it is to be on top of creative marketing techniques. Social Media only enhances his ability to put his former marketing experience to work for his clients.

B4. Carlton is an audio & video production expert - having produced his own local television show for 4 years (and coming back soon), Carlton is swift in the field of video & audio production. Knowing how to crank out professional-looking video content is a definite advantage in creating social media campaigns.

B5. Carlton is a schmoozy, likable guy – you can’t help but fall in love with Carlton the minute you meet him. He has a contagious laugh and energizer-bunny enthusiasm. He is known for his ability to inject his natural zeal for life into helping his clients. What more could you want in a consultant?

So there you have it. That’s what they say about me, and that is why I am officially a self-proclaimed social media expert.  Are you ready for me to optimize your business? You better call me soon, because I am getting busier by the day. The word is out on the streets that I have the best social media optimization solutions, and good news travels fast!

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