Is a career in SEO right for you?

TIP 1. Set your focus on your client’s success.Stop focusing on sales and start focusing on your client's success! Do all that you can do to make them successful. Pour all of your talents into making their projects work. So many folks I speak with can never stop thinking about where they will make their next sale, instead of working on delivering results to the clients they ALREADY have. In so doing, you establish "lifetime" residuals. Make your client successful and they will literally become part of YOUR sales team.

TIP 2. A difference in your performance is a difference in your profits.If you are NOT up to speed, you better catch up fast. Truly a difference in your performance is a difference in your profits! If you are not up to speed on solid SEO marketing techniques and methods, start learning now. Take a course or study at a live workshop but however you do it, get your SEO skills up to speed so you can genuinely help get your customers results. If you can show them a strategy that really puts dollars in their pocket, they'll put dollars in YOUR pocket!

TIP 3. Have confidence in your own strategies and explore profit sharing.
How's your batting average with profit sharing? Don't be afraid to explore this one! If your skills are medium to above average, why not share in the profits yourself? I am referring to offering someone a vertical deal. This would be a deal where you own part of the company in return for making it successful with your SEO skills. Don't brush this off. There are some exceptional deals to be had if you start thinking laterally.

TIP 4. Don't forget community and charitable work.When's the last time you helped promote a charitable work at NO cost. Build a site and promote it for the literacy council or the Easter Seals Society or your local Rotary Group or your Chamber of Commerce. Don't forget that this work can OFTEN open unusual and even surprising doors. Help make others successful and you will NOT fail. Many important leaders within your local community will be serving on these committees right next to you! This is a great way to network and meet new people and help the cause too.

TIP 5. Work on Relationship building and position yourself for success to come.
Watch the latest SEO trends and position yourself to quickly take advantage. The study and practice of SEO has been extraordinary. A few years ago, I never dreamed that my study of optimisation would lead to the Internet lifestyle. As a result of our work, we enjoy wonderful repeat business and client loyalty. If you have not been enjoying good profits, a rewarding lifestyle and being appreciated by your clients, then you need to consider a plan of action.

Tip 6. Set your course of action and get started.Consider taking a live hands-on SEO workshop, which can kick-start your professional SEO career in just a few days of hands-on training. Or if you cannot travel, consider taking an Online SEO Training Course.

Tip 7. Choose which voices you choose to listen to carefully.
You MUST be able to "deliver" and make a difference. Do whatever it takes to get your SEO skills and lateral thinking skills up to speed. In business there are many voices offering free advice. You need to choose carefully whom you will listen to.

Tip 8. Run a balanced business.
Are you charging for what your services are worth? There are some folks who charge steeply and don't even know how to get the results. For goodness sakes, if you're good at what you do, make sure you are charging well for your services. You DESERVE fair reward if you're helping other business owners to prosper.
(Some folks are afraid to charge for their work)
Note: The ones that charge steeply but DON'T deliver may make a few dollars initially, but they won't enjoy the customer loyalty, the referral business, and the repeat business that you do, and they won't have a "customer for life" like you will.

Tip 9. Don't forget to recognise and be thankful for the progress you've made.
Yes, this is extremely important. How else can you truly measure your progress unless you benchmark along the way. Be sure to benchmark your victories but even more important, celebrate your CLIENTS' VICTORIES too! After all, you helped bring them about.

Tip 10. Give something back to your community (with gladness).
Look for opportunities to help others who genuinely need help and avoid those who are only after your talents to exploit them. (Trust me, when your SEO talents and success stories increase, you'll have strangers coming out of the woodwork to take you to dinner and wine you and dine you and pick your brain). Proceed with wisdom.

Tip 11. You must be willing to change and take action! Performing the way you perform now has delivered a certain result. Maybe you're happy with that result. If you're happy with this result, carry on exactly the same way and you should get very similar results. However, if you are NOT happy with your results now, then you must change the way you do things.
Some people go all their life complaining that they would like a better career
or a better position in life and yet they continue taking the same actions and
getting the same results year after year.
Think of it like this...
Same action = same result
Different action = new results

Tip 12. Surround yourself with the high quality people!
Without a doubt, your SEO interests and abilities will make way for many new working relationships. Be sure to carefully choose the people you want to work with. Look for those with whom you can share synergies and be very observant of the skills and abilities within the others that surround you. No single person can operate as effectively as a group of people that work as a team. Learn to choose the right people to work with and recognise the latent strengths and talents that will sometimes be present but initially hidden within the group. Build to your ultimate potential by choosing wisely, encouraging one another and recognising the talent in one another.

Are you ready to take your SEO career to the next step

Increase AdSense power

1. Comment on Related Blogs - - “Commenting on related blogs is probably the most effective strategy early on in the process. And responding to comments when people leave them on your blog (this encourages them to keep coming back).” And from Brody - “I visit other blogs in my niche, add them to my feed and participate in the discussion on their blogs via the comments. Writing interesting comments often gets people to click through to see your site.”
2. Join Forums - - “I’ve found that one very quick way to infuse readers to a new blog is to be active in discussion forums related to your blog topic. Locate posts that ask for help with something you are familiar with and share your experience.”
3. Write Effective Post Titles - - “Simple and to the point. The title should create an instant urge to read the entire post… But of course it should be related to the topic of your blog”
4. Interviews - - “One example being to interview fellow bloggers who are in the same niche as me. This has gone down well, and has been great for both myself and the interviewee as traffic flows between us.”
5. Persist - - “Persistence is key. After starting up a new blog last month and letting go of another this month, I notice that traffic (quality traffic) doesn’t happen over night. On my last site, I think it took 6 months before ASK.com found me.”
6. Connect with Local Bloggers - - “The other thing I’ve been doing just recently is connecting up with other bloggers in my city and the neighboring towns. We’ve got something of a link exchange going and a nice side-effect to this is that I/we have discovered that there are quite a few more bloggers and/or website authors in the area than ever expected.”
7. Give Away Free Stuff - - “I’ve had some success with giving away free stuff, like free templates for WordPress. It doesn’t give me lot of new readers, because my blog is written in Norwegian, but the templates give lots and lots of new links to the blog, giving it a much better pagerank in Google, which in turn should mean more readers from search-engines.”
8. Be Opinionated - - “Be opinionated, but encourage opposing viewpoints in the comments. Opinionated makes you interesting - encouraging other perspectives makes you essential.”
9. Ask Questions of Other Bloggers - - “Ask questions of other moderately successful bloggers and try to network. If you shoot too high, you’ll often get blown off because these people have so much stuff to read and deal with.”
10. Use Trackbacks - - “Sending highly creative and penetrating trackbacks about a blogger’s original post.”
11. Advertise - - “Buy advertising space on related websites.”
12. Educate Readers about RSS - - “With the most recent blog I launched I created a page in WordPress called Feeds which not only has the RSS icon on it but a description of what a “feed” is and what are some of the most common ways to subscribe and use feeds, mostly pulled from a CC article.”
13. Offline Promotion - - “Talk to friends, family and coworkers about them… you’d be surprised how much the traditional way of “networking” really does work…. also Business cards, depending which blog I’ll post on a community board at a grocery store.
14. Search Engine Optimization - - “Properly optimizing my blog has been a big boost to my readership. Once I figured out how to play around with SEO I started getting a regular 25-35% of my hits from Google.”
15. Quality Content (mentioned by many) - - “Posting only quality content.. obviously! Better posts are discussed more, increasing both the number of comments and references in other blogs.”
16. Blog Carnivals - - “submitting posts to Blog Carnivals”
17. Memes - - “I’ve picked up a handful of wonderful friends and readers through initiating the “Thursday Thirteen”. Yeah, a meme.
Bloggers want to know about bloggers, not just the business aspect of it but the *person* writing the blog. Reading a quick list of “getting to know me” type tidbits gives me instant inside information on whether or not I will become a regular visitor. Some participants
have used it solely to gain business, but frankly I think that turns people away. People are interested in people first, and what they do second. It works.”
18. Frequent Posting - - “I also try to post frequently. I find that the more I post, the more readers I have. The less comments, but the more readers.”
19. Guest Bloggers - - “I invite other bloggers to guest blog and allow always one link back to their site. I have 3 active guest authors … and in return they link to my site from time to time.”
20. Get Links from Other Blogs - - “Getting mentioned on other sites and blogs in the same niche, I think, has been the best way to get a readership who keeps returning to a blog. Make contact with other bloggers in yoru niche via comments, email, AIM, skype, homing pigeons - whatever.”
21. Newsletters - - “The Zookoda newsletter provides nice spikes and people tend to forward the newsletter to their friends.”
22. Social Networks - - “Submit your story to Digg and reddit and, regardless of whether it makes the front page or not, you get 50-
100 free hits. The easiest way to generate quick exposure. Failing that, comment frequently on blogs that you like. With any luck, the
blog author will want to find out more about you, follow the link to your blog, and perhaps write a post referencing one of your posts.”
23. Pitch Your Posts - - “I view other bloggers as a PR pros view journalists working in traditional media. I reach out to bloggers using tactics successfully employed in the world of professional media relations. For instance, I “pitch” specific posts that they might find
adds value to topics they are writing about. I also send email introducing them to my blog, but only if there’s a good fit between my blog and theirs. The key is to be very selective in approaching the “media gatekeeper”–just as successful and smart media relations
people do.”