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According to Tim Ash, President and CEO of SiteTuners, landing page optimization is actually starting to stick. Several years ago, Ash said he, along with Bryan Eisenberg, were “crying in the wilderness” about landing page optimization. However, now people understand that it is the quickest way to improve conversions.

New questions that arise now include: “How can I identify the problems with my landing page?” and “How can I fix what’s wrong?” To help site owners answer these questions, SiteTuners developed software called Attention Wizard. Visual clutter is one of the biggest problems with landing pages and Attention Wizard helps users recognize where it is on a landing page.

The software has the ability to simulate the areas or hotspots of a webpage that users are attracted to. Attention Wizard does not involve eye tracking or mouse-movement-tracking; instead, it simply predicts human behavior based upon research that SiteTuners conducted on the human brain.

Attention Wizard is now in public beta and available free of charge. Ash said the software would be available for purchase in the first quarter of 2010.

Posted by randfish

First off, I hope everyone among our US (and expat) readers had a great holiday weekend, filled with tryptophan and football (I know mine was). Second, I’m very excited to announce that SEOmoz PRO is launching our first ever webinar on Thursday Dec. 10th at 11am Pacific (2pm Eastern, 7pm London/UK). We’ve heard from a number of our members that they’d like to do some live reviewing of strategies and recommendations and get questions tackled in this format. I’ll be running the webinar personally, but I haven’t quite decided on a topic, and that’s one thing I need your help with.

Below is an embedded Google form (they’re pretty spiffy) with three short questions. We’ll use your feedback to help determine the content and format for the webinar, as well as gauge interest level.

 

 

We’ll have another blog post in the next few days announcing details (based on your requests + votes), as well as an email to all PRO members with a registration link.

Of course, if you have anything to add in the comments or any recommendations, we’d love to hear from you there, too. If this webinar goes well, we’re certainly planning to make it a monthly event for PRO members, and possibly offer some free webinars to the entire community. A future subject that folks have been asking about is training on the SEOmoz toolset – that’s something we want to do, but we have some changes + additions coming in January, so we’ll get those released first, then follow up.

Thanks for your feedback and happy holiday season! 

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Have you ever intentionally ignored something only to find out that you’ve been a fool for doing so?

This weekend I discovered what a fool I’ve been for ignoring a resource that could have been helping me make my business a lot more profitable.

Many of you will have heard of Jeff Walker and his wildly successful ‘Product Launch Formula‘ before. Every time he’s opened the doors on this training a lot of people talk it up as being ‘the resource’ to get if you want to make money from selling your own products online.

I’ve seen all the promotions come and go and… shamefully… I’ve ignored them all.

You see I thought I knew better. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I didn’t have much more to learn about this business. I thought that all the hype about this product…. was just hype.

That was until this weekend.

The Best Invested Two Hours I’ve Had for Ages

On Friday I found myself with an hour to spare. I’d seen a number of bloggers that I know and respect talking about Product Launch Formula again and decided to check it out for myself by taking a look at some of the free case studies that Jeff Walker is about to stop using due to the new FTC regulations.

As I hit play on the first case study I smugly thought to myself that I was just going to hear the same old same old teaching from another internet marketer.

Two hours later…. and as my wife called me (for the 4th time) to come eat my dinner – I realised that I’d been a fool. In front of me on my desk was a pad and paper, full of notes. The notes contained things I needed to investigate and think more about as well as action items that I plan to take this week.

Already I was learning stuff that I wish I’d known when releasing my own products earlier in the year.

I particularly found the Product Launch Blueprint video VERY useful.

Keep in mind that these case studies are just part of what Jeff is offering as part of his Pre-Sales process – I’m yet to pay a cent (also note that the case studies are online online for another 2 days so you should view them now).

What I’m discovering is that I’ve got a lot more to learn about developing and launching a product. I also discovered that Jeff’s teaching is not full of hype, that he delivers real value, that he’s passionate about what he does and that his teaching has helped a lot of people.

Why I like Jeff’s Teaching

Note: as you’ll see in the case studies, Jeff really emphasizes a number of things that I think are well worth noting:

These three things make what Jeff’s teaching a lot more credible and powerful in my mind. I’ve come away from what I’ve seen so far really liking his approach.

As a result I’m going to be getting into more of Jeff’s stuff for myself and am enrolling with the next class for myself.

Product Launch Formula Opens Its Doors Again Today

Product Launch Formula is opening its doors again to a new class. Last time they did this they only had the doors open for a single day. This time around it’s only available for 36 hours.

Check Out the Case Studies

Whether you buy the full course with me or not – I really think the free case studies are well worth working through (you can see the two videos that I mentioned above for free here and here).

If you do sign up for Product Launch Formula I look forward to working through the training program along side you – we’ll be class mates!

PS: I’m really sorry that I didn’t alert you to the case studies earlier but I only got into them myself for the first time on Friday.

Due to the new FTC regulations Jeff is about to pull them and they’re only available for the next couple of days. Put some time aside today, grab a pad and pen and get into them for yourself while they’re still around.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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You Need to See These Case Studies Before They’re Gone

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A Guest Post By Deb Ng – Deb Ng is a freelance writer, professional blogger, social media consultant and founder of the Freelance Writing Jobs network of blogs.

Four and a half years ago I started a blog filled with nothing but leads to available freelance writing opportunities. As I studied blogging and the various ways to generate traffic and revenue, the blog began to grow beyond my wildest dreams. After two years I was able to hire someone to help find leads and we branched out to also offering daily tips and advice. After three years, I added two more bloggers to the roster and today, it’s a flourishing blog network for freelance writers complete with 8 blogs. It’s now the number one online community for freelance writers. At some point in the past couple of years, it occurred to me I didn’t have merely have a blog. I had a business. In addition to paying other bloggers, I can now draw my own salary and don’t even have to take on clients if I don’t want to.

Someone once suggested it was luck that brought me to this place, but I respectfully disagree. Luck had nothing to do with it. Building FWJ from a blog to a network to a business took a lot more than luck. It took hard work, dedication and a thick skin. When I stopped treating my blog like a hobby and began working at it full time, it became a place that was both profitable and popular.

How did I get here?

That doesn’t sound like a whole lot of luck, does it?

The truth is, there were times I questioned my ability. I was also getting a little tired of moderating snarky comments by a few community members who like to bicker about wages and jobs. It was hard seeing people write out and out lies about me on their blogs or suggest I’m only here by luck and not talent . There were plenty of times I wanted to throw in the towel.

Last month when a major online brand inquired about acquiring FWJ, I realized I built something very important and I was very proud. Proud enough not to want to sell.

If I can take my little freelance writing job blog to new heights in only four and a half years, what can I do in another five? I’m looking forward to finding out.

Sure, you can have a blog. You can post once a day and have a few hundred visitors. Or you can treat your blog like you would a job. You can put your passion behind it and give it your all. You can work for someone else or you can do everything possible to grow your own business. With blogging, you get what you give.

What do you want, a blog or a business?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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From Blog to Small Business: Tips for Taking Your Blog to a Whole New Level

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Although news outlets continually bring reports about new features on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, there is actually a lot happening with social aggregation sites as well. To catch us up to speed, Brent Csutoras gave WebProNews a rundown of the latest news from both Digg and StumbleUpon.

First of all, Digg has a new trending feature that allows users to be more involved in the actual voting process. Since people are always complaining about the items that reach the front page, Digg is incorporating this new feature to give users more of an opportunity to vote on a particular item.

On Digg’s homepage, the feature will display an item that is close to being moved to the front page and give users 10 minutes to vote to move it or not. After the 10 minutes are up, the feature will show whether or not the item was moved.

StumbleUpon has also seen some drastic changes over the last several months. Earlier this year, the company broke away from eBay and is currently being run by its original founders. Since becoming independent again, StumbleUpon revamped its design, added more content to its homepage, and essentially, tried to become more like the other social sites.

Most recently, the site has made an attempt to focus on the social profile. Csutoras however, does not welcome this change. For him, StumbleUpon was different from the other social sites. He relied on StumbleUpon for finding really unbiased and good content from anyone. But now, the content is heavily dependent upon the social group that recommended it, much like Facebook and Twitter.

“It does put an extra click or two between you and content,” he said.

All these changes are currently in beta and Csutoras is quick to point out that StumbleUpon is very good about listening to user feedback.

What are your thoughts on the new features from Digg and StumbleUpon?

Although Twitter’s homepage gets a tremendous amount of traffic, it hardly compares to daily amount of queries its API receives. According to Alexander Barbara, the founder of EasyTweets, www.Twitter.com got around 86.5 million pageviews last month, but the API gets hundreds of millions of queries each day. In addition, Twitter did an analysis and found that the majority of tweets posted come from the API instead of the website.

Many people do not realize that it is actually the API that allows them to do multiple tasks such as managing lists, following others, pulling profile data, and managing accounts and reputations. The good news is that Twitter is continuing to improve and perfect the API. For this reason, Barbara expects even more from Twitter’s API in the coming months.

Twitter is already adding functionalities that would make threading conversations easier. Also, they recently added geolocation features which display where a tweet originated and includes geotagging. What’s more, Twitter is starting location-based trends that show top trends on a localized basis.

Barbara said Twitter has embraced the development community by allowing it to build upon their platform. They have even incorporated some of the applications directly into their homepage. He said that by embracing third party developers, Twitter has not only enhanced the overall platform that the company is based upon, but it has also added value for everyone.

What do you think is next for Twitter’s API?

Posted by great scott!

Happy belated Thanksgiving my American moz-Comrades, and welcome to Black Whiteboard Friday (and just Friday to everyone else)! 

This week we’re looking at analytics. No, not the normal stuff you probably pay attention to, but a few sneaky little metrics that can give you some great SEO insight.  Since it’s now officially the "Holidays," I’m not going to reveal too much; rather, I’ll let the video serve as an early gift, ready to be opened! Suffice to say, prepare to start looking at your referral traffic, abandonment rates, browse rates, and more in a whole new light :)

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Analytics for SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Since it is Black Friday, I want to remind you of some killer deals that are still available for you or your favorite SEO!

There’s still time to get your FREE SES Chicago Pass by purchasing a year of PRO! We’ve only got about a dozen passes left, so you should probably hurry. SES just raised their prices to $1995 for a pass, so $799 for an entire year of PRO and a full-access SES Pass is an awesome deal (and if Chicago’s not your thing, SES will let you exchange the pass for any SES Event in 2010).

You’ve also still got 10 days left to get super-low release pricing on the brand-new SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics six-disk DVD set! Until December 6th, you can get this killer new series for 20% off and Free Shipping anywhere in the world. Hundreds of people have already ordered and supplies are limited, so take advantage while the price is low, and this limited-edition set is still available.

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Posted by Sam Niccolls

 

 

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Rocking on YOUmoz

Top YOUmoz entries:

  1. Annual Local Demand Using Google Keyword Tool by identity

  2. Best Practices for Setting Up a Twitter Account by danazarrella

  3. SEO Daily Workout by Martini81Vette

  4. Actionable SEO Insights from Google Analytics by kim_toomey 

  5. Google Apps – Getting Efficient at SEO  by The Lost Agency

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A Guest Post by Kelly Diels.

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First, Mom, I don’t even know what Mr. Smalls was selling on the corner but I’m pretty sure it is not smiled upon by the authorities and I have never ever tried it nor will I. Swear.

Second, bloggers-in-arms, as you might have suspected (seemingly insane titles are great foreshadowing devices, yes?) I’m going to go all things white people like and cite old-school hip-hop from a dead artist.

Don’t start composing your irate comments just yet – I haven’t earned the right to say The Word used by the late great Biggie Smalls, so I’m offering the radio-friendly version of Juicy.

Here’s the cleaned-up version of today’s musical call-to-arms:

Yeah, this album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I’d never amount to nothin’,

to all the people that lived above the buildings that I was hustlin’ in front of that called the police on me when I was just tryin’ to make some money to feed my daughters,

and all the people in the struggle, you know what I’m sayin’?

That’s you and me, baby. We’re in the struggle. We’re trying to make a living at blogging, which, if you haven’t noticed, a whole lot of people are doing and doing badly (or well) mostly for very little money.

That’s why we’re all here hanging out in the ProBlogger salon/saloon. We’re trying to make meaning and money. So we’re not exactly gangsta – although some of our outlaw blackhat brethren think they’re sooooo badass ‘cuz they get their meaningless, money-making sites banned – but it is a struggle.

You might really, really, really be in the struggle but I’m middling away at a mediocre job in middle class land. I’ve got a pretty cute suburban townhouse and some pretty cute suburban kids. Poor, poor me.

That’s why I had to use a gritty, kinda romantic, dramatically up-and-coming lyric for inspiration. My boring life won’t inspire you or a really great rags-to-riches magazine profile. We all have our burdens and Biggie’s were so much sexier and before-and-after than mine.

(Sort of: before he dropped out of school, Biggie was a brilliant, scholarship-winning student. Artists are storytellers and storysellers and sometimes stories we’re selling are more revealing than the truths we’re not telling.)

Call it the suburban curse of the mundane. Call it a paradox. Call it luxury. Birthdays aren’t the worst days but like all the other days they’re kinda boring and meaningless. And so I blog.

You can also call it not-terribly-unique: most of the big-name bloggers didn’t start out blogging for dollars either. There are other rewards. The trouble with these other, non-lucrative rewards is that they plant a dangerous seed.You start humming Biggie and thinking I AM BIGGIE and then the trouble begins.

You think: I’m getting so many accolades. I’m figuring things out. I’m creating something useful. People like it and maybe even need it. Maybe I should believe the do-what-you-love-and-the-money-will-follow lie.

Hence the grand existential web dilemma: how do blogs (and bloggers) make money?

Well, they don’t. Blogs don’t make money. Businesses make money.

When we talk about blogging for money, we’re getting it all wrong. It is not really possible to ‘blog for money’ unless you develop a business model around it. And unless you’ve got a head for business – or are willing to get one, and who needs two heads? – and are willing to put in the time figuring out the unsexy mechanics of this seductive vehicle, blogging might never make you money.

So don’t quit your day job. Hang on to your corner. Keep practicing your craft. Stay true to your vision, feed your passions, and start thinking about the back-end, business side of it.

Here’s what I think about my own imaginary blog empire. In a sense, I’ve gone about it backwards. I started blogging just because. I didn’t worry about money or how to earn it. I still don’t have a single advertisement on my site and I have never, ever made a direct cent from my blog. But I like to write, I’m sticking with it, and people seem to like it, and all of this, I think, is a good foundation from whence to build my blogging castle.

Speaking of fairytales, once upon a time I owned a coffee house. I wrote a business plan, secured financing, bought equipment, designed a process, created a look, implemented a marketing strategy, hired people, trained people, maintained the books, and made coffee.

A blog is coffee. It is what you create, what you give your customers, but it is not the business.A revenue-generating, transactional blog is the end result, or the center, of an infrastructure put in place to create and deliver the content.

But a blog, in and of itself, is not a business. If you want it to act like a business (ie generate income), then you have to think about it and treat it like a business.

So that’s my insight of the day: if you want to make blogging a business, you need to make it a business.

And that’s what I’m doing now. I’m matching my inspirational red shoes to my small business hat and thinking systematically about how to assemble a revenue-generating outfit.

How do you transform your blog into a business? (And by you, I mean me.)

You start by think systematically (not magically, not field-of-dreams-y, not the universe will deliver because You Are Entitled-y) about it. Analyze it. Strategize about it. Focus. Figure out what tools you need. Learn them. Figure out what you can sell, organically, as a result of what need you are resolving for people who land at your blog and (hopefully) like what they read.

In other words, get thee a business model. Pour your passion and inspiration and tap-dancing red shoe love through that juicy model so that it will let you sip champagne when you’re thirsty. (And do not mix metaphors the way I just did. It makes poor, dead George Orwell want to off himself.)

Leo Babauta did it. He writes that the reason he was so successful, so soon, was because he treated his blog as a product. He branded it. He promoted it. He was consistent with his message. But most of all, he crafted a solution to the hurly burly of daily life: Zen Habits. Simplicity. Respite from the hamster wheel of work and over-scheduled family and materialism and conventional thinking.

Sonia Simone at Copyblogger gets it right when she writes that blogging is like high school and the white hat/black hat cliques could learn from each other – that, in essence, the marriage of vision and tactics makes for a power couple. (What she really meant was Kelly get your idealistic, semi-lazy red shoes to stepping and learn SEO already.)

Sonia Simone also writes that “blogs are not television” and it is tough to monetize even a high-traffic blog if you readers are not coming to your site “to solve any kind of real-world problem, other than how can I kill 10 minutes before my boss gets back from lunch?

And all of this made me realize that how (and why) your readers end up on your doorstep might predict what they are willing to buy from you. How you cultivate your traffic informs how you feed your bank account. And since I’m such a graphic wizard, I made a chart to show you what I mean:

Your traffic source: 

Search Engines

Social media (relationships, reputation, word-of-blog)

Your clients’/readers’/worshippers’ buy motivation:

Looking for (maybe to buy) a solution to a problem (the question typed into Google…) 

Looking to buy some (possibly useful) shine. 

You offer:

SOLUTIONS in the form of:

Products
Advertising

ebooks
things by affiliates

Services
Consulting
Speaking
Offline gigs 

You MUST have:

The ability to put SEO on a leash and walk it, baby. 

Relationships. Brand. Authenticity. Evangelical Fans. Love. Minor stalking. Pixie dust. 

Your business model: 

Direct Income

Indirect Income

How people find your blog predicts their motivation to buy which determines what you can successfully sell them which tells you what skills you need to hone and, in fact, the shape of your business model.

If your blog and your appeal and your traffic are about relationship, and shine, and magic, then that’s what people want from you. To paraphrase the late great Britney Spears (ahem), they want a piece of you. Probably in person and most definitely offline.

If your blog and your traffic are a result of search engine queries, then people want solutions from you and that is what they will buy from you online in the form of clicking on a related advertisement, buying an e-book or a course, paying for membership in a forum, or purchasing a product. And if you’re selling solutions in a niche that requires keyword breadcrumbs then maybe you need to have more than one blog to really make money your captive.

And so far, that’s about all I know about blogging for dollars – that how you court your people determines the source of your coffers and the shape of your kingdom. So now you know, bloggers.

Was it juicy?

Kelly Diels bakes cupcakes, rages against the machine and writes about the lines that shape us. Her blog Cleavage does not have a focus, business model or revenue. Yet.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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What You Can Learn About Blogging Business Models from a Hip-Hop Artist Who Used to Hustle on the Corner Just to Put Food in His Daughter’s Mouth. An Ode To Biggie, Small Business and Making Money. It’s Juicy.

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As a quick followup to my post a few days ago regarding how to make more money with the Amazon Affiliate Program this Christmas – today is a key day to be linking to Amazon as their Black Friday sale has just started.

This is on of the biggest days (if not THE biggest day) of shopping all year on Amazon so many of your readers will be heading into the store today anyway – you might as well as earn a commission for what they spend.

The cool thing about linking to the Black Friday Sale today is that next Monday when Amazon’s Cyber Monday sale starts the links you create today will automatically be forwarded to that sale also.

Good luck with the promotion!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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Amazon’s Black Friday Sale Starts – If You’re an Affiliate Today’s the Day to Promote

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