SEO is a very big part of that because good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will put you in the top search results (provided that you are not in a very crowded space of similar websites such as this one).

However, it’s not an easy thing to get good SEO and this infographic from SEOBook.com should give you an idea why.

SEO Infographic by SEO Book

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I wrote, directed, shot and edited this little gem. It was not easy but it ended up fantastic!

So, recently I got fed up with the number of app invites I was getting for games and I posted a status on my Facebook to let people know in advance that I would prefer that others not invite me to join them in growing vegetables or telling fortunes.

Mysteriously, I got a bunch of Likes and positive comments about the wording. So, I decided to turn this into a more permanent form as a blog post here.

Here’s what I wrote (reworded a bit here):

“If you didn’t notice on my Facebook Wall, I don’t play game apps on Facebook. Thanks for thinking of inviting me to play, but no thanks in advance.”

Feel free to copy and use this as you wish because I think it has helped to eliminate some invites. I may have to repost this every once in a while and I can just return to this post and copy/paste and I’ve posted it again.

You may also want to bookmark this post as well if you want to return and copy/paste.

You’ve probably seen some Facebook updates that show a Yahoo! News item or a Washington Post Social Reader story such as these:

It seems innocent enough, but then you click on one of the stories you see (the top one using Washington Post Social Reader in this example) and you are prompted to give permission to the app which posted these stories using the profile of the one who read it. The box looks like this:

Well, that seems fair enough, so I go ahead and click “Add to Facebook” so that I can read the story. I get sent straight to the article and, something really creepy, it tells me who else has read the article meaning that if a third person comes along, I have NO CONTROL over whether or not I want them to know I’ve read this article. Notice by the way, that it doesn’t say it will be telling everyone you read this story on your Facebook Timeline or on their site; it does say it shares articles which is innocent enough. It does NOT give you the option on their site to “un-Like” or change their public action to show your name on their site.

This is really where the danger is. Nobody but me knows the motivation behind why I read an article. I’m concerned about the dangers of the Internet, so I’m going to be clicking on stories that may only interest me professionally and that should not be confused with me personally. Of course I could switch profiles, but really, this shouldn’t be so hard to keep what I am doing simple.

The problem then becomes that someone who sees my name on an article that I read may wonder why I am reading such an article and that makes this a privacy threat.

You see, I sometimes click on a link and I regret even going to read that story because it may contain content I didn’t realize was going to be there and I go back to where I was, but a record of my visit there has not only been recorded, but it’s made public. OUCH! And then I have no control over that! DOUBLE-OUCH!

And, in addition, it’s on my Facebook Timeline! Check it out:

At least I can and you can do something about that. I can simply hide it by clicking the upper-right-hand corner of each post each time if I want, but I’d rather not have to do this each and every time and I’d rather selectively choose which articles WILL show up on my timeline rather than all of them automatically showing up there, so here’s what I found I can do about it.

If you go to the following link in your Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications), you will be able to remove this app completely OR you can get rid of it’s capability to post on your timeline.

Just click the little X where it says “This app can also: Add app activity to your timeline” and this way you can use the app without approving/removing it each time without it posting to your timeline. It does not appear that you can re-enable this permission later to add it to your timeline nor does this option automatically reappear later if you remove and re-approve it.

So that’s it. You can customize this app further, but as far as options go, this seems to be it. If anyone finds any further way to keep my name off of websites using this app, please let me know.

If you really feel like sticking it to Facebook and Washington Post Social Reader and the Yahoo! app, then mark each one as spam. If enough people will do that, then this sort of thing will be lessened.

Well, I found out that, even though I was doing nothing different, my Klout score has been dropping each and every day for the past couple weeks about one point per day with no bottom in sight.

I have to admit that I have simply got fed up with them claiming how they are the arbiter or influence and, after following their recommendations and watching my score go up, to watch my score simply sink like a big neon sign sinking into a bog.

So, I encourage you to simply dump Klout as I have done.

If they think they are really the “Standard of Influence” as they claim under their name, then they have lost my faith in their standards. It looks as if someone is tilting the scale the wrong way.

Many Klout users have registered the same complaint and I really don’t think anyone else I know is going to close their Klout, but I find it to be useless for me to be concerned about something that is supposedly important but impossible to understand or truly respond to.

#KloseKlout!

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Just so that you know, it’s been proven that books and ebooks with trailers do better than those without. An ebook trailer is like a mini-commercial and can be very creative, but they can also be simple and informative.

Just fill out the form and I’ll get back to you right away!

Klout touts themselves as “The Standard for Influence” on the Internet in terms of social media. Well, they certainly have a right to make that declaration as they seem to be pretty dominant in that market space. I just signed up with Crowdbooster to see how well they do what they promise in this same service/product segment.

As you can see in my screenshot of my profile, my “Score Analysis” has been between 45 and 47-ish for some time now while my other statistics have significantly increased. My True Reach has gone up 20 points over the last week or so (my guess as to what those points represent), my amplification seems to be up (I have no idea what scale this is…percentage?) and my network has grown from 44 to 53 (of course, that’s some kind of aggregate score).

So, you would think that with these numbers like this that my “Score Analysis” would clearly at least be going up from prior to a week or so ago. NOPE. What’s up, Klout? (I did write them and I plan to post my response and follow up on this over time. I’ll also let you know what I think of Crowdbooster.

My Klout Numbers

UPDATE: My numbers took a nosedive and so I decided to close my account. See the “improved” numbers here.

I’m just a humble Internet Marketer and I have clients and my site is really a resource for Internet Marketing services, questions and information.

However, when I see a product or service that I do like or don’t like, I share about it when the existence of that service or product relies heavily on the Internet, social media or software that helps people run their Internet-based business. And that is why I wrote the article about Stanford Who’s Who and how they advertise on LinkedIn and, based on what I saw, concluded that they were shady (after all, they had a picture of one of my good friends on their site with some other person’s name, so that was a big clue that something wasn’t on the level). I’m entitled to do that and basically had warned others to be wary of them.

And so after I made this post, I kept getting replies to my post that Stanford Who’s Who had called them and they sometimes thanked me for my article and some told me that they know all about Stanford Who’s Who and nobody was saying anything good about them. So, it became even easier for someone to think that they were not a company that could be trusted.

Well, this week was a big shocker to me. I was contacted by them to ask me if they could use my site to help deal with the lack of customer satisfaction that my post and the comments of those visiting my site had demonstrated. I thought about it and figured I’d give them a chance to see what they would do. I always monitor comments, so I knew that nothing could go wrong by giving them a chance.

And so, after seeing a few comments, I realized that they genuinely want to clean up their reputation. I’m still not taking my post down because the jury isn’t completely out yet because I may get another comment next week for all I know.

But in the mean time, they have been personally responding to those comments one by one and I was so impressed that I decided to contact them. This was a big move considering just a few months ago they sent their lawyer after me to get me to shut down my site or at least to delete my blog post by court order. I had told them that I have powerful friends (and the hijacked picture of my friend is…tada!…a lawyer!) and I would see them in court if they tried.

So, after speaking with Anthony who is one of the partners, it was a weird feeling of deja vu except it had never happened before. Like stepping into an alternate universe. We even talked about possibly doing business together so that I could help them with their Internet Marketing. How weird is that?

Well, I’m going to see how things go, but I specifically wanted to let you know that if you are reading this because you think Stanford Who’s Who is a scam, then they want to change your mind and make whatever is wrong into something that is right. Just contact Carla Gwatney at help@stanfordwhoswho.com and they should take care of you. IF NOT, POST YOUR COMMENTS BELOW.

Let’s say that you are a really great _______(fill in the blank with your profession) and you have no interest in marketing or using a computer to design ads, place them strategically, make the perfect landing page and outbid others in doing the same thing. Well, most _______s don’t know how to do this because it’s a completely unrelated discipline to doing what _______s do. Even if you were to get a degree in Business Management, they don’t teach this stuff because it changes so quickly that by the time the class is over, a whole new chapter would need to be written in the textbook.

But, there are people who know a lot about technology, software and marketing and also coaching and training. This person would be able to do the work for you and then teach you how to do it yourself. That’s MeshMarketer. We will do it for you. I’ve done it with fantastic success in saving lots of money for other companies when they were spending too much and also helping them to increase their overall traffic to their site. References available upon request.

So, if you’ve ever thought about starting up with Google AdWords to reach new customers, this is a great way to do it. However, I do feel it’s important to warn you in advance that the coupon may be $100, but you often need to spend up to $200 altogether to really get a fair sense of how your campaign actually works and whether or not it’s a good idea to continue with it. Also, it’s never a good practice to think you need to be at the top of paid search; it only means that you outbid everyone else. When you are able to pay a low cost per click, have a Quality Score of 10 AND be at the top, then you know you are doing it right and it’s then great to enjoy the space at the top; unless you are the only provider of a product or service, you can expect to pay your way to the top unless you are smart and simply work on being between #2 and #3 and focusing on your Quality Score (7 is just fine; 8 and 9 rarely exist).

As you can tell, there’s probably much more to this than you know. You can read my ebook (for free if you subscribe to my mailing list) and learn all that there is to know and then from there you can hire me to do the work to get you started.

What is probably the most interesting part of this phenomenon is whether or not a YouTube video may reach the top of a Google Search.

Is Google doing this to leverage YouTube? After all, if a website is what you expect to see when you type in a Google Search, then how can a VIDEO replace a website? And if a website isn’t what Google is providing you with when you type a search and it’s a page they are returning to you, then shouldn’t these results also show up in Yahoo! and Bing?

Whatever the answers to these interesting questions are, it’s time to leverage this more prevalent capability. I plan to make a video a week doing something related to my sites.

I promise you that I will become a vlogger and I will be vodcasting once a week.

Mind you, I have three sites that I plan to be posting to. One of them isn’t even purchased as a domain yet, but I plan to buy the domain name this week and start posting.

The first site is this one. There are TONS of material to post about Internet Marketing and Social Media and I plan to make a video each week or at least three times a month. The cumulative effect is worth it.

The second site is my workoutrecipes.com site. I’ve now lost 44 pounds since I started working out with P90X and eating far better and I really need to keep adding to my blog there.

The other one is coming as I said, but it has to do with video editing.

PS: It’s amazing how my life has given me the opportunity to have editing skills, writing skills and generally the kind of skills that make for a life of a blogger, so now I really need to not just help my clients blog and turn profits, but I really need to do that and I have started raising my rates as a result of my full schedule. Any good business owner knows that if you are charging X amount of dollars for work and your time gets filled charging X amount of dollars, then it’s time to start charging a rate higher than X such as 110% of X or 120% of X or even 150% of X or 200% of X. I’m at that point. One thing I haven’t done is start pricing my competitors and find out if I am charging too little. I’ll be posting more on that as I continue to blog…this will end up being part of a video that I make because I want to talk about my competitors but I don’t want to mention them in text so video will do the trick perfectly. This blog post came about because I was doing research on my competitors and found they had a really crappy video (and I do mean REALLY CRAPPY video) of their business and it was in the top 10 of organic search results! This means I am behind the curve! This is my incentive to get cracking.