There is a lot of free SEO advice out there on the Internet about marketing your website. Much of it is very good, but a lot can be noisy or too public even.

For those people who might like to ask questions about their websites privately and gain expert independant frank advice, I’ve decided to offer a subscription based advice service that will enable you to ask questions about your website in a private relaxed setting accessible only to subscribers.
It costs just $50 to subscribe for a one month period, all new subscribers will receive 50 credits to their accounts, users can ask questions in the forum or via private email.

Private email answers from me or an expert moderator will cost users 50 credits, whereas forum posted answers from me or an expert moderator will cost just 25 credits.

Subscribers can also benefit from reading the answers to subscriber submitted questions. Subscribers will also be able to select who they’d like to answer their questions, by viewing moderator profiles. All experts must answer questions to your satisfaction, or as adjudged by myself and the other experts.

Additional credits will be available for purchase at the following scale, this will enable you to ask additional questions.

• 50 credits = $50
• 100 credits = $95
• 500 credits = $400

Subscriptions and additional credit purchases are non refundable.

Subscriptions last for one month

To subscribe to this SEO Advice Service, simply visit the paypal link here. Once Ive added you as a subscriber you will be able to access the seo advice forum and post your questions.

Paid Moderation Opportunities

If you are interested in becoming a moderator at this resource then you can apply by sending me an email to watts underscore rob at hotmail dot com. Please show me references to your experience including forum nicks you may have posted under.

This will enable me to read some of your posts and decide on your suitability.

Qualifying mods will be expected to post a profile in the forum allowing subscribers to select them on the basis of their experience and suitability.

Moderators accounts will be credited on the following scale

• 1 – 5 questions answered 15 credits per answer
• 6-10 questions answered 20 credits per answer
• 11 + questions answered 25 credits per answer

Credits will be converted to dollars at a rate of 0.60.

To illustrate further, if you answered 15 questions in a one month period the conversation would equate to $225-00. You will need a paypal account to participate and must be over 18 years of age.

There is a lot you can do to make or break a new domain, people will try and sell you all manner of services, Link building, Link baiting, SEO restructuring, Usability services, Re-design services, Keyword monitoring  services… the list is pretty long so I’ll say no more on it for now, other than you might not need any of them, at least not straight off the bat, consider employing an seo consultant before commiting any cold hard cash. A good consultant will be able to advise you on the best strategies. Recommend good people, that kind of thing. For less than the price of a weekend in Brighton you could be well on your way to getting your site up and running to where it needs to be.

If you’ve just had a new site built then IMHO you should have at least been told about some of the fundamentals of how your site was going to be constructed.

If your development company hasn’t factored SEO into your design then, well, I don’t want to depress you or anything but you’ve probably wasted a shed load of cash, needlessly, but that’s a post for a another day.

Getting good backlinks without spending fortunes

So assuming the best, assuming that your site has all the ingredients to do well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) then the next stage in the process would be to get those all important keyworded links for your target sales terms.

How can you get these? Well, you could always buy them, but that could well backfire on you. You could employ some blackhatter to go and spam a zillion blogs for you, but that’ll just create negative karma and come back and bite you on the arse, or you could do something relatively simple and generate things the natural way yourself. How? Simple,  install a blog.

Install a blog on your domain

Installing a blog is a breeze. Wordpress is a great piece of kit. All it requires is some file space, an ability to edit .htaccess files (check with your host) and a database, usually mysql. There are at least a 1001 templates out there and plenty of good designers who’ll be happy to help you convert your blog to fit in with your existing website or even build you a new one.

Blogs are fantastic tools of communication. Who is the best person to talk about your goods and services? The answer should be you, or the head of your sales and marketing team, but then wait up a minute. What about the rest of your organisation? What about your distribution and purchasing teams, what about your direct sales teams, what about your customer services staff? Aren’t they all expert in what they do? Isn’t there someone within each of these spheres who can add a postive contribution or two?

Why blogging matters to your online promotion mix

Why am I even banging on about this?

Well, its Sunday, its sunny, I’m in a ’state the obvious’ mindframe, I want to get the message out there that this Internet marketing stuff really can be very simple, its not so complicated you just have to do the right things and work at it a little.

Who promotes you in the offline world? What do you do, how do you do it?

Do you write press releases and hope they get picked up by mainstream media or local news agencies? Do you give your customers great service and after sales back up? Do you have direct lines of communication with past customers? Are you building those all important relationships?

Blogging  enables conversations

Bloggers are social creatures, they like to talk about each other and make reference to some of the things that others are saying – search engines too, those leviathans like Google for example are also interested in what bloggers have to say. They like the way in which bloggers link and discuss things. It gives them lots of diverse reference points to object and sites on the web that people like or have found useful, subsequently using this data to inform its SERPs and rank the websites within them, sites just like yours.

By blogging, you’ll link to others and cite good ideas and examples yourself. Others will link back to you, your domains authority will increase, your relevancy for your target terms will increase. Your customers will find you for an increasing number of keyword terms in the SERPs, they will feel reassured that your company is actively discussing and sharing what it is they do, you will be able to communicate your passion, your ethics, your ethos, launch new products and innovations in a heartbeat, create buzz and excitement in your marketplaces. 

Why wouldn’t you want to have a blog?

If you run a company and don’t have a blog, then either you aren’t really that serious about your company or you just don’t have a clue, or you just don’t want more sales, or you just…look, I can’t be convinced of any reason why you shouldn’t have a blog.

Just do yourself a huge favour and go and get one today.