There are many SEO terms you could invest months in researching and studying. And here is the bad news…nearly all of your time would be wasted studying those terms. I have spent countless hours researching SEO terms and buzzwords in both the private-sector and university setting. This has given me the ability to distill the unwieldy, confusing technical jargon into a small list of nine SEO terms that provide small business owners and busy managers with the greatest value with the least amount of effort. Every small business owner and manager should understand the following SEO terms. But if you want to review a comprehensive SEO glossary, then please refer to Glossary of SEO-related Terms on page 207 of this book.

The nine SEO terms every small business owner or manager should know:

#1: On-page and Off-page tactics: On-page tactics include the specific steps you take to optimize the content within the confines of your site’s pages. For example, bolding a keyword within a paragraph of content on your site is an example of an on-page tactic, or optimizing your page titles. Conversely, taking articles you have written and distributing them throughout the Web with the goal of increasing the number of inbound links to your site is an example of off-page tactics. The entire 15-step SEO process I developed uses a combination of on- and off-page tactics.

#2 Indexable: The content of a Web page is considered indexable if the text (content) on a page can be highlighted by left-clicking your mouse and dragging it over the text. Being able to highlight the text means that the text and any associated graphics on the page are essentially in different “layers,” which is what Google needs because it can easily “index” the text-based content. Indexing is the process Google uses to scan a Web page for important details and then log them into their database for future keyword searching by Google users. Google cannot index text that is layered into a graphic or photo. However, Google can index the content it finds within Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files you post on your site.

Adobe Flash®-based Web sites also create challenges for Google. In the past, Flash completely prevented Google from indexing content. I have read about Google and Adobe collaborating with the goal of making Flash-based content more indexable. However, I have not read any testing results regarding the success or failure of the experiment. Therefore, you will be best served by using text-based content and avoiding any design temptations to put your text content into Flash. I cover this in Chapter 3, when indexability is discussed in greater detail.

#3 Crawl, Spider, and Bot: These are all catchy terms for the computer programs used by search engines to index your site’s content. For example, Googlebot indexes a site’s home page approximately every seven to ten days. Googlebot will come back and index an entire site approximately every 30 days. You can check the last time any Web page was indexed using the Google PageRank function within the Google Toolbar. The clock is ticking…make your site ready for Google’s next visit.

#4 Page Title: This is the first of several critical pieces of real estate within each of your Web site’s individual content pages. The Page Title is the white text over the black background that appears in the upper left corner of your browser window. Both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox display Page Titles in the same manner.

Some Web designers/developers prefer to create a generic page title and then repeat it verbatim, or in some variation, throughout an entire Web site. This is a missed opportunity because the Page Title is the first place Google looks when indexing a site’s content page to determine the page’s relevance to the keywords found within the particular page’s content.

A page’s Page Title also becomes the clickable link that Google displays within its search results. For example, the clickable link for the #1 ranked site when searching on “Confident Kids Coach” in Google reads “Confident Kids Coach – Confidence tips for kids. Fred Nicklaus…”, which is an exact match to the Website’s page title.

Because of this importance, in Chapter 5, I will teach you a step-by-step process for optimizing all your Page Titles so this valuable piece of real estate drives as much traffic as possible to your Website. For now, it is enough to know where Page Titles are displayed within a Web browser and how Google uses them to generate its search results.

#5 META Keywords and META Descriptions: These fields are two more valuable pieces of real estate within each content page of your Web site. The META Keywords and META Description fields are found in your site’s HTML source code. Do not worry if you are not familiar with viewing the source code. I will show you how to do it.

• Use your browser to open any content page within your Website
• Use your mouse to click on the “View” menu next to the right of the File and Edit menus in the upper left of your browser window
• Your browsers will then give you a drop-down menu with “Page Source” as one of the options
• Click on “Page Source” and a new window will appear that displays the page’s HTML code within Notepad
• Or, if you are using Firefox as your browser, you can press the “Ctrl” and “U” keys simultaneously and a source code window will open for the Web page you are viewing.

For example, when I open the source code for www.confidentkidscoach.com, the META Keywords field is the first highlighted line in blue and reads: <META CONTENT=”fred nicklaus, martial arts american, karate, confidence, kids coach, coach, confident kids coach, kids health, healthy kids”>

The META Description field is the second highlighted line in blue and reads: <META CONTENT=”Confident Kids Coach – Confidence Tips for Kids”>

Googlebot loves both of these META fields. Although both of the META fields in these examples contain what seems to be good information, neither of the fields have been optimized. I will specifically show you how to optimize the META Keywords and META Description fields so they work in unison with your page titles to provide Google with the information it needs to properly index your Web site’s content pages.

If you looked for the META Keywords and META Description fields on your Web pages and did not find them…do not worry. This is a common problem during the Web design process because developers tend to be focused on the design and usability of the site, and not necessarily content optimization. I will teach you how to easily fill in these holes during the optimization process. Or, if you want to fill in any holes right away, just go to www.seotrainingproducts.com/tools and copy-paste the code that is displayed on the page directly into your source code. You can then customize both META fields using the optimization process taught in Chapter 5 of this book.

#6 Keyword Prominence, Frequency, and Density: all three of these SEO terms deal with the location and repetition of the keywords you place within your page content. Keyword prominence is the determination of how close to the start of a sentence or paragraph a keyword appears. A keyword appearing at the top of the page, at the beginning of a sentence, and at the beginning of a paragraph will be considered more relevant by Google, versus keywords found toward the bottom of the content.

#7 Keyword frequency represents the number of times a given keyword or keyword phrase is repeated within the same page of content. For example, say you had a page of content on your site targeting the keyword phrase “endurance training,” and within the content, the words “endurance training” were repeated 20 times. Your keyword frequency would be 20.

#8 Keyword density takes your keyword frequency — 20 repetitions in this example — and divides it by the total number of words within the text-based content of the page. Let us say that the endurance training content page contains 500 words. If so, the keyword density score would be 4 percent, or 20 keyword repetitions divided by 500 total words of content (20 ÷ 500 = .04). With that said, keyword density has become much less important in recent years. Some of my colleagues within the SEO industry would even argue that keyword density is no longer a relevant measurement. Therefore, my 15-step SEO process does not focus on building your keyword density. I included this definition simply for your awareness, and so that if at some point you decided to work with an SEO service provider, and they began discussing their goal to build your keyword density, you could ask them to explain why that was an important measurement for the work they planned to do.

#9 Inbound Links: are often referred to as “external links” and are defined as links posted on other sites linking to your Web site. The SEO X-ray tool (explained in your SEO Tool Kit within Chapter 2) can quickly calculate the number of inbound links to any Web page. Inbound links are extremely important because Google considers sites with more links to be more popular. Google could review two sites from the same industry with exactly the same content and optimization, and the site with the higher number of inbound links would be ranked higher because Google would consider the site to be more popular. I will show you exactly how to build the number of inbound links to your Web site during Step #15 of my SEO process.

I hope you found this list of SEO terms to be helpful and informative. I wish you the best of success.

In September 2009, my family and I spent a couple weeks in Disney World. It was a great trip.  And during our stay, I got to do something I rarely get to do in the real world…read the USA Today nearly every morning. It was heavenly. So while my daughter played in the toddler pool nearby, I got to read the Money section. And one day, the Money section included an interview with the CEO of Yahoo! He explained that the company’s strategy over the course of the next 18-months was to invest $100 million in advertising to rebuild the Yahoo! brand and recapture some of its lost share in the search engine market. Huh? Yes, the company had announced plans to aggressively advertise what seemed to be a broken model in order to regain its position as the best search engine. When I read that interview, I thought Yahoo! had even further lost its direction. In all actuality, Yahoo! had lost its focus years earlier when it had begun to morph into more of a media company instead of being one of the best search engines. So, I was left sort of scratching my head at their strategy in moving forward.

Then the very next morning I was again reading the Money section. I sort of felt like I was reliving the previous day inside the movie Groundhog Day because I sat down in the same seat by the pool, drinking another cup of Disney coffee, watched my daughter splash around in the toddler pool, and then I opened the Money section. And this time, there was an interview with the CEO of Google. How coincidental is that? Interviews with search engine CEOs two days in a row? Google’s CEO told USA Today that the company believed the economy was near the bottom of the recession and indicators seemed to be pointing toward a recovery. So Google’s strategy in moving forward would be to acquire at least one company each month for the foreseeable future. Yep, the best search engine on the planet was committed to becoming even better! Impressive.

I quickly flashed back to the Yahoo! interview from the day before. Let’s see…the company with a broken business model (Yahoo!) decides to advertise more often instead of fixing its model…then the best search engine on the planet (Google) decides to continue spending zero dollars on advertising and embarks on a mission to acquire one company every month for the foreseeable future in an effort to improve its business model. Fast forwarding to present day…Google purchased four social networking companies during August 2010 alone. Yes, four social networking companies! The best search engine on the planet has found a way to continually improve.

I suspect that Google’s appetite for buying social networking companies is likely the result of the overlap between social and search engine optimization. By overlap I mean that your social networking activities can benefit your SEO efforts and vice versa. The overlap between social networking and search engine optimization is so significant that I devoted several of my 15-steps within my latest book, Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Networking, toward the topic.

Google is also the best search engine in the market largely due to its mission in life of indexing every page of content in the world. And Google is well on its way to accomplishing that goal.

Google market share remains staggering…even with Bing-Yahoo as strong as they are. Google still owns over 65 percent of the search market whereas Bing-Yahoo represent less than 30 percent. The business owners who attend my search engine optimization often ask me if Bing will hurt Google. My answer has been, and will continue to be, no. When Microsoft introduced Bing into the market, I began telling people that Bing would put Yahoo! in its grave. And that is essentially what happened in August this year. Now all search results provided by Yahoo! are powered by Bing. For all practical purposes, there are essentially two search engines…Google and Bing…and Google remains the best.

Given Google’s market-share dominance in search, I specifically designed my 15-step SEO process to give small business owners the tools they needed in order to score Top 10 rankings in Google. By following some simple math, you can quickly calculate the dollar value of a number ranking in Google.

Ultimately, you will save time by optimizing your Website content according to what works with Google. Plus, your site will not only rank well in Google, but you will likely rank well in Bing, too. Because of this, from a search engine optimization perspective, Google is the only search engine that matters.

Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Networking by Stephen Woessner

I termed the 15 steps in my latest book, Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Networking, as “viral” because I blended the entire social networking process with aspects of viral marketing such as word-of-mouth (WOM) communications. This blending creates a powerful and influential business promotional tool that increases online sales and Website traffic. Here are several highlights from the comprehensive research that was conducted to validate or contradict my theory regarding the effects of social networking.

I first scoured dozens of top-quality academic research journals. These journals publish the work of the best and brightest academic minds all over the world. I found several sources that demonstrated how a company’s activity within social networking sites, including viral marketing aspects like WOM communications, could help a company build an “online brand community” when a product for sale is the centerpiece of the company’s social networking activity. I also dug into the research studies to see if I could determine whether or not a brand community could facilitate a consumer’s decision-making process (product adoption), which is clearly the end goal.

Incidentally, this intensive research also helped me uncover a number of linkages that later formed the foundation for the three Cs in viral social networking: conversation, community, and commerce, which are discussed at length in Chapter 1 of the book.

Social networking sites serve as arenas for consumers to share their reviews and preferences about products or services. When consumers share these reviews, the exchange of information becomes WOM communications, because a product or service is the centerpiece of the message. WOM is a form of viral marketing.

Another study also determined the effectiveness of WOM’s role in the flow of information as well as the flow of influence. This makes WOM communications an attractive part of the marketing mix, because as an unpaid endorsement for products or services, WOM can be the most believable form of advertising.

Brand communities are composed of people who possess a social identification with others who share their interest in a particular brand. In addition, brand communities are non-geographic, meaning they can exist anywhere including on the Internet. This gives a businessperson the ability to use viral social networking to create a powerful and influential online brand community for their business.

Based on the data, it seemed reasonable to conclude that if brand communities are composed of people sharing common interests just like social networks, viral marketing activities like WOM communications are prominent within social networks, and brand communities can exist entirely online, then social networking sites have the potential to serve as the platform to develop an online brand community.

I also found existing research that suggested marketers could leverage the power of interpersonal relationships found between members of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote a product or service. The concept assumes that the electronic peer-to-peer communications such as WOM are an effective means to transform communication networks like social networks into influence networks. The social networks could be used to capture recipients’ attention, trigger interest, and eventually lead to sales.

However, the effort needed to build an online brand community via social networking activities would only be valuable if the community positively affects the sales process. Therefore, I felt it was necessary to quantifiably measure the effectiveness of a brand community’s ability to increase online sales. Or does an online brand community simply bring people together who have a common interest in a particular product or service? Unfortunately, none of the existing studies specifically tested this impact.

This is what motivated me to invest my money and test my viral social networking theory and collect my own data. The results were impressive because the effects of social networking are profound. Viral social networking has the ability to increase traffic to a business Website by 23 percent as well as increase the online conversion rate from the typical 2 to 4 percent, up to 22 percent. That represents a 780 percent increase in conversion rate!

The data formed the foundation for the 15-steps, which are explained in precise detail within Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Networking. Stephen Woessner’s first book is entitled, The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization.

I understand the dilemma. If you are like most of the business owners who have read this post, your daily reality likely consists of 20 top priorities that need to get done today. Not just two or three. And search engine optimization is likely not one of your top priorities. My goal in sharing the following example is to help you estimate increases in online sales so you can eliminate the guesswork regarding where to invest your time for the greatest impact.

As a starting point, you should become familiar with two key SEO-related terms as well as learn how to collect two pieces of data. The terms are:

• Click-through-rate or CTR
• Conversion rate

If you are not familiar with CTR, it simply means the percentage of time that searches click on your Website displayed in their search results versus a different site. And CTRs are impacted significantly based on your Google Website ranking for a particular keyword. For example, a site that has earned a Google Website ranking of number one for a particular keyword produces a Google click-through-rate of 42 percent versus the site that is ranked number 10, which produces a meager 6.06 percent CTR. See the chart below for more detail. The chart contains data for Google click-through-rates for Websites ranked in the Top 10 by Google (first page) for whatever keyword being searched by visitors.

Patrick Altoft and Neil Walker wrote a couple of informative blog posts about Google Website rankings, CTRs, and provide some excellent data from several studies conducted over the last four years.

The second term is conversion rate, which represents the number of monthly orders generated by your Website divided by the number of unique visitors to your site during the same period. For example, if your Website generated 50 orders last month and 2,000 unique visitors flowed through your site during the same period, then your Website’s conversion rate would be 2.5 percent (50 orders divided by 2,000 unique visitors = 2.5 percent). On average, a Website will deliver a 2 to 4 percent conversion rate of unique visitors. Measuring your conversion rate is important even if you do not sell products directly on your Website. Regardless, any Website should have some form of call-to-action such as customers submitting requests for quotes, e-mailing customer-service related questions, scheduling appointments, calling a special 800 number that only appears on your Website, etc. Each of these actions can be tracked and then used to measure the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts.

There may be some underlying issues with content or site navigation if your Website is not delivering a 2 to 4 percent conversion rate. I recommend reading Don’t Make Me Think, which in straightforward language makes the difficult topic of Web usability very simple and easy to understand.

And the 2 to 4 percent average conversion rate is simply that, an average. Check out Fireclick.com for more information about industry specific conversions rates.

Now on to data collection. You should only select keywords that have a proven track record for delivering traffic. Keywords that are proven performer are those words or phrases that are used every single day by searchers in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It is a wasted effort to score a Google Website ranking of number one for a keyword that no one is using. In my experience, one of the best (and free) keyword tools is the Keyword Selector Tool at SEOBook.com. The tool will show you the number of times each day that a particular keyword is searched for via Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

I take the keyword selection process several steps further in Chapter 4 of The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization by demonstrating how you can take the data from the SEOBook.com Keyword Suggestion Tool, along with some data from Google, and combine it to form a simple ratio that I call the “500 ratio”. With the 500 ratio, your probability for scoring a top ranking in Google is very high. Inc. Magazine highlighted my 500 ratio in their July-August 2010 issue.

We will now assume you have a list of keywords that are proven performers and your probability for scoring a Google Website ranking in the Top 10 or better is high based on the 500 ratio. Now we will combine the different data points to predict an increase in your online sales for each keyword on your list. For example, say you scored a Google Website ranking of number one for a keyword that according to the SEOBook.com Keyword Selector Tool was searched on 100 times per day in Google. According to the chart above, the site ranking number one would receive a Google click-through-rate of approximately 40 percent. This would translate into 40 visits to your Website each day (100 searches x 40 percent CTR = 40 visits), or 1,200 visits per month.

Now we will convert the 1,200 visits into dollars. For this we will assume that your Website delivers the average 2 to 4 percent conversion rate. This means that the 1,200 visits should produce approximately 24 to 48 orders per month (1,200 unique visitors x 2 to 4 percent = 24 to 48). We will also assume that your average online order is approximately $50. Therefore, a single keyword with a Google Website ranking of number one could drive between $1,200 to $2,400 of online sales for your business each month, or $14,400 to $28,800 annually.

This process forms the basis for a good practical and tactical analysis. However, it is important to remember how CTRs drop off precipitously after the number one position. This reinforces the need to keep your Website ranked in Google’s Top 10 or higher (first page of search results) for the keywords that matter to your business. Otherwise, a large percentage of your customers and prospects will not find your Website if Google has you ranked beyond their first page of search results.

I would never recommend that any business owner invest time or money toward something that does not provide a measurable return on investment. And the results from viral social networking are highly measurable. So, I have collected a few of my thoughts from my latest book (Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Networking) to share about social networking aggregation tools. Theoretically, social networking aggregation tools are designed to reduce a person’s time commitment in managing all of their accounts.

Some of the aggregation tools are excellent, and in my opinion, one tool shines above the rest. See what you think.

Q: How many different social media accounts do you manage?

A: I personally manage accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Q: How do you go about managing all the different accounts?

A: I invest approximately 10-minutes per day toward managing the accounts. I follow the 15-step viral social networking process that is detailed in my current book. The process produces maximum results in the least amount of time possible.

Q: Are you using any aggregation tools?

A: I have experimented with HootSuite, TweetDeck, and Ping.fm with varying success in managing my online brand community. Right now, my favorite aggregator tool is by far NutShellMail.com from Constant Contact. I have experimented with NutShellMail for the last several weeks, and to say that I am impressed, would be a significant understatement. I recommend NutShellMail to small business owners because it compiles the activity taking place within your online brand community (compilation of your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections) and delivers it right to your e-mail Inbox in about 10, easy-to-manages batches a day. NutShellMail is an excellent tool for anyone interested in reducing their social networking time commitment.

However, reducing one’s time commitment with social networking is actually less about the aggregation tools that are used. Being efficient is primarily rooted in only investing time toward knowing what works and what does not. For example, did you know that sending more than two tweets per day on Twitter is essentially hypertweeting. In fact, more people will likely “unfollow” than will begin following you. Avoiding these types of common mistakes will save a business owner a ton of time and help boost results.

Q: Is it a good idea to aggregate since the audiences on various social networks can be different?

A: I have made mistakes using Ping.fm to distribute a single status update across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. What I did not realize at the time was that the context of the post was personal in nature and therefore more relevant to my Twitter followers and Facebook friends but not appropriate for my LinkedIn connections. I later received negative feedback (constructive criticism) from one of my LinkedIn connections who let me know that personal-related updates where not appropriate. That was great feedback because it helped me refocus and greatly improve my 15-step viral social networking process.

Q: What are some tips, besides tools, to simply your social media streams?

A: One of the best ways a business owner can simplify or reduce their social networking time commitment is to only tweet or write status-network updates regarding content that really matters to the members of their online brand community (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn). A business owner should also avoid the temptation of getting involved in time consuming Facebook games or other applications…entertaining but they do not serve a business purpose. Instead, focus on writing two posts or status updates per day on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

A business owner should also resist the temptation to turn their online brand community into a selling free-for-all by following a simple six to one (6:1) ratio. A business owner can maximize results by writing six life or professional-related posts-tweets to every one product or service-related post. This will provide your online brand community members with balanced and valuable content. Your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections will feel informed versus being sold. This is such an important point that I devoted all of Chapter 7 to explaining it precise detail.

 Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org

I love seeking out challenges that push me to be better, to perform, and to reach new levels that I did not think I was capable of reaching. I literally thought I had met my match on a crisp, early morning in April 2000. It was on that day that I learned the keys to total happiness. I learned that my ability to focus and relentlessly pursue what I loved and wanted most in this world were the keys to making me happy. And on that April morning, there were times I definitely felt like quitting and giving up the pursuit. But I did not give in — and I am so glad that I pushed forward because total happiness found me that morning on the side of Mt. Hood.

I had arrived in Portland, Oregon several days earlier to continue the due diligence process regarding a company called Global Health & Fitness (GHF). The company was owned by Chad and Jody Tackett and it represented a very strategic acquisition for the company I had recently founded called FortifiedNutrition.com (FN). From the moment I landed, Chad Tackett and I worked well together and we got along great. Our personalities and goals were completely in sync. A friendship that lasts to this day had been born.

The idea for climbing Mt. Hood came up after Chad and I had finished playing basketball with some of his friends and eating way too much pizza one night. While we stood around the kitchen, one of Chad’s friends asked him what we were planning to do the next day and at that point there was nothing on the agenda. So when Chad suggested we climb Mt. Hood, it sounded like a once in a lifetime opportunity. I had no idea what I had just agreed to do but would quickly find out.

I woke up early the next morning with a nervous and anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was I seriously going to attempt the climb? How had I let Chad talk me into it this? I was starting to reconsider the wisdom of my decision for several important reasons.

First, Mt. Hood is the highest mountain in Oregon and the fourth highest in the Cascades. It is approximately 11,200 feet high and is home to 12 glaciers. Yes, 12! Mt. Hood is also considered to be the most likely volcano in Oregon to erupt. Super. Second, Chad was in significantly better cardiovascular condition than I was. Consequently, I was afraid of being left in the snow only to be found in late May by some unsuspecting skiers. My body had been trained for lifting heavy objects and moving them from point A to point B — not snowshoeing up the side of a mountain. So my endurance would likely be a problem. Third, I had never been snowshoeing and physical coordination is not one of my strengths. I lacked the experience of doing anything physical in high altitude, which meant that my energy level would be a real and present issue.

So there I sat in the hotel lobby—waiting for Chad to pick me up. I tried to choke down a protein bar while my stomach continued to churn.  And then it was time. Chad drove up and we were off to get our gear at the nearby outfitter. We then packed up all of our gear which consisted of snowshoes, boots, and some ski poles. “Hey, how about some food and water”?, I thought to myself. What I did not realize is that this was just going to be an extended cardio session for Chad, but it would physically push me to my furthest edge.

We decided to climb Mt. Hood’s West Leg Trail, which is one of the most popular ski trails that curves and twists its way from Timberline Lodge down the southern flank to the base of the mountain. All totaled, the West Leg Trail of Mt. Hood trail is 5.5 miles long. Our plan was to climb the trail until we reached the lodge located just below Palmer Glacier. Chad and I would be climbing a very significant incline and covering about 5,000 feet in elevation. Our goal was to complete the climb in approximately three hours so we could have lunch at the lodge. It all sounded like a good plan; I was so naïve!

“You can do this,” I chanted to myself. Chad looked at me and smiled. He could see from the anxious expression on my face that I was nervous and had no idea what to expect. Then Chad said something to me that I suspect was supposed to instill confidence and encouragement, but all I heard was mumbling. I had tuned everything out and was trying to focus.

We were off. I looked ahead as far as I could follow the trail. It ascended and then headed into a tree line. The sun’s glare reflecting off the snow was nearly blinding. It was one of the most impressive and beautiful scenes I have ever witnessed. Just being in the presence of all that grandeur was incredibly awe inspiring.

The splendor and beauty of the mountain quickly faded during the first 10-minutes of the climb — I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest. Granted, I already had assumed my lack of conditioning would be an issue, but I never imagined that I would begin feeling the affect in such a short period of time. I thought I might have a heart attack and die right there at the base of Mt. Hood. And it was only going to get worse.

Chad saw that I was struggling so he coached me on how to develop a rhythm with the snowshoes and poles.  “And do not forget to breathe,” Chad said to me. “Gee, thanks for the pearl of wisdom,” I thought sarcastically to myself. “And how can we be inclining already? Doesn’t this mountain come with some sort of test trail or something so we can properly warm up? Come on!”

Once I focused on following Chad’s sequential process of pulling, stepping, and breathing my way up the trail, my efforts became much more efficient and effective. And I was covering more ground while using less energy. Darn him for knowing everything! I am convinced that Chad was enjoying the thoughts of the physical torture that the trail was about to inflict on me.

As we continued our ascent, the fatigue and thinning oxygen levels were setting in and causing me to lose my focus. Chad could see that I had begun to mentally wander so he started chatting me up and asking me all sorts of due diligence questions about how our team planned to fund the acquisition, our timing for the initial public offering of FN, and aspects of our exit strategy. It must have worked because I snapped back to the reality of the situation and thought, “You must be joking. Here we are, snowshoeing up the side of a mountain, and he wants to talk about stock options, venture capital, and who knows what else!” But that was Chad. He loved to multi-task so why not combine the two things he really loved—intense exercise with business. Chad is one of the most driven people I have ever met. But his Q&A session also helped me maintain my focus and the relentless pursuit of Timberline Lodge. I kept urging myself forward by saying, “Come on…keeping pushing up the trail. If you stop, you will never get started again. You will pass out and you will not be found until spring!” 

Chad tried a tactic that he thought would motivate me further, even though it was sort of demoralizing. He literally leaped ahead of me and began sprinting up the side of the mountain as if he were jogging in his snowshoes. I stopped and looked incredulously up at him. “What the hell? How can you even do that?” I shouted up at him. I shook my head and kept trudging up the mountain.

When I finally caught up to Chad, I dug my poles into the snow and sunk the spikes of my shoes into the trail. I reached down and pulled off the sweatshirt I had been wearing; it was soaked with sweat. I tied it around my waist and turned to look back down the trail we had just climbed. Off in the distance, I saw Mt. Jefferson and it looked larger than life. It looked so close, I thought that if I got a running start, I could leap off Mt. Hood and land on the side of it. Little did I know that apparently altitude plays games with distance perception because Mt. Jefferson is approximately 50 miles away from Mt. Hood. Insane.

Being dug into the sided of Mt. Hood gave me the opportunity to take in some of the most beautiful nature views I had ever seen firsthand.

It would have been easy to quit. It would have been easy to give up the relentless pursuit. But Chad would not let me quit. He would not let me give up. Chad knew that if he could motivate me to finish the climb, that I would remember this day for the rest of my life. Chad pushed me to persevere, to dig deeper than I ever had dug before in my life, and to ignore the tremendous pain in my legs, back, and arms. He pushed me to focus on reaching the end of the trail.

It was a miraculous sight when we finally cleared the tree line and we saw Timberline Lodge. I had willed myself to achieve something I would have never considered possible for me to achieve. I had nothing left. I was mentally and physically exhausted. And in that state of depletion, a quote from Coach Vince Lombardi made perfect sense to me. Coach Lombardi once said, “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour – his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear – is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he is exhausted on the field of battle — victorious.”

But it is because of that morning on Mt. Hood, as well as other experiences in my life, that I firmly believe a person’s focus and their relentless pursuit of what they love and want most in this world are the keys to total happiness.

Everything worth doing requires commitment, strategy, and hard work. A person needs to have a singular focus…as if you are pursing the one thing you have always wanted most in your life. There is no magic bullet or secret that can grant us what we want most in this world. There are no short cuts, there are no second chances, and we have to enjoy every opportunity we have.

And the same goes for the viral social networking process I am about to share with you in this book. Yes, the process is efficient and effective. And yes, it will produce maximum results in the least amount of time. But it requires your focus and relentless pursuit of the business goals you are trying to accomplish. I assure you, there will absolutely be times when you want to quit or when you begin to question whether or not your time investment is going to pay off.

Trust me when I tell you that your time commitment will pay off. But consistently communicating with the people in your social network takes time and it takes discipline to keep up with the conversation versus a flurry of posts and comments during one week and then nothing from you for three to four weeks as if you disappeared. This type of inconsistent communication will produce lackluster results.

You must relentlessly pursue your goals…never give up…keep on fighting…and enjoy the total happiness that comes your way!

It is time to learn something new! It is time to challenge the status quo! Are you ready?

I wish you the best of success.

- Stephen

I decided to write a book on viral social networking because none of the current books attempting to cover the subject even came close to providing readers with a practical and tactical social networking strategy that could be implemented. And having a specific action plan to follow is so important based on my experience in working with hundreds and hundreds of business owners. Initial successes in social networking produces confidence, which leads to momentum, which leads to more social networking successes!

But really…can viral social networking truly provide business benefit? Social networking, when done correctly, can represent over 20 percent of a Website’s traffic. Plus, a Website’s conversion rate of online sales from traffic referred from social networking sites can be as high as 22 percent versus the typical 2 to 4 percent. This translates into a 500 percent increase! Bottom line: viral social networking can deliver significant business benefits, which makes this book ideal for anyone looking for a practical strategy to increase online sales by using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

You will learn a 15-step viral social networking process that has been proven to increase Website traffic and online sales. The easy-to-follow steps in this book will also provide you with the tools you need to reduce your social networking time investment while showing you how to measure results.

You will get started by learning the fundamentals of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well as the criteria for deciding which social networking site(s) are the best for your business goals. You will also learn how to harness the power of the three Cs of viral social networking: 1) creating Conversation, 2) building Community, and 3) generating Commerce.

And if you are like most businesspeople, you may be wondering what things in your life or business are “that interesting” that they should be shared with the world via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Sound familiar? If so, this book will help by providing you with suggested topic categories and recommendations regarding the type of content your social networking community will find interesting and valuable.

However, developing the right content is only one piece in a viral social networking strategy. So this book will also show you how to effectively share your content with the social networking community you have worked so hard to build. You will also learn how to apply a proven 6:1 ratio of making six personal or life-related posts or status updates to your social networks for every one product or service-related post. The 6:1 ratio will help you avoid the mistake of turning your viral social networks into a selling free-for-all.

And how will you know if you have accomplished your goals? This book will also demonstrate how to track and measure your performance using Google Analytics so you can observe how your efforts are affecting your site traffic and online sales.

This book will help keep you focused because it summarizes all the steps into a tactical, action-oriented social networking checklist. This viral social networking blueprint will serve as your roadmap and can guide your daily to-do list. And lastly, this book includes several real-world social networking success stories and frequently asked questions so you can benefit from the experiences of others.

Visit Amazon.com to pre-order Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Networking.

So, if any of you out there reading this post bought my book on Amazon.com UK, thank you very much! I really appreciate your help and support. I hope you find the 15-step process easy to implement. I am confident you will be impressed with the results!

- Stephen

Tells How to Increase Google Rankings and Enhance Site Traffic Using Just 15 Easy Steps

Amazon.com 5 star rating by Midwest Book Review

“Stephen Woessner’s SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tells how to increase Google rankings and enhance site traffic using just 15 easy steps, from adding anchor links to content to creating custom page titles. It’s an outstanding survey for any interested in search engine operations and how to improve business visibility online. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews”.

Book description: The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization is ideal for small business owners who want to learn an efficient and effective process for dramatically improving their Web site s search engine rankings and doubling their site s monthly unique visitors. Guaranteed!

Stephen Woessner, of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Small Business Development Center, is a search engine optimization (SEO) expert. But more importantly, Woessner has owned four businesses and understands the significant time and cash constraints faced by business owners every day. Because of this, Woessner placed increasing efficiency and effectiveness at the core of the 15-steps allowing a business owner to maximize results in as little time as possible. A business owner does not need to know technical skills, like Web programming, to be successful at SEO. Instead, business owners will rely on their marketing skill and the ability to think like their customers and prospects, versus an ability to write HTML or other form of Web programming. Business owners will learn how to select keywords that are proven performers, blend the keywords into site content, boost site popularity, and more. Woessner explains with precision how business owners can use SEO to achieve measurable results. This practical and tactical guide includes a free SEO toolkit and other valuable resources that will help business owners increase the return on investment generated by their Web sites. Business owners will also receive a detailed blueprint with specific checklists to follow throughout the 15-step process.

Lastly, this book can also serve as an excellent resource to business owners who are considering outsourcing their SEO work to a third-party. Developing a working knowledge of the 15-step process will make any business owner a more informed consumer. This book is also an ideal resource for marketing and advertising agency professionals who want to expand their services and need to develop a proficiency in SEO as efficiently and effectively as possible.

I can’t believe that the competition is almost here! It has been a long, and sometimes stressful, seven weeks getting ready for Saturday night (November 28th). Katie and I have worked hard on our Paso Doble and Samba routine. And we could still use help with sponsorships. Remember, every dollar you sponsor us with counts as an additional point in our overall score. And, every dollar goes directly to the American Red Cross. Just download our poster and fill out the sponsorship form or call the Red Cross at 608.788.1000 to sponsor Katie and me. We would greatly appreciate your help!

So, some people have asked me where the “Google Guru” thing came from. I actually got the nickname from a reporter with Wisconsin Public Radio who interviewed me shortly after the publication of my book The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization. Apparently the nickname is catchy because it stuck! And I confess…I kind of like it!

After the Dancing with the La Crosse Stars competition, I will post some videos and other behind-the-scenes photos. I am so excited for Katie and I to get on stage but really nervous too. Being in front large groups of people and giving a speech or teaching a class is comfortable for me…but thinking about doing the Samba in front of 900 people is starting to make my stomach turn. What did I get myself into?

But Katie has been a great teacher. I could not have asked for a better partner. She is outstanding and has worked hard to prepare me well for the competition. I just need to trust in all of our prep work and that will give me the confidence I need to keep from tripping over myself! Saturday night is going to be so much fun. I am really looking forward to it…but will be very relieved when it is over, too.