Make your client successful and they will literally become part of YOUR sales team.

2. If you're not up to speed, you better catch up fast. A difference in your performance is a difference in your profits!

If you are not up to speed on solid SEO marketing techniques and methods, start learning now. Take a course or study at a live workshop, but however you do it, get your SEO skills up to speed so you can really help people. If you can show them a strategy that really puts dollars in their pocket, they'll put dollars in YOUR pocket!

3. How's your batting average? How about profit sharing?

If your skills are medium to above average, why not share in profits yourself. I am referring to offering someone a vertical contract. This would be a deal where you own part of company in return for making it successful with your SEO skills. Don't brush this off. There are some exceptional deals to be had if you start thinking laterally.

4. Don't forget your community and charitable work.

When's last time you helped promoting a charitable work at NO cost. Build a site and promote it for Literacy counsel or Easter Seals Society or your Local Rotary Group or your Chamber of Commerce. Don't forget that this work will often open unusual and even surprising doors. Help make others successful and you will not fail. Many important leaders within your local community will be serving on these committees right next to you! A great way to network and meet new people and help cause.

5. Watch latest SEO trends and position yourself to take advantage.

The study and practice of SEO has been very good to me. Five years ago, I never dreamed that my study of Optimization would lead to Internet lifestyle. I look after my clients well and sometimes go a little beyond what some might do in call of duty. I have clients that pay me well for my services and demonstrate that they care about my business. As a result of work I have done, I have enjoyed wonderful repeat business and client loyalty. Referral business is best type of business going because it does not really involve a lot of preparation or hard work. You know that when you arrive, that they really want YOU to do job because of your track record. It's wonderful business.

I could write a lot more but I hope you get picture. If you have not been enjoying good profits, a rewarding lifestyle and being appreciated by your clients your need a plan of action.

SUGGESTIONS:

1. You MUST be able to "deliver" and really make a difference. Do whatever it takes to get your SEO skills and lateral thinking skills up to speed.

2. Run a balanced business. Are you charging for what your services are worth?

There are some folks who charge steeply and don't know how to get results. For gosh sakes, if you're good at what you do, make sure you are charging well for your services. You DESERVE fair reward if your considerable skills are helping other business owners to prosper. (some people are afraid to charge for their work)

Note: The ones that charge steeply but DON'T deliver may make a few dollars initially, but they won't enjoy customer loyalty, referral business, repeat business that you do and they won't have a "customer for life" like you will.

3. Don't forget to recognize and be thankful for progress you've already made. Be sure to benchmark your victories but even more important, celebrate your CLIENT'S VICTORIES too! After all, you helped bring them about.

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

5. You must be willing to change and take action! Performing way you perform now has delivered a certain result. So if your happy with that result, carry on exactly same way and you should get very similar results. If you are not happy with your results now, then you must change way you do things.

Same action = same result Different action = new results

Are you looking for new results? Is it a time for a change of action? Here’s wishing you ultimate success.

It's important to note there is no good-guy, bad-guy here - just two companies that provide information and do so with different incentives in mind.

Second: Understanding The Artificial Skew.

In researching search term "keyword," Overture's STST indicates there were 180,468 searches for 30-day period ending last day of December '03. Of course, when we divide this number by 30 (days), one naturally assumes that's an average of 6,016 combined searches per day for term keyword - (180,468/30=6016).

Now, if you happen to be in a business that sells keywords (like Overture) then 6,016 pairs of eyeballs per day is a pretty encouraging number indeed! The problem is, there isn't anywhere even close to 6,016 per-day queries for search term(s) keyword(s). In fact, actual number, which we'll share with you in a minute, will no-doubt shock you!

But, for moment, let's look at why that number is skewed.

Reason #1 — Artificial Searches

Overture's STST numbers are increased upward by automated queries. These include automated bid optimizers, position and ranking monitors, page popularity analyzers - anything other than a real person manually performing a search is considered an automated query. Monitoring a site's positioning at, say, AltaVista for search term "keyword" tallies a "hit" within Overture's STST system for that search term. That's in spite of fact that it was actually automated software that generated hit. The same holds true for page-popularity checkers, pay- per-click bid optimizers or any other machine generated monitor or tabulator that queries an engine for a "pet" keyword and generates a hit in process.

Then, when same positioning query is done at, say, MSN (another Overture partner), STST records yet another hit. Understandably, STST cannot differentiate between automated and human queries. Neither can they tell when auto-query has already been queried at another partner's site.

Now, when we take into consideration all of position monitoring, page popularity checking and pay-per-click bid analyzing - there are well over 15 automated and semi-automated bid checking software programs alone - it's staggering to realize significant effect these automated queries are having on overall search term query tabulations.

However, artificial searches are only one aspect contributing to artificial skew (defined as: inflation of actual search queries for specific keywords performed by anything other than humans).

(Continued in Part 2. Contact Robin@SearchEngineWorkshops.com for complete article.)