There's never an "Off" moment at LIVE Events.

The real benefit of our LIVE events is what you see right here.  Getting to sit down with us and talk about YOUR business and interact with the Faculty, Staff, AND your fellow Stompers.  None of us is as smart as all of us, and that’s never more clear than when we get together.

Paul Lemberg delivers shockingly simple product creation methods.

We kicked off the event with a FULL Friday of FormulaFIVE business growth.  The day was dominated by super-consultant Paul Lemberg, creator of F5.  In addition to going deep into the time management power of FormulaFIVE’s “Turbo Thruster” we also got to see Paul’s secrets for nearly INSTANT and INFINITE product creation.  If you have more products to sell, you make more money.  Makes sense, right?

StomperNet Faculty Andy Edmonds shows off his iBlipper iPhone to enthralled Stompers

Andy Edmonds sometimes talks over people’s heads, but that’s just because he’s so dang smart!  In additon to sharing his formidable SEO and usability skills with Stompers, he’s also been showing off his new iPhone app “iBlipper” – (available soon!)

Faculty Dan Thies shares some candid advice in between sessions

Here’s another example of how a Stomper event breaks down the “wall” you might see at some other events – here’s Dan Thies, right off the LIVE stage, interacting directly with members.  You can come to our events and ask us ANYTHING about your business.  And if you’re not comfortable asking in a crowded hotel lobby, you should check out the Confidential Roundtable discussions.  I’d tell you what was discussed (but you might never see me again!)

Faculty Don Crowther does Q&A in front of a slide from his presentation

Here, Don Crowther brings his social marketing expertise to the table and lays it out for our FormulaFIVE Day attendees – and not only did he deliver BRAND NEW content for our members, but he hung around afterwards to make sure everyone had every question answered.  It’s not just about listening – everyone is here to LEARN and we make sure that happens.

Andy, Janeen, and Stomper Coaches mix it up after a long day

Towards the end of a long and information-packed day, we like to unwind and network, and that’s exactly what we do.  Here, you can see members and staff after hours.  Is Andy threatening this guy for wearing the same shirt to the party?  Probably not.  After such a long day, we’ll let the fashion faux-pas slide.

Faculty Sherman Hu consults with a Stomper who KNOWS how to get attention

Okay… maybe not!  Just when we thought we were done discussing fashion, this guy walks in.  No, not Faculty Sherman Hu.  The other guy – with the hat!  As a special bonus for demonstrating his understanding of “attention marketing”, Andy gave this guy an hour of free consulting with the Stomper Faculty member of his choice.  It PAYS to come to LIVE events, in many more ways than the obvious one.

And that was our Friday.  Saturday would prove to be even MORE busy and literally busting at the seams for some sessions.  In fact, it was SO hectic, that I’m only just now getting to tell you about Friday, but we promise, check this space again very soon for another update from the floor of LIVE 7, including details and tidbits from our presenters, and of course, more photos!

If you want more up-to-the-minute updates, lots of buzz (and tweeting) over on Twitter!   (Speaking of Twitter, the next post will have some good stuff from Perry Belcher’s presentation, so don’t miss it!)

Also, don’t forget to leave us a comment if you like the pictures.

Talk again very soon!

Stompernet Blog

IMPORTANT: This post is all about answering a bunch of the questions that we’ve gotten about our last two videos. There is a LOT of serious MEAT in this post, so PLEASE be sure to read the LAST QUESTION. There’s a rumor that’s started up, and it’s important that I squash that rumor right now.

Plus there’s a bit of a hint of some VERY cool stuff that I’ll be releasing very soon.

But first -

Holy Moly! We are receiving an amazing avalanche of feedback here on the StomperBlog from the “Double Your Traffic” and “Destroy Duplicate Content” videos.

I’m very grateful to everyone, and humbled by all the praise.

(What?! I can be humble! Sometimes!)

But along with the praise, you guys sent along your questions and your requests for clarification. That’s just GREAT for me, because that means you’re watching the videos, and you “get” them. That’s what StomperNet is all about. We want to make this stuff not only understandable, but we want to make it EASY. We also love interactivity and feedback.

The more you guys post your questions and comments, the better we can find the sticking points and get you un-stuck. Success is going to come with taking action, and you can’t pick up the ball and run with it if you have questions about the play book, right?

That’s why I’ve taken a break from working on the next video to reply to some of the more pressing questions we’ve gotten.

Now, you’ve probably noticed that I often reply directly to the comments here. However, I thought these questions below brought up particularly important points, and I wanted to make sure I got them in front of everyone who can use them, rather than just posting into the comments.

Before I get to the Q&A, I want to officially ask for even MORE questions and concerns! We really do read them, and as you can see here, we’ll try our best to remove any obstacle on your own path to success!

Without further ado, it’s answer time:

Q. You said that “Your chosen domain name has little to no affect on your SERPs”. Well, I have to dis that – at least two of my sites have top rankings almost solely because of their chosen domain names. Maybe you were meaning something else and I just misheard. – Chris

A. Hi Chris, great question. You know what’s funny? I already kind of answered it accidentally in the same video! You remember later in the video when I gave you the trick about keyword stuffing your URLs so your articles will link back to you with your keywords? The same principle is what’s at work when we’re talking about keyword-rich
domain names.

It’s true that your domain name has no REAL effect on your SERPS.

BUT if you have a domain name which contains your target keywords, when people use your URL as the text to link to you, you’ll start to rank for those words. This happens for the exact same reason it works in the article bio box example I gave in the video. Hope that clears things up for you and anyone else who might have got confused on that point.

Q. …One observation on making the text an image file on your example site on the mortgage disclaimer. Why is that better to do than just placing that text on a separate page – linking to it – and then blocking that folder or file to that page in your robots.txt file?

This will keep the search engine spiders from spidering that page and therefore will see no duplicate content as well. – Chad

A. Another great question, Chad. The key to that answer lies in the question itself. In the mortgage industry, you need disclaimers on every single page for legal reasons. For that example, the image disclaimer with the alt tags is the best solution, because that info NEEDS to be on every page or you’ll get in big trouble.

If you aren’t in an industry that has such requirements, your example is the recommended solution. In fact, that’s the most common way people handle Terms of Service and Privacy Policies. So there’s your answer!

Q. I was a bit confused about the title tags, after removing the stop words, then what? Do you need totally different words in each title, or is a certain percentage of similarity acceptable to mother Google? – Ronald

A. Let me eliminate your confusion Ronald. There’s no target percentage for your title tags, necessarily. It depends on how much content you have on your pages. For example, if the pages on your site are short on content, then your title tags will need to be significantly different.

However, if your pages have a lot of content on them, it’s less important that your title tags be unique. The more total content on the page, the less you have to worry about title tags. However, you should still make each one unique if you can, since it’s a good practice.

Your title tags are displayed in the SERPs, so it’s an opportunity to communicate with your visitors before they hit your site. Take that opportunity and tell them exactly what they can expect when they visit you.

Q. Just wondering, how do you avoid duplicate content in blogs, where different ‘pages’ are created on the fly using existing content? Eg: there may be multiple category or tag ‘pages’ where the same few posts appear… – Rob

A. Rob, this is similar to what I stated above. It’s not necessarily a problem that you have repetitive content on your blog, as these different blog page templates will arrange that content in different ways. Whether it’s a factor in your rankings or not depends on how frequently you update your blog, and how long your posts are. Here’s the way to tell if it’s a factor or not.

Simply take a look at your different “pages”: Home page, Category page, Post Page, etc. How unique is the content on each page? If you’re posting frequently enough, and with enough content in each post, each of those pages should be significantly different – more than enough to avoid being seen as duplicates. If the pages look too similar, tweak your templates. Show more posts on the homepage, or show only post excerpts in you categories, rather than full posts. Those should help make the pages as unique as possible.

Q. What would you think about (on smaller sites) going to the trouble of changing the alt tags on the template images that repeat on every page to contribute to page uniqueness? Or would this seem like manipulation to the search engines since they could probably determine the image file names aren’t changing on each page, just the alt text? – Brad

A. This one’s going to depend on your site also, Brad. I don’t think there’s a danger of the search engines seeing this as manipulation, but it takes away the benefit of having a template in the first place, and seems like a lot of work to me. The “smarter” way to overcome your template duplication is by adding more unique content to each page, and leaving the template alone.

As I recommend in the video, make the percentage of content text on the page exceed the percentage of template text and you should have no penalties for duplication. Plus, rather than spending your time changing alt text (which your visitors will most likely never see) you’ll be spending your time creating more unique content (which your visitors AND the search engines LOVE)!

This one’s from a StomperNet member!

Q. I wish G would allow me to push a third page… or would that be the death-knell of the double and turn it into an authority site which I would gather does not convert as well? – Anthony

A. To tell the truth, we don’t know exactly why or how Google decides to make an authority site listing. However, based on what we DO know, we don’t think it’s related to the multiple listings or indents. Is it possible to get two indents on the same results page? I’ve never seen it. Is it possible to have an authority site listing AND another page from the same site on a results page?

Yes!

We’ve seen this happen, but we’re still testing to figure out how this happens and how to do it on purpose. I want to add a note about conversion as well. We don’t have enough data to speak with certainty about whether authority listings convert better or worse than regular indents. However, the authority listings take up a LOT of screen real estate, and will push your competitors farther down the page.

Who doesn’t like that?

And here’s the last one – and I bet almost every single one of you had this question in the back of your mind…

LAST IMPORTANT QUESTION:

Q. What are you guys hinting at launching? Jeff Walker and Frank Kern just don’t start blasting out emails over free stuff. – Richard

A. I’ve started getting lots of comments and questions about what’s coming. It seems that some people think that GN 2.0 is just a build up to me opening SN back up again.

Let me squash that rumor right now. SN has been closed since last May, and this is NOT a build up to me re-opening SN.

I am honored to call Frank Kern and Jeff Walker friends of mine, and they are definitely on my cell phone speed dial – but you’re right, Richard.

Those guys didn’t just mail out about my GN 2.0 videos for nothing.

You see, we DO have something coming. And it’s going to happen VERY fast so you need to pay attention.

I will have more details in just a couple of days, but right now I can tell you this – we are about to launch a piece of software that will *almost* magically increase your web sites conversion. And I’m not talking about something cheesy that puts some gimmick popup or something on your site.

I have literally spent TENS of thousands developing this tool – it’s not rocket science, but it’s pretty darn close. This software let’s you zero in on your web site and pinpoint exactly where site is leaking profits. You just plug those profit leaks, and watch what happens to your bottom line. It’s that simple.

Now I know you are used to these huge super-expensive product launches, and you’re probably a little worried about sticker shock when we release this thing. After all, it seems like there’s another $2000 or $3000 product released every week.

Well, I want to be clear here – I know with it being Christmas time a lot of people are a bit tight on cash… and since it IS the season of giving and generosity.

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when we launch this software tool.

But FIRST – I’m going to release another video, and it’s about optimizing your site in a way I have NEVER seen taught anywhere before.

If you thought my first two GN 2.0 videos were groundbreaking – well, reserve your judgement until you see this.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday so far, and we’ll talk again super-soon!

Stay Tuned,
Andy Jenkins

P.S. If you’ve had a question about either of our videos, PLEASE post to the comments! We’re checking it all day every day, and that’s your best bet to get your question answered. And of course, even if you don’t have a question, we’ll accept compliments and praise as well. What? I said I CAN be humble. Just not right now.

P.P.S. I’ll also have more details about the software we’ll be launching in just a few days, so watch your inbox, watch the StomperBlog, and if you haven’t – Watch the “Double Your Traffic” and “Destroy Duplicate Content” videos AGAIN! Don’t just watch – put those tactics into action today.

Post a Comment

Stompernet Blog