Happy New Year, you wonderful you!

Alison (that's my wife!) came into my office last Monday and said, "I wasn't going to tell you this because it's really dumb, but then I thought it would be a good anecdote for your newsletter."

And the story she told me had me laughing out loud, so hopefully it comes across in writing as well as it did in person. Here's what she did...

She made herself a bologna and cheese sandwich. She took a bite and thought the bologna was really tough, in fact, she said she was biting and pulling on it and moving her head back and forth trying to get it to rip off.

As she's telling me this I'm thinking to myself, "Do you really want to eat a piece of bologna that is that tough?"

Anyway, she couldn't bite off a piece of her sandwich, so she stopped trying and looked at it . . . that's when she noticed she had left the wrapper on the cheese!

All the best to you,

Bullet Points
The Tips Jar: Prioritizing Keywords
Webmaster's Q & A: Page Not Displaying
Life's Little Goodies: The Three Pillars of Congruity
Ask Anything: Quotation Revelation
Miscellanea

Bullet Points

• Aweber, my list host for this newsletter, was hacked in December and email addresses were stolen.

  If you Google "Aweber hacked" you'll find all kinds of discussions about this. I just wanted you to know that I did NOT sell your email address and I NEVER would. The reason I pay the high fees for an Aweber account rather than self-hosting AAN is because it's far more secure than a self-hosted list.

  Much to YOUR credit, not one person accused me of spamming them or selling their emali address, and I thank you for that. I'm on my own list and haven't been getting any more spam than usual, but if you are you may want to unsubscribe and resubscribe with a new address, then delete your old account. That will end the spam.

• In the near future those who purchased SEO for YOU will be getting their first upgrade. When I said you'd get free lifetime upgrades that was no empty promise, it has real value.

  The upgrade will be a series of videos.

  Whether it take three weeks or three months to finish this up I can't say. I'm not very proficient at this video stuff yet. I can tell you there are other video SEO courses that are selling for up to $197.00 right now, and my SEO course (including the ebook) has more.

  I know some of you thought I'd flipped my wig when SEO for YOU came out with a $97.00 price tag, but that's a bargain compared to the competition, and it's a massive bargain when you consider the value of free lifetime upgrades.

  Here's an unsolicited email I received a couple weeks ago or so...

  Dear Dennis,

  I have read a lot of material on SEO and my best efforts put my site on the first page for some of my search terms but only on page 3 or 4 for the ones I really wanted. Then I bought your ebook back in April and revamped my site based on your suggestions. By July I was on page one of Google, Yahoo and Bing for dozens of search terms. I keep tweaking my site and I am still on page one months later. Sales have gone up exponentially. It was well worth what I paid.

  Friends and clients with web sites are asking me to look at their sites and I am amazed at how many people haven't given SEO a second's thought. I know someone spending $600 A DAY on adwords but his site only comes up in the paid section on the right and not in the search area on the left. He has no SEO at all on his pages.

  A few weeks ago I was approached by someone whose website wasn't even in the first eight pages of Google. I did some tweaking, submitted the site to the engines, and told him it would take a couple of months to see results. ONE WEEK LATER (this boggles my mind) he is on page one in all three search engines and it is the descriptive paragraph I wrote which is being displayed so he knows it's no coincidence. A week? I can't begin to explain it.

  keep up the great work, izzy
  ccs-digital.com

  According to the new FTC regulations I'm supposed to disclose if Izzy was compensated in any way. He was not. He is a regular paying customer and sent that email without being asked or prompted by me.

  You know I always try to be honest with you, so I have to tell you, not everyone will achieve results as fast as Izzy. It depends on the keywords you target and the level of competition for them. Plus, of course, how well you carry out the optimization techniques.

  By the way, in a second email Izzy told me he teaches web design. If SEO for YOU helped a web design instructor put his sites over the top, just think what wonderful discoveries are waiting for you inside its pages.

• Those who bought Industrial Strength Link Building will also be getting a free upgrade in the near future. Actually it's an additional ebook that teaches another simple strategy for gaining one-way links pointing to your website from high-value, high PageRank sites.

  Industrial Strength Link Building also comes with free lifetime upgrades, and as I previously said, when I decide to include free lifetime upgrades with a product it isn't an empty promise. It has real value because I plan on providing free upgrades, it's not just a sales gimmick.

  This upgrade will also be sold separately as a special report, but if you own Industrial Strength Link Building you'll get it for free.

• High search engine rankings take three things . . . on-page optimization, on-site optimization, and link building. SEO for YOU and Industrial Strength Link Building will show you all you need to know about each of those requirements, as Izzy's comments reveal.

  By the way, Izzy isn't the only person who has written to tell me about achieving better rankings.

  I started implementing your strategy to an old website I had that was doing nothing but showing my illustration skills.

  The domain name was good but no one except the people I had given the URL to knew it was there. Now just after two weeks it is coming up in Google's search results as number 3 and 7 under certain keyword phrases.

  - Susan Roche
  Graphic-Artist

  Like izzy, Susan is a paying customer that volunteered her story in an email to me. She was not compensated.

  As you can see, these tactics work, and have worked for years, and will continue to work because they do not involve cheating, search engine spamming, or other short-lived tactics. What I teach is what the search engines want to see! And with what we know from statements Google has issued about their latest search changes, these tactics are more important than ever because they are going to be placing more emphasis on exactly what SEO for YOU reveals.

  I should also point out, nothing about search engine optimization is particularly difficult. It does take effort, but the hard part isn't in the doing, it's in the knowing what to do. Anyone that can read can carry these optimization tactics out.

  The regular price of SEO for YOU is $97.00 and the regular price of Industrial Strength Link Building is $57.00, but today you can get Industrial Strength Link Building for FREE with the purchase of SEO for YOU. That low price includes free lifetime upgrades for both products, plus Free Reports Goldmine and Ten Great FREE Research Tools.

  Free Reports Goldmine sells for $27.00 and shows you how to create and give away free reports to build your mailing list, drive traffic to your website, and even how to make money from them. That's right, you can make money by giving away free reports—and yes, this stuff REALLY DOES WORK!

  Ten Great FREE Research Tools is ONLY available as a free bonus to Industrial Strength Link Building, and it will point you to free tools to check your site's link popularity, check how your site ranks for specific keywords, create site maps, grade your site from a marketability standpoint and more. Every webmaster who is serious about their site's web presence should be using these tools.

  To save $57.00 on SEO for YOU and Industrial Strength Link Building just purchase through the link below with your Paypal account or credit card, and after paying click the Return to Merchant button to be taken to the download page.

  When it comes to search engine optimization and link building, if you're not moving forward you are falling behind because your competitors are not sitting still. The longer you wait the harder it will be to achieve good search engine rankings and the longer it will take to achieve them.

  If you're serious about success online, now is not the time to be hesitant. The sooner you get going, the sooner you'll start winning the search engine game.

  Join Now!

  Yes Dennis, I want SEO for YOU, Industrial Strength Link Building, Free Reports Goldmine, and the 10 Great Free Research Tools report!

  I understand all I have to do is click the gold Return to Merchant button and I'll have instant access to the downloads after paying.

  I further understand that I get Free Lifetime Upgrades for SEO for YOU and Industrial Strength Link Building, and that at $97.00, I'm saving more than 46% off the regular price of these four products. Thanks!

  

The Tips Jar: Prioritizing Keywords, Part I

As with the previous tip, Google is again our ally. Once you have your list of keywords and keyword phrases, go to:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

We'll continue with our example of candle making from the previous issue. You'll recall that some of the things Google thinks our candle making site should be about included:

• scented candle making instructions
• homemade scented candles
• candlemaking supplies
• wax candle making
• fragrance oils candle making
• candle making wicks
• candle making molds
• candle soap making

Paste in your keyword list as shown below, enter the captcha text and click the Get keyword ideas button. If it's too slow you may have to limit the number of keywords you enter at one time. If you don't like sifting through all the results, enter them one at a time.

Once the search results open, click Match type and choose Exact as shown in the screen capture below. Broad match can be useful, but for this exercise we want to know exactly how many people are searching for our search terms.

Google will also show you related search terms, but we're not interested in those right now. In the image above you'll see one column heading reads, "Local Search Volume: December" ...that is the search volume for the previous month for your country in your language.

The next column reads, "Global Monthly Search Volume" ...which is the monthly search volume for all countries in all languages. That's what Google tells us, but that doesn't make sense. Look at the second search term. There are more US searches than there are Global searches, which would include the local searches. The numbers have a different meaning than Google is telling us.

Some people have speculated about different meanings, but I don't find any evidence that sways me toward any explanation. So, I consider both numbers when I'm researching the search volume for different keywords. Sometimes I just average the numbers out, which seems a reasonable thing to do since some of your traffic will come from other countries.

As you may have deduced, these search results are not exact, they are estimations, but they are close enough to serve our purpose. You also may have deduced that this isn't an exact science, and that's because Google is very secretive about all this. Still, using this data this way is far, far better than making wild guesses. It's does work to a high degree.

In the screen capture above, you can see that the global search volume for "candle soap making" is substantially more than any other search term, but that was for a broad match search. In the screen shot below you'll see the exact matches.

As you can see, the numbers change dramatically using the exact match filter. Candle soap making doesn't even have enough results for Google to report. With the exact match results, candle making molds and candle making supplies are the most popular searches.

If I'm building a content site, I'll build pages for any search term that gets 500 or more searches per month if the competition is fairly low. Let's look at that next...

The green bars of varying length represent the competition for buying that keyword through Google's Adwords program. It usually gives you a fairly good idea of the competition for that keyword for organic search results as well, but there is other research we can do to check on the organic competition level (organic simply means "natural" search results).

If you consider the green as a percentage of the space inside the bar available, you can guesstimate the competition level. For example, I'd guess the competition level for candle making molds at about 80%, and the competition level for candle making wicks at about 55%.

For many keywords the bar will be completely solid with no white space. For this purpose, I consider a competition level of 75% or less to be acceptable. You can rank for search terms that are 100% full of competitors too, but it takes more work, more time, and more content.

To sum this up, if a keyword has 500 or more searches per month and a competition level of 75% or less, I consider it a good keyword to build a web page about on a content site. If the competition is really low, under 50% or less, then I'll build a page for keywords with 200-300 monthly searches because a good deal of the time I can get on the first page of Google for them and get a lot of that traffic to my site.

In the next issue we'll look a different way of determining the competition level for keywords. This will take us in a new direction.

PS - If you think you'll learn all you need to know about search engines from my tutorials instead of getting your own copy of SEO for YOU, please think again. If I wrote only about search engine optimization in the Tips Jar, it would take over two years to include all the content in SEO for YOU, and that doesn't include the link building, which would take another year. You can have it all and more right now by scrolling up and ordering this issue's special offer.

Webmaster's Q & A: Page Not Displaying

Q: Would you be kind enough to spare a moment to look at something for me? I have a page that when I edit it in FrontPage, I can see & edit the html no problem, but the darn page wont show in a browser or in the WYSIWYG part of FrontPage

Right click over the page and you can see the source code no problem, but why wont it show in the browser???

Thanks so much Dennis, I dont know who else to ask!

- Dave S.

A: Probably 99 percent of the time I get a plea like this it's because of something very simple, and this case was no exception.

Dave had omitted the lesser-than arrow bracket on his closing title tag. He had this:

<title>Some Title Text/title>

Notice the missing < at the start of the closing tag. That's all it took to prevent the page from being viewed. You might have a missing arrow bracket, a missing quotation mark around an HTML value, a missing closing tag or a similar mistake. That's all it takes, especially if you use the currently recommended Doctype.

Incidentally, it used to be that IE was very forgiving of errors and would display pages as best it could despite any errors, while other browsers were unforgiving of errors and either wouldn't display the page or would stop displaying it at the point of the error.

I can tell you that Dave uses IE because he couldn't see the page, while I could see it in Firefox. It wasn't until I opened it in IE that the page content was not displaying, so in at least one way it seems the roles of IE and Firefox have reversed.

This is a good lesson in why you should check your pages in multiple browsers. If Dave had be using Firefox as his primary browser and didn't check the page in IE, he would have uploaded a page thinking it was fine, when in fact a majority of people wouldn't have been able to see anything. Since the page in question was his index page, no one would have been able to see his website unless they followed a link to an internal page.

Life's Little Goodies: The Three Pillars of Congruity

For the purpose of this article, "congruity" is defined as consistency in word and deed. In other words, it's practicing what you preach.

The congruity of our character is a substantial part of the basis by which others judge us. A person who is not congruent is often perceived as a hypocrite—someone who doesn't act according to the beliefs they profess.

The problem with being incongruent is that, those who are, will lose influence within their business and social circles, and even within their own family.

Why?

Incongruity gives people a reason to doubt the messenger regardless of the message. We can no longer be completely certain of the sincerity and honesty of the messenger who is incongruent.

Children are very good at detecting incongruency. This may explain why some parents lose influence over their children far too soon.

How?

Children learn by example. A parent may tell their child not to do this or that, but if the parent does it while preaching not to, this "do as I say, not as I do" act will only work while the parent has the power to impose his or her will on the child.

Too much incongruity when the child is young and the parent risks losing influence later on. If you want to have lasting influence with your children, being congruent is the path to that goal.

The same holds true in our business and social circles, and within all our spheres of interaction. Those with a track record of congruity will usually have more influence.

Consistency of character comes from setting and relying on your own moral compass and not simply on existing rules. Rules are made for people who lack a socially acceptable moral compass of their own, but rules are no substitute for good character.

I have come up with three qualities that I believe to be foundational in building congruity. These three qualities, or pillars as I called them in the title, are:

• Integrity
• Responsibility
• Fairness

Let's take a quick look at how each of these pillars relate to congruity.

Integrity

Integrity is moral soundness. If people are going to trust you, they first have to believe you aren't out to cheat or harm them. They more important the situation, the more trust that is required and the stronger a belief in you they need.

Responsibility

This one is pretty obvious. If you aren't responsible enough to "be there" when you say you'll be there and do what you say you'll do, you can't be trusted.

Fairness

Part of trusing someone is in believing they won't take unfair advantage of you. In other words, you do unto others as you want others to do unto you—the "golden rule" is part of your integrity.

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.
- J.C. Watts

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.
- Alan Simpson

Do not repeat anything you will not sign your name to.
- Author Unknown

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
- William Safire

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Ask Anything: Quotation Revelation

Q: You use quotations at the end of your goodies stories, so let me ask you this, what is your favorite, number 1 inspirational quotation of all time?

- Barb A.

A: It's impossible to pick just one. I have a shelf full of quotation books. Two of them are around 3,000 pages long and four inches thick! And then I have page after page of quotations I've collected online.

If you're looking for some inspiration here are a few favorites...

No man fails who does his best.
- Orison Swett Marden

If you do common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.
- George Washington Carver

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
- Unknown

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

It's not what's happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it's your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you're going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.
- Tony Robbins

The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.
- Orison Swett Marden

At the risk of seeming vain, I'll close this by quoting myself from an old "goodie" story...

Each day is your canvas. You are the artist. Paint a masterpiece on as many days as you are able and your life will become a work of art.
- Dennis Gaskill

Note: Reader questions and comments are sometimes edited for length and/or clarity.

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A Video Interlude: Take a "Feel Good" Time Out

Reader Feedback

Reply: Thanks for the kind words and your support, Rob. Folks, I had a look at Rob's website, and you really should watch the video for the hydrabrush. I'll bet you've never seen anything like it—like the hydrabrush that is, not the video. I was impressed.

Reply: Thanks Lila. There are many paths to success, emailing pitch after pitch isn't my style. I don't recommend any products that I haven't either tried or at least personally reviewed, and I do that because I feel when I recommend something my name rides on that product to some degree. I know others just pitch whatever comes their way. I don't think I'm setting the bar for anyone, but I appreciate you saying it. Thanks.