If you are a new convert to Thesis one of your first questions is probably: What the heck are hooks?

I’m new to the thesis theme, I saw the video on DIYThemes, checked out a few of the sites and liked the customizability of the theme.

Face it, if you want to express yourself and make an impression to your readers fast, the appearance of your blog is important. I’m not saying its the most important thing. There are some really great blogs that get readers because of the content and ultimately this is what will work on your blog.

Silk purse out of a sows ear leaps to mind. I am a big advocate of the quality content idea, sure it may be a little extra work (but not that much if you try free writing and use tools like Market Samurai for your research) as opposed to cutting, spinning and pasting an article out of Ezine or Goarticles but it pays off.

So over the next few weeks or days I am going to do a little playing around with the heaps of options in Thesis theme. One of the first things though is to get my head around thesis hooks since these understanding these is pretty important if you want to push your thesis theme.

Hooks for Dummies

I wanted to know what the heck they were and I found. Sugarrae’s Hooks for Dummies, this is a really good introduction to hooks.  According to her (emphasis added by me):

“Hooks define where stuff appears and functions define what stuff appears”

She goes on to provides some useful examples. I recommend it if you have time, it actually doesn’t take that long (I read it on a flight to Melbourne and still had time to watch a podcast on Social Media) and she explains the function of each part of the hook code.

The description of hooks that worked for me though was this one, which described hooks as another name for placeholders, and this is borne out when you check out
another cool resource I found was Roberto Gerola screen shots showing where the hooks are. You can find these on the Thesis Hooks: A Visual Reference

A Useful Analogy: Paintings and Picture Hooks

So now when I think about hooks I think of clothing hooks or the hooks you hang on walls to put pictures on. Then carrying the analogy further the functions or coding you use are the painting you hang on the hooks.

The analogy gets stretched a bit (but not much) when you realise that the sort of paintings you can hang on walls of the house that Thesis built can be interactive, active and mobile – not just the static images you hang on your real walls (unless of course you are Harry Potter fan where even the photos move as well as the paintings).

So that analogy works for me. Next time I’ll tell you about some of the things I found when I started ferreting around the drawers (the options) in the house that Thesis built (and we can see how far I can carry this analogy).

Thesis OpenHook – Salvation for the Hook Challenged (and I don’t mean Peter Pan)

Fortunately if you don’t want to spend time knee-deep in hook code, Rick Bergman has designed a great little WordPress plug-in: Thesis OpenHook. A short video from  Greg Rickarby helps explain how to use this plugin:

Click here to view the embedded video.

when you want to get down to the nitty gritty, and DIYthemes offer all sorts of starter packs to registered users (that is those who have bought the theme).

So this is a short intro with hopefully a few useful places to find out more and an analogy that might help you (it helps me).

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Joke: How many social workers does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb has to want to change.

There is more than a kernel of truth in that story, and I’m not talking about the social worker needing to be only one. For change to happen, there has to be a desire to change or more precisely a decision to change followed by a change action or behavior.

Thinking Ain’t Doing

This came home to me earlier this year when I decided to cut back on my weight. This was not the first time I had thought about losing weight. Like many people I had thought about dieting, even gone so far as to read some diet books, signed up for a gym membership, gone to a personal training. I hadn’t done the Atkins diet or the Lemon water diet but I had considered detox.

You may noticed that the operative words in the paragraph above are thought, considered, I could have also used the words tried.

Changes in Results Need Changes in Action

What was missing was the decision to change my behavior. What I needed was a momentous event to push me over the edge. It wasn’t a heart attack – I was fortunate. It was just the prodding (actual physical prodding) I got from friends one evening on 2009. I don’t know if something snapped (I didn’t hear anything) but after that night I decided to change.

Whats more, once I decided to change, I started to look for support systems to help me make that change. And finally I changed how I behaved – I ate smaller portions, I exercised regularly (almost fanatically if you ask my friends).

Perhaps I went too far, my cousin thought I was starving myself – you can see from the chart below how my weight fell.

Measure the Results, Track the Change

And that was another things I actually started to monitor my diet and keep track of my weight. I found measuring my results gave me energy to pursue my goals further.

82kg to 68.1kg in under three months

To get the change in my weight I decided to change and then I changed my behavior. You might remember that old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For me to get different results (lower weight) I had to change my actions.

This experience with my weight carries into other parts of my life – to change my other results – my income, my attitudes – I have to change my actions, I have to decide I want to change. In the blink of an eye you can become a different person.

Like another old saying: Insanity is when you do the same thing and expect different results.

End the insanity. Decide. Change. Enjoy.

This morning I was looking at a blog article by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz fame about ways to learn SEO basics (6 Ways to Learn SEO). The articles including links to various free resources, several blogs if not dedicated to, at least heavy in content about Search Engine Optimisation.

Always keen to learn about SEO (I can never really get enough of this stuff). I followed on of the links to a SEO beginners checklist by Danny Dover.

This is great checklist and I thoroughly recommend it. One of his first recommendations shook me (a little), he recommended building a site using code (HyperText Markup Language, HTML). Many of you are probably like me, we got hosting and then used Simple Scripts to install WordPress and maybe used an FTP program like Filezilla to load up some .php files. Building a site using just code (and an HTML editor) just seems out of our league and a little, well, elitist.

Now, I have a confession – if you look behind me or at my e-book library you’ll find I have an HTML Reference book, a copy of Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, and downloads from the HTML Dog website, plus some well-thumbed (well clicked) bookmarks to the W3Schools website (probably one of the neatest and simplest online HTML, CSS school online). So hands up, I am a little geeky and was sort of excited by Danny’s challenge. So I had no qualms about learning HTML (although building an entire site seemed a little too involved and time-consuming).

Do I Really Need to Build a Car Before I Drive One

So is the suggestion that you need to learn HTML as fundamental to becoming good at SEO anachronistic. Tantamount to suggesting that before you can drive a car you need to build one?

My answer is a nerdy no – well not completely. I tend to agree with Danny’s underlying message that being effective online means understanding the online language. You may not ever want to check out the source code and to be honest if you are online to blog and share with friends, that’s cool. WordPress also has a huge number of free themes which you can either install and start using or have user-friendly widgets and settings that allow you to modify and customise a site to meet your requirements – without you needing to use HTML, edit a style sheet or even understand what a tag is.

If You’re Going to Make Your Living Driving At Least Learn How to Change the Oil

If you are serious about internet marketing however, familiarity with HTML is a must. Partly because you will see it in the literature – even simple SEO talks about H1 tags, nofollow and robot.txt. Knowing the language is important not only from the point of understanding and accessbility. To take my car analogy a little further, while you don’t need to build a car, if you going to make your living driving, at least learn to change the oil.

More importantly it is about managing fear: familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, it breeds confidence. Check out W3Schools and you’ll be surprised at how simple HTML can be.

So, take a moment, learn a little HTML and find out what all this talk about CSS is. Now if someone could just explain .php to me…

As a follow up to my earlier post on free writing, I said I would talk about the next step: editing your results. My inspiration for this piece is an observation by Jakob Nielsen:

Nearly 80% of Your Visitors Won’t Read Your Page

In 1997, Jakob Nielsen observed in his seminal post: How Users Read the Web , that 79% of people don’t read a webpage, they scan it. That is, they glance through a page rather than read it word for word.  Eleven years later (How Little Do Users Read?) Nielsen reported on another study which suggested that readers read about 20% of the content on the page.

People don’t read webpages, they scan them.

Here are five easy things you can do to make your page scan friendly so that 79% of your visitors get your message.

How to Keep Readers Happy: Five Tips to Get Your Message to Visitors

What can be done? Well, Nielsen recommends the following:

• one idea per paragraph
• highlight the keywords – using bold, italics for example
• sub-headings
• bullet points
• half the word count (of conventional writing)

I’ll elaborate on a couple of the key points below.

Use Headings as Teasers

You don’t need to give away everything with your headings – use them as teasers rather than spoilers.

Give it a little thought and try and come up with something eye-catching – a teaser if you will that will pique the readers interest.

Make sure it is related to the content below (so just putting SEX as an H1 tag is not the answer. Yes, it gets attention but unless your content is about Sex there will be disappointment – and nothing hurts like disappointment about sex.)

Use Headings as Signposts to Your Content

Use headings like signposts in your content – pointing of to the reader the keypoints of your article and giving them an overview of what they will find when they read it.

My personal test is: Can I get the point of the article from the headings alone? That is, without having to read the text.

Give your blog the bullet (point)

Use bullet points to summarize key points that you will cover in more detail in the text that follows.

This is particularly important if you are going to describe a process or present a detail argument. Summarize it in bullet points first so you reader knows what they’re getting or what they’re are missing out on!

How Long Should My Bullet Be?

I recommend bullet points be no longer than one line.

If you need to write more, than put it in a paragraph below – indent it if you need to, to show it is related to the bullet point. But even then the clarification should be brief and not push the other bullet points down the page.

If you find that you need to write more than say three lines, then you may as well convert the bullet point to a heading or a sub-heading.

Sometimes Less is More – the Ghastly Blank Isn’t Always

Was it school or college that got us to focus on word-count and the belief that the more text the better?

Well, in the web world white space and less words on the page is often a good thing because it makes the page easier on the eye and the key points (assuming you have used bold, headings and bullets) easier to spot and pick up.

It’s easier to spot a cow on an empty field than in a forest.

Use more white space or break up the text with images.

Visitors Are Guests Not Prisoners

Visitors can don’t need to read your webpage, they are not obligated to read your content. They don’t owe you a thing.

As a blog writer you owe them the courtesy of providing good, interesting content in a format that respects their intelligence as much as their time.

Respect your visitors and your story (you do want someone to read it, right?) and think about more white space, headings and bullets points.

Give them a road map and a highway taking them through the picturesque landscape of your content rather than  a (metaphorical) wooden sign that promises a glimpse of sunlight before plunging them into a verbal quagmire.

The Problem: Blog Writer’s Block

You may have been there already: you start your blog with a hiss and a roar. “I’ll write a new post every week.”

Then a few days pass, you write one article, maybe two and then you start to fade. The dreaded blog writer’s block.

What’s to be done?

As one writer said, one of the most threatening and terrifying things in the world is a blank piece of paper.

How can you get past this?

The Solution: Free Writing – Letting Your Pen Run Free

One method is to just start writing. Otherwise known as free form writing, you simply sit down, grab your paper or flip on your computer and just start writing or typing. It’s that simple.

Brainstorming on Paper.

A cure for blog writer’s block in a nutshell:

• grab a piece of paper (real or virtual)
• decide on a minimum amount of time to concentrate on writing (say 15 minutes) – set a timer if you can
• write your topic or keyword at the top of the page
• now write and don’t look back (yet)
• keep writing until times up (go on if you can)
• minimal editing: forget about keyword density, SEO, punctuation, grammar, even spelling,
• set the paper down and leave for a day or two

Get a piece of paper or a blank document, put your keyword or topic at the top of the page. Get a timer, set it for 15 min (or 30 min), and then start writing. Stop when the timer rings, but until then just write or try to. Sure you can pause, take a moment to gather the thoughts and then get them down on paper.

The one thing you don’t do is to look back and read what you’ve written. (Don’t worry you’ll get you chance later)

It’s a bit like brainstorming on paper. There are no bad ideas, maybe a little bad grammar and spelling.

Aside from maybe punctuation and capitalisation (you need to know at least where paragraphs and sentences start and end) you keep the editing to a minimum. You might fix up spellng errors (if these things bother you) but you can even sacrifice this if it threatens the flow.

Stop on the Timer – Not Before

When the timer rings, stop. If you have more to write keep going. The main aim of the timer is to get you to concentrate for a set amount of time. If you can keep going beyond the time you set, all power to you.

I recommend you have an upper limit maybe 30 min or an hour. If only to ensure you get other work done. The upper limit is really a personal call and will depend on your other priorities (for example if you are writing a book and this is your priority you might give your three or four hours).

Start Small – Short Intervals

When you start, I recommend starting with a short interval – 10-15 minutes – simply because it is more likely you can concentrate for a short time than long times. This is only to start. As with all things, the more you practice, the longer you will be able to concentrate. Of course, with practice you may find you can finish an article in less time than before too!

As with many things, breaking something into small chunks will help make it less daunting and more achievable. You will also feel a greater sense of accomplishment.

Let Your Writing Rest

When you’re done. Take the paper or save the document and don’t look at again for one day or two days. Don’t edit it or anything until then. Free form writing is like making a good curry: if you let it rest, it will become more flavorsome and spicy – okay maybe not!

Free Writing Tools To Help Cure Blog Writer’s Block

I do my writing using either a simple text application (I use Textwrangler, PC users can use notepad)  or sometimes if I really want to concentrate I use Ommwriter.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The key feature of Ommwriter is that when it runs, it fills your entire screen – visually blocking out all distractions including other applications (they continue to run in the background). It has minimal formatting options (read: minimal distractions) and also has a choice of seven soothing soundtracks you can play while writing (or you can run silent).

It is a beta but pretty stable (it autosaves every three minutes just in case) and is free to download from www.Ommwriter.com.

Next time…

Next time I’ll look at some editing you can do to help make your article more readable.

Till then, let you mind, pen or fingers run free…

Wasabihound

As a follow up to my last post about the (not that) New Google Adwords Tool, I thought I’d report on the latest change made by the Google Adwords Team : adding a new button that offers you Google’s estimate of search traffic for your campaign. I will also give you my initial impressions on how this may benefit or affect the way you manage your Adwords campaigns.

The aptly titled “Estimate Search Traffic” button is available after you have signed in to your Adwords account. It is grayed out until you have select a keyword (or keywords). Selection, as usual, is done by clicking on the radio button next to the keyword.

Click on the “Estimate Search Traffic”:

• A pop-up window appears showing you your campaigns.

• Select your Ad Groups and then Google runs off and comes back with estimates of your Average Estimated CPC, Estimated Clicks and Estimated Cost.

Look Ma, Less Columns…

The other side (downside) of this feature is that you will lose the ability to add the following columns to your keyword tool report:

• Estimated Impressions
• Estimated Ad Position
• Estimated CTR
• Estimated Clicks
• Estimated Cost
• Estimated Avg. CPC

These are still available using the separate Google Traffic Estimator Tool. Some of you may feel a wave of nostalgia at this point, as for many of us this was one of the first tools we used with our PPC campaigns. You will have to cut and paste your keywords into this tool – but hopefully you already have good habits and have your keywords on a spreadsheet anyway.

Some people may bemoan the fact that you need a separate tool (and need to cut and paste) but on the plus side it means that you can ensure you only get data for the keywords you are interested in, rather than experience the tsunami of numbers that you can get using the old/current Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Those with a persistent, masochistic bent of a numeric persuasion who want to get it all in one place, can still get their ‘rush’ by downloading the Keyword reports. (Masochists of other tastes please apply elsewhere – this is not that kind of blog).

So what’s in it for me? It’s Easier to Play Around with Keywords

The main benefit I can see from this change is that it will be easier to see the effectiveness of keywords for specific adgroups, as now you can do it directly from your keyword search results rather than having to add the keywords to your ad group.

This makes it simpler to play around with keyword choices.

You only see a summary, nothing at the keyword level – you either have to use the Google Traffic Estimator tool or go into your actual campaigns – so it really doesn’t assist with micro-management.

It would be great if Google gave you this option so you could see the results at a keyword level in the pop up window. However, given the tendency of some PPC’er to test keywords with the same delicacy as a carpet bombing B-52 you can imagine the resultant window as something that would dwarf a panel from Versailles.

Google released the beta for a new version of the venerable and ever reliable Adwords Keyword Tool in September last year so that we would have time to get use to the new features. Not content to sit on their laurels, they have just rolled out a new update and before looking at the latest update to the tool I thought I would give a quick run down of the tool so far.

Here’s an outline of what I’ll cover:

• A look at the new range of options you can choose before you start your search. This includes a screenshot so you know what to expect.
• Peeking at Keywords of your competitors’ websites.
• The mobile search statistics option. Hmmm.
• How integration with the Search based keyword tool explodes the keyword list. Assuming you have signed in. More about that below.
• Categories and how you can use it to improve slice and dice your list for better results. This is really cool.
• An example of how I used the category list to get a tighter list of keywords
• Separate additional keywords: a work around to help you isolate them. If you are curious about latent semantic indexing (and who isn’t really) I have a couple of links to some great blogs from SEObook and SEOmoz
• How to exclude Negative Keywords in the new Google tool
• How much more data Google throws at you with downloads. Pretty much the whole kit and caboodle.
• The difference between signing into you Adwords account to use the tool, and not signing in. My advice, sign in.
• My thoughts on the tool. I like it. There, but if you want to hear more pop on down here to read my opinion.

Let’s get started.

Getting In the Front Door

To get to the new Keyword Tool beta you can either click on the conveniently located link on the current site:

or go it directly by typing this address in your browser (or just click on the link here: New Google Keyword Tool Beta ).

What’s New or Different?

You’re Captcha ‘ed Before You Get In the Door

The first difference is that you will have to complete a captcha before you start your inquiries (even before you type in your first keyword). As before you only have to do this once.

Some of you may see this as a subtle message from Google about their position in the Search Engine world, others will see it as convenient.

Advanced Options Anyone?

Setting the country and language has become simpler and is done by clicking on Advanced Options. Clicking this text reveals a couple of few options as well, all of which I will touch on in this article:

Finally You Can Peek at Keywords by Website

The second difference is that now you can either look for keywords directly or look for keywords based on a website address (a good way to check out what your competitors are using, or more specifically (and importantly) which keywords Google associates with the site).

I use this when I am checking out sites (particularly those in the first page): partly to see what keywords they are ranking well for or Google associates with the site, and also I will se some of these words as seeds to build a wider or broader list – something that is remarkably easy to do when used on conjunction with the Google Wonder Wheel.

I am celebrating this option because it was not available if you browsed from some locations, for example if you had Australian IP.  Of course, you could fix this by clearing the cookies or if you set your cookies up right but now you don’t even have to think about it. And let’s be honest, if you are about to start a journey of 10,000 keywords (as Lao Tzu would have said, had he been an internet marketer) why expend precious grey matter on mucking around with cookies or settings.

Mobile Search Statistics Revealed…uh Sort Of

You can set the keyword tool to show only search statistics for mobile devices. Google notes that while this limits search statistics to mobile devices, it doesn’t affect performance reported performance statistics. Also, it excludes data from smartphone and handheld digital devices (read IPads) that have full internet capability – presumably because these count as ‘normal’ browser searches.

At this point I wonder how useful this option is going to be given this exclusion – especially with the prevalence of smart phones which arguably fall into the “full internet capability” category. However, I speak as a computer based online marketer.

Keywords, Keywords and More Keywords

This incarnation of the Keyword Tool is an amalgamation of the old tool and the Search-based keyword tool. As a result you now can choose whether you want to see results for keyword ideas OR for ideas containing only the keyword search terms.

If you want as wide a range of keyword phrases as possible, including phrases that do not include the keyword you have specified, choose the first option: All keyword ideas

Is there a big difference in the results? Though proof by anecdote is a contradiction in terms, I tested the keyword: “golf club”.

• Number of results with option one (“All keyword ideas”): 800 (including: driving range golf, country clubs, troon golf, golf break and wi golf [sic])
• Number of results with option two (‘Ideas containing my keywords”): 576 (all keywords including the term: golf club, and all the keywords in this list were also in the list generated by option one)

This suggests that if you want to go broad, check the first option, if you want a tighter subset, choose the second.

Finally you can set filters for local search… and you can set multiple or nested filters.

Slice and Dice – New Ways to Categories.

The New Sidebar Next to the Keyword Results

One obvious and welcome addition is a new sidebar on the left hand side that shows lets you filter you list by:

• Category (a feature previously found in the Search based Keyword Tool)
• Prominent Keyword
• (and change) Matching criteria – from Broad match (default) to Exact and Phrase.

In Affilorama recently, Matthew Carter wrote an excellent post on the New Google Keyword Tool pointing out that you can use the category breakdown to give you an insight into how Google categorizing keywords and build SEO stronger sites.

One Way to Use Categories to Tighten Your Keyword List – An Example

To expand on his point with an example:

Suppose you are doing keyword research to create a wide keyword list for a PPC campaign on Yeast Infection (a subject close to my heart – figuratively speaking only).

Casting my net wide I might look for keyword variations on some of the natural cures for yeast infections – such as apple cider, vinegar, garlic, yogurt – with the intention of finding cheap short and long tail keyword phrases to put on an ad on.

Let’s take the keyword “apple cider”.

My search results (after I have signed in – more about this below) were 345 different keyword combinations. Hurrah.

Expanded Category List

However, not all of these relate to apple cider as a curative or health food and using those words may be a waste of time and be detrimental to my quality score.

Wouldn’t it be great if I could tighten my list and select only keywords that Google reckons are health related.

I could do this by going to the category list and clicking on the Health category. The list is filtered to only 12 words, as you can see in the image at the end of this section.

You will notice that the list expands into sub-categories – which means I could tighten my list even more (my cup runneth over) (see the image on the left).

Now this might not always appropriate for keyword list building but you don’t just use the keyword tool for PPC list building.

Imagine, as Matthew Carter asks you too, the possibilities for building a tight website.

Apple Cider Keyword List 'filtered' by Health category

Where did all the “Additional Keywords” go?

The physical distinction between Related Keywords and Additional Keywords is gone, the beta version of the keyword tool puts them all together and ranks them by relevancy.

This might take some of us a while to get used to, the distinction between … and related words made it easier to identify possible directions we could go to either widen our net of keywords or give us keywords we could use to help with latent semantic indexing. (If you are not sure what latent semantic indexing is, may be well served by this post from Aaron Wall, SEO Guru or this one from SEOMoz

I think this is a bearable change – sure it will be a little less easy to spot the related words (hint: look for the keyword results that do not include the keyword you started the search with) but they are still there.

Teething Pains? Try “Miscellaneous terms”.

If you are hankering to get a list of those curious and apparently unrelated keywords but don’t want to eyeball a several hundred word list or write a spiffy macro in Excel*, head on down to the Contains list and look for, and tick only, “Miscellaneous terms”.

* And Yes, Mac users, Mac Office 2011 has VBA capability – so you too can enjoy the pleasure of recording and writing macros.

Accentuating the Negative

Trust Google to take the term negative keyword literally!

Wondering how to exclude words from your search results? In the current version of the Keyword Tool this is a filter, in the beta, you just add the “keyword to your list and prefix it with a negative.

For example, if I was looking for keywords around the topic Yeast Infection (purely for commercial reasons!) but want to exclude candida then add the phrase: “- candida” to the search box:

Downloading – now including the kitchen sink!

Downloading from the beta version is done by clicking on the “Download” button (logical, but I’ll admit being an old dog, I looked at the bottom of my results page first). Click on this and you’ll get a range of file formats to download in (including the old favourite: .csv files (and yes, I know favourite looks like it is spelled incorrectly but I am a Kiwi, so bear with me please).

If you choose .csv for excel the beta version creates a ZIP file for you to download. In the old days it was a simple (unzipped) .csv and you might wonder why the change, until you open the file and see that Google now gives you all the statistics (not just the ones you can see or columns you have made visible).

That is:

• Competition
• Global Monthly Searches (month by month for twelve months)
• Ad Share
• Search Share
• Estimated Daily Impressions
• Estimated Ad Position
• Estimated CTR
• Estimated Daily Clicks
• Estimated Daily Cost
• Estimated Avg. CPC
• Extracted From Webpage
• Local Monthly Searches

To log in or not log in? (Is 800 better than 100?)

Many of us have Adword accounts but may choose to use the adword keyword tool without logging in – I mean we already got distracted with the captcha, do we really need to log in too?

The main gain I got from logging in was that my keyword results were larger – for the search term: “golf club”, before I logged in I got 100 keywords, after I logged and used the tool again I got 800 results. You might wonder if quantity is better than quality but when it comes to keywords, quantity is king – well at least when you start. (Relevancy is pretty important too!)

Feature Packed or Features Made More Obvious

These are some of the key features of the new Keyword tool, mostly arising from the integration of the old Adword Keyword Tool and the Search Based Keyword Tool.

I like it.

• The layout is more intuitive in my opinion and arguably simpler (once I found the download button).
• The introduction of a category list makes it easier to tighten your keyword results; and
• the inclusion of a link to Google Insights means easier access to one of the most useful (other) tools for keyword search in Google.

The fact that you need to sign in to your Adwords account is a bit of a hassle but not a big one – it is after all the Adwords Keyword Tool so it targeted at Adwords account holders and as we have seen in the most recent change to the New Adwords Keyword Tool Google is heading towards further integration.

If you don’t have an Adwords account, it is easy to get one and free – and any serious internet marketer is going to use Adwords at some time (if only for experience).

The only cumbersome thing for me is having to refer to the current Google Adwords Tool as the old Google Adwords Tool when it is still the current one and the replacement as the New Google Keyword Tool Beta…still this old dog has time for a few new tricks.

For Google’s notes on the introduction of the Google Keyword Tool, check out there post: Updated Versions of the Keyword and Placement Tool

Comments

I am not perfect, despite what my mother thinks – or at least what I would like her to think.

So I welcome any comments or thoughts, corrections or questions you have about this article or it’s presentation – too long, too short, easy to read?

Hi or as the inimitable Fred Dagg would say – “eh yeah, gidday”. My name is Neil Lee and I started Wasabihound.com in light of my experiences with internet marketing.

What Am I Doing Here?

The purpose of this blog is to share my thoughts and lessons I have learnt starting an internet business and using the internet for marketing.

My intention is to get past the hype that I have seen commonly associated with internet marketing, and really see how the internet and being online can be used as another medium that businesses and people can use to expand their sales, grow their area of influence and base of customers.

My goal is examine how marketing on the internet is done and how this worldwide, 24 hour channel of communication and transaction works and can be used.

How visiting Wasabihound.com can benefit you?

Setting You Up for Success

It’s hard to move forward when you are always looking backwards.

I will be sharing my ideas and lessons about building a mindset for success. In my experience getting your head and heart aligned (and pointing in the same direction) will massively improve your chances achieving the goals that will make you happy.

I went to school, high school and university, studied, but no part of my formal education really taught me about how I work. Any lessons were indirect and usually discovered looking over my shoulders and into the past – and while this is important, after a while you get a sore neck.

See Me Do, See Me Trip and See Me Soar

I will take you through my journey of building and testing internet marketing websites. This includes keyword research, site building, testing and using paid and free traffic generation strategies.

You will see my mistakes, so you can avoid them and you will see what works (so you can take it and improve it). This will save you time, money and heartache).

By the way, if you are starting an internet business from scratch – believe it when they say start with something you enjoy. The first site I built was aimed at following the money and not my heart and it’s tough maintaining the rage on it – it’s about Yeast Infection, a great business from a traffic perspective. That said I don’t regret the lessons I learned on the way. You’ll hear more about this soon.

Putting the Marketing Back into Internet Marketing

I will look at how marketing online is the same and is different from traditional marketing. My aim is to demystify and cut through the hype that surrounds the concept of internet marketing.

This knowledge could save you time and money, as well as help you make more informed decisions about how to use the internet to create sales and profits for your business.

Buckle Up

I hope you can come along for the ride. I can promise you it will be a roller-coaster but I sincerely hope you will get some value on the way.

It will get bumpy, nerve-wracking but it’ll be fun.

So let’s buckle up and get going.

Oh yes, I welcome your thoughts and contributions so feel free to scream, laugh and shout as we hit the hills and the valleys.

What’s Next:

I’m going to answer (well, start answering) the question: Who the heck is this guy?

I found this earlier this year and while it is a long video (over 16 mins – there’s your warning!) I thoroughly recommend it.

It’s a little quirky and the black and white gives it a great Sundance quality. I really like the underlying message – hope you do t00. Give it a few minutes anyway.  Interested to hear what you think – just send me add a comment at the end of this post.

“Bones” fans will recognise T J Thyne (in a very different role). I really enjoy seeing an actor go in a different direction. (Like John Lithgow in Third Rock, or Robert De Niro in the Analyse This series – okay maybe I just like comedy)

Yeah, I know that’s way it is called acting – but I still like it. (Maybe that’s why Extras was a hit).

Click here to view the embedded video.

I have recently been reading some inflammatory posts on Facebook about a company I work with. Some of the posts have a kernel of truth and to the extent they do, I have no concerns, fair and constructive criticism is to be encouraged and listened to.

What (briefly) riled me was some comments from someone who had decided to hide under a pseudonym. For a moment I was disappointed and annoyed with that person’s childish, self-serving and immature behavior, but then I realized they were drawing me into their game – and I would have to play by their rules.  I decided to stop, seethe (for a moment, because it does no good to fail to acknowledge feelings), then let it go.

Don’t Play Their Game, Play Yours

Some of you may think this is the wrong course of action, but I am reminded of the saying:

When you fight with a pig, you both get dirty – but the pig likes it

My best course of action was steer clear of the sty and direct my energy to more constructive pursuits aimed at achieving my goals.

The lesson for me was that to the extent a person holds your mind, they have control over you. They have this control only because YOU let them – at which point, they have control over you.

Sometimes the greatest act of courage, is the ability to stay true to yourself.

Steps to Get Back in Control

How do you regain control?

• Review and refresh yourself by looking at your objectives
• Acknowledge that this person’s or these people’s opinions exist (denial gives licence to fear and anger) and decide how you will respond. Try to distinguish emotional from logical reactions.
• Refer to your goals and objectives, if responded means distraction then: Ask yourself is it worth. Ask yourself five times. By the fifth time you should have the final answer.
• Ask yourself why they are doing it. Remember some people will antagonize you so that you will be distracted. If you respond as they expect, they have control of the situation.
• Try to leave your ego at the door.
• Redirect the energy: exercise (go for a walk, run – just get the emotion out of your system), use it to progress your goals

Many opinions and criticisms are constructive and should be listened to and taken on board. We need to accept we don’t get it right every time, and we are not perfect.

Just beware that sometimes people will bait you and the best response is no response at all.

If in the end, it is revenge or retaliation your want – remember the best revenge is to succeed at your endeavors.

PS no pigs were harmed, and hopefully none offended in the preparation of this article.

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