Seriously? Are you going to be defeated that easily?

You know, it’s better to see that there is competition in your chosen niche than find your way to the top of a market that isn’t in demand. If there are plenty of other companies vying for the top spot, luring customers in various ways and making a pretty penny into the deal – then this is a ripe market that you can exploit quite easily.

We’ve spoken about SEO Basics before and Why You Need to Know About Search Engine Optimization – so I won’t go over old ground too much, but unless your market is saturated and your competition is in the league of Amazon or Apple (even then you can squeeze in for some juicy, low-hanging fruit) you really have nothing to worry about.

The simple strategy for beating your competition lies within their webpages – they are giving you all the information that you need – you just need to go and have a look.

Simply studying what they have done and doing it better yourself will ensure that your business will rise to the top. Google doesn’t care who is running the site – whoever comes out top in their search, is the one who is best matched for their customers search query.

So, it’s back to basics – see what keywords they are targeting, make sure that you are optimised for them too, make full use of your title tags, meta description, page content and anchor text. These simple things combined with GREAT content will be enough for you to win any battle. Remember that most of your competition is there by fluke – they have optimised unwittingly and have no idea about search optimisation. So you already have the advantage.

Of course, if you’re scared of hard work then forget it, because an ongoing campaign to create great content that is well optimised is a huge time consumer – but if ever you have any niggles or doubts, just look out of your window one morning and watch as Karen dashes out the door with an armful of kids before heading to the office to have ‘the man’ barking orders at her all day….. still seem like too much effort now?

Photo Credit Alessandro Paiver

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If you are here, reading this blog, then the chances are you are like me – a small business owner aiming for success or a mum – aiming to juggle it all.

Most of us are trying, but until a few months back I had a warped view of how I was going to succeed in this. I’ve thought long and hard about writing this post because what I feel is difficult to put into words and I’m not sure whether it will help you or if it’s just therapy for me – we’ll see.

For some time now, I have been reading about ‘positive attitude’ and the ‘Law of the Universe’ it all made perfect sense to me; visualize what you want – action and reaction – positive and negative and so on.

I guess I wanted it to be real because it gave me a reason to keep chugging and do you know what? It is real! But I really dragged my butt through some hell to figure it all out.

My main mistake in trying to ‘love’ everyone and ‘please’ everyone is that I never really loved myself. In fact I’ve been pretty harsh on myself.

Do You Have a Berating Voice in Your Head?

How often have you tried to accomplish something and stuffed it up? It’s happened to me many times and do you know what I do? I tell myself off – the annoying inner voice pops up and says ‘That was Dumb!‘ or ‘God, you’re an idiot – what did you do that for‘

Here’s another one;

‘They think you’re stupid’

Yeah, that’s a good one. You spend time thinking about what would please others and then tell yourself they think you’re an idiot – and the harsh truth of the matter is that they actually might think you are an idiot.

Think of somebody that you really like? Someone you are drawn to? Even if it’s someone online – there is just something nice about them that makes you warm to them.

It’s called charisma and here is why they have it; They don’t spend their day thinking of ways to please others and then tell themselves they are worthless. They do stuff for others because it comes naturally to them, there is no thought process! If someone doesn’t like what they do, it doesn’t bother them because their lives are already full and they accept that they won’t be liked by everybody – in essence – they don’t have to try so hard that it hurts!

I wish I could pull back the time I spent trying to please other people, hoping they’d like what I was doing or what I stood for. I thought I wanted their approval but now I question whether I wanted their support as it might benefit me further down the line.

Don’t get me wrong, good solid relationships are built on mutual respect and the knowledge that if you help someone out – they may help you out down the line – but you’ve gotta really dig deep and question your motives. We don’t like doing that because any form of digging and self-realisation is often an ugly picture at best.

Get the Voice to Stop Yapping

To move forward in an upwardly progressive manner in anything you are trying to achieve, will mean you squashing that voice of doom. If you don’t, it will hinder you tremendously.

‘You can’t do it’

They won’t like you’

‘That was so dumb’

‘What did you say that for?’

‘it’s never going to work’

Does any of that sound familiar? Encouragement yields success – you wouldn’t say any of those things to a child, or they would become repressed. they would slowly sink inside themselves and recoil from life. They’d never accomplish their dreams, hopes or aspirations.

When you speak to a child you use words of encouragement;

‘You can do it’

‘They’ll think you’re great’

‘That’s brilliant’

‘You are fantastic’

‘Go for it’

So why do we feel ourselves unworthy of the same encouragement?

Society dictates various rules and as adults we all take notice and nod in the right places. If the majority likes something we jump on board and furiously agree – but do we always? Are we frightened to speak up in case ‘they’ think we are fools?

If there is something that I have learnt – it’s to be yourself. If you want to be successful in business, you need to work like a bloody horse or else it won’t happen – but whatever you do – don’t constantly seek the approval of others. You won’t always get it and you will be taking two steps back for every one step forward.

Learn to love you!

You ARE worth it

You ARE great

You’re NOT stupid

You CAN do it

Because once you learn to love yourself and accept that you can’t please everyone and that not everyone is going to like you, the sooner you will be able to move on and get to where you wanna go.

And here’s the thing; the real gem if you like…. once you accept you for you, everyone else will too. You won’t have to try to please people anymore as you will be focused on what matters. You will naturally help people along the way and they will naturally warm to you, you will have charisma!

My life has changed dramatically in so many ways since I truly grasped this concept. I care if someone doesn’t like me, but not enough to change what I am doing – I’ve worked too hard and it’s too important.

I’m impacting on peoples lives and helping them to succeed in ways that I never could imagine – I’m finally realising my goals and achieving them.

I don’t need someone else’s approval to make my life successful, I don’t need a pat on the back or to be told ‘Well Done’ every five minutes, although of course it is lovely when it does happen.

When I think about the time I wasted on wondering why someone didn’t like me because I never received an acknowledgement in a forum or a reply to an email. It’s infuriating to think about now!

The fact is, we’re all fairly insignificant, so we need to love and encourage ourselves because only then can we truly go on to achieve great things.

And YOU WILL.

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I’m sure most of us ‘Internet Marketers’ have experienced it in some way or another. It’s why we feel such a bond with our online peers, and why we often spend too much time on Social Networks. These people online ‘get you’, they understand the language you speak, the hopes, fears and aspirations you have and they don’t collapse into fits of laughter when you mention that you sent out a ‘Tweet’. (sigh).

I actually find it quite amusing that I mentioned Twitter over a year and a half ago (how time flies) and I got that look – the picture illustrates it well – and yet now, as Twitter becomes more mainstream with celebs jumping on the bandwagon, everyone suddenly seems to be a Twitter expert. Of course the same divide still exists on Twitter, just because some of your ‘real world’ friends jumped on Twitter, it doesn’t mean they’ll understand more than 50% of your tweets, infact I prefer it when my friends don’t follow me on Twitter as it takes too long to explain what a PDF report is or why I would recommend someone reads a list of SEO tips, sheesh that’s a minefield – SEO to a non Internet person!

I Have A Gift For You

As I started to ponder the divide, I thought more and more about what it involves – this running a business online malarkey, and I decided to map it out. You’ll be surprised when you see what’s involved but mainly you should be proud! If you even accomplish a small portion of what I have included within this report, then you deserve a pat on the back – you really do!

Within this free PDF (which you can grab by clicking on the icon below) is a mind map, if you haven’t seen a mind map before, you’re in for a treat. You will need to zoom in and move your cursor around to see all of the sections as mapping the life of a Work at Home Parent is no mean feat.

You’ll also have a handy reference for a ton of sites you will be able to use throughout your entrepreneurial adventures online, it’s packed full of golden nuggets of goodness. And not only does it contain a ton of great websites and resources, it also maps out SEO and Website Optimisation in an easy to understand and logical way.

Use it wisely and don’t understimate the power of the info contained inside, I can’t reach every parent or home busines online, but between us we can get hold of a fair few, so share it with other work at home parents by clicking on the Re-Tweet button at the top of this post – I’m pretty sure they’ll thank you for it! And – please leave me a comment and tell me if I’ve missed any great sites that you use, because I can easily and add them and I will credit it you in the pdf for the information!

Wishing you every success in your online business….

Work at Home Parents Guide and Resources

Click the PDF Icon for instant access – no need to sign up for anything, it’s yours to just grab! If you’d like to be kept updated on the latest news from the blog, then subscribe to my RSS Feed and you won’t miss a thing.

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It is said that a visitor to a website makes their mind up whether to stay within 3-5 seconds of landing on your site. This is the average time – some people will decide in a second.

So below are just 5 simple ways that you can ensure you don’t lose their attention before they’ve seen how great your site is:

1. Don’t Use Splash Pages A splash page is a front page that people see before they ‘enter’ your site. Fashionable for a while, it’s long been decided that they are detrimental to you holding your viewers attention. Pretty pages with flashing images that say ‘click here to enter’ can often lead to your visitor hitting their back button. These pages also can take time to load and it’s time your visitor is often not willing to give!

2. Keep the Banner Ads to a Minimum You want to make some money from your site but even the least web savvy people have trained themselves to gloss over banner ads. Blinking flashing images splashed all over your page is a turn off to visitors. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use any – but less can sometimes be more in term of revenue.  Try recommending services via affiliate links and give great value and content, this will reward you with higher payment returns.

3. Clear Navigation Make your site as simple to navigate as you possibly can. If it looks confusing then your visitors will be unsure about entering. If they find themselves lost in an array of sections with no navigation back to the home page they will be clicking out of your site rather than reading your info.

Keep your category menus to the left, where a customer expects to find them. Make sure that your categories are clearly separated and defined to prevent the customers eyes from glazing over. Drop down menus can work very well if they are kept simple – but don’t always work so well for SEO purposes, and too many menus with sub menus or not enough menus with clear navigational links can see your site sink without a trace. Go with the KISS method – Keep It Simple Stupid – works every time!

4. Think Twice About Using Music On Your Site This will depend on what kind of site you are running and what audience you are trying to appeal to. If you were an R&B music based site then your customers would likely appreciate hearing something along those lines.If you want your visitors to stay a long time then you might want to rethink this as the same tune over and over again can become annoying.

Yes, they can turn down the volume, but it’s far easier to click to a different site. If you are using music, have clear onsite controls where they can turn it down or off and please make sure that you have permission to use whatever music you play.

5. Provide Excellent Content This should go without saying but the only way you are ever going to get a loyal following of visitors and customers is if you provide excellent content. With so many websites and blogs popping up over the Internet every, single day, it’s almost impossible to create something that isn’t already being done somewhere else in some form of another.

What you can do though, is DO IT BETTER. There may be many sites on similar topics but there are very few who are doing it really well. Give your visitors great content and value and your site will rise above the rest.

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