1.6 The Tao of C->T->P->M
They do not load their mind with anxieties and are
flexible in their adjustment to external conditions.
Chuang-Tzu (399-295 BC)
Let’s pull everything together to clearly see how a simple, pure focus upon reality (relevancy and quality) builds businesses, naturally, powerfully, and even, as some would say, “mystically.”
There are two basic steps to building a successful Web site and business...
STEP 1) Create great Content. The “C”
of Content 
Traffic PREselling Monetization
takes care of the “ON-page criteria.” Your information both
W-O-W-S your targeted visitor and gives the engines enough
“hooks” to determine “first-look relevance.” But
mastering “on-page” is not enough anymore. So next...
STEP 2) Start rolling that snowball over the hump and down the hill by getting some good inbound links. How do you get those links?
First, create at least 20 quality content pages. It’s hard to take smaller sites seriously. Let’s go back to that snowball analogy -- you need to build a snowball of a decent diameter, enough size and weight, to really start it rolling down that hill.
SIDEBAR
OK, I’m stretching here. But hey...
I’m into this
snowball analogy too deep now to abandon it!
So... what have we accomplished so far?
A great start!
CONTENT and LINKS... those two strong hands create the snowball and then start it rolling down the hill.
Just above in STEP 2, I mentioned a “hump.” This is more than just “part of the analogy.” There is a hump.
For weeks, often months, Content Traffic PREselling Monetization
can seem a thankless effort. You create content, content, content. Near-zero
traffic. You get a few inbound links.
Nothing happens? What do you do, quit?
Nope...
... “Tortoise
it!”
You “keep on keepin’ on!” Continue doing both of these. Do not stop.
Persevere.
Trust the system.
Be patient. You are building a long-term business that is going to substantially alter your future. It does not come overnight.
So... persist. More content. Get a few more links. Create a bit of buzz in a prominent forum. Keep building your “Brand of One” (i.e., your reputation).
And then... it happens. A trickle of traffic. Just a trickle, but it’s the first sign that you are getting over the hump.
You start to win the Search Engine rankings for the less competitive words. You gain a few, natural (i.e., unasked-for) relevant incoming links. Yes...
Human visitor behavior is starting to take over. So do you stop now?
No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.
You build more and more content. Use your Analyze It! tool, if you have SBI!, to get the basic on-page criteria correct (for each of your keywords for each of your topical pages, as always).
Some of your PREsold visitors give you more inbound links, without even needing to ask! Directories start listing you. Forums discuss you. In short...
The off-page criteria (far more than we could ever discuss here and, thankfully, we don’t need to) build naturally and organically.
You are over “The Hump.”
And now... here’s where the ever-growing, ever-accelerating snowball analogy really starts to fit! The Search Engines “see” how frequently your site changes. They return more often. They spider your new content pages faster and faster.
SIDEBAR
Remember those engines that can ONLY find you via inbound
links? Well, once they’ve found you, they follow the same behavior.
It is all good.
Of course, as you build more and more content, and rank higher and higher for more and more pages, your visitor count keeps growing. It’s important to keep your PREselling content at a high level...
That PREselling (“ P”)
is vital for human behavior to powerfully and naturally create all the
off-page criteria. No manipulation involved...
Your PREsold visitors merely behave naturally. The engines measure their “judgmental behavior” by tracking more off-page criteria than we could ever imagine! And you do not have to meddle in those criteria at all...
One who meddles with the world loses it.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)
As your excellent PREselling content increases, you will receive yet more inbound links, naturally and without asking for them. That, and other off-page criteria, raise the overall credibility of your site. You will find pages that never ranked for their specific keywords start ranking in the Top 30, then in the Top 10... without tweaking them.
Wow! Life is good. Now you can stop, right? You know what I’m going to say by now... Don’t stop. Why should you? You know and love your material.
Have a blast!
Keep building content, content, and more content. Get the on-page criteria “roughly right.” And round and round and round it goes... building all along the way.SIDEBAR
Most people don’t realize that I’d rather be my own customer
than the head of SiteSell. I love what I do, but the responsibilities are
enormous.
I’d rather be
building an SBI! business.
My advice? Never stop. You can slow down once your site is well-established. After all, it does get easier and easier (but never “easy”), regardless of what kind of business you have. Take 2 months off and your site will still be there, growing and earning for you on auto-pilot (one of the advantages of being an infopreneur!)...
http://infopublishing.sitesell.com/
Of course, if you sell hard goods, you’ll need someone around for customer support... unless you take your laptop on vacation (something I refuse to do!).
Once over the hump, the ease at which your site flourishes is what creates that magical-mystical feeling. It’s what I call...
“The Tao of
Content Traffic PREselling Monetization”
“Tao? C’mon Ken!”
I hate to get “zen”/“Star Wars-y” about it, but you will seriously feel a force with you. It’s because your site is real/relevant and good (the reality that SEs seek).
PREsold humans just naturally build all the off-page criteria for you. As the engines consider you as more and more of an authority, you will start ranking higher and higher for more and more of your keywords at more and more of your pages. The traffic increases, which means more delighted visitors.
And growing traffic means even more off-page criteria are “delivered” by those happy humans, through natural, normal, human, online behavior. These off-page criteria basically reflect how humans respond to your site. Your portfolio of inbound links is merely one of many off-page criteria.
SIDEBAR
SEOers seem to forget that inbound links are just one of many off-page
criteria. They spend ordinate amounts of time on this single criterion.
This is likely happening for three reasons...
1) It’s simple and controllable -- you can do something.
2) It’s measurable -- long live “Google PR”!
3) There is even complicated, expensive software to help boost your links.
Bottom line? Once you have a solid link program in place, all this fine-tuning represents time better spent on Content. You do not need any fancy, expensive software. You certainly do not need to do anything at all, just for the engines.
Do not fall into this SEO trap.
Please don’t think that I am saying that inbound links are not important. They are. But there is no need to go overboard.
It’s relatively easy to get started with a few important, relevant inbound links. That gets this whole snowball rolling! Here is the key long-term point...
If you PREsell with great content, you don’t have to manipulate all those off-page criteria (not possible in any event). All the good off-page criteria happen because of visitor satisfaction. That is why SBI! sites succeed way more than others.
When it happens, you will be astounded. You will scream, “it works.” See the Case Studies site to see what I mean...
http://case-studies.sitesell.com/
After a while, you realize that SBI! delivers more than targeted traffic. And even more than “success.” Much more. Every “e-box” of SBI! comes with a free special prize inside...
http://specialprize.sitesell.com/
SIDEBAR
You can “do” Content Traffic PREselling Monetization
without using SBI!. There is more than enough useful content on the
family of SiteSell sites to show you how to do it...
http://www.sitesell.com/sitemap.html
So, yes, you can certainly “do Content Traffic PREselling Monetization”
on your own. But why would you want to? No other small business service
comes close to offering the value...
http://buildit.sitesell.com/sbi-businesses/value.html
And no one “gets” the process like we do. We constantly push the envelope, helping SBIers to do better and better.
And the SBI! Forums are the most motivated, high-signal-to-noise, serious small business set of forums in the world. Closed and private, these forums are busier than any open forum, yet populated only by paying, serious, non-anonymous small business people.
“The Place For Friendly, Success-Focused Discussion, ” this is the place where SBIers come to “help and be helped.”
Bottom line? There is no better way to execute Content Traffic PREselling Monetization
“What about when a major new technology
comes in,
say full Artificial Intelligence? What will happen?”
Great question!
Here’s what will happen...
SEOers will wring their hands in panic, grief, rage. They’ve done so for years, whenever a major algorithm change happens. But the reality is that the engines do not owe anyone a living. If anything, even the “good” SEOers are an annoyance because they do not deliver what the engines seek... relevance AND quality. However...
SBIers will clap in glee. They will have an even bigger advantage. Here’s why...
The closer the engines come to accurately assessing reality (relevance and quality), the better SBIers will do, especially when compared to the mechanical, mimicking world of SEOers.
The collective mass of many well-written pages (that please the human and the SE) is followed by positive off-page human behavior (delivering the “off-page criteria”). The combination builds overwhelming momentum, and feeds upon itself in a positive loop that continues the growth.
Why?
You know that answer by now.
Because SBI! sites are REALITY.
Let’s borrow a famous slogan for a moment and apply it to an SBI! site...
... “Engineered
Like No Other Site In the World”
SBI! “engineers success” through superb content that hits the basic on-page criteria and that W-O-W-S the human visitors. Ultimately, those delighted human visitors generate more and more off-page criteria that engines detect and measure.
The effect upon the Search Engines is like a boat with a strong tide coming in. The competition?
Tide’s out.
Your site rankings and traffic go up, up, up. More links and off-page criteria. More content and better rankings. Round and round it goes. And it does all this without manipulating the engines...
Instead of chasing the “SEO Holy Grail” and trying to mimic
reality by constantly jiggling Search Engine algorithms, you simply build,
build, build Content. That Content sets the whole Content Traffic PREselling Monetization
process in motion.
SEO has always been short-sighted...
It’s a
treadmill.
I know because I’ve been there, done that and sold over $1 million of software, as a solo entrepreneur, before “e-commerce” was even a proven viable concept. But I also got tired of “playing the game.”
I realized that the engines are not “in hot pursuit of SEOers, good or bad.” Yes, they do have to protect themselves against whatever the latest “trick” might be -- but the mid-term picture is that they will blow SEOers away simply because they get relentlessly better at recognizing reality.
Let me repeat that because it is such a key concept, and so many seem to miss this point. They fall into the trap of SEO’ing instead of building their business...
The engines continuously become more and more sophisticated. Their ultimate goal is simply to recognize reality (relevant and good sites) the way humans do (no easy task!). SEOers have to chase this increasing sophistication constantly. Instead...
SBIers leapfrog the algorithm-chasers and head straight to reality. Tens of thousands of small businesses use SBI! extremely effectively... far more effectively than most SEOers and more than any other small business.
No other service comes close to delivering success. We prove it, too. No one else does... and they would if they could...
From teen-age girls like my daughter (anguilla-beaches.com) to uber-geeks like Marc Liron of updatexp.com (15,000 unique visitors per day), SBIers do NOT worry about all the “advanced SEO voodoo.” They abandoned those worries long ago.
They merely go about building their business through content. <>SBI!’s building, optimizing, background-automated, and special-function tools do all the rest.
If you follow the Site Build It! Action Guide (another piece of
near-unanimous advice from the super-successful), if you use
SBI!’s integrated tools to execute Content Traffic PREselling Monetization,
if you persevere through and over the hump by building more and more Content
and securing some inbound links, that “traffic trickle” will
indeed start.
Each of those “ifs” is totally do-able. Each is within your power. And when that snowball starts growing magnificently, the build is indeed a wonderful feeling. Your confidence soars. Your motivation triples. But do not get over-confident...
Stay focused. Keep building content. Do you know what your chance of failure is by now? I apologize in advance for taking the analogy one step too far...
... yup, the
proverbial snowball’s chance in you-know-where!
You are well on your way to evergrowing-snowballing success! And you know it.
Of course, it is not just about traffic. Notice that the
“T” is merely the second letter in Content Traffic PREselling Monetization.
While SBIers build traffic more effectively more than SEOers, we still haven’t reached the real bottom-bottom line. Since their content also PREsells through the delivery of superb and relevant information, SBIers build raving fans...
Many SEOers overlook this all-important point. Even if they rank #1 for a certain keyword, what happens when that visitor arrives? She reads sub-par content that, at worst, is gibberish since it was “built for an algorithm.” At best, she receives material from a brochure that has been “SEO’d”...
No spark. No passion. No sale.
However, reality shines through. Your visitor recognizes it.
And that is where PREselling steps up to the plate and hits a homerun. SBIersbuild raving fans...
PREsold visitors. In other words, each SBIer builds...
A Brand of One
Unless you are Amazon and already have a brand, that is critical. It makes the final step, Monetization, so easy. And, at the end of the day, it is all about the final step of Monetization. And that is where SBI! excels...
The entire Content Traffic PREselling
process ultimately aims at the final step...
Monetization
Unlike algorithm-chasers, who may generate some short-lived, non-PREsold traffic, SBIers’ #1 goal is to OVERdeliver great Content that PREsells. The “M” of Monetization becomes the easiest part. Take your pick and diversify...
http://buildit.sitesell.com/sbi-businesses/index-monetize.html
The Free(dom) Special Prize Inside Every SBI!
Ever noticed the difference between a PGA pro golfer and your local amateur who thinks he’s pretty good? The pros make it look so easy. It’s not, but they have the proper technique... combine that with practice and the results are excellent.
SBIers make it look so easy. They have the right technique,
Content Traffic PREselling Monetization,
and they do the work. The good news is all the work is business-related since
SBI! makes all the barriers (tech, SEs, etc., etc.) disappear.
The feeling of the self-building momentum? Of success? Of your business literally growing in front of your eyes? There is nothing like the feeling of empowered confidence, knowing that your business/professional life is improving beyond expectations.
I’m proud to show you our “family bulletin board.” Its photos symbolize the special prize far better than I could ever put into words...
http://specialprize.sitesell.com/
Yes, Content Traffic PREselling Monetization
results are almost mystical. That tide-rising is an amazing
feeling. But we are all a bit too-left brained to accept that as the basis
for success. So let’s get hard-left-brained-analytical as we wrap up
this booklet.
The Internet is merely the world’s most sophisticated, interconnected database. And, at the end of the day, it all boils down to bits and bytes, 0s and 1s.
SBIers consistently give the engines enough on-page criteria to handle relevance (the first half of reality). They have the two key tools (“Analyze It!” and “Rank Report”) to provide the end-point of when “enough is enough.”
After that... HUMANS see the interface and the words. They like what they see. So their behavior takes care of the off-page criteria.
Those off-page criteria are incredibly complicated. They will only get more so, but they are increasingly important to the engines to determine content quality (the second half of reality).
The rest is “just math.” Incredibly complicated math, yes...
... math for
the “triple-thick-glasses and pocket-protector” crew.
But that’s OK because we don't need to figure the math out. Let the SEOers play that game. They will only fall ever-farther behind.
Content Traffic PREselling Monetization
is “e-commerce for the rest of us”...
Start the ever-building snowball careening downhill. Once you do that, Content and visitor reaction feed all off-page criteria (including inbound links), which feed more Traffic, which builds more off-page criteria, while you keep building more Content. All that great content PREsells visitors, delivering more off-page criteria and leading to Monetization...
Content Traffic PREselling Monetization... round and round it goes.
It all starts, of course, with Content. As someone from a more recent century said...
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Content starts things moving. Links give it an extra push.
With Content Traffic PREselling Monetization
You focus on what counts. SEOers focus on endless parameters and detailed, time-sucking link programs.
You keep it real. SEOers mimic reality.
You keep it simple. SEO could not be more complicated.
“Keep it real. Provide what people want.”
Yes, basic business rules hold true, even in this third millennium. When you think about it that way, doing business has not really changed, even on the Net.
Site Build It! merely illuminates the Content Traffic PREselling Monetization
process and provides all the tools to execute it, flawlessly.
The Tao of SBI! takes it the rest of the way. And as the engines get smarter, SBI!sites will widen the “results gap” into a chasm between themselves and SEOers (and all other small business sites)... naturally and powerfully.
Let’s close this “big picture,” introductory chapter by paraphrasing the words of Einstein and Lao-Tzu...
Content
Traffic PREselling MonetizationContent makes Content
Traffic PREselling Monetization
move.Keep it real. Keep it good.
Keep it simple. Make it happen.
You too can “win your world.”
The Tao of SBI! (2005)
OK, speaking of making it happen, let’s get busy...
MYLW: <<1.5 A Weird Story 1.6 CTPM Tao 2. Quality Inbound Links...>>
