Greetings eBoot Campers!

It was a busy last few weeks with a book signing down in Florida and a quick trip to New York City. But we are back in beautiful Michigan and here with another valuable eTip to help you and your business succeed!

But first a couple quick announcements:
Our second winner of the “Spread the eBoot Camp Love” contest is…Nick Whatcott! He will get 30 minutes with me to discuss his business and how to make it more successful via the Web. Congrats Nick! Will you be the next winner? Take a look at the contest details to the bottom of this email.

My Good friend Michael Port has written an awesome book called Think Big Manifesto. This is absolutely a MUST read book. It is outstanding… inspiring, challenging and compelling. You must take a look and see for yourself.
Buy The Think Big Manifesto and Scoop Up Some Free Prizes at www.thinkbigmanifesto.com

Now let’s get to today’s tip!

Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool

I was down in Florida last week spending time with my family. Whenever I go down there, I usually engage in conversation with my dad on how his business is going and if he needs any help with stuff he’s doing on the Web. I can use my dad as a good litmus test for what I talk about here. If I show him a tool or resource and he finds it easy to use and valuable, then I know it will most likely work for the majority of my audience here.

As was the case when we played around with Google’s keyword suggestion tool. This free resource from Google allows you to enter a search phrase and see some very powerful information about that phrase. First, it tells you how many people have searched for that phrase during the previous month and on average over the course of a year. This can tell you whether or not the specific phrase you are researching is worth focusing your efforts on to get a good ranking for your Web site. It also gives you suggestions on other search phrases similar to your original query along with their popularity statistics too. Pretty cool, huh?

So what do you do with this info? You can use it to decide whether this is the right phrase for you to focus on. If only a few hundred people are searching for that phrase per month, it might not be worth your time. However, if a few hundred thousand or searching for that phrase, it might be too popular and a battle you can’t win. Take the words “blog tips” as an example. That phrase had 18,000 search queries just in the month of March. “Blogging tips” however had only 9,000. I might choose to focus my attention on “blogging tips” because it still has a good amount of people searching that phrase, but not so many that it would be a losing proposition to try and rank high for.

Once you have used the tool and determined the search phrases you want to target, then you start optimizing your Web site for those phrases by adding them to your Web site content. Get them on your homepage, title tag, description tag, blog, etc. (Shameless plug: the eBoot Camp book gives you LOTS of direction on just how and where to effectively add these phrases to your Web content). Just don’t overdue it. If you start repeating them too many times without the sentences making sense, you can actually be penalized by the search engines. So continue to write good solid content on the Web, but remember to strategically add your keyword phrases wherever you can.

To use Google’s Keyword Analyzer, just go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Here are the contest details I referred to above:

I can’t tell you how much it means to me to hear the kind words and powerful emails about how the eBoot Camp book is helping you and your business. I wanted to offer something in return for your kindness in spreading the word about the book to your friends and colleagues. So today we are launching the “Spread the eBoot Camp Love” contest and here’s how you can enter for your chance to win!

Below are a few things you can do to help sustain the positive momentum about the book and help others realize what a powerful tool the web can be for their business. For each action you take, your name will be entered into our drawing. And yes, if you complete all seven items, you’ll be entered seven times! Each week, we’ll pick one winner at random and that person will win 30-minutes of time with me to discuss their specific Internet marketing or social media questions or challenges. All you need to do is email me (corey@ebootcampbook.com) and tell me which actions you completed. Yep, the honor system – I trust you! 🙂 Here’s what you can do to help promote the book:

– Send an email to people you know about why they should purchase the eboot camp book. You can direct them to www.ebootcampbook.com to purchase.

– Buy the book as a gift for anyone in need of a stronger Web presence

– Go to Amazon.com and write a review for eBoot Camp.

– Go to BarnesandNoble.com and write a review for eBoot Camp

– Become a fan of eBoot Camp at Facebook.com

– Tweet about your fondness for the book on Twitter.com!

I will announce the winner in the next etip issue.