Derek Gehl Internet Mastermind 2013 –

$4k… $40k for a weeks work and I might get interested.

Inet courses – dime a dozen and not my thing. My interest is strictly business management and there are good pro courses you can do at tertiary institutions. I looked at business coaching many years ago but it looked more like life counseling than coaching so I flagged it.

I'm the opposite. Never had a problem with focus other than too much focus at times to the detriment of other things.

God save me from people at seminars!!

Ajago let me put things in context for. If you like flying and had studied aircraft and how they flew that kinda suggests where you were before going to see Gehl. Now I give you a manual on how to fly a 3 axis aircraft and we do the black board thing to get this clear in your mind etc. Same as going to a Gehl seminar.

So if I said there's a little single engined Cessna out there go get 'em. How do you think you'd get on. 

The odds of you succeeding have in all reality only been progressed ever so slightly. So where your chances of failing where 100% before. Now they're only 98%. What I suggest you do is find a mentor or someone who's prepared to hand hold you for a while. The website thing is the least of your worries. Go and have a look at comparable websites and see how they do it. Email their webmasters and ask advice/questions etc. Look for the best and the worst to understand what works and what doesn't. 

The rolodex thing is a gimmick and a selling tool to cross sell you into more of his product. There's an even better one that's always up to date. It's called Google and it's free.

You're being groomed, conditioned and manipulated. You probably don't realise it but to have any chance of success you need to understand how HE markets and runs HIS business. Look at what and how HE's doing things and then assess your own reactions to it. When you start to get your head around that you'll understand what Gehls seminars are really all about and it has nothing to do with helping you be the next best thing in internet business.

You might find this interesting reading

http://www.pickaguru.com/guru-gehlderek.html

Good to see you're awake ajago.

Market Samurai is a fair to midling budget SEO tool. It does it's core tasks very well but falls down in others. You'll find the SEO world quite interesting. Like all tools knowing which ones do what best can give you way better results. Be careful about picking tools based on cost. Remember you get what you pay for.

SEO can get quite frustrating at times. You have to remember 20 gazillion other people are doing exactly the same thing. Most of them badly thankfully. That gives you a shot at learning which SEO tools work best for differing tasks and getting ahead of the pack. Unfortunately it's a never ending task but a necessary one to achieve your target traffic flows.

If you're going to take on Gehls direct marketing approach then MS isn't likely to offer a complete package in terms of SEO due to the fact that in depth analysis is a key function of business development and MS doesn't provide that. It's alright as a budget starter tool but you're going to have to recognise it's limitations and find other tools to compliment it.

Don't underestimate Google. I can usually find what I want in less than 10 minutes and have a fairly good overview of things within 30. The rolodex thing is just a refined directory just like yellow pages but its designed to channel you to where they want you to go. In other words you see what they want you to see for their benefit not yours. When you free search you find and learn so much more with a lot less bias.

Google has almost 70% of the SE market followed by Bing at around 16% and Yahoo at 11% (and falling). In commercial terms the priority is to optimise for Google and forget the rest (they will follow). There is no way you optimise for the others at the expense of Google.

Google have tutorials, knowledge and "Webmaster Tools" all free and provided to help you design and write content in a way that meets their SE requirements.

90% of SEO is done in the creation stage and for that to be effective it's knowledge of SEO requirements that's important. The best tools won't make a lot of difference to a poorly written and designed site. SEO tools are primarily productivity tools. 

I personally don't get too absorbed with SEO tools. A good web designer will solve most if not all of this for you. If you're doing it yourself and its your first attempt you really are at the beginning of a steep learning curve. SEO tools might seem like the best thing going but analytical tools are more important. Once you get visitors then what they do and how they react will be more important as you tweak your site.

I suggest playing with the free tools first. If you find them wanting you can always spend a dollar and go for the more comprehensive ones like Web CEO, Advanced Web Ranking etc. They're expensive at around the $500 mark but if they improve your productivity and help with analytical interpretation then they're probably worth it.