But… at the end of the day, why exactly is it that I chose to use Wishlist Member over a ton of other WP membership plugins?

Simple. I don’t like to create what I refer to as “wham bam” membership sites, where a customer pays for their membership, and are dumped a ton of content for them to get confused by.

No, I prefer to drip feed content and leverage the new relationship – release one piece of content at a time, so that my members can get through it at their own pace. Not just that, but I like this all to be backed up by an Autoresponder, such as Aweber, that notifies them as new content is being added, and helps me further build on that relationship and keep it fresh.
Oh, and I also like it to be supported by a wide variety of shopping carts too, anything from Clickbank to eJunkie, and even other third party carts such as Nanacast through community support.

For me – this is what the Wishlist Member WP membership plugin does, and it has made my life quite simple in doing so.

So… What Doesn’t It Do?

Let’s be honest here – I assume that you are in the market for a WP membership plugin for WordPress, but you need to know that whilst there are many out there, there is a good chance that Wishlist Member actually may not be for you.

For example, it lacks support for some shopping carts that are quite popular, and it also lacks its own in-built affiliate functionality.

That said – with community support, some third party carts have been connected successfully to Wishlist Member (such as Nanacast), and whilst Nanacast has its own in built affiliate functionality (now including two tier tracking!), other supported carts such as Clickbank make affiliates much easier to work with.

What Does It Do Well?

It is the first WP membership plugin that I have seen that allows for drip fed content through automatic membership upgrades, and although there are others out there now that offer this functionality, this is the only one that does it well.

For example – if you want to drip modules out to paid members, simply create a membership level for each module, and set up an auto upgrade of their membership, or an auto add of new content through membership levels. This is surprisingly very easy to do.

I use this method extensively through my training portals, and I have never been able to do this so easily.

It also has excellent Membership administration built in, using the WordPress members system, it allows for easy upgrades, downgrades, and even manually adding members in.

Lastly, and certainly not least, it ties in with my favorite sales letter & membership theme perfectly. I’m talking about Optimizepress.

In fact, it is that combination that I use in my training portal, and I would happily reject paying a monthly fee for a membership service such as Kajabi, in favor of using Optimizepress with Wishlist Member. It works that good.

Here’s My Honest Thoughts…

If you want to spend a ton of money creating a membership site, and making a huge fuss out of a process that can be much easier, then DO NOT buy the Wishlist Member WP membership plugin.

On the other hand… if you like having control over your membership sites by hosting them yourself, plus maybe even tying it in with other third party services (check to see what it is compatible with here), then Wishlist Member is absolutely worth checking out, and worth the investment.

I know, it’s hard to believe most Internet Marketers these days when they give positive reviews of product – but at the end of the day, this is a plugin that I use extensively, and based on my experience with it, this is more a recommendation IF you have the need.

To grab a copy of the Wishlist Member WP Membership Plugin, head over to www.wishlistproducts.com

IF you end up buying it (regardless of what license), be sure to buy using one of the links on this page, and I can send you a full overview video of how I managed to leverage a free membership site using Optimizepress & the Wishlist Member WP membership plugin.

This is a solid part of my business that I do not share out in the open, and is applicable to most businesses. This is my treat to you for taking a leap and giving it a try, just be sure to contact me with your receipt number, and I’ll hook you up.

If I’ve sent you here because you don’t quite understand that “obstacles” only make way for success, remember… I weigh 130kg. Sometimes walking is an obstacle for me.

If neither – grab a copy of Steven Pressfields “The War Of Art” and it will change your world.

Note: Click the image to see it full size.

So, if I think back to why it is that we create businesses, and/or the ability to be able to work from somewhere of our own choosing, be it our home, the local cafe, or our own office building… does it not defeat the purpose of going our own way in the world if we do nothing but work 18 hour days, only to sleep for 6, get up rinse and repeat 7 days of the week?

I’m a huge believer in balance. Yin and Yang if you like to call it that. Good and bad, hard and easy. Everything one side requires and equal amount of what sits on the other side to make it happen.

For example: If I want more freedom, then I must work hard on my business in order to produce enough profit, so that I can support additions to my business that enable me to be present just as much as I need to be. For example – outsourcing and out tasking. I then need time to rejuvenate in order to be able to perform at my peak, without burning myself out.

I started out as an Internet Marketer because I wanted to be free. I’m not wired to work for big corporations that do nothing for me, I much prefer to be doing the things that I want to be doing. Mountain biking, hiking, cooking, playing PS3, and as guilty as I might feel when I turn on my PS3 some days at two o’clock in the afternoon, I make no excuses for it, because the life that I want is one in which I can set when I do the things that I want to do, rather than work on a roster set by a company.

I may not be being 100% clear here, but I know that you understand exactly what it is that I am saying.

Although… I know that many of us get caught up in the exact opposite. Work hard, get results, start again and sooner or later, you are stuck in the same vicious cycle of working with little or no reward.

This is not to say that working hard is not the key to everything, I’m just talking about balance. Remember why it is that you chose to do what you do.

I was always taught as a child that you must work hard in order to get ahead in life, but what exactly does it mean to “get ahead“? Is it to earn tons of money working hard for someone else so that you can eventually retire on what little superannuation that you have, or is it creating something that allows you to enjoy freedom, that may involve some work, but is scalable, and can evolve to a point that requires you to be involved just enough so that you still have time to enjoy your freedom.

That’s not to say that hard work doesn’t pay off of course, it’s just to say that in order to achieve balance, it’s best to get some of the good stuff too, just like you promised you would when you first decided to take the leap. I see it all too much.

You are doing this because you want to be free. You want more time to do (insert task here), and you want to be able to (insert task here) more often.

My day to day is structured in a way where I have time to work, I have time to develop ideas and bring them to fruition, and most importantly, I have time every day to do the things that I want to do.

In fact, after writing the first draft of this post, I’m going to go and jump on my bike for a bit, because I want to do it, and because I have created a lifestyle that allows me to.

How am I able to do this? I worked on one task at a time, got ideas and tasks to fruition, and prioritized those tasks that turned a profit, and developed a strategy for the ongoing maintenance of those tasks that requires me to do less of the “technicians” work.

That’s freedom for you, and as much as you may have forgotten about it, it’s the very reason why most of you do what you do. Don’t lose sight of it.

The reason that it felt bad was because through my own mind, and the path that I had planned for myself, I truly believed that the idea of taking up part time work three months ago was not just the best thing for me, but the best possible thing for my own business.

With the extra cash, I could hire an article writer or two, I could pay for extra accounts that I needed and other memberships that I wanted. I could make use of several of the paid services that I have been wanting to use for some time. Money, at the time, meant that I could take my business to the next level, even with me involved in it 70% or so less.

I make absolutely no secret here of the fact that as far as my career as an Internet Marketer goes, I am only part way to where I want to be, but I am most of the way. The idea of getting a job to me was merely a way to simply “bridge the gap“, and as a bonus, get some human interaction at the same time, because lets face it… when you first start out working from home, you tend to become a bit of a caveman.

Not just that, but when you work from home, all kinds of resistance factors come into play, and lets face it… this is where we all start from at some point, I think that just about every well known Internet Marketer has video footage buried deep in their YouTube accounts of them broadcasting in their home office or bedroom.

Take my current position as a prime example. I live in a house of three, where the other two work full time jobs earning other people more money than they earn themselves. This is their mindset, so when I am able to sit at home in a beanbag (which I am not afraid to admit that I do sometimes!) and earn a living… well, compared to how they earn a living, they see this as meaning that I have all the time in the world to do all the things that they don’t want to do, because they work long days, and so on – and as we all should know by now, when you are seen to have free time, a ton of stuff gets dumped on your plate.

Not that I don’t blame them of course, I’d be the same if I worked harder than I do now to earn half as much.

This position is not unique to me. This is probably also felt by yourself, and may even bring back shuddering memories from several of the other high profile marketers that I know read this blog on a regular basis.

This is where we all start, and it is also the time in our growing careers in the Internet Marketing space where resistance plays its strongest role. This is make or break stuff people.

Here’s the thing here. Resistance is easily defeated by results.

A story... When picking up my partner from work on the day that I resigned, her boss had a chuckle at the fact that he believed that I wouldn’t last until Christmas, and wanted to know if I had any other job offers. I told him that I dont need to look for work when I earn twice what he does by doing less work than he pretends to do, and answering to less people than he does.

He laughed, proceeded to “not get it”, and walked off dumbfounded.

That felt good. He hasn’t questioned me since.

In leading into the moral of this whole story though, I will say that this does not apply to everyone who is reading this. Some of you are struggling to make even half of your replacement income, so you will still have a lot to answer for.

The option to go back to work will always seem lucrative, as it is stable, and it is guaranteed.

My advice to you is to understand that there is a big difference between going back to work, and making good use of your new skills. In the Internet Marketing space, whether or not you believe it or not, you have some serious skills, and people will pay you for those skills. Speak to an Entrepreneur, advertise on eLance, network with others, or even advertise that you can do work at a cost. It’s better to work in the Internet Marketing space than outside it, because it allows you to be present so you can do the work. Simple.

Regardless of money, if you are not present so that you can do the work, it doesnt matter how many people you hire, or how many services you utilize… your business will not grow. You must be present, and you must resist against the forces that pull you away from it.

Just know that by taking the job that I did, this was the equivalent to admitting defeat to all other forms of resistance that have surrounded me as someone who works at home. I’m not earning enough. I have more time to do other things. Lets not forget the thoughts of those around me too… Now that your’e not working online as much, you can take me places when you should be working. I cant be bothered cleaning tonight, you can do it tomorrow after work.

It is a massive admission of defeat that leaves you open to be trampled, and can be deadly.

I know this. It’s why I stood up, quit, and got back to business.

It’s good to be back.

In this video, you are going to be introduced to three WordPress SEO plugins that I use on a day to day basis, each one I recommend highly, and only after rigorous testing on my own portfolio. Enjoy!

Video Resources:

• Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins
• Yoast Analytics
• Pingback Optimizer (highly recommended!)

payments via PayPal Luke.

Silently, he is also responsible for my love of Affiliate Marketing, which although he is probably not all that aware of it, his quick eye helped me notice an opportunity some time ago that paid off big time.

As I said… an awesome guy.

Anyway… I’m not writing a post about Luke, I’m writing one about something that he stumbled across today, and like anything that Luke shares, it kind of spiraled from there and has become something much bigger.

After finding out that Google has given themselves the whole above the fold area for the keyword “Adwords”, I decided to Google my own name. You know, for ego’s sake and all that.

Here’s what I got.

Epic, right? So… as you can see, Google is unfolding more changes to search, where they seem to be rewarding those who are best at creating content for their nuche not just with profile images through authorship markup, plus the usual dual listings and/or sitelinks if you are lucky… but an entire above the fold section.

What this means is this. If you aren’t in the business of consistently creating great content in your space, the person that does wont just take the #1 spot, but they will completely force you off the most important part of page #1 in Google.

Huge news, I know. You are going to want to watch this space.

I’ll be following these changes as they happen, along with what also appears to be some erratic behavior with PageRank updates as of late. More soon…

So, where does this big gut feeling come from? Call it a big hunch or whatever you call it, here is exactly how I see it…

When it comes to anything social, Facebook absolutely has the upper hand. At least for now, and as much as there is scepticism, it is undeniable… Since the time that Facebook branched out from being a university based social network, they have basically (for lack of better words) become one large data collection company that is hidden behind the worlds most popular social network. They are one of the most visited websites on the Internet, and although they are an entirely different product to what is on offer by Google, they are a threat due to the data that they have collected, and what it is that they can do with that data.

On the other hand, Google continue to create better versions of many pre-existing online services in an attempt to collect as much data as possible to perfect both their search and advertising platform. In recent times, this has included their own social network, which to the contrary of popular opinion, has grown incredibly fast in a very short period of time, sparking somewhat of a war of words between Google and Facebook fanatics.

And yes, I know that statement might make a few of you cringe, but remember the days we all didn’t want to change over to that boring looking MySpace wannabe clone? Well… its happening again whether you like it or not. It’s OK, I loathed Facebook too.

Here’s the issue. I’ll put it out there as simple as possible. Google is under threat by an organization that has the capability to walk all over it. Facebook has enough data to be able to power their own competing socially powered search engine that will actually be more accurate than Google, and for obvious reasons, Google does not want that to happen.

So… in order to take social search my the proverbial “balls”, what does Google have to do?

It must become social, and it must keep you signed in so that it can deliver a tailored set of results to each individual user. It has to put itself in front of you. Simple. Throw as many services at their users as possible that require a sign in (Email, image hosting, chat, VOIP, business apps, a social network, a gaming network…), and suddenly, they are able to deliver a social search that is backed up by the most advanced link and socially influenced search engine in existence today to their users who are signed in at all times.

I see this as being highly possible too. Remember, Google already keeps you signed in for Gmail, for YouTube, for Picasa, for your business apps and your Android phone and tablet… throw in a social network that bridges them all together and you have a match made in heaven.

Here’s the thing. Google has become social with the introduction of Google+, and as much as their capability to deliver accurate social search is dependant on their ability to make Google+ a success, not that their user base is climbing rapidly, and like all things of this nature, it signals imminent change regardless of whether or not they are successful or not. The bottom line is that Google wants to go social, and they will go social. If they don’t go social, then someone else will.

So, What Does This Mean To You?

This is where things start to get a little hairy, especially for us SEO types, although I will mention briefly that there is a massive difference between those of us who like to stay on the cutting edge, and those of us who continue to preach old school methods that only get a small percentage of the results, and that difference is going to be that my claim to fame does not lie in Google results that are in plain sight, but the results that are in the line of sight of my audience when they are logged in. At least, that is my aim.

Put simply, the playing field has levelled all over again.

Hard, I know… this is something that is going to be extremely hard for us SEO types to track.

The innovation of social search is the only reason that I have not come out with an SEO course, even though I am eager to get started on one ASAP. Not one single person has got it exactly right just yet, since the innovation of social search. Some people are very close, but that is an extremely limited few.

Its no longer a matter of how high you rank, but how far your rank extends. Try and stomach that.

So… What Do I Need To Know?

Tip #1. Don’t run for the hills, don’t sell everything… just keep doing what you are doing. This is absolutely not the end of the world. It is how we respond to certain situations that defines us. A challenge is a challenge that can be overcome, and that is exactly what Social Search is.

What you will need to remember from this day forward is that your market is on social media platforms that influence the results that you see in Google, and we all know what the #1 rule of marketing is, right? You go where the crowd is.

I updated my status on Google+ the other day with something rather bold. You can see it in the image above. This, in a rather large nutshell, sums up what I think of Google+ at the moment. 20 million users on G+ within the first 3 weeks, each and every one of them allowing their friends to determine the results that they see in search.

Social recommendation in its finest form. Compete with that Yellow Pages!

Your goal should be to continue creating content, and continue sharing it with your market on social media. You need to be where they are so that they can invite you in. Nothing less.

Tip #2. Your content matters big time. If your content is not good enough to be shared with others, then it is not going to matter how many links you build to your content. Sure, that will help to an extent, but what will matter more is the recommendation (in the form of +1’s from your friends) from your friends.

When you create content, consider what it is that your friends want to hear. What do they want answers to? What have they been asking you? What have they reacted well to in the past? What compelling questions can you answer for them What complex issues can you demystify for them? If you want to take matters further, watch this eye opening video from the guys at SEOmoz on the kind of questions that you need to ask yourself in a Panda influenced search engine.

Find out what resonates best with your audience by installing Google Analytics on your blog, and monitoring traffic numbers to your posts. Repeat more of what works.

I wrote a post about Google Authorship Markup the other day, and my traffic spiked and tripled my monthly traffic in one day, is it any surprise that I am writing about Google+ again today?

Tip #3. Get verified as an author. Follow my Authorship Markup Verification tutorial if you’re not sure how its done. Who knows at this point whether this code will help you rank higher or not, but one thing is for certain – if you attach your face to your content, it doesn’t matter if you rank #1 or #3… you are going to get more clicks if you can establish trust first!

Now, as much as Google likes to keep fairly quiet on certain things that we may be able to use to our advantage when it comes to our standing in the search engines, one thing is for certain. What is being referred to at the moment as “Author Rank” is going to have a huge impact on how much exposure our work gets as a whole.

I’m making no serious predictions here, but what I will say is that if you create every single piece of content as if it were the best content you have written in your life, I believe that there is a chance that this may not just impact how well that page in particular ranks, but the weight of all of the content that you attribute yourself as being an author of.

The quality of your content has never mattered so much, and will never matter as much as it does right now.

Know your metrics and conversions before moving ahead too fast...

There is no hard and fast rule to anything in life. Saving for that house deposit, buying your first car, and even coming up with profitable keyword ideas. However, the main difference between the three is that it’s not that straight forward to test drive a keyword. You just have to earn it, and see how it performs, and adjust accordingly.

Here’s the problem. It can take a fair amount of time to rank highly in Google – it recently took me 3 months to take out a highly competitive phrase, however, at the end of the day, with all of the time that I spent writing articles, submitting them, paying for other services, spreading the word on social media, and so on, what says that a keyword is going to pay off well enough to pay off the time investment involved in winning it?

Sure, I’m pretty sure I could have ranked well within a few weeks, however… considering that I am in the business of doing things right (for long term value), I’m not going to spam out a ton of links real fast for the sake of a short term gain. Every time that I start building links, I do it with precision. I know what keyword ideas I am going to rank for, how I am going to do it right now, and in the future, for the future. Needless to say, with the time investment of planning this out and executing the plan, I absolutely MUST be 100% certain every single time without fail.

RE – my approach to link building and selecting profitable keyword ideas- Be slow, take time, and do it naturally. Every time I get asked about why it takes me so long to rank #1 in Google for a term, I give the same answer. Because good and sustainable results take time. Hard and fast is a dangerous approach to any kind of business, especially in the current climate where links only account for so much, where quality of content and so called “Author Rank” matter a whole lot more.

So… Lets Take Your Keyword Ideas For A Test Drive…

Call me strange, but I'd take one of these over a Ferarri any day...

Do you buy a car if you haven’t given it a test drive yet? Of course not. I recently bought a 1997 Magna TS (Or Diamante if you are from the USA), it was unregistered and unroadworthy. We took it for a test run first, and I had someone that lives with me (who happens to be a mechanic) check the car over. Turns out that there was only a small amount of work to be done on the car to get it roadworthy, all of which (including purchase price) would amount to less than half of the second hand selling price for the car – a massive arbitrage opportunity. At the same time, the car was in incredibly good condition with all major parts being in near brand new condition.

Approach the keyword ideas that you want to rank for in much the same way. Here’s my process:

Step One - Broaden your keyword ideas by looking in the Google Keyword Tool for other related phrases that may bring in searchers who will have a similar intent. I will generally broaden it out to around 20 or so phrases at this point, all with a decent amount of searches per month.

Step Two - I will narrow these keywords down in Market Samurai by double checking the traffic and competing pages in the keyword research module, and narrowing it down by removing your keyword ideas that have too low and too high competition. Once this is done, I will check the highest performing 5 – 10 keywords in the SEO competition module, and make a gut call on which ones I believe I can win in a reasonable amount of time.

Step Three - I will then run Adwords campaigns on my keyword ideas, spending as much as I need to get at least 300 – 500 clicks per keyword. Each campaign will run for 1 – 3 days, and at the end of the trial, I will run with whatever keyword has performed highest for me. In order to track sales, I will use the Easy WordPress Links plugin to use custom URL’s so I can track sales in whatever affiliate software the vendors that I am promoting are using.

Does that make sense? If not, don’t be afraid to ask below, and I will explain or create a video for you.

I mentioned in my previous post about the idea of getting stuck in the vicious creation cycle. This is one of the methods that I use to make sure that I am getting the most out of a page. That said, I want you to remember that when it comes to your pages making money, this really is much more than simply sending traffic to a page.

This really comes down to your ability to remember what it is that people are searching for, considering what kind of value you can deliver your visitors, and ultimately, the power of the recommendation that you make for an up sell.

That said, there really is only so much that I can teach here without doubling up on what my teachers and mentors have told and taught me already. One of the most skilled affiliate marketers that I know of, Andy Grand, teaches this in his course, and helped me learn as much as I do now.

In all sincerity, if what you read in the post really rings positive with you, then I highly recommend that you check out his highly affordable Affiliate Marketing course at www.SuperAffiliateGuy.com

So lets fast forward to 2011. Sadly, I didn’t earn my millions. Not yet, anyway. I’m not going to lie to you for the sake of building false trust – I ain’t a high earner by no means. Yes, I teach people how to do what it is that I do (because I have had my successes), but do I earn millions? Nope. Here’s what I do…

I own a five figure blog, and a handful of websites in a variety of niches that I monetize with affiliate and email marketing. I specialize in building valuable assets that make me money. I also freelance some services such as building websites, link building, and the odd occasional coding issue. Nothing special here, and if there is something that you think I can help you with, by all means, contact me. I don’t bite.

Funnily enough, one of those niche affiliate websites of mine that makes a whopping $50 – $100 a month is one of my original dot info blogs. True story.

But, to tell you about that blog, I feel that I have a duty to tell you the story about how I managed to make a few bucks from that blog. I remember it quite well, I promoted a product on one of the many posts on the blog, and it happened to rank quite well. As a result, I managed to get an affiliate sale every two months or so. Nothing special, but proof that there was potential, and (gold nugget alert!) that I had found something that works that I can repeat time and time again.

Anyway… I stopped working on my other sites for a few days, refined the original post (split testing, and so on…), plus created a few more posts in the same space with keyword variations, and within the month, I had tripled my earnings. How cool! Its amazing what happens when you focus on refining an idea instead of developing a new one from scratch.

Actually, all long “The Simpsons” style introductions out of the way, that is actually what I wanted to talk to you about today – refining your current inventory Vs creating something new, limiting entrepreneurial distractions, and for a better term of words, getting s**t done.

In fact, the amount of emails that I get from people who talk about their portfolios and their Adsense websites that earn a dollar a day, and their domains that they bought, the one thing that they all lack (and I mean absolutely no offense to those that have mailed me!) is that they lack a vision, they are quick to buy and they are quick to start a new project without first considering refining their current projects. It goes without saying that we get too caught up in creation, right?

That’s right. We end up buying a ton of dot info domains. (see the first paragraph if you didn’t get the lame joke…)

Don’t get me wrong, this is one of those nasty side effects of being an Entrepreneur – we get more ideas than we know what to do with them, they pop into our heads in machine gun succession much faster than we can handle them, and as a result, we want to get them all started and carry them all to completion because we are awesome, and always think of the good ideas first, right?

Here’s the thing – there is creation, then there is having a clear path to completion. As of today, I have around 50 domains sitting in one of my registrar accounts, and I have a clear vision for every single one of them. Yeah, its a painful process singling out the winners from the losers (there were over a hundred of them), but that’s how things have to happen. Limit distraction, and you will get more done, plus as a by product, if you can throw enough focus at the right projects that need that attention, you might actually make a few bucks, repeat the process, and end up in my shoes.

Make a few considerations about your projects. Detail what needs to be done to get it off the ground, plan out what the product is that you are delivering to your audience, how you are going to find your audience, how you are going to monetize the project, and most importantly, draw up a timeline that you will stick to like your life depended on it so that you can, without distraction and deterrence, get the job done before you start anything else.

It’s all about direction – removing the need to consistently go round and round the deadly “creation cycle” where you buy and build, but never actually fine tune your idea enough so that it puts money in your pocket, but instead, build more “things’ that you are never going to finish.

Here’s a message for you.

Yes. I’m talking to you…

Creation, as much as it is the start of what can become very good things, is extremely addictive. So much so that you can easily find yourself creating, creating, and creating some more, and before you know it, you have a huge number of domains and websites that are making no money, with no clear plan to move forward, but you’re left broke and wondering why, completely oblivious to the vicious cycle that you are stuck in that has (for the past year or two) held you back from bringing a single project to completion.

Cut me a deal here. I don’t want people who read this blog to leave without some kind of value. It’s time for you (yes, you!) to get organized. Consider to yourself (do it now!) what the #1 project that you should be working on right now is, plan it out from start to end, and allocate yourself a good block of time every single day to getting it done. Table out the tasks on a whiteboard.

Cant afford a whiteboard? Check out your local bargain center, they regularly have them for a 20 – 30$. Don’t want one? Get a legal pad and draw it up, just whatever you do… have a plan. No… Make a plan. Every time, and stick to it from start to end, no compromises, be relentless, and get the damn job done.

A final thought – anyone can think up an awesome business idea, and anyone can start developing that idea. The real skill is in your ability to disallow yourself to be distracted by the noise of other great “potential” ideas, and instead, focus on the real ideas that matter – eg, the one that is right in front of you begging to be completed. There is a time for all ideas, and as much as your lizard brain might be trying to convince you otherwise, now is only ever the right time for one task – the one that you are yet to take to completion.

It is perfectly fine to create new things, but do it at the right time, in the right mindset, and most importantly, for the purpose of taking it to completion.

So... who would you click on in this search result?

At the start of July this year, many people started noticing that there were a few pretty big changes happening in search. The number one most influential change being the inclusion of a profile image to the right of search results. I’d also like to make it very clear that I am not talking about the smaller avatars below results, as per some confusion on Twitter and Facebook this weekend about a breaking story from Google that actually broke a month ago.

Understandably, this is going to be a pretty drastic change, a real “Make Or Break” kind of change, and one that (luckily enough!) we can use to our advantage. For example – consider the impact that having an author profile image may have from a traffic generation standpoint.

Number one – it builds trust right where you are trying to attract visitors, and number two – it provides yet another avenue to attract followers to your social media profile, namely your Google or Google+ profile.

In all essence, a massive positive change that you can ALL use to your advantage right now by simply adding two link relationship tags to your blog.

Note - If you don’t or aren’t confident doing this yourself, click here to get me to do it for you.

The first of these tags is the rel=”author” tag. This tag is used only on a link to your “about” page on your blog. What this tag does is quite simple – it tells Google that this page is a page that is dedicated to the author, and is the most important page on your blog or website relating to the author. Quite simple, right?

The second of these tags is the rel=”me” tag. This tag should only ever be placed on your author page, and should only ever link to either a Google+ profile, or a standard Google profile. What this does is quite simple – it tells Google that the page that you are linking to is in fact the profile of the author. This is exactly where Google will pull its profile image from.

Now, I have created a video showing you how to make the appropriate changes to your blog so that you can potentially start seeing your profile image displayed beside your search results, but be aware – this is not something that just happens after you have done the work. Much like other listing upgrades in Google, this is on a case by case scenario, and either may or may not happen for you. That said, if you practice good SEO, and rank highly for specific keywords, then this will be a very important process for you to follow and implement right now (Seriously, put aside 10 minutes right now, this is that important!).

Video Resources:

The code to use in your functions.php file to enable to use of relationship tags in posts is as follows:

function yoast_allow_rel() {
	global $allowedtags;
	$allowedtags['a']['rel'] = array ();
}
add_action( 'wp_loaded', 'yoast_allow_rel' );

This post was heavily influenced by information given by Joost De Valk on his blog www.yoast.com – I give credit where it is due, and as an avid reader of his blog, I recommend his work to anyone who reads this blog. His original post on this topic can be found here.

And… don’t forget to test your blog with the Rich Snippets Testing Tool. If it doesn’t work, comment below, and I will see what advice I can offer.

As always, if you have any questions, please let me know, and remember to retweet this post or +1 it.

Cant Be Bothered Doing This Yourself?

That’s fine, not all of us know our stuff when it comes to coding and messing around with the inner workings of a WordPress blog, or a static HTML site.

Don’t want to do the work yourself? Click here to have Ryan do it for you.