Inflation was dormant for 40 years. Much as the Federal Reserve tried, especially after the financial crisis of 2008, it could not cause inflation.

The Federal Reserve could not even hit its goal of 2% annual inflation.

Well, that has all changed dramatically. The governments of the world have all gone crazy with the covid hysteria and the overreaction and money printing have gone off the rails. But the truth is, this is all just to cover up the fact that all the governments have been borrowing money (stealing) with no intention of ever paying it back.

To cover up their crimes, they have created shortages and inflation, and now they are on to creating was as a distraction.

Not to scare you, but this sounds bad, yes?

Well, there is some good news. Investors that can see all this nonsense that is going on are looking for insurance against the financial system, and they are finding that protection in the shiny yellow metal, gold.

All of these bad things that are currently going on are a catalyst for gold. Gold is rock solid (please excuse the pun). Investors turn to gold in times of uncertainty and in times of crisis. Well, guess what? Those times are here.

What about rising interest rates? That will hurt the price of gold right? Because that is what has always happened in the past, correct? No. Just look. In just two months, interest rates have gone from 3% to 5%. In just two months! A historic rise in interest rates in such a short amount of time.

This must-have caused the price of gold to collapse, or at least decline, right? Again no. The price of gold has remained mostly even and has even risen slightly, in the face of skyrocketing interest rates. This doesn’t make sense to most investors.

Don’t be like most investors. Realize that gold has been valued by humanity for at least 5,000 years. Gold has seen countless panics, depressions, wars, and inflations come and go. One of the many reasons why we value gold is because it is dependable.

In times of great crisis, people always turn to gold. And when this happens the price rises. We are in times of great uncertainty, so even when the interest rates rise at an unprecedented speed, gold remains unfazed. Because of this, nearly all investors need to have at least some of their portfolios allocated to gold and other precious metals. Many investors can see what is going on with the economy and have made a smart decision to move a 401k to gold without a penalty by opening up a gold IRA. Even if you just move a portion of your 401k to gold, you are still getting ahead of the investing crowd.

Let’s review some of the main factors that drive the price of gold.

A weakening currency will push the price of gold higher. Well, all global currencies are weakening. The United States government is doing everything it can to destroy the dollar. They are inventing new ways to print and devalue a currency. Whether this is all being done intentionally or the people making the decisions are bumbling idiots is unknown, and it does not matter. The fact is the abuse of the currencies means that the price of gold will go up.

Inflation and loss of confidence are also key drivers in the rising price of gold. It now takes two to three dollars to buy you what only took one dollar to push as recent as two years ago. That is wild inflation. The average working person is getting crushed by this loss of purchasing power. The reason inflation causes the price of gold to rise is because of fear. If investors don’t buy gold today at $2,000 an ounce, they will have to buy it next month at $2,400 an ounce.

The longer you wait, the more the price you will have to pay, and the less of the product you will get for your dollars. This also impacts investor confidence because they are scared of this. In normal peaceful times, prices don’t move this quickly. When confidence declines the price of gold rises because of FOMO (fear of missing out). Investors worry if they don’t buy today, they will have to pay a lot more soon. They are correct, and this pushes gold higher.

Capital flows, both domestic and internationally, have a huge impact on the price of gold. Capital flows are the main reason why the style of investing called Trend Following works so well. If money (capital) is flowing into an asset, that asset will rise in price. The asset is popular with a lot of investors, and investors are spending money to acquire the asset, then the price goes up. When Trend Following investors see a lot of capital going into an asset like gold, they buy gold too because they know that a rising tide lifts all boats.

The same is also true of capital flows and Trend Following in reverse. If most investors decide that they do not want the asset, then money will flow out of the asset as more and more investors sell the asset. This is unfortunate for you if you are looking to acquire gold at a cheap price point because this is not currently happening in the gold market. Capital flows internationally are going into gold and the price is rising in all currencies, which is the signal of a real bull market because all the governments around the world are all doing the same thing and all going insolvent.

Momentum breeds momentum, as the saying goes, and the momentum is going into gold.

A popular, but much less powerful reason for the price to rise is due to government central banks buying gold as reserves. Don’t believe the hype. It’s popular nonsense by gold promoters to say that a central bank that is in trouble, will buy gold to stay afloat. This just is not true. Central banks hate gold because they can’t just print more of it like they can their currency units. And a central bank will never allow its gold reserves to be audited by an independent third party. So don’t think that because a central bank is buying gold that the price will go up. That is mostly a myth.

Now, some people think that gold will not rally because of cryptocurrencies. Somehow crypto has everyone in a trance and they don’t think that gold works like it used to. Just take a step back and think for yourself. While we don’t hate crypto like many gold investors, we know that crypto is not gold. Gold still has value even if all the power goes out from a cyber attack. If the internet goes down, your crypto goes to zero. Gold has been around for at least 5,000 years and probably longer. It has never gone to zero. There is a place for both gold and crypto in a smart investor’s portfolio. But do not get caught up in the hype that gold has replaced crypto because it is simply not accurate.

Hopefully, we have convinced you that there are many solid, well-thought-out reasons for allocating a portion of your investment portfolio to gold. Some investors will want more exposure, some less, just make sure that you get off a zero allocation. Your retirement depends on it.

First off, a bit of a contradiction here.

I don’t believe in reading books about search engine optimization, if you don’t know how to do SEO.  The best thing you can do is build your own websites and try to rank them.

Trial and error for SEO works best.

That is how I, your humble author, learned search engine optimization.  And it took me years and thousands of hours and I made a lot of mistakes and wasted a ton of money in the process.

One thing I tried to do is learn from people that were better than me at understanding algorithms.

And that helped a lot.

Since I’ve been able to rank many different websites, in many different niches in Google, I’ve come to the conclusion that the fundamentals of SEO hasn’t changed for at least 3-5 years.  In fact, the fundamentals have become more important.

And the fundamentals will become even more important in the future.

You’ve got to learn how to build a web page that a machine (googlebot) comes to and crawls, so that the machine can actually understand what they webpage is about.

The big thing you need to understand about SEO is that a machine can’t look at a page, or an image on a page, and understand or form an opinion about what the page is about.

You have to tell the machine specifically what the page is about.

And this important basic ideas is not going to change.

Because of these fundamental ideas aren’t going anywhere, I can now actually recommend books for someone to read on the topic of Learning SEO for a Beginner.

SEO Books I Recommend

I will only recommend 2 authors, because I know they are good and I’ve learned from both of them.

The first recommendation is from Ryan Stewart titled: The SEO Blueprint: How to Get More Organic Traffic Right Now

You should also follow Ryan on Twitter (I do).

Just read another article arguing that "SEO is dead".

If you agree with this, here's my thoughts…

SEO isn't dead. You just suck at it.

— Ryan Stewart (@ryanwashere) October 29, 2020

Ryan’s active on social and I’ve learned a lot from his posts on Twitter and LinkedIn.

I’ve followed Ryan’s work for years now.  He consistently stays up to date with the latest methods and even pushes the envelope in some areas.

One of Ryan area of expertise is systems and processes.

If you do SEO for any amount of time, you’ll quickly learn there are huge time sucks in SEO.  What I mean by time suck is, little tedious tasks that will take up way too much of your time.

Ryan is one of the very best at creating systems to efficiently handle these important but tedious tasks.

Ryan is so good at creating systems that he sold his first search marketing agency, basically because the buyer wanted to acquire all this sales and fulfillment processes.

In his book The SEO Blueprint: How to Get More Organic Traffic Right Now, Ryan shows you how to do this and more.

I definitely recommend reading this book if you’re a beginner to SEO, but also if you’ve been at it and successful for a while with search.  Because darn near every SEO practitioner I know, needs to get better at creating systems so they can expand their business.

My second recommendation is by Bruce Clay: Search Engine Optimization All-in-One For Dummies.

Bruce Clay has been around from the beginning of SEO.  I found out about Bruce Clay from reading his blog.  Even if you don’t buy his book, you should definitely read his blog.

If you want to know the foundations of search engine optimization, Bruce is the guy to learn from.

What's the core web vital "cumulative layout shift" and how can you check it on your website?

This post wraps up our series on Google's Page Experience algo update, coming sometime in 2021.https://t.co/Do6vIGKEos #corewebvitals #seo #google pic.twitter.com/O5vc8Qf5I3

— Bruce Clay, Inc. (@BruceClayInc) October 21, 2020

You can follow Bruce Clay on Twitter if you want.  I don’t because it’s a boring company account.  You can still learn stuff, but the Bruce Clay Twitter account doesn’t use social media correctly, like a networking tool.

That account isn’t really “social”.  That’s why I recommend following Ryan Stewart on Twitter, but going to Bruce Clay’s website to read his blog.

If you’re looking for fancy tricks and techniques, you won’t find it in Bruce’s book Search Engine Optimization All-in-One For Dummies.

What you will find is how to build a proper web page and website that is easily found and understood by Google.  And this is why I recommend his book, because this information is not going to become obsolete in the next year, or the next Google update.

Bruce tells you how to build information on the internet in a foundational way, that will only become more important in the future.

And because this is part of the “For Dummies” franchise, it is written in an easy to understand, and easy to take action manner.

That’s it.  Those are my 2 recommendations.

I see a lot of other posts that compete with this one that recommend 10 or 15 different books on SEO that you need to read.

Definitely don’t read 10-15 SEO books if you’re a beginner.  It’s a complete waste of time.

That’s why I’m only recommending 2, and these are the 2 best know I know of and have gotten value from myself.

Thanks for reading!

GMB: Your Most Important Citation for Search Engine Optimization

Are you a new business owner that is looking to start developing your online presence to make it easier for customers to find you? This article will help you understand the importance of Google my business and how it can benefit your business. This will also be a step-by-step guide to help you launch your Google my business profile and set it up correctly to maximize its effectiveness.

So let’s get started!

Why is Google My Business Important?

Some business owners argue that having a Google my business page isn’t as important as everyone makes it out to be. So let us clarify the confusion and show you how it can benefit your business to see if you find it worth setting up.

The first thing is that Google My Business makes it easy for people to find your business. Whenever a customer searches for your brand name, you want that customer to find your business instead of one of your competitors. Just imagine if people were looking for your business and didn’t see your Google My Business page – how many customers would that be costing you?

Google My Business also gives people an easy way for people to call you, see your credibility from reviews and see the hours your business is open. All of these features make it incredibly easy for customers to find the information about your business that they are searching for. Also, since Google My Business is incredibly easy to set up – it makes sense to have it and enjoy all the benefits than not have it set up at all and miss out. So let’s dive into how to set up a Google My Business page if you are in the local services industry.

How To Set Up Google My Business

The first thing you need to do is choose a Gmail account that you would like to grant ownership access to for your Google My Business page. We recommend using your personal Gmail account but if you don’t have one, just create a brand new one. Once you have your Gmail account selected, it’s time to create your business page.

1. Go to Google and search “Google My Business”.
2. Click the first search result and sign into your Gmail account
3. Click Add a new business listing

Once you get to this point you will need to verify that your business exists before you are able to start filling out your business information. This sounds difficult but it is really simple. Google will ask you for your business name and address. Once you provide Google with your business name and address, they will send you a post card with a code to your business address to validate that your business exists. All you need to do is type the code that you receive into your business page and that will verify that your business and address is real. The post card usually takes anywhere from one to three weeks to arrive so be patient!

Adding Business Information

Once you received you Google My Business code and have verified your account – it’s time to start setting up your business information. The first thing you should do is add your phone number and make sure that the address is listed correctly. Once this is complete you can start filling in the rest of the business information that includes:

• Business hours
• Services
• Price ranges
• Industry
• Photos

Adding Business Photos

There are different type of business of photos you can add to your business page. However, there are also some photos that we suggest you not to add to your business page. The best type photos to add is the ones of what your actual business interior and exterior looks like. This make it convenient for customers to be able to recognize your business if they are trying to find you.

We suggest taking pictures of the inside of your office, the outside of your office, pictures of the team, pictures of work in action etc. This will make your business profile look great!

If you are a general contractor and don’t actually have people coming to your office because you provide a service for them at their home then you can also add pictures of past work that you’ve completed, your business logo, pictures of the team at work etc. Now we suggest to avoid adding pictures that are not directly related to your business specifically.

Too many businesses add stock photos to their business page that they’ve purchased from professional photographers. These types of photos may be beneficial for your website, but your Google My Business page should only have photos of your actual business. The reason for this is that Google frowns upon having stock photos on the Google My Business page and also it does not benefit your customers.

Your customers might be looking for something specific like what the front of your office looks like, the interior, past work and stock photos provide none of these benefits.

Google My Business Posts

Google My Business posts are one of Google’s newest features for business pages. This allows business owners to make a post or show a photo directly on their Google listing whenever their brand name is searched. This can be super beneficial if you have any special promotions going on that you want to make customers aware of. If you are a credible company with many people searching for your business online – just imagine being able to show your customers and potential clients a special promotion while they are searching for your business. You can use this feature to share reviews, promotions, any information posts, things that you’ve posted on social media, or whatever you like. Most people find this feature extremely effective.

So this concludes our step-by-step guide on how to set up your Google My Business profile. Our team believes that Google My Business pages are one of the best things a company can use to improve their search presence. We hope you were able to benefit from this and we wish you more success for your business!

—

Special thanks to Mathew Moretin of Toronto SEO for contributing this article.

We’re Back!

EvolverIntensives.com is re-indexed in Google.

This means that you can find us in Google.  While we had the Manual Spam Penalty, you could not find this website in Google.  This means we were de-indexed.  That is the penalty.  Google kicks you off Google, so that no one can find your website on Google, which means you won’t get any visitors to your website from the largest, most heavily trafficked website in the world.

It’s not good to get a manual penalty from Google (especially if you’re a blog about SEO!).

This is the last update about the penalty.  On the last update, which you can read here: I Got a Manual Spam Penalty from Google REMOVED! But, I don’t know how, the Manual Penalty had been removed, but this website still wasn’t showing up in Google’s index.

If you don’t show up in Google, then it’s the same as having a penalty.  We’ll you can now Google “evolver intensives” or “evolverintensives.com” or “evolver intensives SEO tools” and you will see us!

This means we are fully back and healthy again.

If you’d like to read the first post (where I was panicking), you can read that here: https://www.evolverintensives.com/i-got-a-manual-spam-penalty-from-google-dont-know-how-to-fix/

I made a video explaining as much as I know and what I learned about the process that you can watch here:

I hope that this new blog post gets indexed in Google!

Here is a transcript from the video:

Hey guys, I’m the SEOBizBuilder and today I’m going to do something a little different, I’m going to do a video answer of a question that I got.

Now I answer SEO and digital marketing questions on Google on Quora on Twitter and on a bunch of different places on the internet. I really like this question and I wanted to go in depth on this answer.

This one came through on Quora.com it says, “Should SEO be my primary online marketing channel?”

So obviously I’m biased I build websites and businesses based on free traffic from the internet and Google. Just want to be clear about where my biases are.

Going into that should it (SEO) be your primary marketing channel marketing strategy?

Here’s The Answer:

It depends.

It’s like everything in SEO. It depends.

So I know people and myself included that have built, well people who have built a lot bigger businesses than I have, and all they use is SEO.

All they’re using is free traffic from Google and also other sites on the internet, but they do it just with SEO or search engine optimization. Of course, I have met great copywriters, direct response copywriters and I have met folks that are great at paid marketing, and they won’t even touch SEO.

They based their entire business on a different form of marketing and that’s cool too. And then there’s some SEO’s who got really good at SEO and then they also build on top of that paid marketing, and YouTube marketing, which is paid marketing, and content marketing, and all sorts of other stuff.

So it depends on what you’re good at. And what you want to do, really you want to figure out what your strengths are, so is it your primary one.

It should be your primary marketing source it just depends. For me it is search engine optimization.

How I got into SEO

I got to tell you a quick little story how I got into search engine optimization. I wanted to write direct response ads, like those mailers you get, or a headline that gets you to open up an email, or submit your email to get a free case study or whatever.

That’s direct response advertising. I wanted to do that but I couldn’t find anyone to hire me to do that because I had no experience. So I had a pressure washer and it was like well heck I’ll just start writing mailers out and getting see if I can get people to hire me to do the pressure washing.

I didn’t know anything about pressure washing but that’s exactly what I did. I read books like these, The Ultimate Sales Letter, shout out to Dan Kennedy. He’s a direct response guy marketing guru.

So I built a business on doing mailers and I didn’t like that business because I don’t didn’t like pressure washing but I did like the marketing aspect of it. And I was looking on ways to improve the marketing of that and that’s when I learned search engine optimization and I realized, oh I’ll just build a website for pressure washing in the town I was living in at the time.

And then I would get calls in day and night and I wouldn’t have to send out mailers all the time which cost a bunch of money.

And so that worked great for me and I transitioned over to SEO and I got goodat SEO and I built a marketing company and that’s what I do for local businesses.

I help them and I work on their websites and get them to the top of Google get them more customers but now I’m also transitioning back to learning and trying to get better at copywriting once again. To stack that on top of search engine optimization because if I can get a website and get all that traffic now I want to get better at converting that traffic.

Go with Your Strengths

So it just depends. If you’re really good at conversion, you need traffic. If you’re really good at traffic it’ll help you if you’re if you know a little bit of conversion. So, the question is should, SEO be my main marketing channel? The answer is, it depends. It is for me but I say go with what you’re good at.

All right, let me know what you think of this format if you guys have questions just let me know let me know in the comments.

Maybe I’ll make another video if I get another good question. All right. Thanks a lot.