Internet Marketing in 10 Minutes

So directories allow you to add your link to a page that has 50 – 100 – 200 other advertisers all in the same area. This often costs a reciprocal link or an annual fee. Why bother anymore when there are new technologies in play that give you the ability to, for the most part, control your own page on a site that doesn’t belong to you? Having the authority to only link to your website or blog and writing content for a page that doesn’t solicit your competitors services is a pretty useful tool for search engine marketing.

Blogging, Social Networks, Social Bookmarks and other user interactive sites have been spreading for a few years now. Take MySpace.com for an example; it started out without much competition and allowed people to post to their very own blog hosted on Myspace.com. Today it gets more daily traffic then Google.

Active Rain is considered a Social Network for real estate agents, Del.Icio.Us is considered a Social Bookmark site and You Tube is considered a Social Video site. Either way, they are all social and require interaction.

So yesterday I was working on link research for one of my clients. I decided to spend my time reviewing the linking practices of his competitors and came across one particular competitor that had a constant pattern amongst his many links. He had created for himself several Social Identities. I found that he had an Active Rain (AR), MyBlogLog, Del.Icio.us, and a ClaimID profile among a dozen or so more of these links.

I quickly noticed that he was neglecting a large amount of these Social Identities but he did provide a link or two to his main website from them so they were passing some link love. In addition to the link love to his website he appears to randomly be linking to a few of his other Social Identities. In this way he passes value to each of the Social Identity profile pages that in return pass greater link love to his main website. I imagine he isn’t linking all of them to all of them in order to avoid being looked at as a link farm.

So now I have a new direction to take when looking for links for my clients. However if this is helpful for one person then it should be helpful for others. My only advice is to not just create an account and let it sit unused. Take advantage of this marketing tool and build upon each of the Social Identities you’ve created. This will not only help search engines not devalue the empty page(s) but it can also encourage other Social Networkers out there to reference (link to) your social contributions.

Since yesterday I’ve started establishing five Social Identities that will work on promoting this Marketing Blog and maybe even pass some link love to client websites and other sites that I frequent often. The one I’ve spent the most time on so far is my ClaimID Social Identity. Bookmark it and keep watch with my progress over the next few months as I put this concept into play and build a case study.

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Many people think that print media is a thing of the past. Well for all those Internet marketing wizards out there, who is going to deny that this bus on the freeway during rush hour didn’t elicit pictures, thoughts and sales?

It took a lot of effort for my co-worker and I to get this picture. We pulled over, hit the emergency flashers and whipped out our cell phones. I ended up with the better picture even though my camera takes a second or two to actually take the photo.

 

 

 

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Today I spoke with someone for about 30 minutes. He was looking for a SEO firm that could help him rank for terms like, “register domain”, “domain name registration”, “domain registrar”.

I instantly start to think of Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Register and other highly reputable companies in the domain name registration industry. I also start to think of Danny Sullivan, Bruce Clay, Greg Boser, and Eric Ward. In my mind this is these are the types of people that would be able to pull off such a project.

The gentleman I was talking to informed me that he was quoted $3,600.00 for the year by one company or individual. My first response was,

“Save your money because you’ll lose it.”

Rule number one for anyone looking for search engine optimization services is to ask yourself if it is to good to be true. Doing this will help you avoid the SEO burn effect and better gage the serious bidders against the non serious bidders.

I ended up telling him that less competitive keywords would be a better investment for his money. With an industry like that it is far better to target a large amount of long tail terms then throw your money up against companies that have more to throw back like GoDaddy.

Note: Long tail keywords are terms that are searched less. In this guys case that might be “bulk cheap domain name registration”.

Anyways, he is now going to send me a list of 30 keywords that he thinks he’d like to rank for. I’ll do some initial keyword research and most likely double or triple that list and present to him a bid. If he turns me down then at least he gets to walk away with some thorough keyword research and I’ll have the same research for later down the road.

Building trust and warning a client against potential danger (especially when it comes to their money) is a sure way to improve the total number of projects you are awarded through out your year.

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Today I received an instant message from a former co-worker that I’ve had the benefit of watching go from not knowing much to out performing me in pay scale. She started from the ground floor and worked her way to the top and when there was nowhere else for her to go in our company she moved to Arizona to work for a Scottsdale SEO Company called Obu Web Technologies as their Director of Search Marketing.

While she is still getting her feet wet with blogging and social marketing, I found her post today titled, “How social networks feed you to feed Google the goods” to be very well written and worthy of mention on my blog.

The post kept me interested the whole way through and I felt she explained her viewpoint rather well.

While I’m not looking forward to Google getting all psychological on me or my clients, I am always interested in the twists, turns and ups and downs that Google puts us through so as Melinda stated… “So go ahead and take over the brains of all us Google guppies, analyze what we’re into, and give us the results we want.”

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Today I was looking into some rankings for one of my clients. At the bottom of page two I noticed the following message by Google:

“In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.”

Now, I have my search set to 100 results per page in Google so if you want to do the search yourself and are at 10 results per page then you can skip over to about result page 20 for the term Summerlin real estate or you can click on the link and it should take you to the exact page.

I’ve never seen this before. Does anyone else have any additional sightings of something similar? I’d like to see more instances of this and I’d like to have that fax number! I’d also be interested to know if the offenders are alerted to their removal in the Google SERPs or know about the ability to file a DMCA Counter-Notice.

One thing I’m not so sure I agree on is how easy it is to identify the offender through the on line copy of the faxed complaint. (Read the DMCA complaint)

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Since I’ve started Sphinning I’ve received a few e-mail inquiries in regards to whether or not I am looking to take on new clients. That answer isn’t always yes but it never hurts to send an e-mail and ask.

I am fairly selective when it comes to the projects I pick up. I like to speak to the potential client about their goals and desired objectives that they’d like to see be produced from their online marketing efforts. I then like to have some time to scope out the potential client’s competition.

Either way if you are seriously looking to hire a consultant on a contract basis then send me an e-mail. The worse that can happen is I give you a sound viewpoint on search engine optimization for your industry and maybe even a few unknown keywords that you are better off targeting.

I apologize in advance but I don’t work with adult, gambling, dating or pharmaceutical websites.

I can be reached at jfj3rdws@gmail.com. Please provide me with your name, phone, e-mail, web address (if any) and a brief description of what you’d like to accomplish. Response will be by e-mail initially and later by phone. Response time will typically be within 24 hours.

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I spoke with a gentleman today from South Africa for about two hours. He had a lot of questions regarding Internet marketing and in particular search engine optimization. We discussed link popularity, Google page rank, keywords, competition and other topics.

Towards the end of our conversation it took a familiar path that many of us are probably used to.

Client: “This is the point i need to be brutally honest with you, do you know the age old saying of once bitten, twice shy?”

Me: “Yes and I am fairly familiar with it in this industry too.”

Client: “Well in my case, we’re sitting at about 10th bitten, very shy…”

I’m sure this sounds all too familiar for most SEO consultants today. Most potential clients are straight ripped off, taken or given something that doesn’t meet there needs. However it can also be that many potential clients are simply not educated when it comes to what we can and cannot produce for them.

I know time is money and I can appreciate that. However after spending two hours of educating this guy in regards to what can be guaranteed and what cannot, I believe he and I will do business together. During our call he learned about how useful Google Page Rank is to the success of his marketing efforts. He also learned about the importance of establishing a website that other website owners will want to link to as a resource and though he may not have understood it all that much I also explained to him about 301 redirects.

Another comfort I gave this client was that of taking the process step by step. Now I want to get paid in advance like everyone else but if I see an opportunity that isn’t going to cost me a dime then why not? I can start this guy out with keyword research that he can keep, a design that he can keep and even content that he can keep all in three stages. At that point I can make arrangements for the rest of the payment to be made for other aspects of the project. This client will make five payments to me and if at any point he decides I am not doing what he wants then he can take what he has paid for and go elsewhere.

Lastly I pointed the client to a few simple tools and websites that he himself could take advantage of. I showed him SEO Digger and I gave him a direct link to my 76 useful SEO / SEM websites & tools. While most of those links are common knowledge for the SEO community, to him it is like a pile of gold.

Note: I’ve given advice away free for many years and the end result is that the client doesn’t have the time to do all of this him or herself so they end up hiring me simply because I provided them with enough information to learn.

The moral of the story is this… give a little and you may end up getting a lot in return. It doesn’t take much to build trust between you and someone who has experienced the SEO burn before if you take the time and plan ahead with the potential client even before they pay you.

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Today I noticed a nice surprise over at http://www.mybloglog.com. I’ve been receiving a nice amount of traffic directly related to the blog posts that I’ve added directly to Sphinn.

I thought I’d share the outcome of this week’s statistics with everyone to show just how powerful a social network can be, even one as new as Sphinn and for a person who isn’t as well known as many of the known SEO Guru’s.

8/3/07 & 8/4/07

I didn’t really have anything going on with blog postings.

Page Views: 13
Readers: 4

8/5/07 & 8/6/07

I posted Psychotic Breaks and Multiple Personalities Wanted. This was a job listing that I thought was amusing enough to share with the industry so I Sphunn it.

Page Views: 91
Readers: 41

8/7/07

I didn’t post anything to my blog and traffic from the previous posting started to die down.

Page Views: 7
Readers: 6

8/8/07

I posted “76 Useful SEO / SEM Websites & Tools” This was posted later in the evening at around 9:30 PM PST. Chances are not many people were as active as there might be during the day. However the turn out in the last remaining hours of the day was fantastic.

Page Views: 63
Readers: 15

Today is August ninth and I have yet to get the latest statistics from MyBlogLog.com. However, while the day isn’t done yet I have had fifty-eight page views and 24 readers.

Over all I’d say so far Sphinn has been highly effective in driving readers to my blog. It may be a little time consuming and addicting but it is worth the efforts put into each post.

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Keyword Research Links:

• Overture
• Word Tracker
• Keyword Discovery

Search Engine Pay Per Click:

• Google Adwords
• Yahoo Search Marketing
• MSN Adcenter
• Ask Sponsored Listings
• ABC Search

Rank Verification Sites / Tools:

• SEO Digger
• Digital Point Keyword Tracker & Ranking Tool
• Google Rankings
• Web Position Gold
• Web CEO
• Search Engine Genie - Google
• Search Engine Genie - Yahoo
• Search Engine Genie - MSN

Social Networking Sites:

• Digg
• Sphinn
• LinkedIn
• MyBlogLog
• MySpace
• FaceBook
• ActiveRain (Real Estate Industry)
• Twitter

SEO Chat / Radio

• Webmaster Radio

SEO / Webmaster Forums:

• SEO Round Table
• Webmaster World
• SEOMoz
• Web Workshop
• High Rankings
• SEO Chat
• Digital Point
• Wicked Fire
• Search Engine Watch
• Cre8 a Site Forums

Backlink Checking Tools:

• Google Webmaster Central
• Market Leap
• Digital Point

Google Employee Blogs:

• Matt Cutts
• Adam Lasnik

Yahoo Employee Blogs:

• Jeremy Zawodny

Ad Networks:

• Ad Bright
• Text Link Ads
• Google Adsense
• Yahoo Publisher Network

Domain Registrars / Tools:

• Register
• Godaddy
• Dotster
• Moniker
• Netsol
• PC Names

Social Bookmarking Sites:

• Del.icio.us
• Technorati.com

Social Video Sites:

• You Tube

Social Photo Sites:

• Flickr
• True Party

Directories To Be Found In:

• Yahoo Directory
• Dmoz
• BOTW

Other Valuable Directories:

• UniXL
• The Internet Public Library
• The WWW Virtual Library

Classifieds Sites:

• Craigslist
• Google Base

Educational Sites:

• W3 Schools
• SEO Book
• Search Engine Land

Wiki Websites:

• Wikipedia
• Wiki How

Random SEO Blogs:

• Shoe Money
• Jim Boykin
• Caydel’s Blog
• David Naylor’s UK Blog
• Cshel
• Jason Bartholme
• StuntDubl

Thanks to Little Miss SEO for helping me find some of these websites.

• Uniqueness: 4.5
• Overall Rating: 2.5
• Usefulness: 3.0

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*** This is a job listing I found on CareerBuilder.com; Not only is this a great read but I think the writer should get the job. ***

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