Internet Marketing in 10 Minutes

For many months now a group of friends and co-workers of mine have had this little ranking game going on with a particular keyword in Google. The objective was to out rank one another and stay at the top of Google’s SERPs for as long as
possible.

Good old Matt Cutts rocked our world on Thursday when we discovered one of his posts sitting at the top of our little competition. Our little side competition suddenly became much more interesting. Now instead of out performing one another we will have to set our scope on beating Matt Cutts in a game he robably doesn’t even know he has interrupted at the time of this posts writing.

I’ll be the first to admit that not all of our tactics to game one another have been all that kosher but at least in my case I figured it was a harmless term that very few people actually search for.

From blog category names to creative usage of titles and even creating the post with a keyword rich name and then renaming it so it wouldn’t be so obvious at first; we have pretty much done it all just to game one another.

All four of us involved in this little content writing competition have had our fair jokes about how Aaron Wall virtually made the term “SEO Book” popular. Before he came into the picture I think I read somewhere that it wasn’t a widely searched term. (If anyone reading this knows a link to an article that talks about that i’d appreciate you letting me know so I can reference it). Our little posse of small time bloggers figured that just maybe we’d make our term a big success like Aaron has. Well Matt; it looks like we now have a lot to work to do.

As far as I know only two of us have seen Matt show up at the top for our term so this post is somewhat of a head start for me but I think I will be giving the advice that we all should work not only towards out ranking one another but that each of us should work on pushing Matt down just for the added thrill… That is IF Matt allows us to have our fun without getting creative with his Super human Google Powers.

By now I’ve probably triggered a few Google Alerts. Somewhat purposeful and somewhat accidental I assure you. However it is what it is and I’m sure that Aaron Wall and Matt Cutts have probably browsed this post by now or at least have been informed that their names were brought up in one way or another.

Let me introduce the game players so that everyone knows who all might be involved in this little game of ours that has taken a serious interesting turn of events.

Zak Nicola - Zak happens to have some of the most interesting posts out of all of us simply because they aren’t all related to Internet Marketing or SEO related topics. He has a page or two on the ever so popular cat frenzy that seems to keep everyone occupied and let’s not forget Zak in drag! This very sexy picture of Zak Nicola got us laughing and smiling for a long time.

Jeremy Rivera - Jeremy is to blame for this competition. He is fairly new to Internet marketing in general and prior to that he was a Customer Support Supervisor. He got nosey and started asking questions one day and never stopped. It was a surprise to us all when the company we all work for decided that Jeremy deserved to be the Marketing Manager.

Jeremy originally ranked for this keyword term prior to his promotion. We all thought that it would be funny (and easy) to push his blog down on our targeted keyword so set out to write a lot of content (some useful, some not) around the topic. So the game began and has gone on for several months now.

Shirley Tipsy - Many people might recall Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006. There were two ladies who attended the conference that wore “Matt Cutts is a God” and “Matt Cutts Makes Me Google” T-shirts. Needless to say; to this day Shirley Tipsy still Googles over Matt Cutts. I was unfortunately not brave enough to wear any of those shirts during that trip so I didn’t go down as the guy wearing a “Matt Cutts Loves Me” T-shirt or whatever Shirley had planned for me.

Shirley Tipsy is also known as Audrey and she is our former Marketing Manager. She still works for the same company but now she is in charge of our company site and not our client sites. She has been involved in this game since the beginning but has been an even bigger game player in the SEO industry for many many years.

(Compliments of http://www.webuildpages.com/)

John Jones - That’s me! Jeremy first showed off his new blog to me via instant message at work one day. Later that evening at home he sent me another instant message letting me know that he was ranking for a keyword that looked rather impressive at first.

It is always easier to write about other people yet it is always easier to speak highly of oneself; why is that? I’m not exactly sure what to say except that I’ve been honored to work with the people I’ve worked with. I’m also very happy to have been contacted by people like Rand Fishkin and Rebecca Kelley for very small and non important issues all the way up to Barry Schwartz aka Rustybrick
over at Search Engine Round Table right around the time that Google launched their Adwords Print Campaign capability.

So now that I’ve introduced the players of this game I’ll tell you that the targeted keyword is “Content Writing Advice“. Many posts and many links have been purposefully established just to target and rank for this keyword term.

Zak probably has one of the best posts out of the four of us while my original post is probably the absolute worse out of the bunch. Now that Matt and others may be taking a small interest in this little game of ours though I hope that we will all be able to step it up a notch and show that we really truly deserve those top positions instead of Matt’s post on, “SEO Advice: Writing useful articles that readers will love“.

John Jones

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

Update 3/7/08 4:18am: For the record, Matt has always had a ranking
for this keyword term; he simply has never been number one for it. I should have
taken periodic screenshots and certainly a screenshot for last night. This morning
my obsessive compulsive self checked CWA (Content Writing Advice) and Matt is
no longer at the top again. Possible Google fluke last night or maybe this morning
but I still think this will be a fun addition to our competition to follow through
on.

• Uniqueness: 10.0
• Overall Rating: 10.0
• Usefulness: 10.0

4 Comments »

Writing content for a blog, website or promotional print media isn’t all that easy when you think about it. You cannot expect to attract readers simply because you wrote something and put it out there on the Internet. If you build it they will come does NOT hold true with traditional or online marketing efforts in today’s marketplace.

I’ve written some pretty horrific blogs on here before even by my own standards. Some I’ve simply removed right away and others still exist though I won’t be pointing them out. Then again maybe a “Top 10 Worse Posts” section on my blog is a good idea…

I once gave a friend of mine some advice when he first launched his blog and he wrote a decent follow up blog titled, “Swallow Your Pride: How To Take Advantage of Constructive Criticism“.

So in the spirit of good humor and in hopes of everyone actually liking what I write on this blog I think for kicks I’ll find a way to set up a thumbs up / down system much like Rand Fishkin is doing over at SEOMoz with the blogs they post. Everyone could use a little constructive critism every now and then and even Rand would agree with that; right Rand?

John Jones

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

• Uniqueness: 10.0
• Overall Rating: 10.0
• Usefulness: 10.0

1 Comment »

This Internet Marketing in 10 Minutes blog was established in May of 2007. From now until then I have written 71 different blog posts on all topics related to SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing.

Like many new blogs my first few posts didn’t get off the ground all that much in regards to how many people actually read them. I’m a little more established now and have a regular reader base so should anyone be interested in some of my older works I might suggest reading my Content Baiting, Does Content Baiting Equal Link Baiting? and Content Lifecycle: Creation, Refresh, Archival, Expiration.

In 2007 I had several posts that really surprised me in regards to the amount of readers they had. To this day I still get traffic to these posts so they might be worth looking at when you have some time. They include Social Networking & Link Building, Paid Directory Collapse, Making Money with Social Networking, and Second - The New First Place

I also enjoyed several respectable industry leaders in the Internet Marketing arena visit my site including Rand Fishkin and Rebecca Kelley from SeoMoz. I’ve also had Jill Whalen visit in the past even though I believe she didn’t exactly agree with an opinion I had.

Also, some of you will be in on a little secret between a few of my fellow friends and co-workers. We all decided to get together and wash out another friends ranking on Google for the term, “Content Writing Advice”. It was a fairly easy goal and I maintained the number one ranking for a number of weeks before I got bumped off the top 100 all together. This link is just to poke at those friends and co-workers…

Anyways starting tomorrow I will be publishing a series of articles on link building practices starting with what I’ll consider the basics all the way up to advanced strategies. Over the next few weeks I’ll review as many strategies as I’ve done myself or have yet to experiment with. Regardless who you are within the Internet Marketing industry, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on these up coming posts.

Here’s looking into 2007 and anticipating 2008!

John Jones

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

1 Comment »

I apologize for not writing as often as I’ve done in the past. With the holiday season upon us and all the preparation that goes into play during this time of the year there is a good chance I won’t be posting very much until the start of 2008.

I do have a series of articles on link building in the works that should prove to be a nice push at the start of the year.

From my family to yours; I want to wish you a very blessed and merry time over the Christmas season. Let the egg nog and brandy pour, let the feast begin and enjoy your friends and family this holiday season.

John Jones

• Uniqueness: 1.0
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Usefulness: 1.0

2 Comments »

In the early hours of the morning on Wednesday November 28th Rand over at SEOMoz posted a blog titled, “ Complaining about Some Google Missteps“.

I didn’t much like the post and left a comment that says:

I’ll probably take a little slack for this comment but that is ok…

While I understand your complaints and have plenty of complaints of my own about Google related issues, I felt this post was very much like a public temper tantrum.

I went along with my day but I kept a close watch on additional comments to see which MOZers were going to have a lot of nasty things to say about me. I even started watching my blog for increased amounts of traffic thinking that people would be curious as to whom the looser is that basically accused Rand of whining.

As it turns out I only had 2 - 3 people comment on my negative comment and they merely said that they disagreed with me. No verbal backlash and I didn’t get a ton of thumbs down either. I even got a thumbs up that wasn’t from a friend or colleague.

Anyways, after work I decided that I would write two apologies to Rand. The first was a public apology that I posted on the blog post itself here. The second was an e-mail to Rand himself.

I decided I’d write this post on my blog because I wanted to comment on what a great guy Rand is. Not only did I not get slapped down for my comment by him or anyone else but he responded to my personal e-mail to him in a positive manner. He truly taught me a lesson today and he didn’t have to lift a finger to do it.

As it turns out the blog post that I thought was terrible at first yielded a large amount of comments and some very useful insight to Google directly from multiple posts by Matt Cutts. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few blog posts come up out of this midnight posting from Rand.

So two thumbs up for Rand Fishkin over at SEOMoz for being a better person towards me then I was towards him.

3 Comments »

I am employed by a large company offering marketing packages for their clients. For the most part I’d like to think that I am fairly successful at what I do. 78% of the keywords that I track for all of my clients are ranking within the first page of Google during the month of September.

A lot of what I do for each and every client I have is customized to their own specific needs. Some clients simply want more eyeballs on their website which means higher rankings on many related keyword terms. Others like the traffic and leads that their website generates for them while others still are perfectly fine with 1,000 visitors and a high lead capture ratio. Regardless their needs, I do my best to oblige them.

I must admit though that a lot of what I do or instruct my clients to do is pretty much Cookie Cutter SEO. If something worked for one client in Florida then the same concept might work for another client in California or anywhere else. Should I not doctor up an existing e-mail that was previously written by me for one client and send it off to another client?

Some of these things are as simple as adding keywords within the content, updating meta tags, anchor text links, cleaning up the source and I’ll even go as far as suggesting the same kind of lead capture idea’s to one client that I’ve already suggested to another client.

The suggestions or practices may be Cookie Cutter SEO but the end results are all different and unique to each and every client.

I don’t always agree with Cookie Cutter SEO. I don’t believe that you can sit down and write out a years worth of suggestions if you are a consultant and upon obtaining a new client set them up on an e-mail drip campaign. Many things could have changed since you wrote your suggestions out and you could be causing more harm than good for your new client.

If you are primarily a consultant, which means you tell your client what to do instead of doing it for them, make sure that if you are going to use
something that you’ve sent someone else that you rewrite it some to be unique to that specific client. I’ve made the mistake in the past by simply forgetting to change the name after ‘Dear..’. Whoops!

I write most of my proposals or suggested modifications to a website in Word. I save those in a folder called TEMPLATES and I’ll occasionally pull bits and pieces or all of the information from a specific file to send to one or more clients. A habit I’ve developed is to make anything variable within the document bold and red. You might try implementing some strategy like this as well if you start to manage dozens of clients on a regular basis.

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

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Before Internet marketing became a wonderful reality for me I had devoted my younger years to becoming a Chef. The one thing I remember about working in kitchens is that I never wanted to go home and cook dinner. I always went straight to the freezer and grabbed the best looking TV dinner.

I have close friends that work at Wal-Mart or Radio Shack and others that are teachers. Regardless what profession people are in, the common consensus that i’ve seen is that we like to leave work at work and enjoy what little time we have of our home life having fun.

My choice to dive into Internet marketing over six years ago has completely changed my understanding of being passionate about what I do. It also brings on a whole new outlook on being addicted to work.

So taking a page out of Rebecca’s rulebook over at SEOMoz I thought I would outline my typical day with my addiction with Internet marketing. Unfortunately it isn’t filled with sushi, repeat visits to Starbucks and meeting with people like Dave Naylor. It does however depict a day in the life of an SEO addict.

• 4:00 am: Wake Up
• 4:05 am: Check e-mail and Google Reader for eye catching SEO article titles.
• 4:55 am: Run out the door while still swishing mouthwash because I read an article or two and lost track of time.
• 5:20 am - 6:00 am: Try to catch a nap on the train but end up thinking about what I read in the morning and how to apply it to my days work ahead of me.
• 7:00 am - 3:30 pm: Spend my day and most of my breaks in front of my computer providing my clients with advice and reviewing their newest additions. I also end up doing research which sparks conversation between all eight of the marketing specialists in our department.
• 3:30 pm - 4:15 pm: Carpool with a co-worker where we end up rehashing things we’ve read during the day or strategies either one of us has decided to test out.
• 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm: Get as much time in on my personal websites as possible before the wife comes home and threatens me with the dog house if I don’t peel myself away from my work.
• 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm: Dinner with the wife and a show or two.
• 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm: Back at the computer hitting forums, on line marketing chat rooms and blogs commenting or helping others.

Somewhere in there you can count on me checking rankings, analytics, sitemaps and other factors that I pay attention to.

While it may look like the only time I have away from my addiction is during dinner I swear I step away on different occasions through out the week. Errands have to be ran, the Gym has to be visited, I need naps and well… my wife and I are having a baby so I’ve obviously made time for… well you know.

The few things I don’t like doing at home is taking my work home with me. Content writing is also one of those things I’d prefer to leave to things I am passionate about and that is mostly talking about SEO, SEM, Internet Marketing and the works.

Rule of Thumb: Don’t ask for content writing advice from John unless it is geared towards a topic he is passionate about. He will be happy to recommend a writer or two though.

Anyways, this post came to mind today between 3:30 pm and 4:15 pm when my co-worker and I were on our way home from work. We both are addicted to Internet marketing and while neither of our spouses understand our obsession maybe some of my readers will understand exactly where we are coming from.

Can you relate? Do you find yourself having a similar schedule? Share about it; after all the first sure sign of an addiction is denial.

• Uniqueness: 1.0
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Usefulness: 1.0

5 Comments »

If I was to build a website that was basically a how-to for creating illegal sweatshops and reference Nike with a link then I’d expect to receive a CnD (Cease and Desist). However to be told I have to link to a company in a certain way or else they are going to take further actions against me is just down right retarded.

Some websites have valid claims to controlling how people link to them. For example they don’t want people saying that they endorse the company without prior written permission. If that company has a registered Trademark for a phrase or saying then they can request the Trademark be removed from a website.

However what they can’t do is request that I stop linking to them with the following example:

“Today there are many different financing companies and services. Some are just ok, others are fantastic but over all you will need to find a company with your best interests in mind.”

I haven’t used the companies registered Trademark therefore they have no authority over the links I give them.

Companies with an authority website have others naturally linking to them. These companies don’t go out and buy links within directories or get local mom and pop shop type websites to link to them as their primary source of link building. Instead they get national exposure and professionals within the banking and real estate industry referencing them all the time. I’d venture a guess that almost all of their in bound links are natural.

When a company enforces a linking policy, they may actually be hurting themselves because of their requests being unreasonable or impractical. It may be easier for a website owner to just remove the link and be done with them. For example, I received a recent e-mail from a company complaining that a link on my site to theirs opened up in a new window. They mentioned that it is clearly stated in their linking policy that the link must open in the same window. Well guess what, I have my own views on best link building practices and that is that I can cause links on MY website to open in any which way I want them to open. I’ve since decided to remove that link from that particular website and sent that company an e-mail letting them know that the problem has been resolved and how.

The bottom line is this… A company or website is only successful because of word of mouth in some form of marketing or another. If a company wants to cut off the hand that feeds it then that is the risk they are going to have to be willing to take. They should pick their battles wisely because in the end they may end up losing the war.

- Disgruntled website owner

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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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