Internet Marketing and Advertising

Do you depend on free search engine traffic for your livelihood?

I admit it. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keyword density, keyword relevance, KEI, incoming links and link text, and where my web site and web pages rank in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for my targeted keyword phrases.

This afternoon I had a shock. I discovered my main web site was dropped from Yahoo! Not one page could be found in Yahoo, out of hundreds! This was after months of working to completely revamp the site, rebuilding it with a nice content management system and lots of pertinent on-topic content, building links, writing and publishing articles, creating RSS news feeds and publicizing them…

I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It’s a clean site - no black-hat SEO techniques, nothing that should get me banned, just good information, the heart and soul of the Web.

I checked my logs, and thought, “Oh my God, it doesn’t look like Yahoo has crawled my web site in over a month.” This was after getting used to Yahoo’s spider crawling my web site daily because of all of the new, pertinent information (and especially because of the RSS news feeds and pinging). But I hadn’t noticed because traffic was still high, even increasing.

Frantically I searched the Web for information about Yahoo making changes. Sure enough, I discovered that Yahoo apparently changed their search algorithm around the time Yahoo stopped crawling my web site. What could I do? What if the other Search Engines dropped my web site, after all those months of long nights and long weekends really working to create a quality web site?

In the midst of this chaos, my wife looked me in the eyes and said, “Don’t worry about it, you still have traffic. The web site is doing well!”

I replied, “Well, yeah! In fact the web site traffic has doubled since Yahoo apparently dropped the site a month ago!”

Then it struck me. Traffic really had doubled, despite the fact that none of the traffic was coming from Yahoo any more. And I wasn’t doing any pay-per-click advertising or any sort of advertising. All of the work I was doing really was paying off - in ways I hadn’t really imagined. I just lost all incoming traffic from one of the two or three biggest search engines and yet my traffic doubled!

Have you ever heard the expression, “Don’t build your house on sand?”

Or how about, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket?”

There are only about three important search engines at any one time. As I write this, I would say those three are currently Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The more dependent you are on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and placing high on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) in these few search engines, the more you have built your house on sand or put all of your eggs in one basket. You know that search engines regularly change their algorithms, right? One big change and your web site can disappear or all but disappear from a major search engine. And you won’t know if it’s temporary or permanent. If you’re in this position, you are at the mercy of the search engines.

So what can you do to change this, to ensure that one single algorithm change won’t wipe out your business?

One way, perhaps the best way, is to build alternate traffic streams to your web site.

1. First things first: Make sure you have a web site that people would want to visit. Ever visit a web site that was so bad you wondered how they make any money? Guess what, I’ll bet they don’t. Unless your web site is just a sales page and you direct traffic to it from other web sites or from affiliates, now is a good time to start building some quality content - lots of it, if you don’t already have it.

2. Get lots of incoming links… but change the way you look at links. It used to be that links drove the Web. That was how people found your web site - by surfing in from other people’s pages. Then something strange happened: search engines. But as the search engines evolved, they started measuring the quality of web sites - and determining your site’s position in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) - by how many incoming links you have, and what keywords are in the link text. Then people began to link just for Search Engine Optimization, not for actual traffic from those links. Do you really think people are going to find your web site and surf in from a page of 200 uncategorized links hidden behind a link at the bottom of a page and called “Partners” - in an 8 point font? If you want to get traffic from links again, regardless of what the search engines do, you have to change your links pages and you have to change the type of link partners you link to. There’s a very nice free service, Honest Links, that is a grassroots effort by Webmasters to get back to linking for traffic, not SEO. You can learn more at: http://www.honestlinks.net/

3. Write and publish articles related to the theme of your web site. Publish them in the many article directories on the Web, as well as the many mailing lists for authors and publishers. Webmasters and Ezine publishers will pick them up and publish them if they are good. You can get hundreds, even thousands of links into your web site by just including a little “Resource Box” at the end of your article with a link to your web site. (Look at the end of this article for an example of a Resource Box.)

4. Publish a newsletter and start building a list of subscribers. It’s one of the best ways to get people returning to your web site, along with the next one…

5. Start a blog on your web site. Post interesting and useful information related to your web site’s theme and ping the various blog and news directories after each post. You’ll get links from these directories AND you’ll build up readers syndicating your posts on their web sites and reading them in news feed readers. Recently people have been gaming this, too. People post and ping just to get noticed by the search engines and get spidered more often. It will do that, but if you don’t have quality posts, you will still be at the mercy of the search engines. Create quality content and you will build loyal subscribers as well.

I can’t say it doesn’t bother me that my web site was dropped from Yahoo. It feels like I must have done something wrong. But I know I have a good site, with great, useful content that is on topic. I know that my site could be back in Yahoo tomorrow, or it could take months. In the meantime, I’ll keep building a quality site that people want to visit and doing everything I know I should. Traffic has doubled every month for the last two months. I’ll bet it will again next month - with or without Yahoo!

Here’s another old saying for you, “Dig your well before you are thirsty.” If you’re too dependent on search engine traffic now, maybe it’s time to start digging that well. The five steps above should get you started.

Copyright 2005 Mike Adams

Mike Adams has been building web sites and playing with Internet marketing since 1996. Looking for an Internet marketing solution? Visit http://www.timberway.com/

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Tags: S, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Results Pages, sem, SEO, Yahoo!

Advertising is a major part of any successful business. Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark: You know what you are doing, but nobody else does. That would be foolish, as well as a waste of time. We are not in business to waste time or to make foolish decisions.

Advertising can come in many different forms. It can be full page display ads in nationally distributed magazines, that produce thousands of dollars in profits. It can be in the form of television commercials that bring in tremendous amounts of inquiries and profits. It can even come in the form of word of mouth advertising that costs you nothing, yet brings you profits still. We will work on getting the best of all advertising mediums for you.

You do need to learn, and remember, one thing before we go on. You need to know that: “The only advertising that costs you money is unsuccessful advertising!” Unsuccessful advertising is foolish advertising. You must take several steps before spending any advertising dollars. Let’s cover some of these steps:

1) Research, Research, Research!

2) Stick to a budget.

3) Test your idea before committing long term.

4) Learn from your competition.

There are several key factors that come into play when it comes to advertising. This article is merely meant to help you scratch the surface, and give you a few key pointers that will educate you enough to make educated decisions.

There are no guarantees when it comes to the world of advertising. You can have what appears to be the best idea in the world, and it can flop miserably. But, if you do your home work (research), these will be few and far between, if even at all.

It is assumed that most of you are not working with the largest of advertising budgets. That is perfectly ok. It is very possible to effectively advertise with little money. In fact, if you are industrious enough, I will show you how to advertise with virtually no money. Just read on…

Fax machines have revolutionized the way that business is conducted in the world. It is extremely affordable for anyone to own a fax machine. You can pick one up at a garage sale or on ebay for under ten dollars. If you are going to be conducting business, you should have one.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I’ll fax that right over to you?” I’m not exactly sure how many times that I’ve heard it, but I am sure that businesses are not using the fax machine to it’s full potential as a powerful advertising tool. The only time that I’ve seen the fax machine used to advertise (except for myself doing it) was by restaurants faxing their menus by request.

Think about it, by using your fax machine to advertise your business, you spend only the time that it takes to fax the message. Also, if it’s a local call, you won’t be spending any money. Even if the call is long distance, you will only incur a small telephone fee because of the information being transmitted so quickly.

Let’s imagine that you have gone through your phone book, and you’ve found several businesses that you’d like to do business with. Instead of having several letters typed, addressing several envelopes, stamping each envelope, and taking the letters to the Post Office, with your fax machine, you can complete the task in a fraction of the time at a small percentage of the cost. You also will not even have to leave your home. You won’t even have to pay for postage.

There is also one more way of faxing, and that is by a modem through your personal computer. With a fast modem and some decent software, you can have your computer fax documents that you have created in it to various individuals, or businesses, at times that you have predetermined. The computer will even try again if the fax does not go through the first time! Imagine that. You can literally be sleeping and conducting business all over the world.

Do not underestimate this powerful advertising medium. It is low cost and it gives your business a very professional looking presence. When properly used (especially through your computer modem), faxing can save you lots of time and money.

Ray Mardo has provided business consulting services to mom and pop stores and Fortune 500 companies. His DJ business LGRE was listed in Entrepreneur Magazine’s top 500 businesses in the nation. These days the Austin Film Festival honored writer spends his time typing away screenplays and novels and internet marketing. Two of his websites are: http://www.raymardo.com

http://www.whoisthecoolestguyontheplanet.com

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Does the whole idea of Internet marketing intimidate you? Are you thinking of hiring a professional? Well, we’ve got great news for you. It’s really not difficult to do search engine optimization (SEO) yourself - you can save hundreds of dollars, and get the same results as the professionals do. You will probably get better results from highly qualified professionals, but you should definitely perform these do-it-yourself actions first. Once you’ve done some of this kind of work it will be easier to determine if a professional is worth his/her salt.

Basic SEO is very simple and easy - all it takes is the willingness to put in the work. Once you know the ropes, it’s not that difficult though it can be time consuming. The content of your website the focus of what SEO is all about. Here are the top points to think about when you’re doing it yourself.

1. You will start by registering a domain name, which should reflect what your site about. Keep it short, as long as it’s somehow related to your site. Being more specific can help. You could choose to name the page after one of your products or services, for example. Another method is to get a sub domain of a popular domain. This will generally help you get indexed more quickly though it will not appear quite as professional to your visitors. There is a trade of here, sub domains are quicker (and generally cheaper), but domain names are more memorable, and, in the long run, better for your indexing.

2. The next thing you should look at is your page’s title (i.e. the HTML title tag), which is critical in letting search engines see what the page is about, and is the first item looked at by search engines to determine your relevance. You should put your most important keywords in your title tags - you don’t need to worry about singular or plural forms as search engines account for these changes in most cases. Whatever you do, don’t call your home page ‘Home’ - make the title a mini-description of the page.

3. The two primary meta tags aren’t as important as they used to be, but the description tag is still used by some search engines to display information about your website to users and help them decide whether they’ve found what they are looking for. Not all search engines bother with this, though most will put some bearing on it (even if it is minuscule).

For very short descriptions the alt tag can be used. Alt tags let you describe an image or graphic file - they’re the pop-up descriptions that appear when you hover your mouse over a graphic, or when the graphic can’t be downloaded for whatever reason.

Text within comment tags is never displayed on the page - it is used by coders and designers to remind them of what that part of the page is for. Some coders used to put lots of keywords in the comment tags, so that they would be seen by search engines but not users, but search engines have now stopped paying attention to any text that isn’t seen by the user. Keep this in mind when trying to post invisible text (i.e. white text on a white background). This kind of behavior can get you banned from a search engine.

4. Having keyword density in all of your content is good, but keep in mind that each search engine has its own requirements when it comes to how many times that a keyword or phrase should be in the content for the page to be relevant. Somewhere between 5 and 8 percent is a roughly optimal level - but this isn’t always possible, and you shouldn’t force it. Don’t overdo it, or the search engines might mark you down.

5. Many search engines judge web page importance on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. You should link to some related sites, but not too many. Don’t overdo incoming links either, and keep them related your site’s content. It’s also good to get sites to use your keywords as the text of these links.

If you follow the advice above, you can do it yourself and do fine. SEO, if done right, can keep you on top for as long as you want to be.

About The Author:

Lawrence Andrews is an ePublisher, software developer, consultant, and author of numerous books. Visit his Private Label Content and Software site at http://www.lmamedia.com for more information about
SEO and PRL.

You may use this article freely on your website as long as this resource box is included, a link point back to my site, and this article remains unchanged! Copyright 2005 Lawrence Andrews

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Tags: engine, google, indexing, optimisation, optimization, page rank, ranking, results, search, SEO