Archive for category Search Engine Marketing

Affiliate Marketing SEO Tips to Use Prior to Building a Website

Posted by in Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing on September 27, 2011

By Nicole Deal

“Not possible!” you say. There are millions of people using the internet each day, and these millions are looking far and wide for solutions to all kinds of individual needs, right? So you’re bound to get a small fraction of this traffic because you’re building a website that offers something that some of these people are looking for, right? It’s a numbers game, right? I hate ending all these sentences with “right?”, because you know what is coming next, “WRONG!”

The common misperception, or dream as it may be, is that there is enough business online to go around. Those entering the competitive business of affiliate marketing are faced with making many decisions. Add to this all the mechanical aspects of creating a website, applying to affiliate networks, and the tons of minutia that go into the process of taking a project to creation is daunting. Getting caught up in all this work, and the excitement creating a site brings, it is easy to miss what’s really important.

If we assume that you are familiar with, or at least have some basic knowledge of website creation, and are able to network your way into one or more affiliate networks, this will still leave you with some important decisions. These decisions will make the difference between successful online marketing, and failure. The good news is that many have failed only to later find the magic that works for them (is that really good news?). Each time you fail it is a lesson in what not to repeat. The inverse is also very true in affiliate marketing. Once you find something that works, you will likely repeat it many times. You will often hear the terms “rinse and repeat” and “scale it up” on internet marketing forums. These refer to repeating what works. This may include additional sites with similar products or services, and similar marketing strategies.

Let’s get back to the misperception I spoke about earlier regarding there being enough business for everyone to have a little piece of the action. It follows the same rules as wealth. I don’t have the same wealth my neighbor has, and he doesn’t have as much as the guy across the street. Some people are just better at creating and keeping money. The same goes for internet traffic and sales. Some people are better at finding a working model, and then scaling that model up, and diversifying. Some internet marketers have skill, some have luck, and some have both. Luck cannot be groomed so that leaves you and me to work on our skills, and if luck plays a part in our success then it is just an unexpected bonus.

Are you wondering what all this gibberish has to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and how does it apply if you don’t even have a website yet? You need to have something to optimize, yes? Read this very carefully. You are going to optimize your website, by optimizing your content and product, by optimizing your keywords, by using the right tools. You are going to do this in REVERSE order from what I just listed! If you get any step wrong, you are depending upon luck alone. I hate to mention this now, but there are also some subsets of these steps that you must get right also, but let’s concentrate on the main steps, the rest will fill itself in once you begin.

Please look at the following and agree or disagree:

  • A website must have visitors to succeed.
  • The visitors must be looking for the content/solution you offer.
  • Your potential visitors must be able to find you.

Hopefully you agree with all of these statements. These are all tied together very closely, in more ways than one. I’ll show you how and hopefully teach you a lesson I wish I had learned prior to making website after website, all of which were a painful part of a steep learning curve. I would rather avoid the curve and take the straight road when it comes to my time and money.

Let’s begin with the visitor that you wish to attract to your website. Ask yourself how they will find you. They will type in some words in a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. These words are called “keywords”. Before you say you don’t need a primer on keywords hear me out please. The keywords which the potential visitor types in will bring up the SERPs (search engine results pages). Does the potential visitor find you, or someone else? How many pages will this potential visitor scroll through to find a possible solution to their need? Not many. The first result on page one of the SERP typically gets 40% of the clicks. The percentage drops sharply as you move down page one, much less the results for the following pages. Your goal is to be on page one, and hopefully the first result on page one. This where the keywords come in. keywords have competition. Some keywords have massive competition.

Your product or service will also have competition. Some have more competition than others. This is why you are going to pick a product or service to promote that has relevant keywords available with manageable competition for those keywords. In order to accomplish this I would recommend that you find a professional keyword research tool, and that you learn how to use it. You will need to take potential keywords, determine the search volume for them, and also research the competition for your potential keywords. The importance of picking the right keywords where you are competitive cannot be overstated. Remember the “ugly duckling”? That’s not what you want your site to be, it’s a lonely feeling.

The product or service you decide to promote is dependent upon your ability to find low competition keywords. Regardless how much you want to promote a particular product, be mindful that websites without traffic are not profitable! Taking a competitive product and then trying to force irrelevant keywords into building traffic is like trying to substitute water for charcoal lighter fluid.

Your challenge is to find a product or service with viable keywords as outlined above, using a keyword research tool that you understand how to use. Once you have selected your online marketing campaign and have relevant low competition keywords, only then will you build a website around this product, and incorporate your keywords into your site’s content, and on-page SEO. Do NOT get these steps in the wrong order.

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The First Step In Creating Search Engine Marketing Sales Funnels

Posted by in Search Engine Marketing on September 27, 2011

By Octavien J. Remillard

Search engine marketing ideas should be the easiest part of setting up a web business for yourself. Simply ask yourself, “What do I really, really love?”

Shouldn’t you be concerned about what is popular or “hot” at the moment? No.

What a terrible waste of your time it would be to build up an online business, then create a highly profitable sales funnel on a popular theme only to have it fizzle out quickly when that particular fad passes.

The World Wide Web is so huge that almost anything can be made into a lucrative business on the internet.

For example, probably even a huge city like New York couldn’t support a really tiny specialty market like gold and silver cigarette lighters. On the other hand, the world market is so huge that finding enough people interested in this unusual item would not be a problem.

I won’t bother giving any specific ideas. Your heart is full of them already. What do you love?

I will give you a couple of examples of search engine marketing ideas that will show what kinds of things people have made successes of:

  • A couple I know in the lonely mountain country of Montana love to buy, sell, trade and collect antique china dolls. They are doing very well online doing what they love. There are enough people in the world interested in antique china dolls for them to make a good profit.
  • An archaeologist I know loves to juggle for a hobby, yes the juggling where you toss things up in the air. He loves his teaching, though, so he has built up a world wide following in juggling. He sells juggling supplies, juggling ebooks, videos that he created himself on how to juggle and so forth.

You get the idea. What do you love to do?

The biggest advantage you can give yourself to make the most of search engine marketing ideas is the proper choice of software.

Search Engine Marketing Software: Doing business on the internet is a whole new ball game to doing business in the old days. Getting customers and building your sales funnel can be done in different ways:

  • You can pay for advertising
  • You can get it for free (it’s called organic traffic)
  • You can swap customer lists with others (it’s called joint venturing)
  • And there are other ways including building up an emailing list of your own
  • You need a way to collect money
  • You will want products to sell or sell for someone else (this is called affiliate marketing)
  • Good search engine marketing software will allow you to do all this and dozens of other things that are necessary for the profitable operation of a sales funnel.

Web Search Engines: Come in many different flavors when you come to consider how they will work with your search engine marketing ideas. The main one is Google. There are many more.

Fortunately, they all operate on the same principle. They exist to find information. Their sole job is to match a visitor with a query to the best possible answers to that query.

Web search engines spend a great deal of time and money refining how they look over sites, judge them and grade them. When you do a search on car tires, you will end up on car tire sites and the best ones to boot.

Which are the best sites? The ones that the average visitor spends the most time on. The search engine spiders check for this and literally hundreds of other things.

Good search engine marketing software will cover all this for you.

Remember, the sole purpose of web search engines is to match a visitor with the best match to a solution.

Sales Funnels: As part of your training to build a business on one of your search engine marketing ideas, you will want to learn all about sales funnels. This involves basically gathering people from the internet that are interested in your service or product, convincing them that you are the best solution for their problem and sell to them.

For this you need:

  1. Traffic
  2. Something to sell
  3. A method of payment

Get these all together and you will have a highly profitable sales funnel. Search engine marketing ideas won’t be a problem because you already know what you love.

Search engine marketing software comes in many price ranges, but a few stand head and shoulders above the rest. The cost? The best one I know of is about the cost of a cup of coffee a day.

Web search engines are there to serve both you and the person seeking something. Don’t be afraid of them. Learn to work with them and they will work with you.

In conclusion, you can build yourself an amazing sales funnel that will keep pumping money into your bank account with little to no money investment. Build slowly, build from home, build in your spare time and follow your heart.

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Why Search Engine Marketing Is So Important

Posted by in Search Engine Marketing on September 27, 2011

By Suzanne L Carter

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound? Perhaps, but if nobody is there to hear it, who really cares? This cliche is never with a greater degree of truth than for website design. You may have an immaculately designed website; pleasing on the eye, easy to navigate, with a host of well thought out information and in-built functional components to keep it running smoothly. The problem being that if nobody is there to see it, or at least if it’s only getting out to a fraction of its potential audience, then it may as well not exist. The key to solving this conundrum is Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

The vast majority of end users come across websites through one of the various Search Engines out there. The results these Search Engines turn out are anything but random. Prospective clients will only be able to find your website via Search Engines if it has been optimised for SEM by a qualified Search Marketing Specialist. These are the web magicians who make sure that online traffic is being driven to your site, and therefore your company, rather than that of your competitors. SEM maximises the online visibility of your business in an increasingly crowded online marketplace.

Effective SEM can be achieved by employing a number of strategies including Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and Google AdWords. SEO is a legitimate way of improving your website’s rankings using targeted keywords to place your business at the top of the results page for relevant search terms. A specialist in SEO will be able to identify the most popular keywords for your industry, build content around this principle, and use internal linking to best market your website within Search Engines. They will also be able to drive traffic towards your site through article marketing and the creation of sitemaps. With ongoing analytics and further recommendations traditionally included in SEO services, your website will be in a position to maintain the initial momentum push gained from SEM.

Google AdWords offers increased exposure on Google for a nominal fee set by the website owner depending on the level of exposure they require. To maximise the impact of a Google AdWords campaign, while keeping costs down, it may be wise to have a qualified management consultant on hand. They will be able to carefully research the most effective way of appealing to your target market, and monitor your campaign as it develops.

If you’re going to have an online presence which is a reality of modern commerce, you may as well get your brand out there in front of the largest possible audience. The most effective way of doing this is to seek the advice of a specialist in the field of Search Engine Marketing.

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