SEO Bait and Switch Tactics – How to Piss off Potential Buyers

December 24, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

If you’ve read any of David Meerman Scott’s books or his blog, Web Ink Now, you’ll know that rule number one in getting people to follow you is: “Deliver content your readers love!” Everything else is secondary. Create raving fans of your stuff, and the links and money will follow.

Those of us who do SEO for a living (either teaching it in our SEO workshop or working with our clients) understand the tactics to get a page listed on the search engines. When we “eat our own dog food” and optimize our own content, we know what it takes to get results to show up on the search engines like Google. Unfortunately, that knowledge makes it easy to cross a line that can lead to misuse.

Recently, one of our trainers, Beth Kahlich, came across a page on another site that was optimized for the phrase, “search engine academy reviews”. I’m not going to give them the benefit of a link, but you’ll see it in the Google search engine results page (SERP). Mr. McDonald from JM Internet Group has a page that seemingly provides a review about the Search Engine Academy. I have absolutely no problem with that. We have thousands of very happy customers all over the world.

However, when you read the content on that page, it’s a typical bait-and-switch page. He’s luring a reader to his site with the promise of delivering some valuable information (presumably an unbiased, insider review of the SEA). Once the reader arrives, though, they quickly realize that they’ve been had. It’s unclear how old the page is (there’s no date), but he’s hoping people will come to his site and subsequently do business with him just because he provides some pseudo-advice on “questions to ask” the Search Engine Academy.

Really?

Mr. Scott even had a recent post, “Do you care more about customers or the competition?” that hits the nail on the head. Why else would you optimize a phrase for your competitor’s company name unless you were worried about it and trying to snag some of their customers?

Give Your Readers What They Want – Great Content!

The headline or title of a page (or video or blog post or any other content) is the most important factor in getting people to read your stuff. If your headline sucks, people won’t bother with the content. However, if your content doesn’t deliver what you promised in your headline, you’re just going to piss people off.

If, on the other hand, your content consistently delivers exactly what you’re advertising in the headline, you will enjoy so many benefits:

  • Repeat readers who can’t wait to come back for more
  • Those eager readers will build links to your content from all over the globe (we all know natural links help your rankings!), which further increases readership
  • Social media mentions which increase your readership yet again, which of course increases links
  • Hopefully, some of that turns into sales

But it’s not the traffic or the click from the search engines that’s going to generate the sale. It’s the trust you build with your readers that will generate the sale. I don’t care if your website generates 100,000 visits a day from the search engines. If no one is buying from you, it doesn’t mean anything. Only when you build rapport and trust with your readers, will they then entrust some of their hard-earned money in exchange for something valuable from you.

It’s very simple: “People buy into you before they buy from you.”

It can take a long time to build that trust with your readers, but it only takes a second to tear it down. Consistently deliver the content you promise, and the world is yours. Violate that trust, and well, you’ll hear a lot of crickets.

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Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Internet Marketing For Profit – How You Can Create A Successful EBook

November 29, 2012 By + 2 Comments

Internet Marketing For Profit – How You Can Create A Successful EBook
By John Alexander

Taking a little break from the topic of SEO Training, I was thinking back to 9 years ago when a friend of mine, Michael Campbell, encouraged me to write my first e-book. Never having written one before, I guess I thought to myself, but who would want to read my e-book?

I had just shown Michael some recent keyword research and that’s how it all got started. I took his advice and he provided me with some great insights on everything from how it needed to be written, the language and even the graphics and pricing. My first e-book was created in 2003 and I called it “Wordtracker Magic.”

Basically, it contained my personal methodology of using the tool called Wordtracker, to research user search behavior. How to save literally hundreds of hours of time and quickly tap into pure gold. Last year, I finally took the book off the market, since Wordtracker had changed their metrics.

 

 

 

 

Let’s talk about how you can create a successful e-book of your own.

Your e-book deserves to be seen by everyone in your niche, but unless you have an effective internet marketing strategy no one will ever know about it. The difference between your e-book being great and being successful is your ability to get it in front of the people. Once you have the e-book completed and to your high expectations the battle is only half over.

The rest of your work now is finding how to market it online.

The most important thing that you can do is make sure that your e-book is the best that it can be. Make sure that your ideas are crisp and clear, that it is error free grammatically and everything is spelled correctly.
Also ensure that all illustrations help emphasize the points you are making, and that it is pleasing to the eye.

It is easy for bad illustrations to become a distraction, so make sure they are done well. If you need to, get people to review and critique it for you and you take their advice seriously. The better your product is, the more
excitement will be created around it.

Between 2003 and 2005 that little e-book called “Wordtracker Magic” had earned over $50,000.00 and it sold for just $29.95.

Around the year 2005, I decided to re-write my original book and I added more examples and more methods for instantly finding the hottest phrases in Wordtracker’s keyword tool.  I renamed it “Keyword Forensics 2.0 for SEO” and nearly everyone that had bought the first version, came back to get the second version and it continued to make money every day, whether I was in the office or whether I was away teaching an SEO Workshop somewhere.

A couple of important points here:

1. Wordtracker, the tool had very few instructions back in 2003 and in speaking with others, I had learned that many people were spending hours just trying to find good keywords. I learned that not too many people used my methodology to quickly find search behavior.

When you write your e-book, it needs to be an eye opener. If it is instructional, then whatever strategy you are writing about must really help the reader in some useful way.

Ask yourself:

  • Will your book help save people time?
  • Will it help them make money?
  • Will it help them improve results somehow?
  • Will it help improve their performance in some way?
  • Will it somehow fill in a missing gap in a product?

Give it some thought, because this is crucial to building the readers desire to read it. It must be something truly useful. Strive for excellence and people will strive to get what you offer them.

2. Make sure your sales letter is well written and that it spells out all the benefits in the book. I was fortunate to have the very skilled help of Michael Campbell to watch over my shoulder. He actually helped write the original sales letter and that’s where I learned a lot about how people think when they are reading a Web page.

Once everything is published online, you can let your subscribers know that you have a new e-book. But also use word of mouth to spread the word about your e-book. It would be best to supply your customers with a form that they can recommend it to their friends and associates.

If it becomes hot enough, remember to put a “buy now” link right at the top of the sales letter so people can buy right away if they’re hearing good things.

Another marketing strategy that is going to be incredibly helpful is providing short articles full of good information to e-zines.

The internet is full of these type of sites and used by a wide range of people to seek out this kind of information. What this can accomplish is you make yourself known on a wider audience as an authority or expert on the subject you are dealing with. This will only help you, though, if you provide a link to your site or your e-book.

Don’t let them know everything that you know. Leave them with only part of the answers or snippets of information that you want them to know and that to get the rest of it they are going to have to pay for it. If you do this part right, they are going to buy.

A key strategy is to create a group of customers who will keep coming back and buying what you offer in the future. Offer free incentives for them to buy your e-books like an e-zine, newsletter, or even an e-book that you have written earlier or one that you have rights to.

The benefits of the e-zine or newsletter is that you are seen as a constantly good source of information and you stay on their radar. When you have your next e-book, you will have your first group of customers ready to go.

These ideas are only the tip of the iceberg but enough to get you going. If you have something excellent to offer people on the internet with your e-book, then have a marketing strategy that will bring it the attention it deserves.

 

 

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Filed Under: Article Marketing, Content Marketing, Misc, SEO, WordPress, Workshops Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Why Is Content Marketing Important for Business? SEO Isn’t Everything After All

September 27, 2012 By + 3 Comments

Even though we teach it, SEO isn’t everything for online marketing. I was reading an article in Inc. Magazine today, and the CEO of Fab.com, Jason Goldberg’s business goal is as follows, “If we make people smile, lots and lots of money will follow over time.” He recently told his employees that he didn’t care what the exact sales numbers were. Instead, “I care about the brand we’re building and the emotional bond we have with our customers.”

So many of us who do any type of online marketing, spend a lot of misguided time worrying about the “best” magic keyword phrase to put in our title tag, or finding the latest hot SEO technique to bring the masses in droves to our website.

I’m a huge fan of David Meerman Scott’s book, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR“. When you read his book, now in its third edition, you’ll quickly learn that title tags and trying to reverse engineer the Google Panda rules is completely pointless and a wasted effort.

Instead, if we focus on what Goldberg says is his business goal – to deliver what the customer wants and give them a smile in the process – people (our customers) will come to us without having to worry about “doing” SEO.

In reality, isn’t that what Google attempts to deliver to us? The programmers at Google spend a lot of effort (think Panda and Penguin here) to cut out the websites that have artificially inflated rankings, and instead deliver results that have true value to us.

Content Marketing Wins Every Time

So what exactly is content marketing, and what does that have to do with SEO and keyword research?

Just over three years ago, I had a student, Larry Waight, fly up from Belize in Central America and take my SEO workshop in California. He is the Marketing Manager for a Belize eco-resort called Chaa Creek. He had a little web experience, but not really much technical experience. The lesson he learned in the class (among many) is that he has to deliver what people are looking for when they’re searching the internet. By doing the keyword research first, finding out what his customers want, then delivering the content, is so much more powerful.

Larry went back to Belize with a copy of Scott’s book in hand, and spent the last three years building lots of content on his website that his potential customers want to learn about traveling in Belize. In his content, he’s talking about the area and all the wonderful attractions Belize has to offer, not just his resort. He understands that everyone wins if people are coming to Belize to spend money.

Recently, Larry was lucky enough to host David Meerman Scott in a marketing summit in Belize, and when Mr. Scott interviewed him (see video here), Larry said that a whopping 80% of their tourist business comes from the web, because they are delivering the content their customers want to consume. He gets the value to his company and the region, and has essentially stopped all “traditional” advertising efforts because it works so well.

Another company that I’ve worked with, Selling Timeshares, is a vacation timeshare resale business. I had seven of their employees in a private corporate SEO training class, and they’ve spent the last nine months building lots and lots of articles on their website. These articles are designed to draw their ideal customers to their site by giving them real value and information. Their SEO rankings and traffic have steadily increased month over month the more they have put effort into this.

Benefits of Content Marketing

Aside from all that I mention above, content marketing has so many benefits too:

  • The website will be found for many more keyword phrases than you optimize it for
  • It will attract many more natural links to the site, than trying to artificially “build” links
  • Customers will continue to refer to your website as a reference. This builds trust with them and when they are ready to buy, they will remember you

Guess what? We at the Search Engine Academy believe this philosophy to the core too. That’s why we have such an active blog with so many contributors.

Yes, we eat our own dog food too.

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Filed Under: Book Review, Content Marketing, Meta Tags, SEO, SEO Blogging, WordPress Tagged With: , , , , , ,

5 Reasons Why You Should Use Pinterest as an Internet Marketing Tool

March 27, 2012 By + 5 Comments

PinterestAs an important factor within Internet marketing, social media is leaking into every aspect of people’s lives, and business is no exception. Pinterest is the latest social networking site that is gaining a lot of recognition worldwide. The site was established in 2010 and has been growing in popularity ever since its unveiling.

In 2011 Pinterest saw a 4,000 percent spike in number of views over a 6 month period. More than 11 million users are now registered on the website. This social media craze is growing faster than Twitter, Facebook and Google. Any smart business would be wise to jump aboard the Pinterest train and market their brand to users of the site.

Reasons to Utilise Pinterest for Marketing

  1. It’s Free and easy to use -
    You don’t need to pay a fee to register or use Pinterest. Once you have signed up and been granted access, you are able to start posting pictures right away. It’s fast and easy to set up – your company’s profile and pictures are up in minutes!
  2. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your site -
    Pinterest users are growing in an accelerated pace. It’s a huge mistake for you to ignore a totally free product that can help your business gain exposure and drive traffic to your website.
  3. It’s visual and addictive -
    Let’s face it, humans are visual beings and pictures are fun, not to mention addictive. Ever heard the saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’? Pictures are simply more enjoyable to look at than text, and have the ability to send a very clear message. Sometimes, they can convey messages better than any amount of words ever could. Be warned, however, once you start ‘pinning’ you may find it hard to stop!
  4. It lets you show a personal side to your business -
    Pinterest enables you show a more personal side to your business/brand. You can interact with your target market on a more personal level and give them a “behind the scenes” look at your business, which in turn will help people relate better to you and your business.
  5. It’s a great way to network with people and share ideas -
    It’s easy to get qualified traffic by using Pinterest, qualified traffic means people who are interested in what your business is about. Say your business sells shoes, people who are likely to follow your boards will be people who have an interest in shoes. So already you have won half the battle – you have their interest. Progressing to the next stage of a sale is going to much easier.

Pinterest boardHow to Use Pinterest

So now that you’ve been sold on the idea of using Pinterest, how do you actually “do” it? Well, the first step to using Pinterest is to sign up for an account. Pinterest is an invitation-only forum, so you will need to wait to be invited.

Once you have been granted access, create your account. And it’s possible to login via your Twitter or Facebook account.

Once all of the basic administration side is completed, take the time to read through the information – it’s important that you have an understanding of what Pinterest is, how to use it and what their Terms of Service (ToS) are.

It is also wise to know what your plan is before you start “pinning” away. Ask yourself the following questions to get you brainstorming your plan of attack:

  • What is the goal of using Pinterest for my business/brand?
  • What image do I want my business to portray?
  • What pictures will I use?
  • How will I categorise my pictures?
  • How am I going to add another element to my business’s presence on Pinterest, besides plugging products?
  • How am I going to positively contribute to the Pinterest community – Am I willing to follow other users, comment on images, and repin photos?
  • Will I add photo’s on a daily basis or weekly?
  • How much time am I able to spend on Pinterest?

Considering the answers to these questions will ensure you start your Pinterest campaign on the right foot. Ultimately, you may decide that Pinterest is not for you, but you can guarantee that your competitors are chomping at the bit to get a piece of the Pinterest pie.

Search Engine Academy are global providers of hands-on Internet marketing and SEO training workshops. Learn up-to-date techniques that are required to achieve high online visibility and increase your businesses online growth.

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Why Blogging Is Vitally Important for Business – Three Reasons You Should Blog Now

November 30, 2011 By + 36 Comments

One of the lessons that we discuss at length in our SEO classes is that blogging is so critical for all businesses. I had one of my students tell me last year:

“I don’t see anyone in my industry blogging, so I shouldn’t blog either, right?”

Wow. WRONG. I told him that if no one in his industry is blogging, that this is actually a HUGE opportunity for him to get way ahead of his competition! By the time his competitors figure it out, he’ll be so far down the road that they won’t be able to catch him.

Seize the opportunity now.

Why Blogging Is Vitally Important to Business

Even if your competitors are already blogging, why should you as a business owner consider blogging? There are probably too many reasons to list in a reasonable amount of space, so I’ll focus on three primary reasons.

Engage Online With Customers

Your readers are likely the ones who will become customers and buy from you. I always tell my students and people when I give talks:

“People buy into you before they buy from you.”

In other words, if you haven’t done a good job building trust and authority in your industry, people won’t buy from you, no matter how great your offer is. If you demonstrate through your blog articles that you’re an authority in your particular industry, you’ll prove that you know what you’re talking about.

Furthermore, your readers can respond to your articles by posting responses, asking questions, or otherwise engaging with you online. The more you have these types of online conversations and respond to people’s questions, the more others will get involved in your content.

If you only write an article once per month, people won’t be as engaged. If you produce an article every other day, your readers will eagerly await your next post to find out what other cool stuff you’re going to tell them.

At some point, when they are ready to buy, they’ll engage with you to find out how you can help solve their particular problem (by buying your stuff).

Link Building

We’re all told that we have to have links to our website. I will be writing a series of articles on the correct way to build links. Suffice it to say for now, that blogs are a fantastic source of links. First, you can sculpt your links back to your own website with keyword-rich links and target specific key phrases (see the link at the top of this article?). That’s one great example of how you can build some links.

But blogging goes even further than that. The more you write great content about your particular field of expertise, the more people will read your articles. Guess what? When you write great articles, readers will reference your articles in their posts and link back to it. So great blog content generates great incoming links – or what I call link bait. You post great articles, it attracts links like fish to a baited hook. This is the best way to generate links, bar none. There’s no easy road, it just takes writing good articles.

Quality Content

Your readers love great content, and so do the search engines. The more content you produce, the more the search engines will come back for more. The more frequently you product GOOD content, the more the search engines will learn that they can keep coming back for more content to index. Freshness counts here, and if your content smells a little stale, the search engines won’t come back so soon.

As you build a library of information through great articles, the more Google is going to serve your website up as a good reference for search terms people want to find out about. If you don’t create much content, your competitors will overtake you. But if you generate fresh content every few days, over time, you’ll continue to bubble up to the top of Google without even trying.

There are so many other reasons why blogging is important to your business, but I’ll leave it at these top three for now.

What other benefits have you seen for your own business? Tell us in the comments.

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Filed Under: Link Building, SEO Blogging Tagged With: , , ,