Internet Marketing into the New Decade

by John Eberhard

From my perspective as a former full time musician I used to be oriented to music by the name of the decade it came from; the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and so on. Here we are coming to a close of the first decade of the new millennium and there has not even been a widely accepted name for it yet. I heard a reference to the decade recently as the “oughts.” We’ll see if that one sticks.

Timothy Noah, on Slate.com, stated at the end of 2004: “The most logical candidate is a term often used to describe the first decade of the 20th century: the "aughts." But despite heavy promotion from journalists and others, it's never caught on.”

Five years on, and still no name for the decade. Oh well.

I’ve made it a habit over the last few years to name what I thought would be the most important Internet marketing strategies for the coming year.

Here’s what I said for the most important strategies for the beginning of 2008:

a. Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising
b. Article Directories / Content Hubs
c. Optimized Press Releases
d. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Actions Done to a Web Site
e. Email Marketing
f. Banner Ads
g. Web 2.0

Here’s what I said for the most important strategies for the beginning of 2009:

a. Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising
b. Blogs
c. Online PR
d. Social Media
e. Video and Audio on Sites and Blogs
f. Article Directories / Content Hubs

Interestingly, in an industry that thrives on change, there was not a lot of change from 08 to 09. Certainly banner ads are not a major force anymore. Article directories are less of a force than they were a couple years ago but are still very effective. Blogs and online PR are still very effective. Social media has become a more dominant force in online marketing in 2009.

My Website Marketing Picks for 2010

As we prepare to enter the new decade (which we assume will be called the “Teens”) here is my prediction for the best website marketing strategies for the next year.

a. Pay Per Click Advertising: PPC is still a very dominant force and very effective, though its use is pretty much limited to high ticket items because of its cost. I was concerned a couple of years ago because of the multitude of companies that had begun using PPC and the resultant rise in bids and higher cost per click. I suspected that either the competition would have a self-normalling effect, driving some players out of the market and cost per click prices would fall somewhat, or the high costs would make the medium irrelevant eventually. Happily the former has occurred. PPC is an excellent way to drive traffic to your site on an immediate basis, and due to the excellent statistical and monitoring tools, in skilled hands it can be very effective. It’s just not viable for selling books and CDs.

b. Social Media: I have a friend who was bugging me to get into social media a couple years ago when I was reluctant, and he loses no opportunity to remind me of it when the topic comes up. Facebook is the #3 site in November according to Compete.com with 128 million unique visitors. YouTube is #4 with 85 million visitors. Twitter is #43 with 22 million visitors. True enough, social media has become a dominant force in website marketing, as long as you know how to use it. This means developing lots of friends/followers/connections, then sprinkling your marketing message into the conversation in a tasteful, non-offensive way. Shouts of “buy my stuff,” “buy my stuff,” “buy my stuff” at every opportunity will not work, because people can easily sever their connection to you and will. For my business I find it works to post several things a day saying what I am doing, such as “I am working on designing a new web site for a veterinarian,” or “I am ghost writing an article for a client.” It’s not obnoxious (at least I hope not) and it regularly reminds people of who I am and what I do. And I get business from Facebook and Twitter.

c. Single Dissemination Points Out to Multiple Sites: I believe that one of the primary essences of marketing is to have one message and to send it out as broadly as possible, without having to initiate the communication over and over again yourself. For this reason I really like sites that allow you to put out one communication one time, and have it go out to multiple places. I use Ping.fm to type in short communications (140 characters which is the Twitter limit) and I have it configured to post the message to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, and several other sites. So every time I post an update it goes out to 11 sites and to all my friends on those sites. I use Posterous.com for posting longer communications to my blogs, and I have it configured so it goes out to my blogs on Typepad, Wordpress.com, Blogger.com and several other blog sites.

d. Keyword Research: I think keyword research is vital to do at the beginning of your website marketing efforts. The reason is because search engines base all their ranking on keywords. You do not just rank well or poorly on a search engine. You rank well or poorly for specific keywords. And it does practically no good to rank well for a keyword that no one searches for. But at the same time, if you think you are going to be able to rank well for general, single word, category keywords like “golf,” “computers,” “furniture,” or “mp3,” I’m afraid that just isn’t going to happen. There is way too much competition for those keywords. So the key is to find keywords that have decent traffic but not a jillion sites competing for them. Then work those golden nugget keywords into your strategy for blogs, online PR, social media, article marketing and so on.

e. Email Marketing: I first got into email marketing when it was a newfangled thing back in 1998-99, and made millions with it for the company I was working for at the time. Unfortunately a few years after that saw “the deluge.” By that I mean the flood of mostly small businesses flooding cyberspace with their sales emails promoting stock picks, male enhancement products, printer toner cartridges, and a host of other products. And most engaged in tactics that were considered unethical then and are against the law now, such as not removing you if you asked, using deceptive subject lines and so on. My observation is this killed the market for rented email lists. But what does still work today and work well, is developing an in-house email list of customers and prospects who inquire about your products and services, and emailing to them regularly. It works great for selling your products. Just comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.

f. Blogs: I have written extensively about the effectiveness of blogs (some have kidded me about how much). I still believe that they are one of the best things you can do. Blog on Macduff.

g. Online PR: Optimized press releases, containing your target keywords that you found when you did keyword research and submitted to online PR sites, are very effective in building quality links to your website. These links also rank very well in the search engines.

h. Article Directories: I think article directories have become the ugly stepchild of Internet marketing in the last year, because no one in the SEO community talks about them (they rarely ever did for reasons unknown) and the number of directories have dropped off. But I do this for my own sites and for several clients and it still works like gangbusters in developing quantity links.

That’s it. Best wishes for 2010 and may you have the most prosperous year yet. Remember, if you market yourself properly, you can overcome all this “economic uncertainty” and together we will.

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What So Important About Keywords?

by John Eberhard

Keywords are an important subject when doing just about any marketing on the Internet. These are words or phrases that people are going to be typing into the various search engines.

You have to know what the best keywords are to use, when you are doing search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, blogging, article marketing, or sending out optimized press releases. Each of these activities is more effective when you have the properly targeted keyword phrases to use.

So it’s important not only to know what keywords to use, but you also have to be aware that the kinds of keywords you need to use will be different for different purposes.

The Big Picture

The first thing to know about keywords is that you have to select keywords or keyword phrases that have a lot of people searching for them. This may seem obvious but I have talked to people who had selected keywords and thought those were the keywords to use but no idea what the traffic was for them. There are several good tools to find out keyword traffic, including online services Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, and software such as Market Samurai.

The next thing to know is that at the beginning of the search cycle, people type in more general keywords, either single words or phrases that describe the whole category of thing hey are searching for, such as “MP3 player.” Then after they have done some initial searches and learned a bit about the category, they will then enter more specific phrases, such as “ipod mp3 player.” Then as they are getting ready to buy, they will enter even more specific phrases describing the specific product they want to buy, such as “ipod nano 4GB.” Note that this final, third phase is the time when the person is most likely to BUY. At that point he is usually looking for places where he can buy the product and comparing prices.

Keywords that are from this third phase of the searching cycle, are most descriptive and which tend to be 2-4 words or more are called “long tail” keywords. These keywords are not only usually easier to have your site rank for them, they tend to be the phrases the person types in when he is closest to being ready to buy.

Most people who I talk to who are not trained in these facts tend to think that they want to target keywords that describe the overall category, usually single word keywords, like “golf,” “consulting,” “dentist,” “chiropractor,” “marketing,” “computers,” etc. Although these single word keywords tend to have lots of searches, people typing them in are not usually at the buying point in the whole search cycle, and because of another factor which I’ll describe next, you won’t usually ever be able to rank well for them.

Competition

One of the facts of life is that there are usually fewer resources than there are people that want those resources. So it is with keywords. There are lots of companies trying to sell products on the Internet.

For the purposes of search engine optimization (SEO) and link building, you want keywords that don’t have too many sites that are competing for them. If the keyword phrase has too many sites competing for it, you just won’t be able to ever rank well on search engines for that keyword. Most single word keywords have tens of thousands or millions of sites competing for them.

The goal, when looking for keywords for SEO or link building, is to find keywords that have decent numbers of people typing them in, but low competition. I use Market Samurai software to find this information, and I look for keyword phrases that have less than 50,000 competing sites for them, and the lower the better.

Different Uses for Keywords

There are essentially two major uses for keywords, one is SEO and link building on one side, and pay per click advertising on the other.

With SEO and link building, you want to find keywords that have as high traffic as possible, and as low competition as possible. Then with SEO you want to put those keywords into the appropriate places on your website, and with link building, you want to use those keywords in your blog posts, press releases and articles. All of these actions are geared towards getting your site to rank well for those keywords and raise them up onto the first page of search results for those keywords. That gets you traffic from search engines.

For pay per click advertising (PPC), you want to select keywords with high traffic. But here you are not really concerned with how much competition there is for a keyword. And with PPC you want to choose both long tail keywords and more general keywords. PPC is a different animal and if you only choose long tail keywords you will probably not get enough traffic to make it worth your while. There is a lot to know about PPC and I’ve covered that in other articles and will continue to write more in the future.

Good luck with your keyword finding efforts.

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He Said “I Can Guarantee the #1 Position on Google…”

by John Eberhard

Someone called me up recently saying that someone had walked into their office and said he could guarantee them the #1 position on Google for two specific keywords related to his business. My contact wanted to know what I thought of this?

There are a bunch of people out there making this kind of offer to businesses, and I happen to think that most of them are being totally dishonest and preying on the lack of knowledge of most business owners in how this website marketing stuff all works. I have run into quite a few of these guys, who have sold their offer to someone who later became my client. Let’s take a look at some facts regarding all this:

1. First of all, there are two sets of search results on a Google page; the organic results, and the paid or sponsored results. The organic results are the regular results for that search on Google, appearing in the left-hand wide column. The paid results are achieved through setting up a pay per click advertising account on Google AdWords, and these appear in the right-hand narrow column, and usually at the very top, the 1-3 results on the left, highlighted in yellow. Many of these people who make such promises will just put you up with an ad on Google AdWords, bidding high enough to achieve the #1 slot for the keywords they have promised you. There is no trick to this.

1.  Promising someone the #1 spot on Google for specific keywords, even if they achieve this through Google AdWords or other means, doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It all depends on how many people are searching for that keyword. Do you think it would mean anything to have the #1 spot on Google for “blue and purple striped pipe cleaners” if only one person per month searched for that keyword? I’m using a ridiculous example but the concept applies to any business. Owning a keyword that no one searches for is meaningless, and any money you pay to achieve that is pretty much wasted. I remember one home improvement client who had been sold a certain number of keywords at X amount per keyword, with all of them having various city names included in the keyword. Most of those keywords had zero traffic and he was being charged monthly for each one, paying around $2500 per month.

1. Even if this guy who promised you the #1 spot for the keyword “blue and purple striped pipe cleaners” went out and got you that spot using Google AdWords, you probably wouldn’t get any traffic from it. One of the things to consider when setting up a Google AdWords account is getting keywords that have lots of traffic. And the final product of a Google AdWords campaign is supposed to be conversions, i.e. a person who responds to you and becomes either a lead or a sale. The product is NOT having the #1 position on Google. That may sound great and may be a means to an end but it is not the product itself.

1. There is no way that someone can guarantee you the #1 spot on Google for a high traffic keyword in the organic listings. Maybe they can guarantee it for some lousy keyword for which no one is searching, but this is pointless as I said above. The key with search engine optimization is to first do some keyword research and find keywords that a) have decent numbers of people searching them monthly, and b) don’t have a ton of sites competing for those keywords. These are the gold nuggets. Once you find them you embark on a link building campaign to move yourself up in the rankings for those keywords, and this is a several month process.

In summary, I think these guys who guarantee you the #1 spot on Google for specific keywords are, for the most part, being dishonest and ripping people off.

The real way to do this, is:

1. Start a Google AdWords account and select high traffic keywords, set your geography so the ads appear in the geographical locations you want, and put your ads up. Then bid high enough so your ads appear somewhere in the top 5, and set it up correctly so that you start driving traffic to your site. Remember that conversions are the key. Using AdWords you can achieve high rankings quickly, while you are working on the next part.

1. Do keyword research, select keywords that have decent traffic but low number of competing sites. Then optimize your site and put these keywords up on the site. Then start a link building campaign using these selected keywords and stick with it for at least 6-12 months.

If you do “b” above and stick with it and don’t bail too early, you will achieve a good number of keywords in the top 20, top 10 and some #1 positions. And they will be keywords that will be worth something.

 

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Aero & Marine Tax Professionals Obtains Sales Tax Exemption for Northwood Properties

Northwood Properties of Manhattan Beach, CA Gets Sales Tax Exemption for Airplane Purchase

SACRAMENTO, CA: Aero & Marine Tax Professionals (http://www.aeromarinetaxpros.com) has obtained a sales and use tax exemption from the California Board of Equalization for their client, Northwood Properties, of Manhattan Beach, CA in regards to their purchase of an aircraft for the business.

Aero & Marine Tax Professionals are the pre-eminent experts in helping purchasers of aircraft and vessels to avoid paying sales and use tax in California and Arizona.

Jay Visconti, the President of Northwood Properties said, “It takes a lot of research and evaluation when we are looking for new projects. Northwood’s new property development projects are driven by exacting market and property research. We analyze locations, vacancy and absorption rates, existing rents, local business conditions and market demographics to locate development sites that fit our investment criteria. We build office and industrial properties, as well as reviving, reinventing and repositioning acquisitions, even those considered at the end of their useful life. We reconfigure older office and industrial properties to meet modern and future needs, going so far as to completely reinvent spaces for profitable new uses.”

“We currently have sites in 6 states and are always looking to expand our operations.  It was terribly inefficient for us when we traveled to a small town not served by a commercial airline. We flew on their schedule and then would up driving hundreds of miles.”

“Owning our own aircraft was the solution. That is when we recognized we needed the assistance of Aero & Marine Tax Professionals. We contacted them before the purchase and got them involved right away. They were a pleasure to work with. Their knowledge in California Sales Tax Law is unmatched.  They provided a framework that was easy to follow. I always felt like I knew what I needed to do because they were in constant communication with me.  When I sent in my documents they were reviewed rapidly and I was very confident they knew what they were doing.  The information they provided was always accurate and timely.”

“They saved us over $27,000.00 on the purchase of our 2006 CESSNA T182T and we are planning a 1031 exchange very soon and will absolutely have Aero & Marine on board with us for all future transactions. I would recommend everyone who is contemplating a purchase of an aircraft to call Aero & Marine Tax Professionals when they are in the planning stage before they buy an aircraft.”

Thomas Alston, President of Aero & Marine Tax Professionals, stated “Despite the current financial crisis, the opportunities in the personal and business aircraft sector for tax savings is expanding. We have the knowledge, experience and expertise to help purchasers of aircraft in California and Arizona to legally avoid paying aircraft sales tax. But the purchaser has to follow our instructions to the letter and we have to be involved at the beginning of the process.”

Aero & Marine Tax Professionals shows purchasers how to avoid California aircraft tax and to make certain the full value of their next aircraft, vehicle or vessel goes into their pocket--not the Government's. They have successfully filed hundreds of tax returns with the California State Board of Equalization. Mr. Alston has also published many articles on sales and use tax.

 

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Link Building Case Studies

By John Eberhard

Link building is a vital activity to do when engaged in any kind of website marketing. Google says that the number of links coming to your site is the main criteria that determines your search ranking for any given keyword.

When doing link building, it is a good idea, not only to check how many links you have coming to your site on a regular basis, but also to look at what types of links you are getting and how high they are ranking. In other words, there are categories of types of links you can get, and looking at which ones are ranking the highest will tell you which link building activities to work on.

Here are the general categories of links you should be concentrating on:

1. Online PR sites such as www.pr.com
2. Blogs
3. Article directories such as www.goarticles.com
4. Social media sites and directories
5. Miscellaneous sites like keywordspy or YouTube

I do not include “reciprocal links,” where you try to get someone to link to your site and you link to theirs, because Google stopped giving much link value to these types of links nearly two years ago, though some consultants still recommend them.

I’m going to show three sites I have been working on for link building, and show how many links they have in each category on page 1 of Google results, page 2, page 3 and so on.

RealWebMarketing.net – 53,800 links

Note that 42% of my links on the first 5 pages of Google come from online PR sites, 20% come from article directories, and 26% come from social media sites.

This shows me that the online PR actions I’m doing, writing optimized press releases and submitting them to online PR sites, are creating the largest number of high ranking links to my site. Social media is giving me the second highest hit at 26%, followed by article marketing at 20%. These are all actions I do for my own site on a regular basis.

Client #1 – 8,900 links

Client #1 has 54% of his links in the first 5 pages of Google results coming from article directories, which makes sense as we have been doing article marketing for him for over two years. 22% of his links come from online PR sites, and 8% from social media. We have done mostly article marketing and press releases for this client, little social media, so the results make sense.

Client #2 – 4,100 links

Client #2, whom we’ve been working with for about four months, has 24% of his links on the first 5 pages of Google coming from online PR sites, 16% from blogs, 16% from social media, and 14% from article directories. The number of links coming from the various categories is more evenly distributed here, which you would expect as we are doing link building for him in each category.

The First Page of Google Links

If we summarize the results for all three web sites for the first page of links from Google, we see that 30% of the links on the first page came from article directories, 20% came from online PR sites, 20% came from social media sites, and 10% came from blogs. These percentages show that each of these actions is effective in building links.

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Marketing with Facebook and Twitter

by John Eberhard

Facebook and Twitter are the biggest social media sites right now. Both can be used effectively for marketing purposes, but you have to know how.

Facebook Marketing

There are three main ways to market oneself on Facebook, through a personal profile page, through a corporate or “fan” page, and with pay per click advertising.

Facebook’s pay per click program is pretty good, but that’s a topic for another article. As for Facebook’s corporate or fan pages, many, many companies are putting these up right now, and I for one get half a dozen “become a fan of my page” messages per day. So I think this medium is getting a bit saturated and the effectiveness is dropping thereby, unless you are already a celebrity or well known.

That leaves the personal profile page, and I have found this to be a very effective way to market my business and I have gotten business from it. They key is to build up lots of friends. First, find a bunch of your personal friends, and add them. Then formulate a strategy for adding people that you don’t know to your friends list. I have had the policy of adding people who have 20 or more friends in common with me.

On your home page, on the top right is a section called “Requests,” and if you have any requests pending and click on this, you will see a column on the right that says “Suggestions.” This list shows 4 people you could propose to be Facebook friends with, and under each person’s name, it shows how many mutual friends they have with you. This is a handy way of going through and finding people who have a lot of mutual friends. I sometimes get someone emailing me after I’ve sent them a friend request, saying “Do I know you?,” to which I respond “No, but we have a lot of mutual friends.” They almost always then approve it after that.

Twitter Marketing

The first thing with Twitter is that you have to have a lot of followers, otherwise no one will see your communications. You need to build up your followers to 1,000, 2,000 or more. The usual way to get a lot of followers is to follow someone and then they will in most cases follow you back.

Of course this is time consuming. The first thing you should do is to search for some of your friends who you figure might be on Twitter and them follow them. Then you need to come up with a strategy for adding followers that are potential clients or customers for your business.

There are a number of software packages or online services that will automate the following process to one degree or another. Tweet Adder is an excellent tool. I have recently started using TweetSpinner.com, a free tool (with paid upgrade for more features). TweetSpinner allows you to automatically “un-follow” people you have followed but have not followed you in return. You press the “purge” button and it will “un-follow” 20 of these people at a time, and you can do this multiple times in one session.

TweetSpinner will also allow you to automatically follow people who have followed you but you haven’t followed back yet, 20 at a time. You can also select a keyword, and the system will locate people who have used that keyword in their messages, or “tweets” (I’m glad I didn’t come up with that word), and then follow 30 of them at a time. By selecting the right keywords, this can be effective in allowing one to target people who are potential clients, in that they are discussing topics relevant to your business. Then a certain percentage of them will follow you back.

So the method I have found effective is to jockey these two factors back and forth; adding new people that you are following, then a few days later, un-following those that didn’t follow you back. Rinse and repeat.

Communications Out

I use a site called Ping.fm and have my Twitter and Facebook personal profile hooked up to it, so that when I post something on Ping, it automatically goes out to my Facebook and Twitter (and other) accounts. Ping.fm limits you to 140 characters similar to Twitter, so it is an ideal tool to save time for posting to these sites like Twitter that allow you only a short message.

You have to find a strategy for what to post that will work for you. This should not be “buy my stuff,” “buy my stuff,” “buy my stuff,” as this is frowned upon in social media in general and will turn people off. If you are constantly pitching your products or services in your status updates, people will remove you from their friend or follower list.

A strategy I have used that has worked for me is to post messages several times a day, saying what I am working on with my business. For example, if I just designed a new web site or blog, I post a link to it. Or I’ll say that I am working on a new pay per click advertising account for a client, or sending out press releases, or writing a marketing plan. I will occasionally post something saying I’m offering my book on sale or here is a link to a free white paper, but I limit the frequency of that.

This approach is relatively non-offensive to the social media universe and tends to reinforce daily that I am an Internet marketing consultant and I offer these services. So it keeps it in people’s minds that I do that. And this has worked for me and has gotten me business. And I believe it can work for you too.

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