“The Internet evens the playing field between Fortune 500 companies and yours.” Using the Internet, you can portray the image and marketing prowess of a multimillion dollar company. It doesn’t take a dedicated sales staff, human resources, product warehouses and store locations to be successful… It takes you being deeply passionate about the success of your business and realizing that the marketing methods of traditional business alone won’t get you there. In order to be insanely successful, you will need to integrate online marketing and a web presence, along with more traditional advertising strategies to capture your perspective clients’ attention.
Internet Marketing and SEO First and foremost, I have to congratulate you on taking the first step to more profits for your company. An essential part of business is marketing, both online and off. Whether your company has grown up doing television commercials, direct mail, word of mouth or email newsletters – the time has come that you need to take a different approach. One of the hardest things to do in most organizations is finding clients. Some industries have grown up bidding on jobs, while others employ full sales teams, and still others depend on phone calls. The simple fact is just waiting for clients to knock on your door is a sure path to failure. In this day and age, people have more resources than ever to research and compare. In fact, a growing majority will consult the Internet before their telephone book. Why? It's because of the quality of information. A phone book gives them the bare essentials – a number, an address, and maybe a tagline and brief description. It doesn’t give them a complete picture of what your business is about. So they venture online! They try to find out whether a phone call to you will solve whatever problem they might be having. And if it won’t, they move on to the next company.
Ideally, website will be one that both showcases your skill sets (or your company’s) and gets you new leads. In order to do either, it needs to be in front of people. No matter what niche you have chosen, your site has to rank well for some of the more popular search terms that you are specializing in. It might be ‘web design,’ ‘basket weaving,’ direct mail marketing,’ ‘commercial printing’ or ‘boxes.’ No matter the industry, it has key phrases that help to describe it. The website also needs to be marketed well through more traditional media such as business cards, landing pages, and a bit of pay per click advertising. That is more of a grassroots campaign, but one worth mentioning nonetheless. The fact of the matter is this: People are increasingly using search engines to find businesses! They are constantly comparing everything from price to skill level to location. If your site isn’t even on their radar, you aren’t leveraging it correctly. This represents a unique opportunity for anyone who realizes the power of Internet marketing. Using the Internet marketing techniques that I propose in this special report, you will gain credibility, search engine traffic, paid search traffic, leads from your website and referral sales.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) We all know what search engines are… They are those websites that index the Internet, and allow us to search billions of sites quickly and easily. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask; they all exist to get us where we want to go. Some do it better than others, but that is a totally different story! Basically, search engines work by sending robot "spiders" to your website so that they can create an index of the content on your web pages. This spider is nothing more than a little program that follows links from one site to the next. In essence, what it does is scurry down a page, copying all of its content, until it finds a link. The spider then follows that link to the next page, and goes through the entire process all over again! Obviously, the more a spider likes your webpage, the better it will get indexed – and the more traffic will come as a result!
In the spider’s travels, it makes sure to give special attention to certain words that it doesn’t see too often, known as keywords. When I say ‘it doesn’t see too often’ I mean words other than the most common, including “the” and “and.” For example, say the opening couple sentences on your home page are as follows: “We specialize in delivering professional promotional design for newsletters, brochures, business cards and signs.” When a search engine sees that group of sentences, it is actually only going to pick out a couple phrases, also known as keywords or keyword phrases: • • • • • • •
Professional promotional design Promotional design Design for newsletters Brochures Business cards Signs newsletters
(It might also pick up ‘design for brochures’ and ‘design for business cards’ depending on the rest of the surrounding text) Actually, this is a great opening sentence; because it will help you rank for all kinds of very competitive keywords. In fact, there are more phrases that it might pick up on that I didn’t list above. With that being said, you can see the spider doesn’t waste its time on the common words. One thing I see over and over again is the use of ‘Welcome’ on the opening page. How many sites do you think use welcome in their opening paragraph? That paragraph is very valuable real estate for a site because it serves as the introduction of your business to a prospective client. Also, search engines rank home pages higher than subpages because they serve as a gateway to the rest of the site. Is it worth using that to say “Welcome?” Basically, keywords you want to rank for are going to be anything someone would type into a search engine, in hopes of finding a service they are interested in. Unfortunately, there are thousands of niche markets, so I can’t be too terribly specific. Let’s take the Freelancing industry for example. Here are some of the niche’s more coveted keywords: • • • • •
Freelance Freelance writing jobs Freelance jobs Freelance writing 3d freelance
We are going to go through the top keyword rankings in a bit, but I wanted you to get a feel for where we are going with this. The most important strategy is to rank high for your preferred words on the main search engines in "organic" or "natural" searches (as opposed to paid ads). Essentially, search engines want to find the best matching website for the keywords typed in by a user. The objective of performing SEO, is to correctly position and structure your website to rank as high as possible for your given niche and keyword set. Now, let me clearly state that it is unlikely that your website will ever be #1 when performing a search on involving your business’ specific category. The sites that achieve this status are usually sites with hundreds or even thousands of pages in their navigation panels. The top spot often goes to an article review site, or a Wikipedia entry whose main focus is what you are gunning for. This is a very intense topic of scrutiny at the search engines now. They are modifying the algorithms to account for the link popularity of Wikipedia and some of the other popular sites in order to serve the best pages per search query. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out – as long as Google doesn’t give its network of sites unjust placement. Another possible scenario for top search placement is that their search engine optimization is professionally managed, usually by an outside organization. This often leads to better search results for the same reason it is better to hire an outside company to do a company website. The latest tips and techniques may be employed if you have someone on top of it full time. If you are doing it yourself, it won’t be quite as optimized, unfortunately. Additionally, the top spot in Google is difficult to reach is because the first two listings on a very high profile keyword are usually paid advertisements. The background is slightly off color which indicates to the user that it is slightly different, but most people will click on it anyway. That isn’t defined by search engine optimization, but by search engine marketing which we will get into towards the end of this book.
Think About Your Website’s Visitors… When you are looking to catapult your own site to the top ranks of Google, you need to keep one thing in mind specifically: “How will someone find my site? “ In fact, I like to take my client’s through a series of exercises that help them to think like their visitors and customers. One exercise I like to go through with a new SEO client plays out like this: “Hi, Mr. Client. Let me ask you a question. If you had to get to your site without typing in the domain name or the name of your business, how would you do it?” They will inevitably answer, “A search engine.” That is the default response. In fact, that’s how everyone maneuvers around the Internet. Now, the business name is a good place to start for targeting keywords, but it should be a very small point on your list. As an illustration of what to do with keywords, I am going to describe one of my current clients, a very large printing company that is still being run with a ‘small business’ mentality.
Finding Good Keywords PrintCon has been around for 37 years. They are well into the million dollar range in terms of revenue every year, and they have equaled that in assets in their building. They are a very successful commercial printing company looking from the more static, bricks and mortar business to one with a lot of ties online. Let’s face it… Commercial printing is a dying profession. I was brought in to do a number of things, one of which was to manage their new website (which I didn’t build) and make sure they were fully optimizes for their new clients. They were mixing in some Pay Per Click before I got there, but the campaign weren’t being managed and no one knew what the conversion rates were so tracking it was a nightmare.
The initial conversation was hard, at best. I asked my client what they do. They started spouting off long, complicated service offerings like, “Variable data printing, bindery services, plate formatting,” and a lot of things I didn’t understand. There was problem number one! They are tailoring their site for other people that knew what they did. But if I, as a business owner, wants to get letterhead and business cards printed out, what do you think I would type into Google? You got it – business cards and letterhead! Not crazy printing terms that no one outside the industry understands. Sure, the marketers who had been with them for 15 years knew exactly what they were saying, but I didn’t and I am their primary market! So, I restructured my question. “What do you make?” They answered with business cards, folders, envelopes, direct mail pieces, boxes, and a bunch of other ‘printed’ pieces. I responded, “Exactly what I was looking for.” “What do you mean? We having binding services, variable printing…” shot back the owner of PrintCon. My point is this… Your preferred keywords have to be such that an ordinary person will find your site through a simple search. If PrintCon’s website was optimized for ‘bindery services’ and ‘variable rate printing;’ how many prospective clients would find you? No One. However, once I got PrintCon’s website optimized for ‘business cards’ and ‘letterhead’ their chances of success were much, much higher.
Your Industry Most industries in today’s culture are highly competitive and diverse. Not to mention, they are increasingly dealing with the globalization that the Internet has brought to commerce. A grand majority of business is usually done locally, but your customers are now being barraged with your competitor’s offerings. One industry I am thinking of in particular is the meat market in your local grocery store. It used to be that in order to get a great steak; you went to your local butcher. As grocery stores began to flourish, butchers had to step to the back of the line. Now, mail order and online order companies like Omaha Steaks will ship your meat purchase right to your door. And the quality is amazing! How do you avoid having the same fate? Embrace the Internet and realize that your company’s future is rooted in the emphasis that you put into Internet marketing!
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to start getting into the Internet marketing mindset: • • • • • • •
What are you offering for products/services? What are the highly competitive keywords online? Do you think you can rank organically for those words? Is it best to geo‐target your clients, or adopt nationwide sales principles? Where are you located? What are your price points? What are your major selling points?
Think about how you would search for one of your competitors. Better yet, go through one of your competitor’s websites. See what terms they are trying to rank for. Are they getting a lot of business through their website? Or is it just an information portal? Now, think about what you want your client’s to do once they get to your site. Do you want them to visit and then leave? Thinking nothing about using you for their next job? Or do you want them to remember your site and your presence? Once these potential customers arrive, there are definite objectives that your website should achieve to be successful. 1. You want to capture their interest so they value the website as a good source of information. Among other things, this is done by providing a visually appealing and functional website as well as great quality content. You need to make sure your logo and location is prominently displayed as well. 2. You want to capture their email address so you can build a relationship with them. The best way to do this is to enlist these people to a “Prospective New Customer” auto responder campaign. This might be facilitated by a discount coupon or some sort of free offer. 3. Likewise, you might also want to have a special offer for new customers like free downloadable icons, or one hour of free consultation. You might even have some sort of coupon offering a half‐off logo design. The trick is – this all has to happen within the first 10 seconds or so. They have to clearly understand the navigation so that you can get (and give) all the pieces of information listed above quickly and accurately.
Onsite Search Engine Optimization Onsite search engine optimization can be summed up pretty quickly… On site. It is what you do within your site that makes the difference between search engines loving you or hating you. In fact, I personally feel this is the most important part of search engine optimization. A lot of people argue that incoming links is what will make or break you. I beg to differ. I have personally started sites, added 5 or 6 articles and some pretty decent, keyword centered content; and gotten a page rank of 2 in three months. Is that acceptable for a normal business? Absolutely not! But for a site I spend two hours on as a test run of a concept, it is a big win. No longer do I pay for a plethora of incoming links once my site is found by Google. I just make sure to add content often enough to keep the engines interested. Onsite SEO is keyword centered. Keywords are the focus because they let all the search engines know what your site is all about. Forget images, flash, fancy navigation dropdowns, and all the time consuming stuff. If you have a site that is going to rely on search engine traffic, it needs to be text based to start. It can be pretty and offer interactivity, but keep in mind the search engines can’t interpret java or flash. They can just identify what is contained based on the alt tags and title tags. There are a few huge areas of onsite optimization that needs to be considered. They are: • • • • • • • • • •
Title tags Meta tags (Description and Keyword) Header tags (the heading inside your content) The first paragraphs of your website Image alt tags and title tags Clean, text based navigation Sitemaps Keyword specific pages Search engine submission (not required) Local promotion
Offsite Optimization The second part of SEO is offsite optimization. Like onsite, the label is a dead give‐a‐way to what is required! Offsite optimization is all about linking strategies. These strategies have been pretty cut up over time and have made people a lot of money. As I said earlier, I am a firm believer that keyword optimization is the way to go. Once Google finds your site, it will be back time and time again. With that being said, let’s outline the thought behind links and their relation to Google’s invention, ‘Page Rank.’ Google describes PageRank as this: “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important". (Wikipedia.org)” Both PageRank and link popularity were revolutionary concepts for their time. Not only were all the search engines concentrating almost purely on keywords, they were looking to volume. At the time, Google stepped in and took links into consideration while ranking the importance of websites – and the game changed. Now, the rest of the search engines have been said to incorporate linking algorithms into their metrics. It is uncertain how any of them work because of proprietary information, but one thing can be clear – they are getting better. The reason I feel so strongly about link partners is simple – links can be gamed. Incoming links can be manipulated very easily. You can go to RentaCoder, pay $500 and get 50 PageRank (PR) 4 sites linking to you. What’s the quality of those links? Do they have similar content? Will they be taken down in a week? And what are the effects on your site down the road? To me, the one sure bet is keyword content.
There are companies that have made a lot of money selling links. Sites like TextLinkAds.com and SponsoredReviews.com (who indirectly sell links) have made their share exploiting this market. And truthfully, I have made a lot of money selling links on some of my more popular sites. But I do it as a way pull some passive income. Never once have I paid for a link. I just email a favorite webmaster and ask for it! Or I ask to be included in a niche oriented directory. It isn’t rocket science or hard work, it’s just being sincere. As the world of search evolves, the providers are constantly looking for new ways of mixing and mashing the data to stay one step ahead of the curve. Surprisingly, Google and Yahoo are a bit behind the 8 ball now though because of the popularity of the social networking sites in the past years. Personally, I feel this will be the root of a lot of changes coming up. In fact, I might even have to add another section onto this eBook: Social networks. Search engines are still pretty new at learning how to interpret all the data from YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Digg and all other user driven sites out there. They rank things wrong in some cases, and in others leave the social sites totally out of the picture. One thing is certain though, this new ‘social’ web isn’t going anywhere soon. It will continue to grow and evolve until the popularity is at a critical mass. Some think it already is! In the near future, I see a lot of things playing a role in search engine optimization. I see images, videos, and friend’s lists. If businesses don’t have those, they won’t rank well. I also see user generated content to be a part of most major sites. For instance, if you are a designer and have project management software installed in a subdirectory – you will rank higher because Google will feel you manage your clients well. If you have trouble ticket software, you might rank higher because you have a process laid out to process requests. Keep in mind, this is my mind wandering – but I assure you that as soon as I hear something, so will you! Some offsite optimization areas of interest: • • • • •
Link gathering Directory submission Specialized directory submission Reciprocal links Networked sites
There are tips and tricks to each of these areas that will be discussed at a later date. The important thing to realize is these offsite optimization topics are very important to your success as a webmaster, both in the eyes of your clients and the search engines.
Paid Advertising Strategies None of the approaches described in this report is "free." Each requires time and energy. But if you want to grow your business more rapidly, there comes a point when you need to pay for increased traffic. Online advertising is sold in one of three ways: • • •
traditional CPM (cost per thousand views) pay per click (PPC) cost per action, otherwise known as an affiliate program or lead generation program
CPM Ads: In a nutshell, cost per thousand views advertising is just that – a banner that you pay $5.00 or so for every thousand views it gets. It doesn’t matter if 500 people or 1 person clicks on the banner, you will be paying the same amount.
CPA Ads: CPA, or Cost per action, is when a user clicks and follows through with the action you want them to. For instance, if you have a banner promoting your programming services and the text reads, “Sign Up For Your Free Code Snippets.” you only pay when someone actually signs up and downloads the code. The point is you don’t pay unless you get something in return.
PPC Ads: Finally, last but not least, is pay per click ads or PPC ads. PPC is the bread and butter of online advertising. It didn’t always used to be this way, but ‘banner blindness’ has contributed to a lot of companies steering away from gaudy flash banners. PPC is the best starting point for paid advertisement, in my estimation. In essence, Pay Per Click advertising is when you pay an amount of money per click of the ad. For example, if you set up your campaign with the keyword “Web Design” and it costs $5.25 every click, that is how much you will pay each and every time the ad is clicked. Sounds like a lot right? It is. Each of these advertising programs has its advantages and disadvantages. We will be going over them in more detail in later courses and trainings. All three are good for online business as long as they are managed effectively, but I personally feel they should have a disclaimer attached to them… “Only sign up if you know what you’re doing!” But how could Google make money that way?
Non Traditional Internet Marketing Strategies
This is really a very new thought in Internet marketing. As we progress to being a more online culture – and as people are becoming innovative with web marketing techniques – we are confronted with new ways of advertising. Some of these include: • • • • • • •
Blog reviews Widgets Buying independent ad space Guest Blogging Domain name registration (for sub topics of your site) Online press releases Social networking sites and blog commenting
These are some of the many ways in which online companies are differentiating themselves on the Internet. Some of the techniques are good for finding niche customers, while others are better suited for nice linkbacks. No matter the scenario, the more visible you are online – the more of a brand you are building!
Traditional Marketing Strategies Just because "old media" strategies aren't on the Internet doesn't mean they aren't effective. A mixed media approach can be very effective when dealing with non‐digital services. By this, I mean in the world of 98% of all business – you are going to need to come face to face with someone throughout the day. In fact, the people in your local community are often going to be your best clients because you have to put in face time with them. They are also able to feed off of your reputation and recommend you to other potential clients. Even though you have plans to market online, think about these for your freelance business:
• • • • • • • • •
Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature Leverage personalized urls Promote using print media such as trade journals, niche magazines, and smaller run periodicals (these are more cost effective) Direct mail, classifieds, post cards and TV Develop a Free Service or Product Do non‐profit work (a personal favorite of mine) Email Strategies Install a "Signature" in your E‐Mail Program (this one will surprise you) Publish an E‐Mail Newsletter
Here are two traditional marketing scenarios we will play out: You can direct traffic to your site using a post card with a hand picked mailing list of advertising agencies in a tri‐state area. The goal is to simply place the potential customer on the home page of your site. On the home page, you have a general paragraph about what your freelancing business is about, a couple pictures, maybe a link to the menu, and that’s about it. In fact, it is a pretty boring page when you get down to it. Or, How about this… You direct the same traffic using the same method of promotion, and let a user download a royalty free stock set of images in exchange for his/her email address. Perhaps the download is located on a sub‐page like www.mysite.com/offer. I can guarantee you; from being in this business long enough, that you will get at best 1% of your clients by marketing it the first way. If you use the second though, I see you increasing your results to about 9%! Now, they might download the image bundle, play with it a bit, and come back to schedule some work with you – but you got their email and name when they signed up for the download! It’s up to you to market to them. What is more desirable? 2% or 16%? What would you rather see on your bottom line? I am absolutely aware of the expense in time and energy to develop free resources, but it is very rewarding in terms of increased traffic to your site. It also makes that traffic ‘actionable.’ (Actionable refers to getting users do what you want them to do on your site). Just make sure that your free service is closely related to what you’re service offerings are so that visitors will be good potential customers and clients! Aside from the above example, there are a number of other ways to do this for a freelance/service oriented site. For example: • •
Allow someone to prepay for a service online that guarantees them a reduced price. Have a section that will let someone download promotional materials and resources.
• • •
Give the user a free hours worth of consulting. Do an eBook with tips and tactics that may be downloaded. And on and on…
To help potential customers get in touch with you, make sure your details are included on every email you send.
Miscellaneous Strategies In writing this report, there were several thoughts I had that weren’t necessarily tied to any one area of marketing. Some of them are more powerful than others, but they all show promise, nonetheless. Here are some more miscellaneous strategies that you could implement to bring in some new business: • • • • •
Tell a Friend – Viral Marketing Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site Or Add Your RSS Encourage social bookmarking Offer visitors a compelling reason to use your services (this can be done by giving your services away for free to ‘influencers’) Use an effective multimedia squeeze page (Can’t stand ‘em)
Tech Solution Training Throughout the course of this special report, we touched on a lot of different thoughts in regards to search engine optimization, online marketing, pay per click advertising, and so on. It is a lot of information to take in all at once. But, if you put 25 percent of these recommendations into practice in your business marketing, you will be a lot farther ahead than 90% of the people on the Internet. As a companion to this free report, we are offering a complete Internet Marketing training series, available early 2008. This series isn’t something you download, either. It is a complete learning environment that can be accessed online. It includes each and every topic we went through in this eBook – detailed, discussed, thought out, and implemented. In short, I mean each and every topic will be set up like a tutorial with text and interactive elements that will allow you to understand them more fully. There are screencasts, audio lectures, easy to read and understand documentation, and interactive demonstrations. There will be forums for you to network with other niche professionals. And our support staff will be there to assist you whenever you run into a problem in your own business. For any webmaster, business owner, developer or designer; it is one resource that will be essential to leading edge techniques. For more information, please visit http://techsolutioncentral.com/training‐1. There will be more information coming in regards to reserving your spot as well as a $50 coupon for the first 1000 members. Truly, 2008 will be a remarkable year. I feel it’s our responsibility to make you successful in your online endeavors.