September 2013 ÂŁ2
Digital Marketing Insider
How We Grow Our Clients Businesses Online How To Set Up The Perfect Google AdWords Account In 3 Hours Poor Online Marketing Incentives Entrepreneur Insights- Rockstar Mentor Chelsey Baker
A Note From The Editor
First a warm welcome to September’s edition of the Digital Marketing Insider, produced by ROARlocal. com.
If this is the first time you’ve received this a hearty welcome to you!
About Us
Contents
You’re receiving this because we want to show you what we’re all about and also give you some usable strategies to help your businesses grow.
We create great looking online advertising campaigns that enhance your brand, we use scientifically proven online advertising methods to drive visitors to your website and adverts and then we optimise your site to make sure those visitors become paying customers that tell all their friends and come back for more.
01 / A Note From The Editor
Our team is different, we focus on making you MONEY we couldn’t care less for winning awards for being “creative” our reward is money in your bank. We’re successful online entrepreneurs, world class copywriters, website optimisation specialists, online advertising mavericks and the geekiest SEO people!
05 / How To Set Up The Perfect Google AdWords Account In 3 Hours
Of course, many business owners are being completely distracted from working on their businesses by the rugby, the cricket and the summer/torrential downpours!but not, I’m sure, the businesses you are involved with. And here at ROARlocal Towers, we are practicing our best time management techniques to be able to enjoy the best of both worlds! This month we have some great info for you to get you set up online, including how to set up your PPC account, get your SEO going and ensure you’re selling in the right way.
02 / Poor Online Marketing Incentives 03 / How We Grow Our Clients Businesses Online
07 / SEO Fast Page 1 Ranking Case Study 10 / Entrepreneur Insights
I hope you’ll enjoy reading this months magazine it’s jam packed with our usual level of brilliant content and as always if we can help you in any way please get in touch
Neil Asher CEO ROARlocal
01
by Neil Asher
Poor Online Marketing Incentives By Google Adwords Consultants
Flavio Briatore uses a powerful incentive to keep his young wife
I’m fascinated by Online Marketing Incentives. We all use them, online and offline, everyday, to try and manipulate other peoples’ behaviour. “If you behave, we’ll give you a treat later” is a popular incentive used by parents to try and control their kids (myself included). Do this to get this – is the tacit level agreement that incentives operate on. As a marketer we use incentives all the time to get people to take action. Buy this product and you’ll feel this way. The government uses it all the time to try and manipulate society’s behaviour. Think of the incentives involved with having children in exchange for money from the government as our workforce is expanded for instance. But I digress. Let me show you an example of a seemingly good deal that incentivises poor behaviour. Most digital marketing agencies work on the following An agency will typically charge 15% of ad spend to manage an AdWords campaign. So, if client A spends $10,000 a month on Google, the agency pockets $1500. Client B spends on $5000 a month on Google ads, so the agency gets $750.
Your agency’s pay is contingent upon the amount of (your) money they spend, thus the more they spend, the more money they make. Is this a smart incentive? I say it’s not. Your agency should be rewarded for maximising your marketing dollars, and for making you the most money possible, right? As an entrepreneur myself, this is what I’d want anyway. Plus Let’s say Client A’s account, with a $10,000/ month spend, is a mature account that is ticking over nicely and requires only minor tweaking each month. Client B’s account, with a $5000 spend, is still in startup mode and requires many hours of testing keywords, ads, landing pages etc.
Given that a typical conversion rate for AdWords campaigns is 2% to 3%, it means 97% of all clicks are wasted. The aim of a good AdWords agency is to reduce this wasted spend as much as possible. But if the agency is pocketing a percentage of ad spend, why would they be worried if the client spends more with Google? The more the client spends, the better it is for the agency! That’s why our digital marketing agency operates on a flat fee arrangement, we are thus incentivised to maximise your money and your profit. Who knows, in the future I may instigate a % of the profits we produce for our clients (we typically triple the profits of the businesses we work on), but for now this is the incentive structure that makes most sense to me as an entrepreneur.
If anything, the agency should be charging more for client B’s account, due to the added work being done. But this is not the worst part of the “percentage of ad spend” pricing model. As I said the biggest downside is that it provides no incentive for the agency to reduce waste spending. In fact, it actually encourages waste spending!
Certainly, this fee structure is nice and simple. But the downside (if you’re a client) is the incentive at play here. As an entrepreneur your goal is to get the best return possible for your marketing money.
02
How We Grow Our Clients Businesses Online When we take on a new client, one of the very first things we look at is how to grow their business. We look at all aspects of their online marketing strategy, but we always come back to the 3 ways to increase revenue. What are the 3 most effective methods to increase revenue in your business? You work hard to move a new customer into your pipeline. You network. Maybe you pay for advertising. You work for links to your website. Anything to get those precious people into your sales funnel. Anything to make sales. Anything to give you the opportunity to help your customer and help yourself in the process. We always aim to increase revenue without increasing our clients expenses. To do that there are many tips and tricks you can find here on this website. However, they ultimately fall into one of these three categories. And, as you read through them, you’ll find multiple opportunities to increase revenue in your business. Big doors swing on small hinges. When you understand these three principles you’ll realise you’ve only cracked open a very large door and have left a large amount of revenue sitting outside.
Your other option is to increase your conversion rate. If you don’t want to work on getting more visitors you can work on increasing your conversion rate from 5% to 10% so you can sell those 10 items.
1 / Increase Revenue With More New Customer Sales
Increasing conversion rates has become a hot topic recently because of the big impact it can have to increase revenue. For example, if you’re currently converting 50% of your visitors and you increase that to 60% it’s not a 10% increase in revenue. That’s a 20% increase in revenue.
Get MORE customers To Buy Your Stuff
That’s a huge impact!
Of the three ways to increase revenue, this is the most obvious solution and the one most businesses work to improve.
It’s important you’re measuring these numbers so you can deeply understand the dramatic difference any small changes will make on your bottom line.
There are two ways you can increase new customer sales: Sell your stuff to more people, or, convert more existing prospects to buy your stuff.
2 / Increase Your Average Sale Per Customer
These seem the same but they’re two slightly different details. And, they both revolve around your conversion rates.
In most small businesses the sales process is some random series of events. There’s no systematic way to upsell or bundle products and maximise the revenue per customer. Many big chains do it but the Mom and Pop, local business, or blogger hasn’t really embraced this. Often there’s the sense of community and a fear of offending your customer (you really won’t, but it’s a common fear). For instance, one of our clients is a national printing chain. I remember looking at their reports that showed the average order value per customer was $150. We took a look at what their average sale consisted of, then figured out that they could bundle this with a smaller product that each customer needed but most didn’t know existed due to poor marketing. This small change to their online process increased their average order to $180. A 20% bump in sales for them with just 1 alteration. This additional revenue meant they had to service 20% fewer customers to earn the same income. This led to lower staff expenses, time spent on marketing their business more effectively in the stores, etc. It also meant their customers had a better outcome than the average print customer because they were offering more and they were buying. We had created a systematic process each prospect went through when discussing their print needs and options to yield this additional income.
So, what are your conversion rates? How many people buy who visit your website, walk through your doors, receive your marketing, etc.? If you don’t know your conversion rates then you need to start measuring. In order to sell your stuff to more people you can increase the traffic to your website or store. This involves more advertising, networking, etc. You’re working around your existing conversion rate and playing the numbers game in sales. For example, if you have 100 visitors and 5 buy something then your conversion rate is 5%. If you want to double your sales based on this, you’ll need 200 visitors to make 10 sales. Fairly straight forward and simple right?
Now that you’ve started to convert more visitors into sales, you want to make sure you’re able to get as much money out of each customer as they’re willing to spend.
It was critical. It was required! Get Each Customer To Buy MORE from you
03
by Neil Asher
The illusion of value has been created and they’ve extracted the additional revenue out of your wallet.
When you go to almost any fast food franchise you get an upsell via two different processes. The first thing they do is bundle products together. You probably only want a hamburger and drink. But, for an additional 20 cents you can bundle the fries into your meal. This would save you 90 cents if you bought them separately (it’s on sale so I have to upgrade! Yes?). Then, after you place your order they ask you if you want to “go large” or “super size.” This is only an additional 24 cents. So, why not take the large? The illusion of value has been created and they’ve extracted the additional revenue out of your wallet. Search through what you offer. What can you offer after the initial sale? What can you bundle? What can you add to existing products/services and create a premium offer (ex. a silver, gold, and platinum level)? You may not think what you sell could be bundled, however, you’ll be surprised how you can bundle many random things and, because it’s a bundled “savings,” you will sell more stuff. You may not want to do this because you don’t want to offer a discount on a bundled item. You’re making a big mistake. If you weren’t making the additional sale in the first place this discount is found money. Naturally, you want to be profitable so make the numbers work and think… Where can you create the illusion of value? 3 / Increase The Frequency Of Customer Purchases Make Your Products More Addictive Than A Bottle Of Vodka For Lindsey
What are you doing to get customers to buy your products more frequently? Do you mail or email your customer often enough?
They also earned additional revenue from concessions. This was a win/win for everyone involved.
I hear you thinking to yourself:
If you only offer one or two products or services, how can you increase buyer frequency?
“I don’t want to spam my list!” Or: “I don’t want to pester my customer and prospect list; they may unsubscribe or tell me to stop mailing.” Okay. Good points. How about this? What if you make extra sales from those that stick around? What if you make a lot of extra sales from those that stick around? Would it be worth losing the complaining part of your list if you create a few more happy customers? (I hope you said “Yes!”) Of the three ways to increase revenue in your business I’ve found this to be the most neglected. I believe it’s mainly because of the fear of pushing too hard or asking too often. Naturally, you want to provide value so you aren’t seen as a greedy business person. You can offer discounts, coupons, frequent buyer programs, etc. to get customers to come back more often. Repetition of your offer will also increase curiosity and desire in your product. A discount can give them that extra nudge to move ahead and invest in your offer.
Find similar businesses that support what you do and offer their products or services to your customers for commission. If you’re selling online, look into affiliate marketing. There are many missed opportunities for any business to increase their revenue with the products and services of another’s when you begin to search around. Where Will You Start? If you don’t have any statistics for your current conversion rates, average sale per customer, or the frequency of customer purchases, you want to start measuring where you’re at now! Then, as you begin to really understand those numbers, dive into each of these three ways to increase revenue. As I said at the beginning, big doors swing on small hinges. As you work on each of these areas, you’ll realise the enormous door of opportunity has only been cracked open and you’ll be able to swing it wide open. Want to get us to increase the sales in your business? Then get in touch with us here
You can think of many creative ways to get people to buy more frequently. I love an example in the book Priceless about a movie theatre that gave customers a Loyalty Card. The first visit to the theatre each month was regular price. Each visit after the first, the customer paid less and less. The number of tickets sold to card holders went up 22%.
04
How To Set Up The Perfect Google AdWords Account in 3 Hours How to setup a google adwords campaign. I’ve worked in the Paid Traffic industry for over 8 years. I’ve looked after payper-click accounts for all sorts of businesses, from giant blue-chips to tiny start-ups. No matter the size of the company, the number of employees or the weight of the budget, I always hear the same three concerns when people first get in touch…. •
I just don’t have time to set it all up.
•
I don’t get it.
•
It’s going to cost me a flipping fortune!
In this blog, I’m going to show that with just a few hours and with absolutely no prior knowledge, you can set up a really successful Google AdWords account that will increase your business’s profits. Huzzah! 9.30 am to 10.30am: Setting Up - Creating an Account The first thing you’ll need is a cup of tea. Aaah. Secondly, a Gmail address. If you don’t have one, head here to set one up.
good idea to use Somerset as your location so your ads only get shown to people in or searching for stuff in Somerset? If you’re selling online and deliver to Europe, you might want to choose Europe as your location?
Thirdly, sign up for Google AdWords using your Gmail address. Select the options •
•
I have an email address and password that I already use with Google services like AdAense, Googel Mail or iGoogle
5.
I’d like to use my existing Google account for AdWords
On the next page, simply choose your Time Zone Country and Time Zone and choose the right Currency. Click on the ‘Sign in to your AdWords account’ and ta da! You’ve now got your very own AdWords account. Campaigns and Ad Groups Next up, we need some Campaigns. These are an organisational tool (like folders) and it’s really important to set up a different one for each main section of your site. So if you’ve got a shoe shop, set up a High Heels Campaign, a Sandals Campaign, a Boots Campaign, a Children’s Shoes Campaign etc. Click on ‘Create your first campaign’ to get going. The next page is a list of settings for your Campaigns. Leave them all as they are except for: 1.
Change the Campaign name to a relevant one (e.g. High Heels)
2.
For Type, select ‘Search Network Only’
3.
For Networks, untick ‘Include search partners’
4.
Choose your Locations carefully. If you’re a shoe shop in Bath, maybe it’d be a
6.
You’ll also need a budget for each Campaign. There are lots of complicated formulas for working out how much to spend on AdWords, but really, unless you have access to target advertising profit margin figures and suchlike, it’s about what you feel comfortable with, especially when you’re just starting out and testing the pay-per-click water. So, take a total daily amount that you’re happy to spend on driving the right people to your site, and divide it by the amount of Campaigns you’re going to have. Stick that figure in the Budget box. Once you’re live and gathering some data from AdWords, you’ll need to refine this. We’ll do a follow up ‘Optimisation’ post soon! After you’ve saved your first one, head to the Campaigns tab in the top green bar and create as many Campaigns as your website needs.
Setting up Ad Groups Ad Groups are another organisation tool, like a sub folder, that sit within each Campaign. So within my High Heels Campaign, I’d have a series of Ad Groups: ‘Leather’, ‘Red’, ‘Stilettos’ and in my Children’s Shoes Campaign I’d have different Ad Groups: ‘First Shoes’, ‘Crawlers’ etc.
The settings that you’ve chosen for your Campaign will be applied to all the Ad Groups within it. To create Ad Groups, click in to each Campaign to get to the Ad Groups tab, and click ‘New ad group’ until you’ve done all of the Ad Groups required within each of your Campaigns. 10.30am to 11.30am: Keywords and Ads Keywords Peckish? Time for a quick slice of cake I think. Nom. Each one of those Ad Groups you’ve set up needs filling up with some keywords. Keywords are words or phrases that people type in to Google’s search bar. Your next job is to try and find all of the keywords that people will be typing in when they’re looking for exactly what’s being offered on your website. The best way to do this is to head to the ‘Tools and Analysis’ tab in the top green bar and then choose ‘Keyword Tool’ from the dropdown. Beware! You can spend hours and hours in this tool and it’s not always time well spent, particularly as once your account is up and running, lovely old Google will provide a fantastic list of additional keywords that you might want to add. So, to start, for each of the Ad Groups that you chose earlier, type the main phrase in to the Tool. Select the settings shown in the image opposite
05
by Libby Thomas
11.30am to 12.30pm: Tracking & Billing Treat yourself to a toilet break. Aaaand relax. Conversion tracking code needs to be added to pages on your site that people will land on after they’ve bought or signed up for something. These are typically ‘thank you’ pages. You might have more than one of these. Set up a new conversion for each page. Once you’re live, the conversion stats will tell you how many people have landed on those pages, next to the keyword and ad that led them there. Brilliant! Go to Tools and Analysis in the top green bar, then choose ‘Conversions’ from the drop down. Give each conversion a unique name and select ‘Web page’. Save & continue. Choose the relevant conversion category and leave all other other settings as they are. Save & continue. Either copy the code on to the right web page yourself, or email it via AdWords. Double check it’s working using Google Tag Assistant.
how to setup a google adwords campaign A list of keywords will appear. Tick the ones that are really, really relevant to your business, and then select ‘Add to account’ and ‘My Keyword Ideas’. Choose the right Campaign and Ad Group for those keywords. You might only find a couple of keywords and you don’t really want more than 10 per Ad Group.
Ads
Keep going for all of your Ad Groups.
Include the keywords within the Ad Group, preferably within the Headline and repeated in the Description and the Display URL.
Once you’ve got all of your keywords, click ‘Campaigns’ in the top green bar, then click on ‘Keywords’ in the tab set. Select all of your keywords, go to ‘Edit’ and select ‘Change Max CPC bids’ from the drop down. Change your bids to £1.00. This might seem a bit random, but once you’re live, Google will give you more details about your bids. They’ll tell you if that’s too low for your ad to appear on the first page (in which case you can increase the bid, or delete it if that’s going to make it very expensive) etc. The budget you set when you created your Campaigns will stop the spend going beyond what you’re comfortable with. Again, select all of your keywords, go to ‘Edit’ and select ‘Change Match Type’ from the drop down. Change your match type from Broad match to Exact match. This means that your ads will only appear to people who search for the exact keywords you’ve chosen which will improve your relevancy and quality score (a formula that Google use to work out which position on the results page to show your ad in). Again, we’ll talk about how best to utilise the other match types in an ‘Optimisation’ blog.
Next up we need some ads. Every single Ad Group you’ve created needs 3 ads. Click in to a Campaign, then an Ad Group, then to the Ads tab and then ‘New Ad’. Each one of the 3 ads needs to:
Be really well written. Spelling mistakes or punctuation errors will put people right off. Have a destination URL that lands to the right page. If you’re writing an ad for your Birkenstock sandals page, then use the URL for that exact page. Then, pick a different focus for each of your 3 ads. Each of the focus points should be designed to really promote your product or offering, to make your ad stand out from the page, to really drive the right people to click on it and to repel the people that won’t engage with your site once they get there. The focus for one ad could be price (e.g. ‘10% off today!), for another it could be calls to action (e.g. ‘Phone now’) or USPs (e.g. ‘the biggest shoe collection in Bath’).
You’re ready to go live! All you need to do is input your credit card details. Head to Billing in the top green bar, then choose ‘Billing Preferences’ from the drop down and follow the steps. I recommend ‘Automatic Billing’ so that your ads will run without you having to do anything manually. Almost as soon as this bit’s done, your account will be live. Exciting! The next steps are to add on all the extras like Location Extensions and a Google Plus link, understand what the data means and what you can do to improve your account’s performance and how to keep your profits high. But that’s another blog…. Thanks for reading, Libby P.S. If you get stuck with any of the above, get in touch with me and I’ll help
Stuck? Have a look at what your competitors are doing. Type your keywords into Google. co.u and see what else looks good.
06
SEO Fast Page 1 Ranking Case Study I love it when we get fast wins for our clients This week we’ve had 2! We ranked one of our clients for a VERY competitive keyword in 3 weeks and we’re now Google partners! First up we’re now ROARlocal Google partners! YAY for us!! We’ve had to work bloody hard to get our partner status, and thanks to the hard work of Libby and Inga this week this came through. We’re chuffed to bits, as this means we can help our clients at a far higher level and give our clients access to some very slick tools that will make them even more money than we’re already helping them make. Next, SEO in a hurry: As you can see in the image opposite,this is for one of our clients in Australia, they’re resume writing professionals with offices right across Australia. Using our proprietary SEO process we’ve taken them from the bottom of page 1 to the top in just 3 weeks. I have no doubt we’ll get them to position 1. If you’re interested to know how we did this, here it is, step by step: (if you’d like the best course known to man on SEO then check out Source Omega Step 1 : Finding/Buying high Page Rank domains First off building a blog network is not free. If you are strapped for cash either A / Get a job… B / Use cheaper SEO methods to give you budget money (which is not as fast as getting a job) How Much To Buy Sites For This does take some investment, depending on the network. If you’re just starting, getting a few PR 2-3 sites will cost you about $200, and get you GREAT results as long as you do good keyword research. If you’re a vet or have a big client budget, you can pick up solid PR 5′s for about $150 to $200 a pop. Then it is just how powerful you want your network to be. If you’re doing good research, $2k worth of sites will rank you for about whatever you want. Now if you want to get REALLY competitive, aka your client is paying you 10k+ a month to rank for some serious keywords, then spending 5-10k on a network is a way to ensure they will always have results.
Our rule of thumb is that we spend 100% of the clients first month’s fees buying and building a powerful blog network for them. This means we work for free for the first month, but we rank fast and get great results, which of course leads to more business. How To Find Sites There are a ton of different ways to find sites. Here are a few: 1 / PR Powershot If you want to save some money and just want some basic PR 2’s to 3’s, then this is the way to go. PR Powershot basically goes out and finds expiring high PR domains on Godaddy. It then allows you to jump in and buy them at the last second. This takes some time and you’re going to have to dig to find some winners. However, I have found and built many small reliable networks using this. The great thing is you can get most PR2 to PR3 sites for about $20 bucks. This lets you get started fairly cheaply. You are almost never going to find anything higher than a PR 3 on here though… 2 / Domain vendors A lot of people will go out there and bid on high PR domains. They will then sell them for profit. These are called domain brokers. Now there are a few ways to find them… Also when you’re making mass PR networks having your own private list of domain brokers is very important. Its like having the “hook up”. The best places to look are:
Google : Do a bunch of related Google searches. You will have to dig, but vendors will show up. The digital point buy/sell forum : This is where you will find a lot more underground vendors. Other than that you might have to stick to using some tools to find the really high PR domains. How To Choose The Best Sites READ THIS TWICE SO YOU GET IT Choosing the best sites is not hard, but if you do not know what you’re doing you’re going to lose hundreds of dollars. Just follow these steps and you will be fine: 1 / Scan the site’s backlinks This is done by throwing the site into majestic SEO. What we want to see is a large amount of links coming from good sources. This is because when a domain expires, if it does not have a healthy link profile, it loses PR fast when the content changes. We will be changing the content, so it is super important that the site has good links. On top of this, the links ALSO effect the amount of link juice the site will give. A PR 5 with 100k links will give more juice than a PR 5 with 40 links. This also depends on where the links are coming from, and the PR of the links, this can be a pain to find out though. In short, a good amount of links with a good trust and citation flow (10+) is a good sign. Here is my criteria for PR domains. Feel totally free to break this, as I do all the time. These are simply my best practices to be 100% safe:
07
by Neil Asher
PR 3 – 100+ links PR 4 – 800+ links PR 5 – 1500+ links 2 / Make sure the PR is real The next thing we need to do is make sure this is not a fake PR domain. Fake PR domain: When you 301 redirect a high PR domain to another site, the site gains the PR of the redirected site. A lot of people will do this, then sell the site that gains the “fake PR”. Then as soon as it is sold they will remove the redirect, thus wiping out the sold sites PR. This is very easy to check for. Simply go to this fake PR checker. Throw the domain in and look at the results. 3 / Make sure the site is healthy The last thing we want do is make sure the site is 1)indexed and 2) healthy A lot of people will go to Google and enter “site” (the url). If the site is indexed it will show up. I go one step further though. I simply to put in the domain name (roarlocal.com). If the site is healthy and has PR it will show up due to its exact match-ness. If it is not showing up this is usually a sign the site stinks. It might be indexed, but that does not mean its not penalised. You Now Know How To Buy High PR Domains As long as you make sure to follow the info above, you are pretty much guaranteed to be an effective domain buyer… Now onto the next step: Step 2: Setting Up Domains Safely If you do not know, Google does not like blog networks. This is because they work REALLY well and are very hard to find without a manual review… IF they are done right. Now if Google finds your network, your PR sites will get de-indexed and your money sites will get a penalty. We want to avoid this. The good news is that if you follow a few simple steps it is highly unlikely that your PR sites will ever be found. These are those simple steps and things to avoid: Set Your Sites Up On Different IP Addresses While I personally believe this is a tad overkill, it is basic practice to put your sites on what is called “different class C IP hosting”. We do this so that Google cannot simply check a single IP and find all of your PR sites.
Though keep in mind, if someone is manually checking your IPs you’re probably screwed anyway, unless you have a very natural looking network. If you are not very technical, don’t worry. Simply sign up for SEO hosting. It is a fairly inexpensive way to have all your sites on different IP addresses. Then simply install WordPress and hosting as usual… If you do not know how to do that, then Google it. This will give you very basic IP protection. I would not dive any deeper than this though. Your IP addresses won’t usually get looked at until you’ve made some other mistakes. Do Not Interlink Your PR Sites This means if you have two PR sites linking to your money site, do not link them together. This leaves a huge footprint and sets off a ton of red flags. Do Not Publicly Sell Links First off (and I don’t care what any sales letter tells you), there is no such thing as a safe advertised network, and there never will be ever again. What drives me nuts is that people think Google is clever enough to track their analytics, hosting, etc., but is too stupid to read the huge SEO forums online when it comes to combating spam. If you advertise selling your networks links on forums or BIG public places, you’re gonna catch a spanking. This also puts your network at a huge risk. Do not do this OR if you want to, do it privately.
With that being said, if you’re thinking about joining a network, ask yourself “Could Google easily find this?” Make Your Sites Semi Unique By this I mean different WordPress themes, unique content and different layouts. Now take this a far as you want. This actually does not make your network any less trackable from a “technical” side. It also does not effect how powerful the links are. The reason we do this is to make our sites not so obvious at first glance. If all your sites are just on a blank WordPress theme with the same content, its very easy to spot it as a blog network. Now if you want your network to even be able to pass a manual review, go all out with this. Make your sites look legit; put decent content to them and format them differently. I am somewhat in the middle with this. I make most of my network sites “video style” sites, or add a few 150 word articles. I also try to make the sites seems like real sites. REMEMBER: The chance of your network getting a manual review are slim to none. If you’re brand new to this, it is more important to take action and just get the network up. Do not spend all night trying to make your network “pretty”. It truly does not matter when your network is in its “baby” stage.
Continue to page 9
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SEO Fast Page 1 Ranking Case Study (cont) Ideally, we would want a site with a relevant URL. This is VERY hard to do though, and is not that important. So in short, do not let a PR site’s URL be a factor. For example Title : Reviews of spider catcher Content: A 150 word article talking about why all spider catchers should catch them humanely
Just Don’t Be Stupid If you go on any forum, you’re going to see people endlessly debating about the stuff above. Just remember these people are stupid… Like really stupid. As long as you don’t do anything blatantly stupid, your chances of getting busted are pretty unlikely if you have a small personal network. Focus more on taking action and don’t let paranoia stop you. Now lets move to the next step: Step 3 : Making Your Sites Relevant So this is where we make our network 3x more effective. This is because we are going to turn our sites into “perfect link farms”. We are going to do this by making the sites relevant to your niche. So What Does It Mean To Be Relevant? Being “relevant” is actually pretty simple. Google looks at some very basic things when determining what a site is “relevant” to. Its looks at things like; -Title and meta tags -The content on the page -Image titles Whatever you fill the above areas with will determine what your site is “relevant” to. How Do We Use This? So, ideally, if we are trying to rank a site for a keyword like “spider catcher for sale”, we want to make our PR network links relevant to “spider catcher”. So we could go out and buy five PR5 sites. We would then fill these sites with spider catcher related info.
by Neil Asher
This basically means each links is less powerful, but is still powerful, since it is coming from a high PR relevant site. So what I like to do is build 3 links per money site. I do it in the following pattern - The first link is an exact anchor text link (spider catcher for sale) - The 2nd link is relevant anchor text link (Arachnids)
Images : Titled “spider catcher” and preferably of spider catcher or spiders
- The 3rd link is either a URL link (http:// spidercatcher.com)
BINGO The Site Is Relevant
SEO Fast Ranking case study
Now this is the bare minimum you have to do to get maximum results. If you want to make your PR sites seem more legitimate, go crazy. Overall though, this will make your sites the perfect place to get links from.
Too Many Links = Bad
Does The Site HAVE To Be Relevant Look… It would be a HUGE waste of money if you could only use one PR site for one money site/site your trying to rank. For example, you might have other sites you want to rank in Google but your “spider catcher” site is not relevant. Remember what I said in the beginning though… PR links are still very powerful even if they are not relevant. So, what I do is build a PR network around the most competitive niches I am targeting. This way the links give me a lot of ground in the TOUGH niches. Then I will add a few other links on the PR site to my easier niches. This way my tough niche sites still rank and my lower competitive niche sites also rank, even though they do not have the most “relevant” links. Step 4 : Strategically Linking Okay, now that we have our sites set up, time to just slap links all over them… NO!
Having too many links on your PR site will not totally ruin the power of your links, however for optimal results try to keep your outbound links under 10. Get It On The Page With The PR You must, must, must get your links on the page with the PR. This will always be the home page. There are a few ways to do this. - In the side bar - In the footer - In the content The best place to place the link is at the start of the content. A cool thing about sidebar links, though, is that you will get multiple (site wide) links from it. This gets you a solid amount of link juice. It Is Pretty Simple As long as you follow the simple guidelines above you’re gonna have a hard time messing up. And that, my friend, is how we ranked our client for their keyword in just 3 weeks Want us to look after your SEO? Then get in touch here
If you have spent any time here you already know there are a ton of factors that effect how much juice a link passes on. You also know that Google has some pretty sharp overoptimisation rules. If you don’t know these things, then here is EXACTLY how you need to link from your sites: The Rule Of 3 One thing you’ve got to keep in mind is that you do not just have to place one link per money site on your PR sites. Each link will send more juice to your site, with diminishing returns.
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Entrepreneur Insights This month we are interviewing Rockstar Mentor Chelsey Baker Chelsey is one of the UK’s leading business mentors, author of “The Pocket Mentor” and creator of “Broadcasting Your Business”, the pitch, press and publicity programme. For the past decade Chelsey has mentored many businesses throughout the UK and mentors for the Government’s Start-Up Loan programme with Rockstar Youth. Chelsey is a marketing and communications expert with over 20 years experience and a regular speaker at high profile business events and award ceremonies around the world.
What one thing about your childhood, personality or upbringing do you think had the biggest influence on your becoming an entrepreneur? My father ran his own business and I observed his innate conscientiousness, integrity and self-motivation; he made me realise that anything is possible if you work hard and believe in yourself. I admired that he was his own boss and I picked up the same traits and set off on my own entrepreneur journey. I persevered through all the headaches and set backs of running my own business and soon realised the benefits of becoming independent at an early age; the financial rewards were even greater. I always knew that I wanted to be in business and believed that if I worked hard I would succeed. I would say that a strong mind-set has doubtlessly shaped everything in my life. How did you do at school and what did you most love or hate about school? I went to a convent school which instilled in me the value of honesty and maintaining high moral principles; qualities that have carried me through life. I dreaded Mathematics but fell in love with performing be it drama or simply reading out loud to the class; from this I discovered the power and significance of the spoken word. I soon realised that adding a little charisma to the mix would produce a powerful tool; this formed the beginning of my career in public speaking. Over the years I have taught many people how to successfully overcome their fear of public speaking; and as an advanced communications teacher I have created a number of courses to help others master the art of pitching and presentations as well as how to best present themselves to the media.
What would you say was the ONE THING that made the difference in your professional success? Mastering the art of effective communication, without a doubt! Speaking with confidence and authority when chairing a meeting, being interviewed or when speaking in public will do more to enhance your profile than practically anything else! Conversely I have also witnessed the negative impact that poor interpersonal skills can bring; it is no coincidence that the best business leaders are also first class communicators! What would you do differently, knowing what you know now? I traded the stock market so knowing what I know now I wouldn’t have put all my investments into similar areas; spreading your risk is critical in trading. I would also have bought far more stocks if I knew what they’d be worth today! Learning from previous mistakes is a vital discipline. I’d also have planned with a little more flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. In business you need to be constantly looking further ahead, anticipating change, reviewing and adapting to what’s coming in the future not what’s happening now or presently; flexibility to changing demands is a vital success factor.
be a lot less business failures and heartaches if more businesses had a mentor to guide them through the pitfalls and challenges that business often brings. The buzz I get from mentoring is incredible and the testimonials I receive make me realise the importance and value of mentoring. The most fulfilling part is actually seeing the positive changes evolve right in front of me and this is the very reason I keep mentoring. Or get in touch with her through www.chelseybaker.com www.broadcastingyourbusiness.com www.thepocketmentor.com http://rockstargroup.co.uk/chelsey-baker/
What really gets you buzzed NOW about being in business? What fulfils you most? Without a doubt mentoring; as a mentor for Rockstar I’ve seen first-hand that I can, and do, make a significant difference in people’s lives: not only by providing support but by providing the necessary tools and resources that help propel that business forwards. Watching my clients succeed as a result of my guidance is its own reward. There would
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