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SEO? Oh, I’ve heard of that before!

June 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

seo Earlier this week I was headed down the elevator and a guy made small talk by asking what I do. As an entrepreneur it usually takes a bit of effort to get people to understand what is that I actually do. I told him that I run a bunch of websites that bring in visitors using search engine optimization techniques.  To my surprise he responded by saying: “SEO? Oh, I’ve heard of that before.”

After thinking about it for a little while, I realized that for the past 6 months, whenever I mention “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization” to people not directly involved in the internet marketing industry the majority of them actually have a pretty good idea of what I am talking about. This was not the always the case. When I first started doing SEO in 2007 people always seemed convinced that I either worked for Google (especially if I mentioned AdSense) or they would just say something along the lines of “I’m horrible with computers” to hint that they weren’t quite following me.

What I have realized is that most people that have heard of SEO associate it with some news story, such as the J.C. Penney’s SEO story in the NY Times or Overstock getting caught buying .edu links off students and faculty. Many people have even heard of Google’s Panda algorithm change because it had enough of an impact on the average online business owner (either positive or negative) for it to spring up stories in major news outlets.

Here’s a Google Trends graph for the search term SEO over the past 6 years. While the top graph does seem to flatten off a bit in the past year I do find it interesting to also look at the bottom graph for “news reference volume” which shows a big jump starting in 2007.

 

What does all this increased publicity towards our industry mean? It means that we are in the right industry. It means that more businesses are seeing the value in showing up in Google, Bing, and Yahoo for search terms related to their own industry. Companies are hiring more SEO consulting firms and expanding their own in-house SEO teams and it means that companies are now searching for more well rounded marketing candidates that can also integrate SEO and social media into their marketing strategies.

As companies hire more SEO professionals and media outlets pay more attention to algorithmic changes the more likely it is that the next time you offer your business card to somebody they will understand what it is that you do.

The next time you are in an elevator ask the person next to you if they have heard of search engine optimization and then post your findings in the comments section!

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Hiring a Good Graphic Designer

June 5, 2009 By 4 Comments

I have done many things with internet marketing, but due to my stubborn nature I have only worked with 5-6 graphic designers before.  As my normal readers know, I am creating a product that will launch in late January called “Weekend Marketing”.  I haven’t gotten very far in writing the book yet because I have been focusing on scaling up the marketing campaign for it.  I intend to have all of the content finished by early November, but the actual marketing campaign has to start months in advance in order to sell well in the ClickBank marketplace.  This will be a household name by the time I am done, so you will hear all about it in the future.

The content may still be under construction, but the graphics for the site have been made.  I have the full template as well as affiliate resources created, which means that now all I need to do is fill in the sales page with the copy (that will be a 3 week project).  I got the idea for “Weekend Marketing” back in mid-May, and I have already decided on the name, received and paid for my graphics, found a proper web host, and began my marketing campaign.  I would say the project is well on its way.

Since I know you all want to skip through what I am saying to see the pretty pictures, here they are!  Weekend Marketing This is also the first official link to my website, so taking my own advice on getting indexed as soon as possible, I figure now is a good time for the spiders to have at it.  I would love some comments on the graphics, please tell me how they work in your browsers, how they catch the eye, etc.  I especially want input on the “Peel Away Ad” that I have added, because it took me 5 hours to make the simple script work (my web host apparently didn’t have my PHP scripts whitelisted).

Now less about me, more about the process.  The process of hiring a good graphic designer isn’t necessarily a quick or cheap process.  I have dealt with a handful of designers before, and while I have been “satisfied” with the work they did, I didn’t truly love it.  If you have a project you are truly committed to, you need to take your time with every aspect of it.  I went through and got quotes from the 5 biggest direct response graphic designers in the business and looked through every single example in their portfolios to make my choice.

I had a huge range in the quotes that I received, and I didn’t go with the cheapest or the most expensive of the quotes I got.  I was torn between three designers, as all had approximately the same level of skill, and two were within $50 of each other and the third was an extra $500.  I waited a day before responding to any emails to make sure that I had thought through the process as the graphics can make or break a product.  I decided that for my product I wanted a more subdued look while still catching the eye, and for this I ended up choosing Sean Lowery.

I very rarely give out free advertising to business partners, but he truly did an excellent job with this project.  We had about 20 emails back and forth and multiple redesigns as I know exactly what I am looking for.  I couldn’t have asked for any more, I love the design, the affiliate resources, and he delivered on every little detail and more.  If you want to have a big product, you will need big graphics.  If you plan to make an opt-in page, ClickBank product, blog, etc. make sure to get a quote with Sean, he will work until your are satisfied.  The key to success when hiring a designer is to have an image in your head and hold true to the basic design, but allow the expert to make it into something that will sell.

Feel free to check out Sean’s website here: Minisite Graphics and make sure to leave me some comments on the images.  You guys are my first wave of testing!

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , , , ,

Ways to Promote Your Blog

May 30, 2009 By 8 Comments

I just spent 10 hours straight doing the design for Easyonlinemoneymaking.com (still waiting for the dns to update for my Host Gator switch, I’ll post when the results are live).  I figured that since I spent such an extended period of time actually being productive I would make a post about some of the “time fillers” that you can do to promote your blog when you don’t feel like pumping out posts or articles.

When I have spare time I usually do some or all of the following, mixing them up every 5 minutes or so to keep myself interested.  I love internet marketing, but I don’t always have the attention span to keep churning out the content so it is fun to do moderately effective traffic driving techniques rather than the high power but highly boring techniques such as article creation/submission.

Here’s where my spare time goes:

  • Adding followers on Twitter and starting conversations with some of my followers when they have interesting status updates.  My twitter: James Spinosa
  • Adding contacts on MyBlogLog and joining communities.
  • Adding friends on BlogCatalog and joining groups, discussions, blogs, etc.
  • Posting on various forums that allow me to have a blog feed, this is mainly to build up name reputation but it doesn’t hurt to get some traffic.  Don’t just spam them, post useful content.
  • Commenting on a bunch of related niche blog posts.
  • Tinkering with my advertisements to find better converting programs so I can make some more money.
  • Creating link bait lists, such as “Top 100 dofollow blogs” so that I can get some free links from other bloggers.
  • Staring at the ClickBank marketplace trying to reverse engineer the success for some of the products that I have no idea why people buy them.

While these may seem like a waste of time I actually enjoy them, and they do yield results.  Most of these are designed to get a one time visitor, but about 10% of people that come to this site sign up to receive my blog posts, yielding long term traffic.

In terms of things like blog commenting and forum posting, this will yield permanent one way dofollow links, which will make me show up for more search results.  The other methods like adding twitter followers, friends, contacts, etc. make it so that I have another set of people that get updates each time I post.

If you have spare time, you might as well use it for something constructive.  There is always some way you can be promoting your blog even if it isn’t through the traditional methods.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , ,

10 Steps to Creating and Launching a ClickBank Product

May 19, 2009 By 7 Comments

Well college is done for the semester, and with that comes a load of free time for me to expand my business.  With this comes many different ideas for websites, but the biggest point of emphasis for me will be the book I am creating called Weekend Marketing.  It is going to be sold through ClickBank and depending on how ambitious I feel, it may also be sold in paperback.  I have created an e-book before, The Seven Day Millionaire, but that product was created only 7 months into my marketing career and while I had been making a lot of money, I didn’t realize the reasons why I had become successful so quickly.

I have seen many products come and go throughout the years on ClickBank, but I want to be one of the first to create a product with actual staying power.  I have planning this book for about a year already, and now I am going to start going through the marketing and production phases followed by actually writing it over the summer.  My plan is to create it and have a sales page done by August and to then go into full scale affiliate scouting and promotions for it.

You will hear all about it as time goes on, but for now I will just leave you with a list of the steps I plan to take to promote my book, so that you can replicate my plans for your own needs.

10 Steps to creating and launching  a product on ClickBank:

  1. Think of a product to create
  2. Do market research to make sure that the niche isn’t over saturated, and check to make sure there is market demand
  3. Think of a title, and register that domain
  4. Create the product – If you are creating an ebook write it in OpenOffice and use their PDF export option.
  5. Work with a graphic designer for the sales page (I’ll post a link to whichever designer I decide to go with, currently there is one that I want to hear back from) – This is my current step in the process.
  6. Begin building your credentials as an expert (posting articles, trying to get into trade magazines, newspapers, etc.)
  7. Start recruiting affiliates, they will be the primary engine of sales so do what you need to court them.  Many posts to come in the near future about how I plan to get affiliates.
  8. Begin promoting the product itself to drive up buzz (well before the actual launch)
  9. Capture affiliate and customer emails via opt-in lists on the sales page so you can have big support for the launch date
  10. Watch the ClickBank gravity system propel your product to the top as more affiliates jump on board as they sense a profitable product.

This is a very general outline, I will be going into detail on each section of the process as I go along.  I expect to be posting once every 2-3 days until November, and then I will slow down a bit as launch comes closer to happening.

Thank you to all my loyal readers, I’m sorry that I always do this to you but I am going to be back for a while this time.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Google Creates a Search Engine Optimization Guide

November 15, 2008 By 12 Comments

Well this was a shocker for me, I never thought I would hear of Google encouraging search engine optimization but sure enough they created the “Search Engine Optimization Guide” and posted it on the official blog.  This is one of those moves that I won’t completely understand but it does make you wonder; why would a search engine want to teach you how to manipulate their algorithm?

My analysis on this would be that they are fully aware that the sites that rank well in their algorithms are due to people gaming the system, so by logic the most skilled internet marketers will be the ones that rise to the top.  As a result, the best content will typically go with these marketers as all sides are trying to maximize their profits, but they realize this creates a system where it becomes extremely difficult for an average person to climb through the hierarchy.

In short, I view it as a move that signals the start of a trend of decentralization of power as they try to give some of the smaller websites a shot at some of the keywords that haven’t spent as much time building links.  As the ebook is heavily focused in on the various on-page SEO factors I feel it plays into the trend I have been noticing in which Google has started putting far more emphasis on the on-page factors than they have in the past.

One way or another, it was certainly an intriguing move and it looks like it will work out to be a good resource for new webmasters.  Hopefully they add it to their webmaster guidelines so that all new marketers can see it and get a little boost in the right direction.  Since I’m sure you guys would like to read it yourself you can either visit the official Google blog, or download the ebook.

On that note feel free to download my own ebook, which goes into the SEO topics that Google will never share with anyone else.

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , , ,
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