SEO Wars: Internet Marketing – The Phantom Menace

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Never Tell Me The Odds, Kid

In A Galaxy, Far, Far Away… far away from trying to game the search engines and exploit loopholes, there are still scammers and rascals, so be careful out there.

Now you got into this business of online internet marketing because you heard about the benefits. And yes, they can be mighty impressive.

But let us just talk some reality about this dreamy idyllic world of easy online operations, just for a moment or two. It does seem that there is this great myth that a) it isn’t hard work, you can just push a button and suck money into your bank account, and b) that most marketers are scammers selling you their pie in the sky pipe dreams which are mostly overhyped and which underdeliver little of any substance.

I hate to be the one to break the news, but – the reality is – it’s work!

Search your feelings, you know it’s true.

You are just not going to simply set up an account, choose your snazzy username, create an affiliate link and then go for a snooze on the beach / drive in your fast sports car / gloat at everyone going off to their lame jobs, and then go to bed only to wake up the next morning to find $1,000 that you made while you slept.  Gosh darnit, even with affiliate marketing – where you try to sell other people’s products – that actually requires you to do some grunt work so that you can get a commission from their sales.

If you’re looking for an off-the-shelf, business-in-a-box, turnkey, push-button, get rich quick miracle -  Internet marketing just ain’t it. Nope.

If you think like that then you had better go buy a lottery ticket and pray hard that your lucky numbers win big.  Come on, wake up! You can’t believe those pieces of ‘evidence’ where a simple guy who is just like you shows you a fake ‘screenshot’ of his accounts and claims that he makes $1 million in 24 hours, and then think that is going to happen to you in your first couple of weeks. Can you?

Trouble is, even the most sanely rational among us have some strong emotions driving us when it comes to striking gold and making our fortunes. We just don’t want to see the reality, a lot of the time.

And the reality is, it took a lot more than those 24 hours to make that million – it took months, if not a year to get that product developed, honed and positioned, and then the product launch set up with an army of affiliates standing by to mail out to their huge email lists, before that guy could rake in that much cash in such a very short space of time.  Then, after he has made all that money through leveraging his affiliate army, he doesn’t show you the (much smaller) amount of profit that he has left after he has made his 50%, 60% and 70% affiliate commission payouts. The story he feeds to you is that he has made millions, and if you pay him $n then you can have his amazing system and profit just like he does. You do, and of course, you try it and you don’t. You don’t have an affiliate army with huge lists helping you get the leverage that he has. You’re just you, on your own, and that’s just not going to cut it.

To make it in internet marketing you can’t operate alone. You must get yourself involved with others doing the same or similar things. You’ve got to talk with them, meet with them, mastermind with them, and joint venture with them.

Like I said before, you need to be in this for the long haul. If you are not the kind of person who is going to enjoy the drudgery of research, content creation, backlinking, search engine optimization etc. and getting all your ducks in a row before the money begins rolling in, then I’m sorry but you’ve got to take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if Internet Marketing is the business for you.

On any given day you might be busy doing any or all of the following things in order to create and achieve those financial rewards that you have been dreaming about:

•    Researching and compiling a massive master list of keywords and keyphrases (we’re talking thousands, not just the top 10 words or phrases).

•    Communicating with your outsourcers, providing them with clear instructions and checklists so that they can get on with tasks and free you up to do what you do best.

•    Writing, editing and submitting articles – hundreds of them, as many as you can write and/or spin the syntax of in order to submit to article directories all around the net with anchor text backlinks linking back to your site as an indicator of your site popularity.

•    Politely and enthusiastically answering emails from your existing or prospective customers.

•    Setting up new websites, even if all you’re doing is adding a one-page minisite with a Paypal Buy Now button.

•    Handling download issues – even with the best customer service systems in place, sometimes things just have a troublesome glitch and need your full attention.

•    Creating products – trying to think of, research and create your next big product.

Now of course this is just a short list with only a couple of things to do on it, but I hope that you can see immediately how much there is to do on a regular basis.

When you are ready to embrace the work, you are ready to become an Internet Marketer.

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SEO Wars: Google versus Bing – Episode Two

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Google Versus Bing

One of the interesting little nuances of internet search engines these days, is that there are now several of them all jostling for position. Having enjoyed dominance of the search market for several years now, search engine giant Google is now finding its position being strongly challenged by the upstart search engine called Bing.

Luckily for us, Bing calculates its search engine rankings using a different algorithm to Google, resulting in some sites that are nowhere in Google’s search engine rankings being ranked quite well in Bing.

So if you do drop off the map as far as Google rankings are concerned, you can just go right ahead and target rankings in Bing instead. For the foreseeable future, Bing and Google are going to be locked in a battle for dominance of the global internet search market. If Google changes its algorithm and you drop rank, focus on getting ranked with Bing. Simple.

By far the smartest approach however, will be to target both Google AND Bing. To plan your SEO and backlinking strategy to target the common ground between the two, and leaving a bit of wiggle room around the edges so that you can channel some of your resources into doing the different particular things that one search engine loves and the other does not.

So, does this mean that you can just throw up spammy websites, and post up any old content willy-nilly? Can you just buy a few services and bits of software, and run all your websites on autopilot? Well yes you can, and you might even make a bit of money. But far, far greater is the reward for those who create their sites carefully and show some passion in what they are doing, that readers will pick up on and enjoy.

The truth is that on the internet (where a day is like a month and a week is like forever) you have GOT to be in it for the long haul. You can’t just give up that easily, you just cannot, must not. So you’d be well advised to avoid poor quality content, and focus on putting out good stuff that people will enjoy reading for years to come. (‘Years’ is like forever in internet time).

 

I Felt A Great Disturbance In The Force

And if you have stuck around for long enough online, you’ll quickly realise that this upheaval in the SERPS is nothing new. It has happened before, and in fact it happens every few years. At any time, you should be prepared to accept a big readjustment in the way that search engines see your site. One day you are basking in the sun on Page One of Google, and the next day you are shivering in the shadows of Page Seven Hundred and Five, wondering how you got there and more importantly, how to get back. It seems like every time the wind changes, you catch a cold.

So what can you do?

What can you do to make your blog safe, and secure it from the changes in the search engine weather?

Well, there’s a common saying in the online world, that goes like this: ‘Content Is King’.

What this means is that in the end, even if they suffer a few short term problems as Google readjusts, sites with good quality written content are the best way to deliver a good user experience, and so Google will rate this type of site and content highly.

So that’s it then? All you’ve got to do is churn out a bit of high quality content, and you’re rich?

I Find Your Lack Of Faith Disturbing

In the long run, yes.

It’s a test of nerves, of confidence, of faith. You are in this for the long game, planting seeds now that will not yield their rewards until many months from now in some cases. You have to have the patience, the stamina and yes, the faith, to wait long enough for Google, Bing and the other search engines to trust your site and its content, and start to rank you higher.

You could be looking at posting quality content for anywhere up to five months on a brand new blog, until Google and the other search engines stop dancing your blog up and down the rankings and start trusting what you are doing. Only then will you finally get the ‘true’ ranking you deserve.

On an older blog you won’t have to wait for so long, maybe a couple of weeks before things finally settle down, but you still have to wait. The days of lasting rankings being achieved in a short timeframe is over, if it ever existed. Most initial high rankings will just be temporary, and you’ll be doing the dance up and down for a while yet.

Of course, there are always exceptions to every rule, so if you are lucky enough to get a high spot early on and you keep hold of it, well good luck to you and amen to that.

For most of us though, you need to have a plan. A strategy in place to make sure that you are going to last the distance.

So how are you going to pace yourself?

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