Online marketing Blog

This is an excellent resource:

SEOBook.com

The guy that wrote this eBook is a very well known and knowledgable SEOer… I do have a copy.

Stompers is supposed to be very good as well. But a little pricey… and beware. I know someone that just got it and it ended up costing them a whole lot more after shipping… $380 bucks. He was in Ireland I think.

BUT…

A huge and FREE resource is SEOChat.com… honestly, you could learn everything you need to know just from this website and community.

You really have 3 roads to take:

1) Hire an SEO to do it for you… That can be very expensive… $1000s
2) Get an info product like one of the two above (and I think those are the best 2 you will find)…
3) Learn it from incredible resources like SEOChat…

Actually SEOChat is bigger than it looks… They have a FAQs area to take you through the basics…

They are part of the Developers Shed Network….

And I’ve found (and I’ve been almost everywhere I think) that it contains some of the most professional and knowledgable SEOs anywhere… and very helpful ones to boot.

So maybe what I would suggest is dive into SEOChat first because it’s free and spend the next 6 months reading through everything (because I think it will take you that long…) and then if you still need to get some info products.

There are probably other great resources out there, but these are the ones I am familiar with… I’m self taught. I’ve never bought an SEO product to learn from… I just hang out in a lot of SEO forums. I’ve learned by reading, ask questions, and playing the game.

Once you start applying what you learn remember to take notes… Learn from your mistakes and celebrate the little victories… It takes a year or more to learn it all on your own.

That’s the only reason I would get the above info products. To shorten the learning curve…

Blogs are obviously HUGE. Everyone and their Mother is getting one. One of the reasons is because they are so easy to set up…

Some of us struggle trying to build landing pages and such to promote our products or just would love to have a simple CMS to work with to make things easier.

Well, it’s very possible, Blogs can handle that.

I started a Blog these last few days using Blog Software called WordPress…

See it Here: III Business Blog

My main intention with this Blog is not to load it with affiliate programs and bad information… My first priority it to create a useful Blog that people want to read and link to… or get an RSS feed from.

WordPress allows you to simply add what’s called “Pages”… these aren’t like Blog entries. They are simply a way to post an article or whatever… Well actually, it’s also a good way to provide information people are looking for and provide a link to a few affiliate programs.

Like I Did Here: Search Engine Optimization – The Basics (Pages)

Now it is not my first thought when creating an article if I’m going to have aff links. I first create a good article with REAL content and advice and then I go back and see if anything I referred to has Affiliate Programs…

Content first/ aff programs second… this helps keep you focused on good content which will benefit the reader. You don’t want it to be obvious you are trying to sell them!

Now this method probably will very depending on the market and the content… so it may be effective to verying degrees, but I think it’s worth thinking about. Once the Blog is installed, it’s very easy to add content…

At the moment, this website is just designed for Search Engines and to enhance other things I’m doing. But you could easily drive traffic from search engines!

It may be something easy you can do to make some extra money online down the road… there are a lot of niches out there to Blog about. Just Blog about something you are passionate and knowledgeable about.

I know many of you are trying to find good ways to create landing pages etc. and I thought this might be a path worth looking into.

Yes cross linking is something you need to be careful of AND can get you penalized with search engines… and because the Search Engines see sub domains as separate websites, linking between them could be an issue… But I don’t know how much…

Many of you PPCers don’t need to be linking between them anyway. If you are using landing pages for PPC, you should not offer a way off your page except for the link to the affiliate website… (at least I wouldn’t… If I designed a site just for this…)

I really don’t think you have to worry about it unless you have A LOT of sites on the same IP linking between each other… And it may depend a little bit on the relevancy between sites as far as how negative an SE will look at it…

That said, there are some hosts out there that will offer you the ability to have websites on multiple IPs…

The problem… so many webmasters have become so fixated on linking strategies because of PR that more important factors suffer including content…

PageRank as it was originally designed was a brilliant concept. It is a great way to determine a sites importance and popularity… naturally…

BUT the nature of man takes over and abuses the idea. SEOers and Webmasters use linking campaigns to artificially move themselves to the top of the SERPs.

Webmasters have and always will manipulate the Search Engines… but what PR has done is created an environment where this activity is encouraged by both white, gray and black hats.

The nature of the web; linking. That was the vision from the beginning. To create a place where everything interconnects. A web of information…

SO… It’s good and bad. It encourages linking, but also leaves the door wide open for abuse.

I think the bar could be scrapped and just keep it internal. The bar just serves as a tool for people selling websites, ad space and trading links… It was supposed to be for the consumer or surfer… BUT…

It serves webmasters and SEOers… and they probably make up the majority of the users of the bar. It doesn’t come activated on the Google Toolbar when you download it that I’m aware of… I think you have to choose that option and the average surfer is not going to have a clue or care about what it is…

I thought for a minute they might actually get rid of it…

The Universe is still expanding…

Just like any business, your business plan should include an exit strategy. In the case of a volatile environment like this, I would have a tiered exit strategy… 6 months, 1 year, 5… My guess… and this is just a guess… Adwords will be replaced in less than 5 years. Why?

Because Google will be…

If you’re thinking about kicking back and doing Adwords for the next 20-30 years until you retire; think again.

Just like any tech field always be learning and stay on top of information. Know what’s happening around you.

Subscribe to newsletter and magazines related to your field. Continue to hang around forums… Forums are priceless. Instant news.

So I believe even within PPC you can diversify… but even then you should have that exit plan.

Just some quick thoughts.

I wouldn’t pay a whole lot of attention to that for PPC purposes. It’s more useful for SEO and even then I challenge its usefulness…I personally do tend to focus on markets that have the least ads running… generally, but not all the time. I recommend at least tackling them first and then as you gain confidence go after the tighter markets…

The keyword tool is a good snap shot of a market… gives you a feel…

I think it is more useful to dig and find those keyword niches that haven’t been tapped, and to weigh competition… there are other factors involved…….

You don’t necessarily want to ignore a market that has 100s of ads. There are 100s for a reason. It may look competitive, but that might be a huge market and there could be room for you….

That’s the problem with the R/S ratio. If you go by that, you might miss a lucrative market… AND no one has a clear answer what R/S ratio is even supposed to be good! I’ve researched it and no one has a real rule of thumb to go by…

I used Word Tracker when I first started out in this biz… Then I used nothing.

For a long time I actually just used my head!! All I used was Overture’s free tool and then used my creative faculty after that; with great success on quit a few campaigns… Could I have done better with a tool? Maybe, but my point is you can succeed without the bells and whistles…

AT the same time, “Keywords Analyzer” has been a God send…

I honestly think no matter what tool you choose, you’ll be fine. They all basically do the most important thing for you; find keywords…

I would more focus on the variety of tools out there that can help you run a better campaign, make better decisions… save you time. There are tools being developed right now that will have a huge impact on your productivity!

I use CampaignTracker daily to track campaigns and do some other things…

Choose a few tools that you need and then forget about it. Concentrate on finding merchants to promote and setting up campaigns!… focus grasshopper.

And don’t forget that using your brain is also an exceptable means to discover keywords and niches that the keyword tools may never have led you too.

The same thing will happen with new opportunities, tools, directions you might take online…

Many marketers and online opportunity seekers get what’s called a “herd mentality”… When something new comes along, and it’s dubbed the NEW GREAT thing, everyone runs out to get it…

First, there will always be a new fangled thing. Next month someone else will come out with a new keyword tool… it will happen! And I bet the sales page will say it’s better than the rest!

The problem is it makes you lose focus… You have to learn to eventually use what you got. Filter out the noise sort of speak…

Time is money in this business; well any business…

BUT, once you do get a decent template, you can use it forever and just modify it a bit per campaign… and there are free FTP programs out there you can download…

It’s probably way more worth your time to learn and do it yourself then to hire someone… it’s really not that difficult to learn…

Here is a great FREE platform you can use:

http://www.chami.com/html-kit/features/

Download it; play with it… then do some searches for free templates. There are thousands out there. In a few hours you could have your own set up and never have to worry about paying someone to build one for you!

If I find a profitable niche I want to build a landing page or sales page for, I can literally have one up in under 2 hours depending on the length of the copy… Graphics included!

Some other programs I have in my arsenal to create good looking landing pages:

http://www.ecovergenerator.com/ (for my info products… you may not use it because you don’t have your own products, but ya never know!)

http://www.aaa-logo.com/ (free trial) I use this to make logos, banners and other graphics as well!

http://www.sxc.hu/ (free commercial use photos…)

http://www.creatingonline.com/ (you could purchase a template… at least to start and then modify it down the road for other stuff…)

Some things to get you on the right track.

You can still hire someone, but with a little extra effort, this method will save you money and you will retain control of the end results…

I have bought a lot of URLs. Everytime I’m trying to get that perfect URL I try and keep it short and sweet. 2 or 3 words max… short words… OK maybe not always, but often………..

I have a campaign going that broke open today and started to get a lot of clicks… so I thought I would go in and play with it… first stop the ads. I hadn’t looked at the campaign much for the last few weeks… I had forgotten the length of the URL!

20 Letters/5 words… thatwouldbelikethis.com

Of course I capitalized the first letters in my campaigns ad so it’s more like this… ThatWouldBeLikeThis.com

So I’m thinking to myself, does it matter? It might matter more for organic results… I’m thinking Adwords, being the fact you can capitalize like that, might have better results.

Maybe not!

I have always heard the shorter the better… is that a fallacy?

This result could influence my choice of future URLs…