Content Site System

Paid search is a fantastic way to drive web traffic to our site from the major search engines. It can also suck our marketing budget dry in just a couple of days if not done properly. The bottom line is someone is going to profit by implementing paid search. The question is, is it going to be us or the search engines? The goal of the search engines is more clicks. The more people click on our ads the more money the search engines make. Their strategy is to get as many clicks as possible within our budget are willing to do that all day long. The real goal should be “fewer clicks, lower cost with more conversions”. Let’s take a few minutes to look at some strategies that should make a difference in our campaigns.

1. Do not use Content Network in Google when you first set up a campaign default setting is set “on”. There are two things that you need to consider before turning on the content match. The first is: “The website that is hosting our ad gets paid every time someone clicks on the ad”. Most click fraud happens is when an owner of a site clicks on these ads. The second is: “Individuals who click on these ads are most often, at the research end of the buying cycle. Limit those who click on your ads to those who are on the buying side of the cycle.

2. Search Terms. The more general the term, less qualified the lead and the more the cost. What I try to think about what terms are going to get my ideal customer to my site.

3. Keyword “types” There are three types of keywords “Broad”, “Phrase” and “Exact”. The rule of thumb that I use is: for single word phrases, use exact match and for search phrases that are two to three words, used “phrase matching”. I am also experimenting with using “exact” matching for these terms as well. The more specific the search term is to what you are offering and who your ideal client is, the more qualified to lead will be. Better a small number of qualified leads than a large number of leads that waste your time and ultimately cost a lot more money.

4. Just a couple thoughts on writing creatives (ad copy). Use the following in your “headline” box: {keyword: “your main keyword}. This will put your keyword phrase into the headline. You want to attract only your ideal client (someone who is looking for exactly what you have to offer) so be specific. Add at least one of your “unique selling propositions”. This can be very challenging because of the space limitations. Rule of thumb, find out what your competitors are doing and do something different. For example, if everyone is offering free shipping, use one of your other unique selling propositions.

5. Landing pages require a great deal of thought. Landing page have one purpus, answer the questions that are on the mind of the searcher, the reason for the search. He entered his search terms because he has a problem, needs a solution or is in some kind of “pain”. You have about two seconds to convince him that you understand what he is going through and what he needs. You must show him that you possess the answers to his needs. Don’t just send them to your home page unless your home page can accomplish the above. Once you connect with your searcher you must have a call to action. You must be very specific and clear about the next steps. Have your “phone number” or “contact us button” on every page.

6. Tracking. Finally, track everything. Paid search is not an exact science. It takes time to set up and optimized your campaigns to get the results that you are looking for. You must monitor your campaigns at least weekly in order to catch market changes. Google, Yahoo and MSN have free tracking tools that work great.

There is good money in paid search, if done correctly. If you are new to this or do not have several hours a week, it might be a lot cheaper to find someone who knows what they are doing to help you rather than lose thousands of dollars trying to figure it out yourself.

It is the search engines that in the end get your website noticed by clients. Hence it is important to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.   

There are on the whole two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their wanted submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automatic program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the definite site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the definitive content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example:  Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce diverse rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword [stuffing] or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

Internet marketers, I need a couple of minutes of your time. Please help me out.
 
I need to share some things.
 
A couple of years ago I started working on building websites to make money. After a while, I learnt that I was doing something called internet marketing
 
Like me you learnt some other stuff. You found that you need traffic to your websites and you need to change visitors from interested readers to action takers.
 
It is not easy

We are getting all this stuff right… Yes?
OK, so why aren’t we feeling like we’re getting richer?
 
I looked around for solutions. As we both know there are plenty of people keen to sell a ’secret’ - yup, the same secrets that will be shared only with me and a million other folks. All sorts of traffic schemes - bars on screens, traffic exchanges, funky popups and a truckload of other toys and tricks.
 
None of them will change your business because they don’t hit the right buttons. They fiddle with the margins but don’t address the basic issues.
 
The truth is that, in reality, getting traffic generation right IS easy!
 
We need backlinks and traffic. Just like always!
If enough folks know where to find our pages and we tell the folks what we offer we will get the backlinks and traffic that lead to free traffic building.
 
BUT I found that the crazy money suckers and time eating toys were not the way to succeed. All that I really needed was a way to build backlinks and traffic in ‘normal’ ways.
I threw out the nonsensical toys and went back to the fundamentals and this is what I did:

and guess what happened…?
IT WORKED!
More Backlinks and More Turnover!

Nothing is perfect though.
I was spending a lot of time on marketing my sites. Webmasters were again and again suspicious of my attempts to exchange content - their fingers burned too many times by shady characters.
It took AGES to find good partners for link exchanges and the blog commenting was still a advantageous technique but too many spam artists and ‘no follow’ links reduced its effectiveness and sucked away at my time.
 
Then, back in January some pieces came together. A new membership site opened up to just a few members. The new site was from the guys behind PortalFeeder - guys whose names I already knew: Jason Potash, Jason Katzenback and Marc Quarles. Each name was a trusted man behind a range of quality products and each was  standing behind this new concept, a service that rocked my world.
 
What were the guys doing? What was their shtick?
Actually the offer was not so new - and yet it was unique and brand new at the same time.
They used the basic ingredients of success - yes, you guessed: backlinks and traffic.

Taking the fundamental techniques of content exchanges, link exchanges, social methods (Web 2.0) and article submissions and remade them so that we could do the jobs we needed and at a speed that made the process realizable all over again.

The Traffic Kahuna guys have several components to share with you and even though I use these tools they can tell you about them superior than I can.
Please, click on THIS LINK and ask for more information. They won’t bury you with irrelevant emails. They will share with you some of the tools that we use in Traffic Kahuna and demonstrate how they help us.

More importantly, when the doors to Traffic Kahuna reopen with more membership seats you will know as [soon] as it happens and be ready to make a decision - the same choice I made, to go back to the fundamentals and do it right, or to continue messing around with the newest bright ideas from some Johnny-Come-Lately.
 
There is no commitment, except to your own curiosity and need to succeed.
 
Oh, there is one thing to think about.
How you reached this page…
 
You are here because the techniques used in Traffic Kahuna work!
 
ALL the promotion used to get you here is from Traffic Kahuna - Think about it!
 
Visit Traffic Kahuna and request more information.
 
I look forward to working with you in TK!
 
Andrew Wilson.

To make money online you have to have the resources and tools you need. The resources can be free such as internet marketing forums and the tools can be what you have gained in your lifetime that is knowledge on a subject. So it is not that difficult to to make money online when you have the correct tools and know where to get started. Most people can make a living online but you need to be dedicated and think of it as more than a hobby and treat it like a business.

Finding products to sell online is not that difficult and the best way to do this is to learn affiliate marketing. When you sell another persons product you are an affiliate or publisher and they are the merchant. When you sell the product through advertising it on your site or blog you get a commission or percentage of the sale. What is fantastic is the merchant handles the actual product such as shipping handling and stocking all you do is advertise and wait for a sale then you get paid.

To consider how wonderful the whole idea is you need to look at it from this perspective. You can usually find just about any product to sell as a affiliate so whether you are selling thousands of products or focus on one or two you do not have to worry about stocking these items in a warehouse or in your garage. Even better no money tied up in expensive overpriced inventory. This makes it better than what most multi level marketing companies have to offer. It may sound too good to be true but its the good home based work at home business opportunities that do not get much coverage.

Just starting a affiliate marketing campaign is not as easy as plastering ads over your web site and waiting for the checks to come rolling in. It actually takes a lot of work and research but can be rather rewarding. Really creative people have figured how to make money on the Internet without even having their own website and use a combination or free blogging sites and writing about things they are knowledgeable about then selling related products. Article marketing or submitting articles that are content rich to article directories with links to your blog or web site helps get traffic to your site.

It truly is amazing how people make money online with limited resource and stating with no capital. Success when you work from home can be achieved but with any real business you should still network with people on the Internet who have similar goals an you can usually find such like minded individuals in forums an online chat groups relating to internet or affiliate marketing.

There are few barriers to entry to affiliate marketing online and when you make money online your income can be limitless and is only bound by your creativity. With web authoring tools and content management systems that can make an e commerce site in a matter of a few hours you can have a nice platform to launch a turnkey website and start making money online selling affiliate products.

Blogging is writing a web log about anything you want, whether it is personal or business-related. It is simply a website that displays an individual or community diary with the purpose of educating, entertaining, promoting products or ideas, and sharing news or opinions. It is yet another way in which the internet brings people together to exchange ideas.

They also work as a platform for businesses to disseminate information about their products or company updates. One person can be assigned the task of informing customers and employees about new happenings by blogging on a regular basis. This is a more efficient than building new web pages every few days.

The speed with which new knowledge about your products and services can be transmitted to people is the biggest benefit of blogging for business. In no time at all, you can start the ball rolling and turn prospects into customers, simply through blogging. One way to boost your conversion rate is by putting a link to your website in your blog, leading them right to solutions they might be seeking.

Affiliate marketing with blogs has also become more widespread. Choosing to allow ads for related companies on your web page makes you a little money every time is it hit. It is just a matter of getting set up with a large search engine company. They will do all the work for you and send you a check when you have accumulated a certain amount of money from your pay-per-click ads.

You can then roll this money into other internet marketing pursuits. Perhaps you would also like to have ads appear on other affiliate websites. In this manner, you would be maximizing your use of blogs for minimal cost.

In the last few years blogs do not appear as high in the search engine results. This is because when people first began blogging, they naturally took advantage of their ability to gain a higher placement. When search engine results became a list of blogs instead of other websites, blogs were relegated to lower listings.

Another danger in blogging for business is the tendency to write as one would speak. This can lead to a very unprofessional looking blog, which can turn customers off in an instant. Blog readers also have come to expect new content often, which means you may end up devoting more time than you had originally planned to writing updates.

A higher conversion rate, speedy updates on your products, and affiliate marketing are all benefits that can make blogging for business a worthwhile undertaking. The drawbacks can include posting too much personal information and sounding unprofessional in the process, or not creating the buzz you had hoped after investing time in a blog. Written smartly and marketed correctly, blogs are a viable option for growing your online business.

Website optimization is the best form of valuable advertisement; in fact search engine optimization is the most cost-effective, results-oriented marketing vehicle around. Internet marketing is about working the Internet as another channel to market one’s business or organization. Website optimization is essential to your online presence. Without website optimization your website will do almost nothing for you.

Small business owners are becoming increasingly aware of how powerful their website can be. Regardless of what type of business, websites can be strong marketing tools. Small business websites are most effective when all three of the following factors are considered before the website is built. You’ll need to decide on a design look and feel, who your target market is, what kind of content you want to include, how the information will be organized, what kind of navigation you’ll have, and what message you want to get across to your potential leads.

Online promotion is the practice of using all available avenues of internet marketing/advertising to generate response from your target market. Online promotion ties together both the creative and technical facets of the internet to develop a campaign for getting your site seen by your target market.

Online promotion is a crucial component of any marketing plan and should not be taken lightly. An attractive, well-optimized website can be an important lead generation and sales tool. Online promotion is all about name exposure-getting your name all over the internet. Not only does the content on your site need to be optimized, but you also must create online exposure all over the internet to generate traffic and improved search engine rankings.

Search Engine Optimization has been shown to deliver the highest ROI of all forms of marketing and advertising, if done correctly. Because of this need, we feel that joining forces with similar minded Advertising entities will help the clients on multiple levels. Search engines play an important part in promotion but there are many traditional methods that can be combined to target potential customers. By displaying your site address in articles in newspapers or magazines, advertisements, business cards and company literature, you are targeting consumers who already have a direct interest in your product. Search engine optimization is one of the best methods and techniques that help in online promotion of your small business website. An SEO firm can help in providing the best tips to a business for online promotion.

In his free special report, The Rebirth Of Internet Marketing, John Reese says you should give stuff away without even asking for an opt-in. My first attempt at this can be found here: Affiliate Blueprint. It mentions many of the tools and techniques I’ll be explaining in this blog. If you download it (and read it, of course), do me a favour and post a comment!

The first thing you’ll need to do is decide what to write about. You should choose a subject for your content site. That’s not to say you can’t write about anything you want to, but it makes sense to focus your content on a particular topic. If you try to appeal to everybody, you’ll most likely end up appealing to nobody.

Think about the things that interest you, or which have interested you in the past. Your hobbies, the clubs you’ve been a member of, the magazines you read, the books you read, the subjects you enjoyed most at school, the parts of your job that satisfy you most - any of these could be a good subject for your site. Write down a list of ten or more possible subjects. They should be topics you could envisage yourself writing a short article about every day.

Once you have your list, and assuming that you want to make money with your website, you’ll need to see if a market exists for the information you’ll be putting on your site. A market is much like a subject or a topic, but it suggests that people are buying and selling something. You might have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of French crochet work of the 19th century, but if no-one shares your interest, there’s no market.

There are two somewhat conflicting approaches to markets. One is that you should aim at the largest possible market - for instance, golfers. Golfers spend a fortune on their sport - golf clubs, golf balls, clothing, tools, green fees, magazines, videos. But it’s an incredibly competitive market - as I write this, Google lists 318,000,000 sites which contain the word “golf”. It would be very difficult to get into the top 10 sites on Google. And most people don’t bother to click through to the next page on Google - if your site is number 318,000,001, there’s a good chance no-one will ever see it. At least not by looking it up on Google.

The second approach is to target “niche” markets. A niche is a small segment of a market. “Golf balls” might qualify - there are “only” 2,980,000 pages for “golf balls” without the quote marks, and 1,370,000 for “golf balls” with the quote marks.

A quick aside - not many people would be typing “golf balls” into Google and surrounding the words with quote marks. But without the quote marks, Google looks for the two words anywhere on the page. They could be separated by a sentence or a paragraph, like this: “His dad used to play golf every Wednesday afternoon. Terence had the red balls poised over the pockets as he…”. Putting in the quote marks makes Google look for the specific phrase “golf balls”.

So now we know what the competition is for our particular market. How do we find out what people are actually looking for?

There are a number of free tools which show the demand for any keyword phrase, as well as offering suggestions for related keyword phrases. Here are some of them:

Nichebot Classic
Wordtracker
Keyword Discovery
Google Adwords External Keyword Tool
SEOBook Keyword Tool

All of these tools use different databases, which results in dramatically different results for any specific keyword or key phrase. However, the specifics are not that important. What we’re looking for is just an indication that people are actually searching for our topic.

We also need to make sure that people are paying money for items in our market. A sure-fire way to check this is by looking at the Google Adwords ads. If people are paying Google to advertise for your keyword phrase, then there must be customers willing to pay for whatever products they’re selling.

Go to Google.com and type in the keyword phrase. Adwords ads appear down the right hand side of the page, and sometimes above the results as well. The more Adwords ads there are, the more likely it is that there’s money to be made in the market.

Content sites are websites which provide useful information to visitors. There are a number of reasons why you might want to do this:

• Having your own website means that you can join the mass of people who share their ideas and experiences on the Internet. It’s important that you develop your ability to think critically. Reading what others have to say and commenting on it makes you a better citizen of the world - less likely to take things at face value, more likely to have your own opinions about what’s going on around you. Regular writing exercises the brain and becomes easier the more often you do it.
• You might want to make money on the Internet. There are thousands of ways to do this. Building content sites is a core skill which will allow you to stake your claim in the virtual world.
• Pure content sites which provide good quality information tend to get ranked highly by the search engines. Search engine ranking can account for as much as 40% of the traffic to your site, so it makes sense to give them what they want.
• Sites with useful information are much more likely to be bookmarked by their visitors. Social bookmarking on sites like Furl, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon can provide a lot of traffic.
• Once you have built up the traffic to a site by providing quality content, you can steer the traffic anywhere you want. Your content site can become a feeder site for sales pages or affiliate sites, or you can add text ads, Adsense or affiliate links to the site.

Not long ago, setting up a website was slow and painful. You needed a WYSIWYG HTML editor like FrontPage or DreamWeaver, and more often than not an expensive web designer. Then you’d need a graphic designer, maybe a programmer and probably an SEO expert.

Nowadays things are much simpler. You can install WordPress, a blog program, on your own web space in under 5 minutes. WordPress You can start creating content within minutes. The blog directories like Technorati and IceRocket can be notified instantly every time you add content.

WordPress is much more than just a blog program. There is a large and dedicated user community which constantly creates add-on programs - called “plug-ins” which expand the basic program’s capabilities. WordPress is flexible and easy to use.

Where do you start? This series of articles is intended to help you get your content site up and running quickly and easily, as long as you can use a web browser.

The purpose of this blog is to show you a step-by-step method for building content sites which are visitor and search engine friendly, and which will allow you to build up a sustainable flow of traffic which you can direct to your sales pages.

If you need to contact me, please fill in the form below:

thanks

Derrick Markotter