The other day a friend of mine called me up in a panic. His website had been advancing dramatically in PageRank and he was working hard to build it up. Then he checked at the beginning of December and noticed that his PageRank had dropped to zero. The phone call to me was an "I'm ruined" phone call and it took me a long time to calm him down and assure him that he was not ruined. It inspired me to write this list of 4 myths of internet marketing.

1. PageRank is the be-all and end-all of marketing. That's not true. There are several factors that go into successful search engine placement. PageRank is a number that Google uses to determine your placement in search rankings but there are other factors, too. A higher PageRank is helpful, but it's only part of the equation. PageRank is determined from backlinks and how long your URL is registered for, among other things. But it doesn't take into account keyword placement and a smart keyword program can still benefit your business.

2. Keyword density. I sometimes wish this one were on the way out but it still rears its ugly head from time to time. Keyword density is a metric used by internet marketers to determine how many keywords they need to have on a page to optimize the likelihood that Google spiders will view the site and file it appropriately and, perhaps, more highly than something else. A density of 4% has often been the magic number. However, it's a terrible number to aim for because it results in non-readable content. So you might get traffic to your business but you won’t make sales from it.

3. You should only link back to your site from higher PageRank sites. If you're going for PageRank, this does make sense in theory. However, this is a common practice and what you end up with is a marketing plan that puts you in the most competitive places. It's like putting your billboard on the same street where your competitors are all putting their billboards. Instead, some lower PageRank sites might not give you the high value back link you want, but they can give you a steady stream of website visitors using the "long tail" approach.

4. It's not all about search results. One of the points I raised with my friend is this: Some people are online and don't even bother with search results. It's simply not in their sales plan. They know they are in a highly competitive environment, or perhaps they are trying to carve out a new niche with no highly searched keywords. They use advertising and other methods to drive traffic to their site. Search is not the most important. 

Consider picking a few high quality (although not necessarily high PageRank) sites and spend your effort on those sites, building up a name for yourself and creating meaningful content that can engage your audience.

I was recently doing some search engine optimization for a client which included some articles with keywords included in them. I think keyword rich (NOT keyword stuffed) articles are a good marketing tool. Most of the articles went okay. Then I got to one article in which the keyphrase was a four word phrase that was grammatically incorrect. I don't want to say what it was exactly, but to give you a fictionalized example, it was something like "Cadillac Dealership Car Oklahoma". In other words, it wasn't anything you would ever use in a sentence; it was just the result from a Google keyword search. I suggested to my client that they rethink this keyphrase as an article but they insisted because 500 people a month search for that phrase.

Welcome to the attack of the long-tailed monster. The long tail – a notion famously developed by Wired writer Chris Anderson  – is the idea that the accumulated amount of a small group of things is greater than the "short head", the total of the initial spike. So, when you add up all of the books sold on Amazon, the one or two they sell of millions of copies of books far outweighs the millions of copies of a best-seller. Thus, the long tail doesn't look to be that profitable for them but it actually is. (If that doesn't make sense, try reading this Wikipedia entry for clarification; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail).

The long tail applies to search, as well, as illustrated by my attempt to write an article with keywords similar to "Cadillac Dealership Car Oklahoma" in a sentence. In this article, over at SEOmoz, they report that the 10,000 most common search terms only account for the top 18.5% of all searches.

Let me put this into perspective for you: If you were to list the top 10,000 search terms, you'd be hard pressed to do so (but you could probably list the top 250 – 500 and then you'd dry up!) but if you could do it, you'd still not be able to only account for more than three quarters of the searches done online. This study was based on 10 millions searches done in the US. That means that 1,850,000 searches were conducted with the top 10,000 terms… and the remaining 8,150,000 searches were on different terms. That is crazy!

… It also means there's some dramatic opportunity for you to target the long tail in your business. So, even though "Cadillac Dealership Car Oklahoma" makes absolutely no sense in a sentence, it could be enough (when combined with other similar keywords) to bring in the traffic you want to bring in!

How it works in article marketing, well, that's going to be the tricky part for marketers and writers and business owners, but that's going to be the future of web marketing.

Brought to you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

In the last post, we talked bout SEO. We mentioned, in passing, the Google Adwords program. Google has become a household name. Suddenly, over the last decade, when you need information about something, you “Google” it. People are googling everything. Potential clients are googling when they need to find a resource, service or tool. It’s so easy to take advantage of all the traffic that Google is getting these days. There are many methods in which to direct this traffic toward you. One is to create an adwords account for your business. To do this, go to the Adwords site, and sign up. Signing up is free, however, ad clicks will cost you. The Adwords program allows you to select and analyze potential keywords to maximize the traffic your website will get. The system will suggest keywords for you, and you can even view the number of times people have searched for that keyword over the last 30 days along with the average number of monthly searches. Then, you will write your ad. You’ll have 3 lines of text available, so be sure to read the information Google offers on creating an effective ad. You’ll want to be savvy and get people’s interest. Next, you will have to decide where your ad will appear. Do you want it to appear just when a person searches for a keyword, or would you also like it to appear on other websites that are related to your site. These two options are called “search” and “content,” respectively. You will then have the option to select a budget. You can choose either a monthly or daily budget. Also, you will need to choose a maximum cost per click (CPC) that you are willing to pay. For some keywords, a small amount will be fine, but for others, with a great deal of competition, you may have to pay more per click to get your ad seen. As long as you’re new to Adwords, you can get a few free dollars for your account which is nice to do a little test run but it usually isn’t much so if you only use the free money, your free test may not tell you much but you can get a feel for it this way. (Monitor it closely because once that free money is gone, the costs are charged to your account.) Just do a search for "free adwords coupon", "free adwords voucher" and/or similar keywords to find a coupon. You can edit your ad, keywords, and budget as often as you like. And you can check on the number of clicks your ad is receiving per day. The information is almost real-time, with a delay of about 3 hours. The downside? Yes, there is potentially a downside. Be very careful to monitor your account while you’re new to Adwords. Remember, each time your ad is clicked, you incur costs but this doesn’t necessarily mean you will profit from these clicks. Monitor your account closely to determine if you’re actually making a profit from your ad as opposed to just putting out money with no real return. This does happen. You have to weigh it against your goals. Most people’s goal includes driving the traffic to their site in order to make a profit on their product or services. If you find that you’re incurring costs that don’t bring you any real profit, reevaluate. It could be that your site needs a revamp; it is often the content that sells the product or service. So, while it won’t necessarily be the fault of Adwords if you’re not making enough of a profit to be willing to continue the paid campaign, it may not be a good suit for you, at least at the current time. Many beginning marketers simply do not have a ton of money to pour into this type of advertising and that’s PERFECTLY okay. On top of it, most beginning marketers need to feel their way around different avenues, possibly sharpen up their copy, and figure out what works best for them. When I got started in internet marketing, I read some ‘get cash fast online’ type of deal and it said ’slap up an Adwords ad and you’ll make some quick money’. Literally, that’s what it said. And said it quite enthusiastically. Ummm, it didn’t quite work out that way! I actually ended up spending more money on my campaign than I profited. But, that was very likely related to my inexperienced copy and technique. Some beginners do well with this marketing method, others do not. Many more-advanced marketers do quite well with Adwords. If you have a widely utilized business, service or product, you may also do very well with this method. Bottom line, it can certainly be a good avenue to pursue but you need to monitor it very closely, particularly in the beginning, to ensure that it’s working for you and not just costing you. The costs can add up quickly if you’re not careful – which is a great thing if you’re making decent money with the ads, but it’s not such a great thing if you really aren’t seeing your money come back to you. Lisa and Karen J. on behalf of Contemporary VA

SEO and SEM are terms frequently used in the Internet Marketing world. So what do they mean and how are they relevant to you? SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization". It simply means producing and marketing information that lets the search engines know that your content is relevant to certain search inquiries. Your content should be ‘optimized’ for the ’search engines’ so that they can display your content when a person searches for terms that are related. For instance, we hope the search engines will tell people about our site when they type in terms that are related to "Internet Marketing". But in order for the search engines to do this, we have to ‘tell’ them what it is we are producing content on. There are a number of methods to do this. One method is to ensure you are using good keywords and anchor text. Using the right keywords and anchor text says to the search engines, "hey, my site is about xxx keyword so show my site when people type in those keywords." Otherwise how can they know? SEM stands for "Search Engine Marketing". Some people use the terms SEM and SEO and interchangeably. Others would argue there is a big difference. SEM is marketing a site within search engines, frequently via SEO. You can also buy PPC ads (pay-per-click) like with Google Adwords or utilize another method of paid inclusion or paid ads which will put you on the search engines’ radar. SEM will generally cost you whereas SEO methods can be undertaken for free. Whether or not you utilize SEM, as described herein, you certainly need to utilize SEO and consistently build for it. If you don’t optimize your content for the search engines, your Internet property may not get the amount of visitors you would like. Karen J. for Contemporary VA