In the eight or so years that I’ve been an Internet Marketer I’ve managed to involve myself in a few stupid, money and time wasting scams. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent guy, but sometimes I can’t help myself and I just get a little too caught up in a well-written sales letter. I tell myself that I learn something from every mistake I make, I hope so. At the very least, I have enough experience to write this post. So here goes, here’s my list of five things every website owner should avoid.

1) Any of the “Make a million dollars today, by doing nothing scams”: It’s common sense that these things won’t work (c’mon if you developed a system that could make you tons money without doing anything —would you really tell people about it?), but we get so caught up in the dream that our common sense sometimes goes out the window. Earning a living is hard – being an entrepreneur is oftentimes even harder, there ‘aint no shortcuts!

2) Amazing traffic deals – get 10,000 hits for $9.95, or others like them. Listen closely to me —ALL of these “deals” are JUNK! You’re getting machine generated hits, in other words, people never actually visit your website. As with many scams, common sense would dictate that the traffic is junk, why would a company sell you so much traffic for so little money —wouldn’t it make more sense to use the traffic themselves?

3) Search Engine Submission software– Make no mistake, the multi-billion dollar search engines of the world do NOT rely on people buying some $49.95 submission script to find new content to index. Search engines like to find their own content, how? by sending out spiders that surf the web much like humans do —they follow links.

4) Link brokers – Now I’m not saying there is no value in buying links to your site – if done properly this technique can provide you with targeted traffic and maybe even boost your search engine rankings. Unfortunately, you’re often buying links on sub-par websites that never get any real traffic.

Tip: Buy links on pages that are related to what you’re trying to sell – the links you buy should be visible to the people that visit that site, remember – you want traffic – if someone sees your link and clicks through, that’s a targeted visitor that wants to see what you’re selling. Buy links for people to see NOT just search engine spiders.

5) Link Exchanging – Like buying links this is only effective when done properly. Most link exchanging campaigns are simply a waste of time, links that are buried 10, 20 30 pages deep –Never see the light of day, not by search engine spiders and certainly not by surfers. Unfortunately, that’s what 95% of link exchange campaigns are. Someone either buys a script or joins a paid service and starts doing automated link exchanges – in a few days, they can have hundreds of pages of links on their site. Search engines don’t like links pages, they’ve said so! Don’t you think the search engines are smart enough to see what’s going on? The engines can tell a links page a mile away and they know exactly what their worth: $ZERO. The engines want you to build websites for human visitors; a website with 5 pages of content and 50 pages of links is NOT what they have in mind.

Exchange links properly, do it on a one on one basis. Get to know other sites in your niche, link to the ones you like. Then (and only then), contact the owner of these sites and tell them that you’re already linking to them and ask for a link back. Some may not want to reciprocate – maybe they don’t think you have a sufficient amount of content on your site yet. Don’t get angry and remove their link from your site, if you think a resource is good for your visitors then leave the link up – remember you’re building a site for your visitors NOT the search engines.

So that’s it, five stupid things that I should have avoided but didn’t. Go forth now and make your own mistakes, just stay away from these five – they’re mine!

Posted by David Olsen - Owner/Editor

Don't forget to get your SEO Success Guide! My FREE Ecourse that Will Show you how to beat your competition on Google and the rest... CLICK HERE!

I just read a great post over at the Yahoo Publishers Network that shows, visually what is important to search engine spiders. The metaphor shows a typical web page as a side of beef with each section labeled as a different cut. The “top sirloin” is the title bar, the brains (inedible) would be things like a search form.

If you’ve been struggling with the “rules” of SEO, this graphic should help you see what is important from a spider standpoint. Optimizing for Relevancy

Posted by David Olsen - Owner/Editor

Don't forget to get your SEO Success Guide! My FREE Ecourse that Will Show you how to beat your competition on Google and the rest... CLICK HERE!

Here’s a new web directory, WishfulRanking.com, that’s kind of a pay per click directory, as opposed to a pay per click (PPC) search engine. Here’s how it works:

At wishfulranking, you select your category as you would in any other directory, then instead of paying a flat rate to be added to the directory, you place a bid - auction style. The more you bid the higher in the directory your listing is placed.

Bids start at $1.25, you can stay in the directory for that amount, if you’re outbid you can simply place a higher bid to move your listing up in the ranks. I checked, it looks like PR is being passed to the sites listed, however at this time the site isn’t showing any PR of its own and only the homepage is currently listed in Google. I expect this will change pretty quickly as the site gets it own backlinks from press releases and reviews (like this one).

Anyway, it’s an interesting concept, I submitted this site, the process was straight forward, I made my payment using Paypal (it was the only payment option). I paid the minimum amount ($1.25) as there were no other sites in my category. As of this writing, my site is in going through the review process.

have a look for yourself.

WishfulRanking.com

Posted by David Olsen - Owner/Editor

Don't forget to get your SEO Success Guide! My FREE Ecourse that Will Show you how to beat your competition on Google and the rest... CLICK HERE!

Ask five different web marketers to list their top web marketing strategies and you’ll probably get five different answers. That’s okay, because there are lots of different ways to skin a cat. With that said, here are my three favorite web site marketing strategies.

1) Choose a blog or other Content Management System (CMS) over old fashioned static html pages. Blogs especially have a big advantage as they are inherently well organized and search engine friendly. Also with a CMS global changes and updates are usually accomplished by making a change to a single file —In the not so good old days, I can remember putting up marketing materials on every page of my site(s) – individually, only to have to go back and remove them all a few days later when the offer had changed .

Another reason to choose a blog is that it removes most of the design issues that arise when building a site. With a blog/CMS you often only need to select a particular “skin” for your site, then customize it with a single unique header graphic and you’re done. Remember, it’s all about the content – people really aren’t that impressed with fancy site design anymore. Today web users want the meat and potatoes, not the piece of parsley on the side of the plate.

2) Build a focused, content rich web site not a collection of banners. Newbie’s often start out signing up for every affiliate program they can find. Then, they just start adding pages and pages of banners to their sites (this never really worked, and now that the internet is starting to mature a little – it’s absolutely useless). Remember, people use the internet to find information. They want to find out about everything from the latest celebrity news to the latest science breakthroughs. To succeed, you need to find a niche and become the authority site for that niche. This sounds pretty simple right? Well it is and it isn’t – it’s not rocket science, but it does require a few things; good old fashioned work, time and a lot of patience.

So how do you go about building an authority site? You do that by frequently adding fresh content to your site. Content can be articles, videos, podcasts, user forums or just about anything else you can think of. Just make sure it’s accurate, relevant and interesting. You can either create the content yourself or have some or all of it ghostwritten. Consistency is the key.

3) Build a list – There’s an old web marketing adage (well I really don’t know if it’s old or not, but I have seen it in a few different places ) that goes something like — A guru without a list is not a guru at all! That’s because there is nothing as powerful as face to face salesmanship –car salesmen know this, that’s how they get us to add all those expensive options that we really don’t need.

Anyway, promoting to a list is about as close to face to face selling as you can get on a global scale. You can personalize your messages; you can speak to your prospects like the individuals that they are, and you can really build a two way communication with your list. It’s all in how you manage it, treat your list well, treat it as the collection of individuals that actually make up the list and you’ll be rewarded with a loyal group of readers who will listen to what you have to say.

Well, that’s my Marketing Strategy for any new niche I want to target. Once I have this foundation in place, I know I’m well on my way to having a successful website. These basic issues allow me to build my credibility with the surfers who visit my site.

In a nutshell here’s how these three elements work together:

1) Using a blog/CMS gives me a straight-forward, platform that I can quickly modify as necessary.

2) Thinking in terms of building an “Authority Site” as opposed to a website, keeps me focused on what is important to my niche.

3) Having a list of people who are interested in my niche allow me to get to a more personal level with them. I’m not just some guy who’s trying to sell them something; instead I’m trusted because I have a personal relationship with them.

Very Powerful Stuff!

Here’s some related resources:

How to build an Authority Site

Inexpensive Article Ghostwriters

Posted by David Olsen - Owner/Editor

Don't forget to get your SEO Success Guide! My FREE Ecourse that Will Show you how to beat your competition on Google and the rest... CLICK HERE!

Get $100 In Free Links

I’ve been submitting my site to a some directories and found a few that offer great value (pr vs cost). Here’s a breakdown of the sites I’ve submitted to along with their cost and the pr of the actual page my site is listed on.

Note, for each of these directories I’ve checked that the nofollow tag was NOT being used and that the deeper pages were acutally indexed in google. Here’s a breakdown of the $80 I spent along with the stats of the pages my site is listed on:

***********************************************
Site: http://www.webotopia.org
Cost: $10
My Link: On a PR4 page, with one other site!

Site: http://www.linkopedia.com/
Cost: $9.95
My Link: On a PR4 Page with 4 other sites!

Site: http://www.cyber-find.net/
Cost: 29.95
My Link: —My Site is not yet live but my category is a pr5 with only 4 other sites

* Site: http://www.seoma.net
Cost: $24/2 sites ($12/site)
My Site: on a pr4 page with about 15 other sites

* Site: http://www.octopedia.com
Cost: $24/2 sites: ($12/site)
My Site: on a pr4 page with 6 other sites

* These two sites are interesting - they claim to be designed by SEO’s. So your
link is actually embedded in the description, Also each site gives you a second descripton page with additional links. The cost to “join” these two sites is $24, but you get two different site submissions for that amount.

http://www.DirectoryVault.com
Cost: $8.95 - Gives you links in six different directories

The Sites are:
http://www.directoryvault.com/ I’m on a pR2 page with 13 other sites.
http://www.alistsites.com/ I’m on a pr0 page with 9 other sites (The directory level above mine is only a pr1).
http://www.directorybin.com/ I’m on a pr2 page with 7 other sites.
http://www.alistdirectory.com/ I’m on a pr0 page with 7 other sites (The directory level above mine is only a pr1).
http://www.pr3plus.com/I’m on a pr0 page with 4 other sites (The directory level above mine is only a pr1).
http://www.linknom.com/ I’m on a pr0 page with 0 other sites (This directory has the lowest pr of all ).

***********************************************

For the most part, you simply visit the site(s) above and click the “submit a site” option on their menu - you’ll then be taken to their sales page.

Enjoy!

Posted by David Olsen - Owner/Editor

Don't forget to get your SEO Success Guide! My FREE Ecourse that Will Show you how to beat your competition on Google and the rest... CLICK HERE!

Here’s a cool video from Webpronews. It features Ken Jurina and Curtis Dueck of Epiar, a Canadian SEO company. The video is all about the non-SEO insights being found in Keyword research. They make the point that what we key into our favorite search engines is relevant to what’s really going on in the world. Taking say a years worth of search data is really like conducting a huge focus group (one that’s completely unbiased because the group doesn’t even know it’s being watched), that can yield trends that go much deeper then just finding a few keyphrases to target.

Fascinating stuff, Watch the video, it’s about 11 minutes long. Then have a look at this post from Epiar:

Christmas Wishes Expressed In Search

Posted by David Olsen - Owner/Editor

Don't forget to get your SEO Success Guide! My FREE Ecourse that Will Show you how to beat your competition on Google and the rest... CLICK HERE!