Is SEO Killing Your Business?

\Of course in and of itself, that’s a good thing.  I mean how many of us SEO folks out there have ever looked a website and said to ourselves, “I can tell that the designer and SEO specialist don’t like each other”..right?

I mean come on…There’s so many sites that just flat out ignore SEO fundamentals that it’s not even funny.  So when I do come across someone who’s in the process of launching a website that actually has an awareness of SEO I’m overjoyed!

But as with everything else in life, there’s something to be said for having balance.  And again don’t get me wrong SEO is important for the success of your online business.  However, having great SEO in and of itself won’t necessarily make your online business successful.

Put it like this.  I’ve do quite a bit with SEO campaigns and on average it takes me between six to nine months to get a new website ranking on the first page of Google for moderately competitive keywords.

I know most ppl will have you believe that its an instantaneous process.  But believe me, if ur starting from scratch, it’s not.  So ask urself this question, can u really afford to sit around and twiddle your thumbs while you wait for ur SEO campaigns to kick in?

If you’re like me the answer is no…or make that a Hell NO!  LOL

Seriously, you don’t want to put all of your eggs in the SEO basket.  Not only that but there’s something more fundamentally wrong with taking an SEO at all costs approach to starting ur online business.

When you become fixated on SEO, what ur really doing is putting the buggy in front of the horse. And we all know that buggies don’t pull horses.  Likewise, search engine optimization doesn’t drive a business.   On the other hand, your competitive advantage  AKA your unique selling proposition does drive your business.

Which leads me to this.  As much as I love Internet marketing, I hate the fact that we as online entrepreneurs sometimes allow the technical aspects of online marketing (such as SEO) make us lose sight of the second word in Internet marketing.

I’m going to bring it home in simple fashion right here for you…What ur ultimately trying to do with your website is persuade someone to do something.  That’s just plain ole marketing.  Simple as that…

The “something” that you want them to do could be to subscribe to share your content on Facebook, join your mailing list, buy an affiliate product from you, buy your product or whatever.

All of the SEO in the world won’t help you if you can’t persuade the visitors that do land on your sight to take action.  How do you get them to take action?  You lead in with what makes your list, affiliate offer or product special and then you invite your visitor to take action.

Only once you’ve got that process down pat does it make sense to focus on bringing traffic to your site or to your offer.  Because until you do that all ur doing is wasting traffic.  Capiche?

Image by thms.nl via Flickr

This post is in response to one of my newest friends who I really respect for asking how to get more traffic-quick, fast and in a hurry through SEO.  See so many people make the mistake of not asking that you’ve got to give someone props for asking questions-especially when they ask the right question like my friend did!

Dunno if u saw or remember Karate Kid. But u can liken what I’m about to say to Mr Miyagi’s wipe up wipe down method LOL!!!

See the way SEO works is there are lots and lots of search engines but even more websites. Of course the dominant search engine is google, who controls something like 70% + of the search engine market.

Understanding google will help u a lot in this game. Did you see Will Smith’s zombie movie, I Am Legend? If you didnt, don’t even matter. Lets just visualize Google as the proverbial house on the hill-in a land full of blood thirsty zombies.

In this case though the Zombies are websites who use overly aggressive or outright spammy tactics to get their search terms to the top of Google. What do you think Google will do to protect their house?

If u said fight, u were absolutely correct. See in the beginning of search engine optimization technolgists/web masters learned that if they did shady stuff like stuff their pages with keywords (words that their visitors type into the search box to find the websites) they could get higher rankings.

What did Google do-they fought back with an update. And that cat and mouse, back and forth ebb and flow between Google and website owners has been in full effect every since.

What that means to u is that it’s exponentially harder to get ranked for the search terms that matter for you than it was for those early website owners. By harder I mean its more expensive (yep SEO can get super expensive), it takes a lot longer, and it’s not just a matter of grunt work anymore – you actually gotta think and think and think…Then u need to test, test test and improve, improve, improve.

Put it like this on average it has taken me six to seven months to get my money sites ( pages with strong call to actions that make my visitors pull the trigger and either answer “yes I wanna buy or no I aint buying”) ranked within the top five results.

Of course, it’s worth the wait. But I’m just saying SEO isn’t a magic lever that u get to turn on and off. The big benefit that SEO has had, historically (before Google’s hyper aggressive sweeping chances went into full effect), is that once u SEO a site u’ve got a near permanent ATM machine (again I’m talking for sites that have offers and sell stuff as their business model, sites that earn revenue solely from ads are slightly different).

The way SEO gets expensive is that it can be highly time intensive, it requires robust research (which means u have to pay for programs), heavy duty data mining or analysis, as well as automation software to help u with the grunt work.

There are gurus out there that will have u thinking that there’s a magic pill for SEO but don’t believe the hype. Google aint giving out free zombie passes (sorry couldn’t resist when their business model depends on them precisely matching search results to the intent of the searcher.

So how do u get onto the coveted page one or even better top result position for ur keywords? Well, I will end on this note…

There’s 3…No 4 pillars (four thanks to Google’s latest sweeping overhaul – the Panda update) u need to build ur search strategy around:

1. Website Architecture – the structure of ur files, urls, html tags
2. Onsite optimization – how ur using keywords and content on ur site and internal linking
3. Offsite Optimization – How many ppl are linking back to u, what words do they use to link to u, who r these ppl (r they nobodies in the eyes of Google or are they reputable?), is it a steady build up or is it more of a big push (in other words do ur links come over weeks or months or all at one time-if its in one big pop that smells fishy to Google)
4. Social Proof (the new kid on the block, thanks to the Panda update-how dare the damn folks at google LOL – How many ppl are using Google plus to plus ur content, how many are tweeting it, liking on facebook and etc.

Again this is crazy general but just call me Miyagi… aight!

Lastly, those four things were just pillars. The rock that they are built upon is keyword reasearch. Which can be a beast. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying u gotta be a rocket science to do SEO cause u don’t.

But u need to have the mindset of one of those detectives on CSI though, which means u need to be 1. steadfast and hard driving 2. highly systematic 3. willing to change courses when the scent goes cold.

So honestly, given all that is anyone gonna tell me that this can be done in weeks or even a couple a months?

Usually when the gurus sell their quick approaches they’re addressing only one pillar or they are using a work around – a temporary crack in Google’s armor that they have exploited to good effect in the past… Just remember though. Google is the house on the hill, they will eventually find that nick in their wall and your sites WILL suffer if were relying solely on that crack in the wall to get in the house.

So what’s a sister or brother to do? Become an invited guest into the house of google; not an intruder. And again u become the invited guest through courtship – applying the four pillars of SEO on top of that foundation, which is keyword research.

Affiliate Marketing Crash This and Burn

This is the second of my three part series on affiliate marketing for beginners.  Today we’ll be contrasting the way that most of us were taught to do affiliate marketing versus what actually works.  Enjoy!

2012 Happy New Year!

Mad Men - Is an Internet Marketing Degree Worth It? Image by Wikipedia

This is the second (or third) post that I’ve done on my site that talks about Full Sail University’s Internet Marketing Program.  But this one is a lil’ different though because the thing that motivated me to put it together is that over the past two weeks I’ve had four different people that I didn’t know approach me through my site and through Linkedin to seek out my advice on Full Sail’s Internet Marketing programs.  I gave them my thoughts and all but now that I’ve had a little more time to reflect this is what I wish I’d told them…

When it comes to Internet marketing and web development, let’s face it…formal education doesn’t seem to be as valued in these fields way that its looked at in other professional career paths. I feel like on the one hand its due to the whole Mad Men type mentality that pervades our field where it’s more of a “what have you done for me lately?” mentality.

And on the other hand the whole Bill Gates effect that creeps in from the technology side of Internet marketing (which by the way Internet marketing and technology are two different things – arghhh!) where it’s generally accepted that the super smart technology ppl don’t need degrees to shine.  Look at all of the tech billionaires who dropped outta college…

So I’ve found that many of the counterparts that you’ll be going up against when you’re trying to get a job tend to be very light on formal education and more top heavy on experience. Which I think explains why I have never had an interviewer question me about the fact that Full Sail has national accreditation instead of regional.

But maybe I’ve never gotten static over my Full Sail credentials because Full Sail ppl just tend to know their ish-point blank! I’d probably compare the curriculum at Full Sail to a long military boot camp-where if you make it out you WILL know your stuff. What does that mean exactly?

Well, if you decide to give Full Sail a go, you can pretty much kiss your social life, eight hours of sleep, and any other thing that takes more than a few hours to do (on the regular) good bye!  Looking back on it I’d say that Full Sail really felt more like a rights of passage than a normal degree – it was the toughest thing that I’ve ever experienced that’s for sure.

But for me it has been worth it. But my situation may not be your situation.

You see…When it comes to getting a job in the Internet marketing field, a formal degree from Full Sail or any school will be helpful. However, it will be of less value if you don’t already have some documentable hands on experience running online campaigns.

My situation prior to enrolling in Full Sail was that I had some hands on experience in Internet marketing but since it was all for my own companies it wasn’t exactly what I’d call documentable.

So I’d say that Full Sail definitely helped to round out my resume by making up for the fact that most of my experience couldn’t really be verified. Seriously, since I owned or co-owned the companies I could have said I did anything, right? But with Full Sail + my background, I had a fighting chance and I was able to get a position managing online campaigns for a local employer before I even finished Full Sail.

Here’s what I’d say if you don’t already have experience in Internet marketing, but you still want to pursue a formal degree or certification…

You can pursue a formal program such as Full Sail University’s Internet Marketing Master of Science program or their undergrad/certificate programs in conjunction with volunteering (or do an internship) to help local businesses with their Internet marketing. But alternatively, you can do volunteer oriented activities without getting the formal instruction. The only problem with trying your hand at online marketing without the help of formal training is that your learning curve is likely to be much greater.

Again, it is possible to do it without the formal instruction – just ask Jason Fladlien. But everyone’s not Jason Fladlien and everybody’s not willing to throw it all on the line like he did to get where he is today.

There’s one more option that’s more advanced where instead of doing volunteer work for businesses you do paid work – but work in a very tightly defined niche (such as video marketing) where your credentials don’t matter as much if you can get your foot in the door. Again, this is one of those things that’s easier said than done but it is possible though. It’s sort of like the ole crawl before you can walk analogy.

Finally, the last thing I’m gonna point out is that Internet marketing is a mammoth of an industry. It’s not like there’s only one career path in Internet marketing. I mean, if you lined up twenty different people who said that they each do Internet marketing, there’s a really good chance that they all do something different. That’s because there really are more like six major paths that most Internet marketers decide to walk down and then each of those six main paths branches off into several smaller paths:

• Ecommerce Management- Helping an online store get more sales by improving their ecommece store’s website and online visibility.
• In-House Marketing – Working for an employer as their in-house marketing person handling their social media, online public relations, online advertising, search engine rankings or online reputation.
• Offline Marketing (typically this is done on a consulting basis)- Helping a local business or several of them, that lack an online presence, to improve their sales through online marketing.  This can also entail social media, SEO, PPC, web design and etc.
• Product Marketing – Developing your own information products (like ebooks or paper back books) and marketing them online.
• Affiliate Marketing – Selling other people’s products online in return for a share (commissions) of their revenues.
• Underground Marketing - This is where you sell to other Internet marketers or other online opportunity seekers. You can think of it as selling the picks and shovels to those looking to strike it rich in the gold mines.

I would say that Full Sail University or any formally accredited program is probably more geared towards the first two-ecommerce management and in house marketing. As for me I’m about all six paths – but my focus is actually the last three paths.  So that being said as long as you:

• Have a bit of experience (whether paid or volunteer) to back you up
• Are willing to get that experience under your belt ASAP, if you don’t have it already
• Prefer a job in Internet marketing over the more entrepreneurial paths

Then an Internt marketing degree program could benefit you.  By the way, you may wonder why I included non-affiliate links to Darren Monroe and Jason Fladlien’s sites and the answer is quite simple.  We all need role models/mentors and these two guys are mine.