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Absolute Top Five Search Engine Marketing Myths Uncovered!
Affiliate Programs - Which One? It's no secret that Search Engine marketing can drive significant Promoting affiliate programs is probably one of the most popular and realistic ways of making money online. You really can make money doing this, and the money can be substantial with some work. The type of affiliate program you use or promote ..... amounts of very qualified traffic to a web site ' as 85% of Internet users utilize search engines to find/research for goods and services. The problem for many companies is the difficulty they face sifting through conflicting information and hyperbole! Here is my top five list of myths that need to be run to ground. Free Content -- Or Forbidden Fruit? Dear Cathy: I just found an interesting article on someone else's website. What are the rules if I want to put it into my ..... Big Picture Myth One ' Search engine ranking leads are not as good as those which originate from other forms of traditional marketing (print, direct mail, PR, etc.) ' this is absolute hogwash, the truth is many agencies don't have a clue about s/e ranking, so they push their clients to ignore this form of advertising. They simply don't want to recommend anything they don't understand and/or utilize an interactive marketing vehicle that requires a blend of very specialized technology and processes. We've in fact found just the opposite when we've analyzed s/e traffic versus other types of leads for our clients; i.e. search engine traffic can be much better, as it is comprised of individuals who are actively seeking info, not just people whose curiosity has been piqued by an eye-catching publication ad or press release. And, when we've analyzed the data by tracking leads via a landing page (on a web site) we've discovered that CPL (cost per lead) numbers can be much lower for s/e ranking than other more traditional marketing methods. Big Picture Myth Two ' Effective s/e marketing can be done in house ' The Innovative Ways To Use Your Autoresponder this is rarely the case, the sheer complexity and online competition If you have auto response system set up for following up your customers or prospects, you may just use one or two ..... (digital warfare!) for rankings makes this extremely difficult for most companies. Based upon our analysis over 73% of corporate accounts don't understand the basic fundamentals; i.e. how to properly use keywords, meta tags and titles and worse, don't submit their web sites to top tier Directories (Yahoo, LookSmart, OPD) and the hundreds of second tier directories. Most companies delegate the s/e submissions to the webmaster or web site development staff and they just don't have the time to understand the daunting complexities required to generate page 1-3 rankings - or to stay abreast of the shifting submissions and ranking criteria standards, as modified monthly by top tier search engines. And, in many companies the s/e ranking is added to the over worked webmaster's tasks purely as an afterthought ' as opposed to being addressed formally by the marketing department, with dedicated personnel and a budget. Big Picture Myth Three ' off the shelf software that submits a site to thousands of web sites and presents snazzy reports can do it all. This is so inaccurate and nothing can be further from the truth ' it takes a tremendous amount of labor and time to identify keyword sets (not just words), optimize the content for these keywords, submit the pages while obeying the rules of the road and then continually analyzing rankings and tweaking to maintain and drive rankings (web site visibility). Software can certainly help to automate some facets of the process and be used for back end analysis ' but you can't expect any application to make the job easy, there is too much inherent complexity in the processes. And, competition for keyword sets is fierce ' as there are an estimated 5-10M registered domains (the numbers vary widely) with 60K new domains being registered every day. Big Picture Myths Four and Five ' Any page listing will help to drive traffic to a web site ' this is another misconception. If you are aren't achieving page 1-3 rankings then your wasting a great deal of time and resources ' most people never drill down below these pages. Another common mistake is trying to achieve s/e rankings for a specific URL or product ' if people know the name of a company or product they will find your web site easily, it's a waste of resources to optimize for these specialized terms in 80% of most cases. About the Author Give Give Up Now! Copyright 2003 by Kevin BidwellAll-In-One-Business.com You need to decide when you will give up. While that might sound like a very negative comment, it might just be the key to ..... Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience He is the co- |
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