The Online Sunshine Plan
The death of search engines isn’t widely exaggerated at all…
Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on January 8, 2010
I’ve long held that search engines were a dying breed. Recent data has started supporting this view.
The main problem which Google and others have is their addiction to advertising. This is part of their business model and is taking them into the tank. Now, I don’t doubt that Google has some of the smartest people around working for them. And their ability to provide incredibly appropriate search results is amazing. However, they support their programmers by selling advertising.
Advertising is generally a scam. Because they use your emotional buttons to get you to buy – you aren’t simply invited to sample their wares and make an educated decisions in order to improve your life quality.
I have always favored the bazaar model, where you are able to sample or inspect the goods before you buy. Social media is heading in this direction. And they have their own internal search engines. Google is running to keep up and has ramped up both local and personalized search.
Of course, that plays hob with advertisers who are trying to get the entire national market cheaply. They are now going to have to compete on extreme long-tail niche models, which are far more expensive. The kicker for me was when I heard from one of my friends and mentors that he had seen a rise in “organic” rankings when one of his clients ran a PPC ad series.
And it’s also pretty widely known that sites with Adsense will rank higher than those without. Meaning that Google is selling advertising to make their living. Simple. They would prefer that people and companies remain addicted.
People who are working for getting top Google positions in order to get traffic are going to be in a bind shortly. Just because not only is Google a moving target (as always) but they are now beginning to split up the market they have in order to segment it. That’s personalized search.
So my research keeps taking me into another realm. I’m going back to looking up what actually gets traffic. Now the single SEO newsletter I still subscribe to is investigating someone who has started moving away from Google. And when I see his review (I don’t need to spend money on stuff I can figure out myself) – then I’ll tell you all what comes of it.
The line of research goes directly to the communities you are part of. Narrowing down to these few communities and joining in on the conversations. Giving out samples of your goods so people can see what you have to offer.
There is still some use for broad promotion. Pixelpipe and ping.fm, among others, where you can syndicate what you are producing and talking about. Also, article directories (the key ones) and press releases. The work you want to do is on finding buyers, not “dominating the search engines”. You want clients, not visitors.
Any smart company knows that it’s proven leads which is what you want – not people who take your pencils and tshirts at your booths. You want email addresses, phone numbers, and people who need your product to improve their lives. Right now.That’s real lead generation. These “internet marketing” guru’s are simply selling scammy products to the naive.
The current strategy I’m testing is to get your content out on as many social publishers as possible, in as many formats as possible. Then people searching through these lines will then find you. Don’t worry about ranking in the search engines just for the sake of ranking. Sure, you use your SEO data: the 5 basic points to keep in, plus your LSI theming – just so search engines have an easy time of it. But simply concentrate on how to get usable data in front of people who need it. I’ve found that my percentages of repeat traffic have more to do with my non-search engine traffic.
So search engine traffic is not your priority. If you look at search engines for anything, look at how many spots you cover in those search engines for the various versions of your posts for a given keyword. You aren’t trying to “dominate” any given term or phrase in the SE’s, more that this is telling you how well your various publications can be found by the SE’s – what your reach into the different types of social media consists of.
Another interesting point is the mainstream media. These are also a scam, like advertising. Because they are tabloid oriented. Again, they are working to get your emotions to tell you subconsciously what you need to spend your disposable income on. Their idea, like search engines, is to boost their ratings (viewership) so that they can sell advertising. Getting in “the news” is simply being controversial enough to boost their ratings. Because they think controversy keeps people watching their drivel.
This is the same thing which ruined “moden art”. And art students are being taught currently that the purpose of art is to “explore controversy” in order to “start a conversation” – when the actual purposes of art have either been 1) to record an historic event, or 2) to provide an aesthetic environment. When art and artists are used to forward and emotional message (as politicians use them), this is the true bastardization of the arts. But artists who are controversial just for controversy’s sake are no better than those bastards above.
Marketing is supposed to be finding or creating a market for a valuable good which improves the lives of users. Anything else is poppycock.
And this includes search engines.
Thought you’d be able to use this data. (And note that this site isn’t searchable by any of these SE’s – so the data you get here is just for your own use. But share it all you want.)
Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.
Or – buy a copy of “Online Sunshine Plan” from my bookstore.
Some additional posts of interest:
Lead Generation made easy – blog it.
Posted by robertworstell in Lead Generation on November 13, 2009
Getting leads (also known as new customers, potential clients) is not all that hard when you know the rest of the Online Sunshine Plan.
I’m writing this to take care of an omission. It’s really not hard to take any small business online – even if you have a brick-and-mortar service company, like a general contractor or a plumbing shop. You aren’t interested in fixing someone’s faucet in Anchorage, when you work in Southern California. So you use your site to generate local leads.
There are really just 7 steps to setting up a Lead Generation site:
- Get real webhosting and a domain name – which is your company name, usually.
- Set up a blog there. Pick a nice, professional template.
- Do your keyword research so you know what keywords to use so people will find you.
- Set out static pages for the key services you provide. Not posts, pages.
- Make sure you put local names of towns and cities on your pages and posts – this helps the search engines help people find you by city that you’re in.
- Put a contact link on each page and post as well as in your template sidebar – this is how you generate the leads
- Now start blogging on a regular basis about your daily activities and how much you love helping people with their lives and giving tips others can use.
Now, in addition to this, promote your blog by posting great content to other social media sites – like podcasts, videos, ebooks, powerpoints, articles – all with your blog linked and using the keywords you’ve figured out above.
It’s not much different than building an affiliate site or a bookstore for digital downloads – you just are working to get the person to contact you for more information, a free estimate, or a no-charge consultation about whatever you provide the solution for.
The point on keywords and locations can’t be underestimated. You don’t have to come up #1 for “finish carpentry” or “interior contractor” as long as you come up tops for “finish carpentry Orange County” or “interior contractor Riverside”. You see the the long tail search terms?
Posting all these other content pieces out there simply gives other people additional ways to find your site – some people look for videos on how to do finish carpentry, others look for articles. The point is to always give great data people can use – for free. And then they’ll trust you enough for you to talk with them about their own project.
That’s all there is to making a Lead Generation website.
- – - -
Now, let me give you a secret. Most of these guys don’t actually know how to blog or provide any content. This is how you can easily take over the rankings. Just keep your SEO in and routinely (once a week or so) post new content that is helpful.
The other point is to put your web site on your business cards, in your signature, and direct people to it for ideas on how they can best handle the problem they are talking to you about.
And you’ll get more leads than you could shake a stick at. Or something like that, anyway…
Cheers!
Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.
Or – buy a copy of “Online Sunshine Plan” from my bookstore.
Some additional posts of interest:
Laws of Keyword Usage – all keywords are not created equal
Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on October 31, 2009
This error below made me realize I hadn’t compiled the rules/laws/principles of proper and effective keyword usage for SEO:
1. One main keyword (phrase) per page. Now, sufficiently long, you’ll get other combinations of keywords which link to this page, but you are going for one particular long-tail niche (forget one-word keywords, these have been sewn up long ago and are maintained by huge sites with massive link-love coming their way.
Reason? Your page is known (reputation) by its in-bound links. Whatever they say is on the page is really more important that what is on that page – but you want all inbound links to say the same keyword as you optimize the page for. If you work on getting prime search engine real estate (top 5 positions – above the fold), then figure for a keyword “scatterbrained nitwit”, all or most of your inbound links should have the words “scatterbrained nitwit” in their text link. While you can get “scatterbrainednitwit.com” to help out, it’s not essential. (But note: having “scatter-brained-nitwit.com” can get you penalized, as spammers wasted that approach years ago.)
Two or more keyword phrases will confuse search engines and give you lower rankings. Your pages should be like you talk – one subject at a time. Don’t talk or write in non-sequiturs. If you do have to bring up another topic, it’s perfectly OK to link to a separate page on this new topic. Gives you another keyword phrase you can “dominate”.
2. Use your meta-tags for theme words, not keywords. Most of the biggest search engines don’t rely on meta-tags (thank spammers for that one, too…), but Google uses them to check the “theme” of the page, ie. does your content match what you are talking about?
If you put your keyword phrases in your meta-tags, unscrupulous spammers will scan these to find what you are talking about or trying to get search engine real-estate with and work to beat you to the punch. Just what you need – more competition.
The old tools which harvest meta tag information are good now for finding theme words – what that page should be talking about. The reason Google looks for theme words is also to help them figure where to list your page. Most words have several distinct meanings. Searching for “Apple” the computer company shouldn’t give you results on “apple” the fruit. Help them out – use meta tags for repeating theme words on your page.
3. General current use of Keywords:
a. Page title
b. H1-H2 headings (Not necessarily in the headline.)
c. Once in opening paragraph – which should be emphasized with bold (or possibly italic – but only in san-serif fonts, so it remains legible).
d. Generally, no where else on the page, or at max – no greater than 3-5% of that text copy – again, thank the spammers for this rule.
e. The rest of the page is composed of theme words and articles (an, a, the, those, that, etc.) and somewhat meaningless words which hold the sentence together (conjunctions and stuff like and, or, with, as well as of, in, by, etc.) But these common words aren’t theme words and so shouldn’t show up on your meta-tags.
This above is the result of several studies into page optimization, namely through Michael Campbell, Dr. Andy Williams, SEO2020, and some others.
While the rest of this below post seems fairly accurate, the below quote is not. (P.S. I blog this to give you all possible data, but also because their site has no particularly apparent way to add a comment -siwwy wabbits.)
Website Magazine : Keyword Research – A Foundation for Local SEO:
“Focus on one or two keywords or phrases per page – and use them in the title, subheads, meta tags, and copy of the page. Also use keyword variations in the text to enhance the keyword’s relevance.
As an example, let’s say your business is called Las Vegas Floral Boutique. You could use your business’s name as one keyword phrase and ‘Las Vegas flowers’ as another. Since most people will be using ‘Las Vegas flowers’ rather than your business name in their searches, mention Las Vegas Floral Boutique occasionally but focus more on the more generic term and use variations like ‘Las Vegas flower shop’, ‘flower shop Las Vegas’, ‘affordable Vegas flowers”, etc.”
And now you know why that wouldn’t work and what to ignore on the Internet – well, at lest some more…
Some additional posts of interest:
How search engines used to work
Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on October 30, 2009
These next two sections explain how search engines are generally used in marketing. These are slowly being replaced by social media. In fact, most of these are trying to become social media. But that’s another topic for another day…
How to actually use search engines to find potential clients
But there is a single principle involved here: you want to be able to get onto the first page or two of Google and stay there long enough for your most valuable clients to find you. That’s the simplicity of it. When you want to expand your client base, you get back into promoting for new visitors you can turn into clients.
And mostly, we’ve already covered how to do this: simple, basics of SEO applied to each page as you write them, and posting your content on social media sites (which includes using a blog platform to hose your main site.) This gets you rapidly onto Google’s top listings. The more valuable content you post on a regular basis and the longer you stay up there.
I’ll go over this in more detail later, but the crux of search engine use is in helping people find your site to begin with. That’s mostly all they are good for. It doesn’t mean they are going to find it later by using search engines (unless they forget your name). And frankly, that is all they are good for.
Once people select their communities, they find more resources through that community, not through the search engines. Word of mouth, actually. They follow and subscribe to people they trust and use these peoples’ recommendations. Like habits, they continue to mostly check on their email and their favorite sites. People mostly don’t use search engines in their daily living – they are checking out their neighborhood for new stuff from the their network of friends.
This means most of this emphasis on search engines in Internet Marketing is overblown.
Search engines and advertising are like the old Big 3 TV networks and advertising. Companies who think they have to do a lot of advertising support a great number of outlets just so they can get their advertising dollar spent. Yet advertising is expensive and 97% of it is wasted. What Google, Yahoo, and others are doing is to set aside their prime eye-ball real estate (what and where exactly people tend to look at first on the page) for advertising. And charge extra for people to have their ad in this particular spot.
Google and others sell advertising spots by Keyword and then present them on the appropriate pages. By creating a bidding war for certain keywords, they make more money. In addition to that, they entice individuals to put ads on their own sites by paying them (usually a paltry pittance for the hours of work they do providing content – just to have another distraction taking their traffic somewhere else).
The kicker is that the bulk of humankind Internet users train themselves to ignore these ads. Again – you’re left with the 3 percent who are trusting or gullible enough to click-through.
Advertising is how search engines support themselves. So it’s here to stay – until search engines are themselves replaced. And this movement is en-route. (Again, I’ll tell you more of this later, though the basics are outlined above.)
Once you have helped your visitors become loyal clients, then they come directly to your blog and search engine sources are the minority. You will also find that your bounces (people who stay less than 30 seconds and visit no other page) decline proportionately. Direct access and referrals rise dramatically (loyal clients and word of mouth).
Some additional posts of interest:
Keywords which don’t tell you anything about the Gorilla in the room
Posted by robertworstell in Marketing Research on October 30, 2009
That’s the problem with a lot of these niches we deal with. When we are simply trying to sell a product, we fail because some of these niches simply don’t have buyers in them. And worse, some people are telling you that the way you find buyers is to see if people are advertising in that area. (Really? How come people are advertising where there isn’t even any traffic? Google says they do – just look on their Adwords tool and see where there is “competition” even when there aren’t enough traffic results to make up a monthly tally…)
Since I got myself all worked up with that (above-linked) post, I then had to see what was actually going on.
So I set up my Keywords Genies: Google Adwords Tool and RankTracker and started to get to work figuring this all out. I started using Google Adwords to see if it would give me bigger and bigger traffic keywords through its synonyms. After I amassed about 12,000 keywords, then I quit to digest them by OpenOffice database.
Now, this is completely the reverse of what my research says to do. I was purposely looking for stuff that couldn’t possibly be a niche – waaayy too big. Of course, one of the first things I found out was that Google and WordTracker don’t agree on what the traffic for something actually is. (Big surprise – all these tools only deal with their own estimates of traffic. Your mileage may vary, as well – only your own analytics knows for sure.)
But what I did find is that there seem to be a huge number of really good one and two-word keywords with decent KEI. Even though they could (and some did) have literally a trillion pages of competition. No, you couldn’t dream of trying to get these on their own. So the niche theory of marketing empire-building still holds.
The review of these niches and their main keywords started showing something else (other than the fact I was really straining RankTracker and WordTracker – you can only check about 240 KW’s at a time before WordTracker shuts you down). That something else was the point that people who search on Google are just that – lookers. Doesn’t mean they are buyers. And you have to check that keyword on eBay or Amazon to see if people are actually able to sell something like that.
Even more striking was the observation that very little “stuff” was turning up with these keywords. Specific camera’s, or toys, or gadgets or books or authors weren’t coming up. But the big-ticket Maslow-pyramid-type phrases were. As niches.
But didn’t I just say you couldn’t sell anything in a niche that didn’t have buyers in it?
Sure. The trick is that the motivations to buy are there, not the stuff you can sell.
This means that people are actually searching for their wants and feelings, not just specific stuff they want to buy – although that happens as well, but not in two words or less (most of the time, anyway).
Your niches show up in four-word or longer phrases.
But something even more interesting showed up – you aren’t selling stuff, you’re offering solutions.
All of these wants and feelings people put in their search engine forms – these are just problems they are having in their lives (more or less). What they are plugging away at searching for are solutions which would improve their lives.
Again, go back to Maslow and Cialdini. When you take these two giants together, you see what people as individuals and as groups/niches are trying to solve in their lives. All these things people buy are somewhere on Maslow’s pyramid. And what you see selling on eBay or Amazon are translations of these items into the tribe-dominated Cialdini 6 (or 7) principle triggers.
Being blonde, young, trim, athletic, rich, famous, etc. – all of these have definite products associated with them. But below all these states are very definite wants and needs – and between those and the products that represent them are the person’s feelings. Which are what all sales are based on – feelings.
My point in this actually goes back to what I’ve spend the bulk of this life on – personal improvement and self-growth. Recently, I’ve been studying marketing to see how selling this type stuff is done. And so, now I know how to sell almost anything – find out what stresses are hitting people’s lines and offer solutions. Stresses are tied into feelings – and they come from a person’s purpose, something seemingly dis-related to marketing.
The reason I’m telling you all this is to keep you up to speed with what I’ve been discovering.
Practically, with proper market research, starting with keywords and then finding what products are selling in that niche – you could conceivably sell sun-tan oil to Eskimo’s if you wanted.
It’s all sitting there in the keywords.
So, go ahead, compile your own list of 12,000 Google Adwords and see what comes up.
May you be just as pleasantly surprised.
Some additional posts of interest:
Inmates know how to unlock the sanitarium gates?
Posted by robertworstell in Marketing Research on October 30, 2009
Escaping the sanitarium profitably with your keywords — don’t ask the inmates for directions.
Sometimes I get fed up with people who use advertising as proof that people are buying or not buying stuff in any particular niche.
I’ve been doing a heckuva lot of research on keywords recently and can tell you this – advertiser are generally clueless about what people are going to buy. And they are caught up in this insane addiction to buying advertising as a way to get leads which will convert to paying customers.
The reason I say this is I’ve pulled in my Ranktracker files from Google adwords KeywordExternalTool and found that there are some fascinating keywords being used that have a lot of advertising competition, but no one is actually visiting these sites. True.
Now, this doesn’t say all advertisers are this way – but when I’ve now run into the fourth or fifth “authority” saying that you look at these sites which tell you what advertising is being bought as an indicator of whether people are buying products in that area – and I say
“BULL”.
If you want to see if people are buying that product, check out eBay with one of the free analysis tools out there. This will tell you if there is a real buying market for it. Now, eBay is a bit different from Google, as people who are looking (Google) aren’t necessarily buyers (Google and eBay). But if you use Terapeak, you can see over the last two weeks (for free) if anyone is looking for a product in your category and what types of products (and prices) they are willing to pay in an auction. (One caveat – auctions are for 1] Collectors, and 2] Bargain Hunters, and 3] Lead Generators. So prices are unreal here – both too high and too low.)
Right now, I don’t know of any other area where you can find out actual sales data. You want to be able to look at the records of buyers buying. Terapeak and HammerTap both license eBay’s database records to generate their data. Another source would be WorldWideBrands – even though their entry is rather high, even for a lifetime subscription. But they can tell you the rough value of an area and whether there are buyers for that product. WWB does have an online trial where you can check out your keywords in a limited degree.
Oh – but you could check out Clickbank, which does (in a round-about way) give what is selling and you can work out roughly whether you could actually make money at that stuff. Also has return rates (as some of those digital products aren’t worth the digital paper they’re printed on…)
But when someone tells you to see if people are advertising as an idea of who’s buying what – just smile and nod and thank them – then go right on by. Because those people are probably going to be there for a very loooong time. And you should be out in the real world earning money by the carloads.
So:
Places to find out if someone is actually buying products for your niche:
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Terapeak
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WorldWideBrands
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Clickbank.
Some additional posts of interest:
Where Hype Rubber Hits the Laggard Road
Posted by robertworstell in Marketing Research on October 30, 2009
I’ve recently been proving all those Madison Avenue psych studies right. By studying Cialdini, Gladwell, and Godin it pretty much says that we are actually being herded along in our tribes quite nicely. Of course my secret weapon in this is to study Maslow and then see that these tribes are far from being destructive, but are actually heading toward a better future quality of life for all members.
Madison Avenue has been helping, in their odd way, to enable people to spend their way to a better material quality of living. To do this, they need to keep earning more money than they have before. And people get sold on getting their kids through college (another tribe grist-mill) and living better lives.
Our use of this, of course, is to learn not to become effect of every marketing frenzy that comes along – and to re-learn our own mental habits so that we can make our own independent decisions. But meanwhile, as we become the lighthouse on the rocky shore for other ships passing through this storm we call life – we have to use these data to help people find our routes to success. Not that they have to follow it exactly – you just want people to be able to find it and utilize it. And if they become independent thinkers as well – hey, we might wind up with a huge tribe of people who care for each other and do the right thing more instinctively. Better for all of us on this small single world we share.
OK, today I wanted to tell you more about this tribe stuff and some fascinating explanations of what we go through.
Gartner’s Hype Cycle, Bridging the Gap, and Fads Vs. Evolution
First off, there’s Gartner’s hype cycle – which of course is full of hype. But it tells us that not everything is a fad. Somethings make their way into society and do quite nicely after they are widely adopted. Beany Babies aren’t one. Fire and the Wheel apparently are.
Someone else approached the same concept of technology adoption and talks about Bridging the Gap for early adopters, using the Bell Curve to show where early adopters, main-streamers, and laggards show up. Unfortunately, this model only says that demand dies out for every new adoption.
A really bright lad made a great point over at Trashmarketing when he superimposed the two graphs. Not all of his arguments follow, but it’s a great start.
He opines that hype is much greater during the early adopters phase and that the chatter drops off as the mainstreaming begins.
Gartner is talking about technology and adoption curves. Use of the bell curve and this gap theory is fine for fads – but says that people won’t continue using an item.
I think that we are somewhere in the middle of these two curves. (And you’ll see that the Long Tail curve also is represented there – if you look closely around “Late Majority and Laggards’)
But you’ll see what I mean when you look at Detroit’s growth and decline. Compare the Edsel and the Mustang and you can see where Ford missed the boat and made it. Social media is going through this same scene, as some platforms are bought up and drop off. Practically, Nasdaq and our current real-estate economy bubble burst (thanks to Bill Clinton, Barney Franks, ACORN and Chris Dodd for our US version = you can’t legislate morality or award unearned success…) show this same hype curve to some degree. At least for now.
And technology stocks as well as real-estate will always be with us – much as Jesus talked about the poor. So there is some combination of these to start making sense out of things. Sure, the hoop skirt never caught on, but the mini-skirt is still around – just not as hyped as before (but just as enticing to males).
How do we use this? Realize that your marketing efforts have to be way out ahead of everyone else. What you are looking for are early adopter evangelists and “sneezers” (per Gladwell’s Tipping Point) in order to help your product get critical mass. And be prepared for that Dip (Godin wrote a book about it – which I haven’t read).
But you are wanting to keep true to your main, core idea and purpose – both of yourself and of your business. You are there, actually, to help move society and this culture forward – to help it evolve. Don’t worry if your company and product get snapped up and incorporated into some behemoth current juggernaut. Turn it over and start your next one – you’ve now got your own financing as that start up just went mainstream. Time for your next start up
The main point is to keep on keeping on. Don’t listen to the Joneses – but figure out what they really need next and offer them a better solution than the one they have. Like the fries at MacDonald’s which formed the basis for a world-wide trend in fast-food. Or that entrepreneur who found out that selling everything for a little less made a lot more profit – Sam Walton created a very recession-proof business which has improved the lives of millions through his ideas like spoke-and-wheel distribution.
So: the sky is no limit, actually. Just get out there and create your tail off. Learn from the best and do better than them. With what we can now know in this Internet Age, anyone can retire from any online business you create several times over after creating their booms, not bubbles.
Some additional posts of interest:
Creative Commons License
This work by Dr. Robert C. Worstell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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