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Internet Marketing

What’s the Most Common Search Engine Marketing Mistake?

By Charlie Cook | March 28, 2005

“How can I help the search engines find my site and avoid common search engine marketing mistakes? – Adam Brock

1. Start by creating a list of keyword phrases and the variations you think people will use in searching for your products and services.

2. Use the Overture keyword suggestion tool to organize these according to the frequency people actually search for them.

3. Use the keywords in this list when you write your web page copy and articles you distribute online.

Learn exactly how to write and code your web site to help the search engines give it a top ranking. – Charlie Cook

Who Does Your Search Engine Positioning?

By Charlie Cook | March 9, 2005

“You must have someone really good doing your search engine positioning. I see your site appearing in the top 10-20 spots for lots of keywords on Google. Who does it for you?” – Kristie T.

It is true my site enjoys top 20 positioning for a lot of keyword phrases related to marketing. Phrases such as free marketing plans, marketing message, marketing blog, web site marketing plans, marketing coach, business marketing tools, etc.

This is a result of a simple system I developed that is you can learn with my internet marketing manual “Creating Web Sites that Sell“ and I’ve applied to my site myself. Of course the first step is having highly relevant content, that’s what the search engines are looking for. The second step is knowing what the search engines are looking for, that’s what you’ll find explained in Creating Web Sites that Sell. – Charlie Cook

Is Imitation a Form of Flattery or a Sign of Success in Business?

By Charlie Cook | March 1, 2005

If imitation is a form of flattery, I should be unbelievably flattered in addition to being successful. Someone built a site that is almost a duplicate of mine, many of the same page headlines, same page layout and images by the same artists. Similar copy. Articles and books that make the same points, etc. plagiarism probably, copyright infringement possibly.

Unfortunately for my clone wannabe imitating others will only get you so far. If you want to be truly successful you need to learn how to leverage your own passions and knowledge. You can’t just copy what someone else does and expect it to work. Imagine pretending you were a doctor, lawyer or an accountant after a few conversations with one or watching one on TV. You’d fall flat on your face.

The same is true in marketing, you can’t just copy the site of someone else who is successful. And imagine what people will think of you when they see the site you copied. You’ll look foolish and lose the trust you’re working so hard to build.

To be successful in marketing your small business you need to know the strategy and tactics that work and how to implement them to grow your business. These are things that can’t be copied but I can teach you. Learn how to attract prospects and convert them to clients with your web site marketing and the help of a marketing expert. – Charlie Cook

Why Isn’t My Web Site Coming Up in the Search Engines?

By Charlie Cook | February 28, 2005

“Can you tell me why my website isn’t coming up in the Google Search engine?” – Michelle Brown

The search engines, including Google, look for certain key elements on your web page when they spider it. If those pieces of information aren’t present or don’t include the proper text they won’t know how to categorize your site or will prioritize it incorrectly. How and where you use your keywords on your page is critcial to the success of your web site marketing.

Just because your site is relevant doesn’t mean Google will find it or put it at the top of the search findings. To help Google you need to use your keywords in specific places and with a certain number of times. Getting your site listed at the top of the seach engine can happen by accident but usually it requires very carefully planning your pages to ensure they help the search engines find them. I’ve detailed what you need to improve your internet marketing and put your site at the top of the search engines in Creating Web Sites that Sell. This comprehensive manual explains how to structure and write your web site to improve your website marketing plan and sell more with your web site. I also work one-on-one to provde select clients with web site marketing advice. – Charlie Cook

How Can I Find Which Keywords People Use?

By Charlie Cook | February 16, 2005

“Where can I reverse look up the words people are using when they are looking for your products?” – Buck Buckingham

I use the Keyword Suggestion tool at Overture to get a rough idea of how many people have searched for a set of keywords in the last month and related keywords. Once you’ve identified the keywords people use in looking for your products or services you may want to use them in your elevator speech.- Charlie Cook

Avoiding Spam

By Charlie Cook | February 9, 2005

“My email box is being overwhelmed with spam. Someone is putting “microfish” or “ab123″ in front of my url to create email addresses like microfish@charlie.com as the return address for spam emails they are sending. Yesterday I received over 9,000 returns to my my email box. What do I do?” – Philip

About six years ago when I had my popular site SearchIQ.com, which I sold to CNet, I had the the same problem. A number of spammers had found my email address on the site and started to use it deluging my inbox with thousands of emails. The simple solution is to set your email to only specific email addresses. When you do this, all others such as dasfy09p7@charlie.com will be rejected by your server and you won’t be bothered by them.

The next step you can take is to remove your email address from your site and use forms instead. That way you’ll make it harder for the spammers spiders to find your email address and use it. – Charlie Cook

My Biggest Search Engine Positioning Mistake

By Charlie Cook | February 8, 2005

It is in the past so I can admit it. I made a huge search engine positioning mistake that was a drag on my site traffic and it took me forever to figure it out. As the author of one of the first books on search engine positioning it was a little embarassing to say the least. Here’s the mistake I made and how to avoid it.

Originally my marketing site could be found at www.charliecook.net. This site benefited from some top search engine placements in Google and other popular search engines thanks to applying the few simple guidelines I detail in Creating Web Sites That Sell . Traffic from Google was growing steadily, that was until I made the following mistake.

About ten months ago I rebuilt my site and moved the content to the current location at www.marketingforsuccess.com Thanks to my strategy of using articles to attract prospects and my huge distribution list of online and offline editors who publish my articles, my website traffic continued to grow, but I noticed I couldn’t find my site in Google. Yikes, what was going on. Preiously I’d been in the top 10-30 spots for every one of my keywords.

During the last six months I’ve worked closely with a search engine postioning firm to try and fix this situation and get listed in Google again. After trying a variety of tactics which worked to boost my listings in every other search engine, we tried removing all the original pages from my www.charliecook.net site. I had left them up under the assumption that since they were originally well placed they’d continue to draw traffic which would be automatically forwarded to my new site. Big mistake!

It turns out that Google didn’t like having similar content pages on both my sites, even though the first had a permanent redirect on it to my current site. About a week ago I removed all the pages from my initial site, resubmitted it and my current site to Google. This week my site is back in the top 10-30 positions in Google for most of my keywords.

Lesson learned. If you create a second site for your content with a new url, after a month or so, delete the original and just have the domain forward to your new domain. Want to learn how to avoid more web marketing mistakes, check out Creating Web Sites That Sell – Charlie Cook

How Can I Get My Blog To Be Noticed?

By Charlie Cook | January 21, 2005

“Hi Charlie! First off your info is great! By taking your suggestions I stumbled upon blogging as a marketing idea. I use blogger.com also. My blog is named Nashville Real Estate. Blogging is an excellent chance to establish yourself as an authority to create public confidence. How can I get my blog to be noticed more? Again thanks for all the great info!” – uminor

Here are a handful of tips for getting your blog noticed.

1. Include links to your blog on every page of your web site.

2. Mention a couple of your most recent blog posts in your ezine and a link.

3. Submit your blog to all the relevant blog directories.

4. Include your blog url on your business card.

5. Write articles in your area of expertise and include your blog link.

(Hey I should start doing that too.) – Charlie Cook

Marketing or Intrusive Snooping?

By Charlie Cook | December 17, 2004

Yahoo is now using something called “Web Beacons” to track Yahoo Group users around the net and see what you’re doing and where you are going similar to cookies. Yahoo is recording every website and every group you visit.

Take a look at their updated privacy statement : http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy About half-way down the page, in the section on cookies, you will see a link that says web beacons. Click on the phrase web beacons. That will bring you to a paragraph entitled” Outside the Yahoo Network.” In this section you’ll see a little “click here to opt out” link that will let you “opt-out” of their new method of snooping. Once you have clicked that link, you are exempted. Notice the” Success” message on the top of the next page. Be careful because on that page there is a “Cancel Opt-out” button that, if clicked, will *undo** the opt-out.

One note: before doing the above, make sure you LOG IN to Yahoo with your Yahoo account name. Otherwise, it may not take effect. – Contributed by Lorraine Carol

Want Qualified Leads for $6 per Lead?

By Charlie Cook | December 15, 2004

“We are strictly performance based and charge $6.00 per qualified lead we deliver. There are no set-up fees or other costs to you.” – (requested name be removed)

Ouch, $6 per lead is a lot . Now figure what it would cost to generate 10,000 or 100,000 leads. I do spend some money on google and ezine advertising which pays for itself in sales. In addition the majority of my leads come from free lead generation strategies I use and have documented in Creating Web Sites that Sell bringing my costs per lead down to pennies not dollars. – Charlie

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