Internet Marketing
Marketing With Out The Fluff

Here’s a trick people fall for all the time. It’s so common the really scuzzy people have a name for it – it’s called “False Proof.” It’s when they tell you something that is technically true, but completely irrelevant or immaterial.  Like when a person shows you a check for $75,000 they made from affiliate sales. But they don’t tell you they spent $60,000 in advertising and have to share the rest with several JV partners.  Or when a so-called search expert will say, “I’m number one out of  33 million results.” And you think, really? 33 MILLION? Then you get their software, ebook, or system, and you find out that even though you’re also able to rank number one for a term that gets 33 million results, none of it sent you any sales, or leads – and really, not much traffic either. If you don’t want to get hustled by this little trick, remember that proof has to be MEANINGFUL.  If you’re in a traffic or search tool buying frenzy, paste this notice to your computer. Unless The Keyword They’re So Proud of Ranking For Is Actually a Difficult Task Even for a Professional, They’re Not Teaching You Anything You Can’t Find Out On Your Own. Unless the thousands of links they’re getting are Valuable links, it’s a waste of your time and money to get them.  If the technique they’re showing you is unethical, remember you’re risking your entire business for a possible short term gain – is the possibliity of losing everything you built worth a few extra sales?  If It Sounds Too Good To Be True, It’s Not Always Because You’re New to This. Most of The Time It Probably IS. Look for the Proof. Look for the Respect of Peers OUTSIDE THEIR INDUSTRY Who Don’t Benefit Monetarily From the Product’s Success.    It’s fine to profit from a JV deal with a friend, I’m not saying it isn’t. I’ve done it and when I have, I’ve slept great.  What’s NOT Okay is when the testimonials of friends are the Only testimonials they have. What did their peers think? What did their clients think? What do people who didn’t know them from Adam before they tried it think? If a person selling you an SEO product or search consulting is a layperson, and they figured out how to get results better than the next guy, though not on a professional level, and they say so, that is completely above board. But if they’re claiming to be a guru or expert in any way, and they’re using keyword rankings or number of links generated, or anything else to prove their results, make sure they stand up to scrutiny. Here are some things to test for: The number of results doesn’t always tell you how comparatively difficult the keyword is to rank for.    If the keyword is more than 4 words long, a monkey could probably rank for it under the right conditions.   Even if it is hard for a newbie, and the program will help you get to the next level of expertise, if the terms you would rank for are those that don’t send any traffic, or help you build up to terms that will send traffic, it’s a waste of time   If it’s just one keyword, and not at least hundreds, if not thousands that they have gotten rankings for? They aren’t an expert. You do NOT really know what you’re doing with search until you have been able to maintain hundreds or thousands of rankings for a few years. You can get to number one by cheating in the short term – until they catch you and ban your site.  Luck or cheating doesn’t make you an expert.   Is the top result they have in Google or Yahoo their own site? It’s not that it’s a bad thing to get to number one using Ezine Articles or Hub Pages. It’s that you don’t control the rankings, and you don’t need someone to teach you something fancy to get that ranking.Anyone can get a popular site to rank at the top for an article they’ve contributed – there are free articles for how to do this around the Net. That’s not some coveted secret worth $97. You just use your keywords in the title of the article you’re contributing. The real trick is getting that ranking to mean money for you – just because it’s technically listed higher for you, and a link on that page goes back to your site, doesn’t necessarily mean it will help your search rankings or that the person reading the article or watching the vide will go to your site.  It Can be a good technique. But knowing that doesn’t make you an expert. Now, I won’t sit here and say that every expert trying to get you to buy a search or traffic related product is full of it. There’s a lot of good programs out there that work. But the instant you’re being promised outlandish results with a minimum of effort, it’s right that your BS radar should go off. There are plenty of programs out there that work – to tell them apart, scrutinize your expert, and the results of the tool. You may be surprised at what you find. How to Increase Your Search Engine Visitors Every site needs more search engine visitors. Join Traffic Reality , where we’ll teach you end-to-end Website Promotion Techniques starting with how to get the best out of Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search. Learn how to integrate all your promotion efforts into a plan that keeps working even when you’re not. convert this post to pdf.

As promised in my recent lunatic rant about integrity , here’s how I decide to trust a search expert. (And there ARE some search experts I trust , if you missed it.) The ability to pass this scrutiny is what the experts I trust have in common. I’ve put in several asides, in blue, to help show you how you can apply these tips to your business to Become a trusted expert. So here’s my criteria. Yours may vary, and please share them here or click the retweet button, then @ me on Twitter and we can continue the conversation there. 1- If I Search for them in Google and Yahoo, I can research them, and find mostly happy clients and/or customers. I never expect to find 100% happy clients and customers. Things happen. Expectations are sometimes mis-managed. Projects gets stalled. Sometimes consultants get fired -sometimes we have to fire our clients. However, I do expect to find around 95% of the conversation around a person I would entrust with the growth of my business to be positive. How do you achieve this? You keep the great content coming, and make sure it gets noticed, pushed, and acted on by the right people. 2- The techniques they would use on me are the ones they use on their own sites. So how do you tell if they drink their own Kool Aid? Look at their traffic. See how long they’ve been around. Ask yourself if the techniques they use to drive clients and customers to their sites are at least indirectly responsible for leading you to them. Were you referred by a friend amazed by their search results? Were you Googling something and found an article they wrote as number one? How does their site rank for their keyword? Big thing to look out for – Jack of All Trades is Master of None. If a person who has mostly been teaching you how to make money online suddenly claims to be a traffic expert, be wary. Find out exactly how much of what they know they are using to promote their own sites. And make sure they’re teaching you ALL of what they’re doing. Many people will show you incredible statistics where millions of visitors came to their sites…. then teach you the techniques that brought only 1% of their traffic, failing also to mention that they bought the vast majority of it, or paid someone else to generate it. If you want to get treated for a brain disorder, you go to a neurosurgeon. If you want a doctor for your kids you go to a veterinarian. Only the desperate and the fools go to dentists for heart surgery. This one is easy. Few people do it. Do what you tell others to do. Display the proof that you do on your site. 3- The way they accept payment has a built-in guarantee if I’m not satisfied with their services. I’m not saying I don’t trust people with merchant accounts. I’m saying it encourages me if they also use Clickbank, Google Checkout, 2Checkout, Amazon, or any other system where, if I have a problem with my order, I can bypass them to get a refund if I can demonstrate that I have cause. Every service I’ve ever used to accept payment takes the entire refund process out of my hands – not only has my company never refused a refund, the power to do so is out of my hands. You might look at doing this so, in order that regular customers who know about those services will see that you’re not afraid to make strong guarantees. And sure, you would think that leaves us open to fraud – BUT a person can’t get critical updates, or support if they are no longer a customer. The way my company markets without the pie-in-the-sky promises that attract the kind of loser who would de-fraud someone keeps that kind of thing to a minimum. So if you do this, bundle something with their orders that gets cancelled if they refund. These could be unannounced bonuses, free support, etc. As long as what you’re offering is ethical and directly related to the product, people will be pleased and refunds will go Way down. 4- I Can Test A Bit of Their Knowledge For Free. I am subscribed to a lot of other experts newsletters in neighboring fields. I like to be able to refer any business I can’t take to the best people I can find. One of the main things I use to determine whether someone qualifies as the “best” is whether they’ve shared any knowledge in public. When you post some of your minor secrets to your blog or as an article, it displays a sense of confidence that is irresistible. I know your stuff works, I proved it to myself. How can I NOT buy from you when my own logic tells me it’s the best thing to do? This is why article marketing is so powerful. If you solve a small how-to in an article, and your prospect tries it, when it works, you have the most powerful salesman ever – a person’s own experience. Few people ever want to admit they are wrong about something. Once they see your techniques work with their own eyes it will be impossible to prove to them otherwise. 5- They are thought leaders In addition to this, the people I trust not only give me testable, actionable proof in public, they innovate. They invent things. They come up with techniques. Other people seek them out to share their brain store because it is unique. They see things differently. They are pioneers. Being a thought leader sounds more daunting than it actually is. Start small. Do one webinar a year. Have a free teleconference. Get on the staff of a publication that only share articles by people on staff. Be a guest blogger on a reputable site. Do an Editorial in an offline resource. Contribute to your industry, little by little. It doesn’t have to be a profound, ground-breaking discovery every time. Just keep a diary of things you share with your peers to which they say “Really? I didn’t know that.” Then leverage that knowledge for further exposure. 6- They’re Reachable. Perhaps not easily, but I can get to them if I need to do it. By that I mean that I can reach someone via email, blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. for pre-sales questions or support. I also find social profiles I can use to get in touch with them if… okay, when, email fails me. Maybe even a phone number! Now, notice, this person is not always the expert themselves. I have been one of those people who one day can’t seem to BUY a new customer, and then suddenly have clients coming out of the woodwork. If you are in rapid growth or become popular, it’s very difficult to stay on top of all the email and phone calls you can get. And there’s no way to tell people who have a question, from people who want to hire you, or from people who have every intention of simply wasting your time. I know. If you’re a consultant you’ve grown to hate the phone. But remember, the inquiry line doesn’t have to run to your desk. Get a Skype number for a year and have it forwarded to a college student, intern, family member, virtual assistant or receptionist. People will be shocked and pleased when they find a number, and an actual person answers. We’re going to be putting this into effect later this year. Trust is a much more important element than any other thing you do in business. If people trust you, you can have ugly sales pages, a crappy blog, even mediocre customer service. Of course you Must improve those things if you hope to survive in the long run. But in the short run, if people can trust you, and you prove that you are worth being trusted, they’ll want to do business with you despite your short comings. How to Increase Your Search Engine Visitors Every site needs more search engine visitors. Join Traffic Reality , where we’ll teach you end-to-end Website Promotion Techniques starting with how to get the best out of Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search. Learn how to integrate all your promotion efforts into a plan that keeps working even when you’re not. convert this post to pdf.

Given the statements made in my last post, I figured this might come in handy. Here’s a short list of people and sites whose advice I follow and would go to for help, to outsource a project, or to learn more about search, whether I was stuck or just wanted the latest information. It’s by no means all-inclusive, and not in any particular order. This is just off the top of my head, and for the sake of variety I took a person’s site off the “site” list if I mentioned them by name. People: David Bullock Jill Whalen Danny Sulliva n Wendy Boswel l Andy Beard Jennifer Laycock Marty Weintraub   Ann Smarty Lyndon Antcliff Donna Fontenot Aaro n Wall Lee Odden Chris Winfield   Sites:  SEO Rainmaker Search Engine Blog Daily Crawl SEOMoz Sphinn SEO Roundtable   Search Engine Watch Search Engine Guide ISEDB Search Engine Journal StuntDubl How to Increase Your Search Engine Visitors Every site needs more search engine visitors. Join Traffic Reality , where we’ll teach you end-to-end Website Promotion Techniques starting with how to get the best out of Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search. Learn how to integrate all your promotion efforts into a plan that keeps working even when you’re not. convert this post to pdf.

Today’s Topic for “I Don’t Have Time for BS” Wednesdays: What Makes a Search Expert? What Makes ANYONE an Expert? You may remember a few weeks ago when I said I was planning on writing a guide to how to spot a phony expert. I intended to do it right when I thought of it, but the whole issue struck a nerve with me. I mean, here it is, the dawn of an age where communication is the most open, immediate and interactive as it has ever been in the world. Despite economic barriers that still exist for some, in relation to even having access to the web, via cell phone or not, this is still an age of unprecedented free flow of information. With a cell phone, my grandmother in Africa could find out whether the guy who owns the shoe shop she wants to order from in the UK is worth the extra price. (Yes, my grandma would still buy fashionable shoes in the UK. She is FLY.) And yet, the question is – would she? Or would she trust “the expert”? There’s the rub. Who IS the expert? Yeah, I know, they’re everywhere now. If you sneeze, eleven gurus say “bless you”. I get it. In fact, that’s my point. Everyone I’ve never heard of is a guru now. The fact that I continue to reject that particular title is deemed insane – you’re supposed to be able to make truckloads more money if everyone calls you the Guru. But I don’t want to be called that in an age where it means nothing – whether I deserve it or not is far beyond the point. There was a time when if you were called an expert, it meant something. There was a time when if someone said you were an expert, they meant that they read that one of your peers with a pristine reputation for moral integrity, honesty, a fellow expert with a proven track record, had called you an expert, and that they trusted that person so much that they automatically transferred that title to you. There was a time. I don’t mean in the last 90s. I’m talking mid ‘08/ late ‘07 – eons in Web time, I know, but humor me. As recently as a year ago the word expert had a very defined parameter. one didn’t throw around the word lightly. Let me be clear here. I’m not picking on the person who is just starting their online career and has realized that compared to the business owners in their community whose leads are drying up, that their 250 targeted Twitter followers is a group that has value. If you’re charging your lookie-loo neighbors a couple of hundred bucks to teach them how to use Twitter, more power to you. In fact, anyone who isn’t going around calling themselves an expert with no factual basis is okay with me. The issue I have now is that the way the word “expert” is being used has changed dramatically in reference , but not in conversational usage . Meaning, a person calling themselves an expert no longer distinguishes a person who, say, knows everything there is to know about golf, who has the track record to prove it, from the person who has just played more holes than you have. The new “compared to the lay person, I’m an expert” culture is rampant particularly in social media. Which would be perfectly okay if it were stated – understood even – that the person who is supposedly an expert is only one under those strict circumstances. But it’s not. It’s a social lie of the highest order and it’s screwing up business for everyone including them. I’m not going to sit here and lie, and say that the only reason I’m concerned about the spread of the un-expert is that I want to protect you from harm, dear reader. I admit I’m somewhat of a bleeding heart and that IS part of the peril. But a good part of this is self-interest. I’m sick and tired of cleaning up after the so-called expert. It used to be enough that I could perform traffic miracles. Now I have to un-do utter catastrophes first. I’m too old for that shit. So it seems like a good idea to attack the issue at its source. And that is the ability of the false expert to self-stamp oneself as such and not be run out of their respective vocation at the end of a virtual sword. I’m hoping we don’t need to bring dueling into the age of the Web, but a slap across the face with a still-warm glove seems befitting such an offense. Because the word Expert has been pillaged. It USED to refer to a rare person who was at the top of their game . A person who didn’t just study a topic, but was a thought leader . A person who didn’t just teach about a subject, but did what they were teaching you , who exploited their own techniques for personal gain – because they *gasp* WORKED. An expert used to be who hadn’t just used the technology but had tested it on themselves, who was a pioneer, who helped shape the industry, who knew the insiders. Someone who could prove their knowledge about what it is they know, who could answer questions about it off the top of their heads. In the same way a good mechanic isn’t a good mechanic if they have to consult a text book about a typical oil change, nor should a good expert be dodging a direct, basic question about their area of expertise. We’ll come back to how to actually spot the phonies in a bit though. First, I want you to understand that I was never fully in support of the Gurufication of information that existed back in the days of yore, either. Admittedly, there was a bit of elitism to the “Expertization” of a person lo those many months ago. You had to pay your dues and it was a pain in the ass. If you hadn’t spoken at a conference, there were some that didn’t take you seriously. Others felt the calling card was that you had written a book that could be ordered on Amazon and shipped to your house in a box, even if that meant that at press time your information was so old and outdated as to be ridiculous. Still more felt that until you put together a $1000 package and sold a certain number of them … or drove a certain car … or had a certain type of house… The point is, to some people you weren’t an expert unless you also pretended to have a certain type of expertise, a certain amount of money. THAT nonsense we can get into another day, I’m just saying, the days of the expert, proper, weren’t perfect. But those days were changing. It got so, as in the rest of the IT world information publishing borders on, what you knew and your ability to duplicate results from what you knew, were collectively more important than who you knew or what car you drove. And even without those changes, those days were better than this. “Oh, what’s the harm, Tinu” say some of my friends. “What’s the big deal if that loser says they’re an authority on that topic. THey aren’t even your competitors. You don’t even move in that circle. You wouldn’t get out of bed for twice the money they make from the little scams they’re running.” It does do harm though. It does matter. And those of us who are knowledgeable just sort of sitting back and laughing about it isn’t helping. Some of my peers even think “Well, if those folks are dumb enough to fall for it, imagine how much you can charge them when they come crawling to you.” Which is even scarier, to me. Let me reassert before I continue, once again, that I’m not an angel. There’s no future in frontin’, I’m not perfect by any stretch. But there are limits to what I’ll do to make a buck. And if you’ve been following me for more than a week, you know good and well that I need all the help getting to sleep at night. So I’m sure as hell not going to be kept up by a moral dilemma. To me? It’s not even a dilemma – I can’t sit around here and say nothing when it’s becoming a part of the web culture for people not just to screw up, but to purposely set out to harm people, and get away with it.. I’ve screwed up before. There are screw-ups I’ve been a part of that weren’t entirely my fault that I still try to clean up after, two and three years after they take place. I’ve got a couple of debts I want to pay back even though I’m not legally obligated to lift a single finger to help. But there’s a huge difference between wanting to help survivors of an accident you had a part in causing and purposely plowing full speed into a school bus with your head tilted back to finish your beer. My point is, more often than not, these nut jobs are doing their dirty deeds On Purpose. And the only reason I don’t name names in public is because I believe in the goodness in people and that sometimes good people do desperate things that they consider borderline, in order to get ahead. I used to be one of those people who thought you were supposed to choose between honesty and making money. First I chose the money – I was in my early 20s and much dumber than I am now. Then I met genuine, kind people who had mountains of cash and none of the stress I had in my life. So I chose again. And when I chose honesty, and the willingness to be broke if I couldn’t make money other way helped me find out that I didn’t have to choose. So what am I saying? What is the point of all this long-winded drivel? That I believe we should come together and share guidelines on what to check before you buy something from someone online, especially services. I believe we should blog about the blatant fraud going on in our respective industries and, when necessary, challenge it. Of course, not viciously, and not with assumptions – just because a person only has 100 Facebook friends does not mean that person isn’t a Facebook expert. For all you know those 100 people are all CEOs or Millionaires or only family and friends. At the same time, we’ve got to get beyond this idea that having 5000 friends on Facebook automatically makes you the expert. That’s just insane . Under the right circumstances, you can even get 1,o00,000 people to sign up for something that’s free and doesn’t require a credit card number, provided you can find that many people interested in it. Just get in their path, and offer them something of equal or greater value, for signing up. (There’s your free traffic tip for the day.) But getting back to it – why do I care? The same reason I always have, money. The easier it is for me to make, the faster I can make more of it. Okay seriously, now. I’m gonna put myself out here a little bit and speak from the heart. I founded this site to keep people from getting ripped off. That’s what used to happen when information is out in the open. There was less to pay attention to and higher stakes if you screwed up – if you were going to shop online, the majority of us checked thoroughly, if only to avoid the scrutiny of those who were sure just the act of using a credit card online would get us ripped off. Now maybe there’s so much information, we’re listening to the first person who gets our attention. Perhaps, maybe, we’re getting a little lazy with our research — or maybe the new information is burying the access points to how to do the research, I don’t know. Could be that the new people online just don’t know any better than to trust people who SAY they are experts, because in the offline world, you can’t just SAY you’re a doctor. Maybe the credentials are assumed. Anyway, as the start to my pledge, my next post is going to be about how you can spot a phony in fields you may not be familiar with that I am. I think that’s also part of the problems – I have no idea how to tell the difference between an okay Lincoln town car service and an excellent one, so I always go with whatever is linked from whichever travel site I’m making my reservations on. So for search, social media, and website promotion experts, I’ll tell you what to look for and who, as far as I know, knows what they’re talking about. We’ll start with guidelines for search next, since that’s what the theme of the week is. If you have some guidelines, leave me the link, or send me a tweet. Maybe we can put up a master list some place, or find a way to start some kind of association with an independent evaluation body made up of consumers through Get Satisfaction or something like it. So if you have ideas about that, let me know too. It’s high time that integrity made a comeback around here – don’t you think? How to Increase Your Search Engine Visitors Every site needs more search engine visitors. Join Traffic Reality , where we’ll teach you end-to-end Website Promotion Techniques starting with how to get the best out of Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search. Learn how to integrate all your promotion efforts into a plan that keeps working even when you’re not. convert this post to pdf.