SEO

Online marketing is going to cost you time or money. Never believe anyone who tells you about free online marketing.

I talk to small business owners all the time who ask me if there are some kinds of free online marketing ploys they can use. And I always respond, “It’s going to cost you time or money. What’s your time worth?”

You have to ask yourself if your time is better spent doing the “free” online marketing strategies which require skills and knowledge you don’t have, or sticking to what you do best and paying on online marketing expert like me to do the work for you.

Internet marketing “gurus” are like ants on a sugar cube.There are hundreds of them swarming all over the Internet. And the vast majority of them are full of crap.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are some people out there who really know their stuff. But how do you tell whether you’re going to get a first class, up to date education in Internet Marketing or sold a bunch of old tired “tricks” that haven’t worked for years or are rehashes of off-line marketing ideas?

Here’s my bullshit detector:

Who are their testimonials from?

SEO software comparisons probably aren’t what you expect on this blog but I think it’s appropriate. Anyway, I’ve written an article on my web site comparing the two SEO software packages.

I actually use them both for search engine optimization. However, I use them for different things because each is stellar at some SEO requirements and not so good at others.

They really aren’t that expensive for all they do and I believe they are the premier SEO software packages available to day. Mainly because they are regularly updated and they were the first SEO software packages on the market that really were useful.

The short answer? No. Google Page Rank gets bandied about quite a bit by people who really don’t know anything about SEO but want to pretend they do.

Google Page Rank is really all about trust. Google looks at a number of factors when anointing web sites with Page Rank but none of them have much to do with Search Engine Optimization.

Mostly, Google looks at how long your web site has been around. Their theory is that the longer your web site has been around, the more likely you are a going concern that isn’t going to shut down next week.

I don’t know about you but I get approached all the time by companies (mostly from somewhere in the Southwest) telling me they can get me first page listing on Google by search engine optimizing my website for me. Obviously, these morons haven’t even looked at my website or they’d know I DO search engine optimization.

What should that tell you? There are some pretty shady individuals out there offering to do search engine optimization. even worse, I’ve had people complain to me that SEO doesn’t work because they paid some firm thousands of dollars to SEO their website and nothing happened. Then I check the code and the copy on their website and it’s obvious that nothing was done.

Dick Powell from Sales Force XP forwarded me an article from Chief Marketer Report about “Five Ways To Make SEO Work For You.” While the article was mildly interesting, what really got me going me was the article’s opening comment:

How much attention do you pay to search engine optimization? Many marketers give it short shrift, not understanding that it can be the difference between success and failure.