If you have a web site and are looking for traffic, then I am
sure you have done your fair share of research on the internet.
With so much at stake and your web site’s success or failure
hanging in the balance, there is a wealth of information to be
had on the internet to fix whatever problem might be ailing your
web site. But with the cut throat competition and everyone vying
for your ear to give you that “silver bullet” to fix your
internet web site woes, where do you turn and who can you really
trust to help you with such a critical quest? You want web site
success, increased traffic, a top 10 ranking with the search
engines, and you want it now, but how do you find the right
information to help you fix your problems and help you realize
your web site goals?
Differentiating between the gurus and the self appointed
gurus – If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quack’s
like a duck, then it’s probably a duck, err guru.
In many ways, the internet is still a sort of “wild wild west”
of our present day era. Although some things are becoming
regulated and standards are emerging, there are still many
things left to fall through the cracks. Anyone with some extra
cash to throw around in marketing ads can put up shop on the
internet and call himself or herself a guru. Many of these “good
Samaritans” will part you from some of your hard earned cash and
offer you a “silver bullet” to solve your internet marketing
woes. The problem stems from those that are self-proclaimed, and
just starting out, who lead the masses to believe they have the
answers to almost any web site dilemma. With time being a
precious commodity, many people buy into these self-proclaimed
guru’s advice then wonder why their internet marketing woes
still go unsolved. Very few people I have met online take any
real time to research these “gurus” to find out if they are
credible.
The problem I have always had with these types comes from the
“secrets” they speak of selling you. Many tout that they have
made armored carloads of cash and now they want to give
something back to the world in exchange for the successes they
have enjoyed, but the nature of people and business would
dictate otherwise. Most business tends to guard such trade
secrets to ensure their competition always stays three steps
behind them. Why would they give these secrets away? Maybe it’s
just a case of outdated information that no longer works, so
there would be no need to safeguard such secrets. If those
secrets work so well, then why is it they must sell them to us.
Why not keep those secrets to themselves and continue reaping
the rewards of high profits and sales? If they want to give back
to the world, then why not GIVE us the secrets instead of
selling them? There’s just too much that doesn’t add up whenever
I think of this topic. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I just
can’t see why someone would want to give away or sell the
secrets that have made them money unless the secrets no longer
work.
I will admit if someone in a very different field than the guru
is using the information, then there is no competition, and
there is no fear that the information gatherer can use the
information to compete. In that case, there is nothing for the
guru to loose and much more for them to gain through their
sales. Say for instance, a guru imparting wisdom on marketing
techniques. Unless the information seeker is running a marketing
business, there would be no competition, and the guru would be
loosing nothing. But, if the information seeker were running a
marketing company, then the gurus would be opening themselves up
to possible competition.
Another danger to the guru side of things comes when a couple
people get together with large email lists and join forces. I’ve
seen this one done before. They all cross-market each other to
their lists and come off looking like experts in their field.
Each individual builds credibility for the others and they look
like the next big thing. The good ones catch email readers up in
their hype clouding the facts in obscurity and making bundles of
cash in the process. They prey on the naivety of the new web
site designers and marketers, and wind up giving so little in
return. I find that most of these types operate by getting you
on all their friends’ lists, and then they bombard you daily
with marketing email pitching their programs. They entice you by
telling you they are running a newsletter on marketing tips and
tricks, but do the old bait and switch by sending you email with
links to their affiliate programs instead of the marketing tips
and tricks you thought you were signing up for. It’s the grand
daddy of marketing tricks. Promise them what they want and then
try to sell them something to get it while making them think
they were getting it free.
My point is simple. Take some time before you just buy into
someone’s information and check to see if they are truly
reliable. If more people did this online, there would be less
people being ripped off by the hucksters peddling their garbage.
The first stop would be the Better Business Bureau. Check and
see if they have any complaints on file and see how successful
they have been in resolving them. A good and credible company
will always bend over backwards to keep customers happy because
they realize their value. The not so good and credible will play
the numbers game and not care about complaint resolution. They
take the money over the customer satisfaction every time. If
it’s a guru touting search engine placement then do searches in
the local search engines on their keywords to see if they rank
well. Go to customer sites and look at the keyword tags, then do
searches on the keywords and check them out. If they rank
highly, then chances are they are credible gurus; if not, then
you might want to take your business elsewhere. Just because you
see their name frequently around the net, it doesn’t mean they
know what they are talking about.
SEO practices and promises – Can they really deliver what
they promise?
My next favorite is the SEO’s out there that will promise you
top 10 rankings in the major search engines. These guys kill me.
I am sure there are some that can do that, but I question the
methods they use to accomplish it. I’ve been doing SEO work for
years now and have found that such top 10 placements are very
difficult to accomplish especially in highly competitive search
terms. Some will use ad words and PPC campaigns to accomplish
this. That will cost you additional cash, usually above their
service fees, and on an ongoing basis. Many of them leave that
out of their marketing material though. Some will pay other
websites to link to you as a means to accomplish the goal. I
caution you that NONE of this is the way that search engines
intended things, and as such, goes against most search engines
rules. Links have become a commodity to be bought and sold.
How can you promise, to everyone essentially because you run it
in your add and anyone can see it, that you can get them top 10
rankings? Take for instance the term web site design. The
competition for that set of keywords is so staggering that to
get a top 10 ranking for it is next to impossible. Even if you
do get one, the chances of tweaking your page to get it and then
keeping that rank without ongoing maintenance is virtually
impossible. SEO’s don’t put out there, up front, that ranking
takes time, and there is no way to really guarantee a top 10
placement especially with highly competitive search terms, and
especially if you are new to the market. They might give you
that information before they sign a contract with you, but they
tend to leave it out of their marketing materials. You also have
to ask yourself what happens if they have eleven or fifteen
other customers in your market. Who wins in that situation? I
can guarantee you that big SEO companies do have that many
customers in the same market.
My preferences are the ones that put all the information right
out front and tell you the facts. You need to pick someone that
can provide you with real life examples and isn’t afraid to tell
you how they accomplish their objectives. Once you have those
real life examples, go to your favorite search engines and do a
search on the keywords provided. If the sites rank in the top
page or two, the keywords are competitive, and the company has
ranked more poorly in the past, then you have probably found
yourself a competent and reliable SEO company. I like SEO’s like
this because they have nothing to hide, so that shows me they
use ethical and accepted market practices to help their clients
rank better. I especially like the ones that tell you they can
help improve your rankings, but do not guarantee you top 10
placements. In my opinion, these are the realists of the SEO
market. These are the ones that have been around long enough to
know what works and what doesn’t, will do the best to help
improve your ranking, but aren’t going to make promises they
can’t deliver on. These types will always hold a credible place
within my mind. Any SEO company reluctant to tell you how they
are going to gain you the rankings or who won’t provide you real
life examples probably has something to hide. Even worse, they
probably use black hat SEO strategies that could get your web
site banned from search engines. Stay away from them and find
someone who will be honest with you.
Link exchanges and other urban legends – Finding things that
will actually work. My next favorite urban legend is link
exchanges, just as bad as the others I’ve written about in this
article, and just as confusing in the amount of information to
be found about them on the internet. In fact, most the topics in
this article have to do with increasing web site popularity and
traffic, but finding the reliable information to do it. And this
topic is no different from the others. The biggest problem with
this topic is the potential for abuse, and the lack of targeted
traffic you will get out of it. What sense does it make to
increase your web site traffic if the traffic is not targeted,
won’t click on your links, and is therefore generally useless?
Why would I say such a thing? I say it because of an article I
recently read from Exact Seek’s AllBusinessNews newsletter.
I recently opened my email client to find an article entitled
“Traffic Exchanges: Avoiding the Pitfalls and Ensuring
Successful Campaigns”. In this article, the author suggests
setting up 10 accounts and linking the ten accounts together.
His example tells you to link #1 to #2, #2 to #3, #3 to #4, and
so on until you get to ten. Then he suggests spending an hour a
day clicking on your own 10 links for about a month. He figures
that by the end of this time you should have about 500 page
views across 10 exchanges for 5000 page views per day.
Therefore, that’s 5000 page views a day from one webmaster just
clicking links to elevate their own program. What happens when
it’s 100 webmasters, or 500 webmasters or more, doing the same
thing? I’ll tell you, lots of pop-overs or pop-unders doing
absolutely nothing for your web site. None of those clicks are
targeted, and none of them are going to help you to sell your
products or services as affectively as spending your time on
other targeted means of generating web site traffic. Worst of
all, they are all clicks from webmasters who aren’t looking to
buy anything, but instead trying to elevate their own traffic
exchange program at the expense of all the other program
members.
Yes, I admit this scheme will get you some traffic over time,
but again, if this traffic is not targeted and looking to
purchase your offers, then what good is it to you? The only
thing it will get you is some higher rankings in Alexa or some
of the other traffic reporting sites, a hosting company that
could start charging you more for your hosting, and a whole lot
of useless traffic that isn’t going to buy a thing you are
promoting on your site. Your time would be better spent
developing your web site content or working with a reputable SEO
company to increase your site ranking, or finding other web
sites and webmasters with comparable non-competing content to
link to your site. On the other hand, maybe you could spend the
time writing some articles for submission just as I do and get
some valuable one-way links to your site. Almost anything else
is going to be better than using such link exchanges, especially
if it is time in reading reliable articles to educate yourself
to get the most out of your web site design or promotion time.
Other things that go bump on the internet – How to avoid
nightmares after parting with your hard earned cash.
It’s amazing the amount of information to be found on web site
design, marketing, and affiliate programs. It’s all rather scary
when you look at it. Everyone wants your attention so they can
pitch their “silver bullet” to cure your web site woes. There
are so many people and companies out there making so many
promises that it’s really quite difficult to separate the fact
from the chaff and hype. They all want you to think that their
solution is the end all to your problems, and although any one
of them in particular might actually have that solution, it
becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between the
honest businesses and the quacks. If it sounds too good to be
true, then remember, it probably is too good to be true. About
the only thing guaranteed to solve your problems is either
self-education that allows you to understand and fix your own
problems or never ending deep pockets full of cash to pay the
“experts” to fix the problems for you. The problem becomes
finding the reputable “experts” that can truly help you, or do
the work for you, to fix the problems that ail you.
Take the time to do the research. Don’t be fooled by the hype,
learn to look PAST it. Don’t get caught up in the emotion, which
is what the web site designers and marketers WANT you to do. If
they can get you caught up in emotion, they can convince you to
throw caution to the wind and buy their products or services
without much thought. Take the time to do the research on them.
It could mean the difference between finding the solutions you
seek and loosing money to a quack.
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