WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
To avoid the inherent obsolescence that preys upon any attempt
to capture the workings of the Internet, the Internet Income Course has
attempted to deal with lasting concepts. In this second lesson of the
final section of the course, we continue to remind you of some of the
most important lasting principles that have been highlighted and
explained during this course.
LASTING PRINCIPLES OF AN EVER-CHANGING INTERNET
Keywords
No discussion of the lasting principles of Internet Marketing
is complete without coverage of keywords and key phrases. We began this
discussion in the previous lesson and continue it here. While it is
correctly stated that the search engines rely less and less on the
keywords contained in metatags, keywords remain integral to the process
of developing your content nonetheless. Effective content development
always involves the process of choosing the right words and the right
combination of words to best express your thoughts. Notwithstanding that
search engines may now largely ignore your metatag keywords, it still
makes sense to create them and place them in the metatags as well as the
content of your site. Search engines must, of course, search the
content of your site. That is how they work. Integrating key words that
you expect to show up in searches into your site's content, if done
correctly, will always be a viable strategy. Thus, we review in some
detail here the process of creating and using keywords for your Website.
Developing your list of keywords and key phrases is the first
step in the final design of your Website. To develop your list of key
words and key phrases, you need to define your target market. Defining
your target market involves a process of elimination and a process of
inclusion. Decide who will not be interested in your site and decide who
specifically will be interested. Think of the words that your target
market will likely search for on the search engines. Think of the words
that will exclude the disinterested.
The process of generating keywords is both creative and
critical. You have to be creative initially to come up with as many
words as possible. Starting by analyzing your target market, you then
use that starter list to generate many more potential keywords by
reducing your starter list to the root words and finding as many
derivatives and synonyms as you can for these words. Next, by using
index cards for each root word and laying them out in various orders,
you find as many key phrases as you can from these words. You try to
order your words so that each word can be a part of at least two
different phrases, due to its relationship to the words before it and
the words after it. Finally, you critically cull down your list of
keywords and key phrases by checking them against actual search engine
traffic statistics and eliminating the ones that will draw little or no
traffic. You are now ready to type in the title, description, and
keywords metatags, as well as the comment tag, for each section and page
of your site.
In creating your final content, keep it simple. Keep your
pages short and to the point. Don't obsess with it, but be mindful of
keyword-density, cross-linking, and outbound-linking issues and their
effect on search engine ranking. Let your primary guide be to create a
useful and informative page to the persons who will be reading it.
Carefully and economically include your payoff links–no more than one
per page–and keep them on topic with your content as much as possible.
Advertising – Free Ads
Free online advertising can work for affiliate marketers
provided they are properly prepared and the process is approached
correctly. To be prepared, you need to have an effective ad, you need a
target URL to which the ad will point, and you need to be prepared for
the posting process. This includes having a secondary e-mail account and
a tracking system in place. Finally, you need to understand the process
of finding effective locations to place your ads.
Finding locations on which to place free ads is a continuing
process. Nothing worthwhile is entirely easy, but it can be a fun and
rewarding process if you apply a little creativity. Put yourself in the
shoes of people you are trying to reach. Anticipate what they will
search for on the search engines. Search with those same terms and look
for sites in the results that allow you to place free ads. Stay focused
and keep the process moving. Keep notes of anything interesting you find
that would be too time consuming now and come back to it later. Look at
the links on sites for an indication whether they allow free
advertising. Do not confuse free ads with reciprocal links--they are
somewhat different animals. In coming up with search terms to use, be
creative and use your imagination.
Blogs
The emergence of Blogs in the late 1990's as a new form of
Internet publishing was exciting for a number of reasons. Blogs, by
providing a form of expression that easily integrates with other sources
and other perspectives, marked an evolutionary step in the progress of
the Internet. Blogs, when used properly, can be an effective e-commerce
tool. Appropriately placed affiliate links, flowing from the context of
the Blog entries, can be a powerful marketing tool. With Wordpress
becoming one of the most popular content creation tools, Blogs have by
now (late 2013) become almost synonymous with Web pages.
In-Context Link Placement
An individual working from home with limited resources can do
something very powerful. You can create the need for the product and
close the sale all at the same place and the same time. By placing
direct product links to Tripleclick products in a manner that brings
those products to life, you can effectively sell products and build an
income with the SFI affiliate program at the same time.
The trick is to work the discussion of the product into your
content. Google now claims to look for and penalize this type of link
placement, but its effectiveness outweighs that concern in our opinion.
If done professionally, with the primary design goal being to provide
useful information, this strategy should continue to work indefinitely.
Be Efficient
To be profitable, you should take a systematic approach to
Internet Marketing. Being systematic means counting, measuring, and
comparing what goes into your system; how it flows through your system;
and the return that flows out of your system. It means, as much as
anything, paying close attention to what you are doing and what is
happening as a result of your efforts. If you are not getting the
results you desire, identify the part of your system that is failing to
perform to expectation and then fine tune it. Always strive to fine tune
your entire system to achieve greater efficiency. An efficient system
is the key. Brilliance is not required. Luck is not required. Efficiency
is required.
Understand Information Processing
In order to reveal and understand the lasting principles, we
have often turned to science and the underlying technology to provide
the background for an effective approach to Internet Marketing. You can
obtain useful insight by reflecting on how information and information
processing plays a vital role in every aspect of our lives. To be truly
successful in business, you must take time to reflect upon the
information processing skills that you employ in your business. To be
truly successful in an Internet-based business, you must take time to
think about the information retrieval systems that form the foundation
of the Internet. To become a true search engine expert, you must have
some understanding of the information retrieval techniques upon which
the search engines are based. Some familiarity with the science of
information retrieval that drives these developments is well worth a
little time and effort also.
Understanding Databases
The more efficiently we process information, the more
successful we will be. Database applications are much more efficient
than word processing applications for dealing with certain types of
information. Database applications are very useful tools to store,
organize, process and retrieve structured similar information (such as
records of our products or records of our prospects). Using ODBC and
SQL, we can share database information across other networks. Additional
applications such as ColdFusion or PHP allow us to share and work with
database information on the Internet. As we determine our information
processing needs, we can design tables to record the characteristics
that are important for each item in the records that we need to keep.
When necessary to avoid duplication of data, we can create additional
tables that relate back to records in our primary table by using primary
and foreign keys. We use forms to input data and reports to retrieve
and sort the data. For our reports to be accurate, we must input the
data accurately into the database. Our reports can retrieve and sort
data in numerous ways depending upon our needs at the time. Database
applications can make us much more efficient in running our businesses.
Searching Text
Some familiarity with basic concepts of Information Retrieval
Science can help you to perform better searches as well as help you
better optimize your own Website. You should explore and experiment with
the advanced search features of the major search engines, such as
Yahoo! and Google. Identify the keywords you are targeting with your
Website and experiment with different searches using these keywords.
Examine the pages that rank high in the results of your searches. See if
you can calculate keyword density, term weight, and keyword
co-occurrence for the pages that rank high in your searches.
Remember that keyword density is a measure of the
concentration of the use of a word on a page. Term Weight is a measure
of the use of a word in one document to the use of the word in all other
documents in the collection. Term Weight can be used to rank documents
with relation to a particular search. Term Co-occurrence is a measure of
how often words appear together in a particular document with respect
to how often those words usually appear together. It is another way to
test the relevancy of a document to a particular keyword used in a
search. Understanding how searches work behind the scenes is important
to Internet Marketing.
CONCLUSION
In this lesson, the second in the final section on lasting
principles, we have revisited Keywords, Free Advertising, Blogs,
In-Context Link Placement, Efficiency, and Information Science,
including databases and text searching. These are strategies that have
always been, and will always be, important. While the details may
change, the principles should remain the same.
WHAT'S COMING NEXT
In our next lesson we will continue highlighting important lasting principles of Internet Marketing.
by George Little
Copyright 2013, Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for distribution to SFI affiliates.
No part of this work may be republished, redistributed, or sold without
written permission of the author.
For more information on the Internet Income Course and other works
and courses by George Little, see www.profitpropulsion.com.
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