Author Archive

Hi Marshall and Gary here

Life is pretty hectic here at Small Business Internet Marketing.  It is amazing the number of small businesses that we come into help who do not have a website, or have a very poorly optimised website, or are having the most cost inefficient Adwords campaign run that you have ever seen.  These are generally a symptom of not having an internet strategy and doing things piecemeal.

Anyway, today it is about affiliate selling online.  As you are probably aware, affiliate selling would be one of the biggest drivers in the growth of the internet.  The fact that so many products today are available digitally mean that the owners of the products are happy to pay away large commissions to sell their product.  This is because once produced, the cost to provide the product is quite often only the bandwidth to download it.  In fact, most internet courses (you know – make $5,000 a week from home for 4 hours work) recommend that you do not deal with products that pay less than 60% commission.   Many internet marketing based offerings pay at 75% – have a look at http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm and search the internet category.

Continue Reading – Undisclosed affiliate selling – how to spot it

Hi, Marshall and Gary here

One of the reasons we run the Small Business Internet Marketing blog is that there are many people in the internet marketing space that want to make you an offer too good to refuse.  But as the saying goes “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!”.  One example we look at here is whether a high search engine ranking for an article with the rarely searched keyword combination of Marketing for Online Business A Marketing Business Secret will really assist your business.

We believe that our blog offers unbiased and sensible information and advice that can really benefit small business owners, business consultants and anyone wanting to use the internet for commercial purposes.  Have a read though our older posts – you will hopefully learn a few useful internet concepts.

By far the most common “great” offers we see revolve around 2 themes:

1. Get your website built for free;  and
2. Let me drive huge amounts of traffic to your website by achieving high Google search engine rankings.

We have no problem with these offers – when all is as it seems and clearly laid out – but it rarely is.

Offer # 1:  Get a free website built

Continue Reading – The Free offers that cost you

Hi, Marshall and Gary here

Here at Small Business Internet Marketing, we are members or associates of quite a few different professional and accreditation bodies.  So we get to see a lot of communications and offers that flow around.

One that seems to be getting a lot of airtime in many organisations is the pushing of reciprocal links.  Inevitably, the message starts off with something like “Improve your Google ranking” and then goes onto to offer an exchange of reciprocal links.  Whilst we have nothing against reciprocal links as part of a well thought out internet strategy, we have a sneaking suspicion that most people do not quite understand how they work.

One of our earlier posts had a long and detailed explanation about the Google PageRank formula – see How Googles PageRank fits in. If you follow the maths, it is obvious that links from higher PageRank pages will definitely help with your web pages PageRank. 

But a couple of very important things seem to get overlooked in the rush for reciprocal links:

Continue Reading – Beware of the reciprocal link merry-go-round

Hi, Gary and Marshall here,

With the growing popularity of the business and professional social networking site LinkedIn, it was only a matter of time before another powerhouse of the web2.0 world joined forces and integrated their services.

We’re talking about the WordPress application for LinkedIn.  With the WordPress App, you can now sync your latest WordPress blog post and all its content with your LinkedIn profile.  This means you can keep everyone linked to your profile up to date with your latest business ventures.

Once you’ve loaded this WordPress App. you can filter your posts with a special LinkedIn tag and even display your personal WordPress Gravatar (global avatar) with updates sent automatically to your entire LinkedIn network.

Continue Reading – Who’s Joined LinkedIn?

“IT CAN’T BE TRUE?”

Read on and find out!

I’m still shaking my head in disbelief.  As we’ve said many times before here at Small Business Internet Marketing, we constantly use our own sites as crash test dummies for many of the latest online marketing techniques.  We also put ourselves through hours, weeks and sometimes months testing the barrage of new products that hit the market.  More often than not we trash most of them as quickly as we initiate them and put it down to good ole testing for the cause.

However, we’re glad to report to you a web traffic technique that is working an absolute treat.  As usual we’re fairly sceptical of any product or service that can claim they will send you 1 million (yes that’s 1,000,000) FREE visitors to your site in as little as 30 days…. Yeah RIGHT we thought. 

I was almost ready to hit the delete button when I thought…. Ah what the heck…. give it a go….. I’ve got a spare five minutes.  Well…. I’m here to tell you, I’m glad I decided to push on a give this program a go because its kicking butt.

Now before we all get overly excited, we have not yet received our GUARANTEED 1,000,000 visitors and nor have we increased our sales by 4000%.  What I can tell you though is we are not only experiencing significantly increased visitor numbers to one of our sites, but a rather pleasant spin off.

Continue Reading – How to get free traffic

Hi, Marshall and Gary here

All sorts of interesting bits and pieces exercise our minds here at Small Business Internet Marketing. It is said that inspiration comes from the strangest places. Well, talking about online marketing and internet marketing strategies is no different.

As I was driving my son to school this morning, I saw a learner driver in front of me. The company name on the car was something like AABEC Driving Company. I jokingly said to my son “I wonder if it is still the first driver teaching company in the phone book?” He, like all 16 year old boys, looked at me as if I was some kind of demented fool.

So I had explain the strategy of choosing a business name that was one of the first in the telephone directory (white pages) or was the first listing for the business type (yellow pages). You get it – the most “A’s” and “B’s” at the front of your business name, and bingo – you are first on the alphabetic list. It is one of the original “get your name to the top of the search pile” marketing strategies in the old world.

Continue Reading – Start at the top with SEO

Hi Marshall and Gary here

As you will know if you have followed our blog, getting a high ranking in Google exercises our mind regularly at Small Business Internet Marketing and we are always on the look out on how to improve a ranking. We generally use our Small Business Internet Marketing blog as a bit of a crash test dummy to road test various strategies.

One internet marketing strategy that we have been using for the past few months that has really worked for us is Google’s Local Business Centre. What this basically does is provides more like a Yellow Pages type of listing on a Google search query result based on a geographic modifier. In simple words, if someone searches for your business and then adds your location, Google picks this up and returns a result based on information you have supplied via the Local Business Centre facility of Google.

Continue Reading – Do locals get high?

Hi Marshall and Gary here,

Here at Small Business Internet Marketing we are often asked by our small business clients “What is the one thing we can do to get a good ranking in Google?” It is like many people see that their site is lacking the one special ingredient that, when corrected or incorporated, will pump up their ranking. The number of snake oil internet sales pitches floating around seems to encourage this perception. You know “Rank number 1 in Google in 24 hours” type of push.

We feel a bit like the Christmas Grinch when we have to say “There is no magic bullet.”

As we have discussed a number of times on our posts, on-page SEO and off-page SEO is what gets your site ranking in Google. These are not overnight results. On-page optimisation by and large is within the control of a small business (with the right advice and understanding) whereas off-page optimisation is a far longer slog but certainly builds a fortress around your ranking when done properly.

Continue Reading – There is no magic bullet for rankings

Hi Marshall and Gary here,

Here at Small Business Internet Marketing, we often see the claim “we will get your website to rank number one in Google“. This is, in itself, an admirable desire and can get significant visibility for a small business. However, it is an often abused claim from marketers as the mere ranking at number one in Google just means you have caught the eye of the spider for the searched words; it does not mean huge amounts of business will roll in through the internet.

The missing parts of this online marketing equation are:

• How many people are searching for the keyword
• How relevant is the keyword to your business

Obviously the greater the number searching, the better. And the more relevant the keyword to your business, the better. But any claim on keywords and Google rankings without reference to these 2 key metrics is ultimately meaningless from a business perspective.

Continue Reading – Does a Google number 1 ranking always matter

Hi Marshall and Gary here,

Here at Small Business Internet Marketing, we love using free tools and software to help small businesses, their owners and advisors as well. Well here is a great tool that is provided free by Microsoft (yes, Microsoft!). It is not new (been around since 2007) but we find most business owners and advisors are not aware of it.

We know that businesses need to determine what keywords and phrases they should be targeting to get visibility in their online marketing via SEO, but the inevitable question is “Is the searcher using these words or phrases because they are looking to buy or are they just seeking information?” If it is the latter, why bother trying to optimise for this (which is a question worthy of its own post- more to come). Well Microsoft has a free tool that is designed to try to address this issue.

Continue Reading – Are you using commercial keywords?

Hi Marshall and Gary here,

We always try and keep you up to date with all that is happening in the world of small business internet marketing, and today we bring you an announcement from Google about it’s Australian Small Business Stimulus offer.

In short:

Google Australia has announced a business stimulus offer, designed to help Australia’s 1.88m small businesses. Google is offering a free $75 search marketing campaign, to help small business reach new customers and drive sales via internet marketing.

More and more Australians are researching products and services online and conducting comparison shopping. the growth in this type of consumer buying and researching behaviour is reflected in recently released online statistics.

Australian search growth by the numbers

* According to Nielsen NetRatings, Australians spend 16.1 hours per week on the internet, more than any other media.
* Over 11.9 million Australians use Google each month. (Roy Morgan, 10 December 2008)

Retail

* Shopping-related queries were 22% higher in March 2009, compared with March 2008
* Apparel-related queries were 34% higher in March 2009, compared with March 2008
* Queries for Clothing labels and designers were 29% higher in March 2009, compared with March 2008

Continue Reading – Google Stimulates Australian Economy

Hi, Marshall and Gary here

Lots of people on who read Small Business Internet Marketing liked the Goggle Profile information in one of our recent posts. Well here is another nifty tool that Google have recently released. It is called Wonder Wheel and can really speed up finding great keywords for online marketing.

Beware – it is highly addictive and you will find yourself chasing keywords all over the internet.

Continue reading – Google provides the wheel deal

Hi Marshall and Gary here,

We like to post on many and varied online marketing topics here at Small Business Internet Marketing. We are also fairly inquisitive – so when the experts say “ipso facto, this is the truth”, we wonder “is it really so?”

We have posted a lot of late about the Google algorithm and backlinks, or so called off-page SEO. We also recently posted a list of 7 critical on-page SEO factors for small business. There is no doubting the importance of PageRank and backlinks and most SEO experts hammer on and on about it, but sometimes the simple things are often the best.

The Small Business Internet Marketing blog has been running since the start of this year. We have been diligent, if not a bit anal, about on-page SEO. This is due to the fact that quality backlinks and a good PageRank take time and effort. It is not that we are not trying, it is just that it takes lots of time. If its one thing we know its that small business owners do not have a lot of spare time to chase elusive links. It is a bit like the chicken and the egg – good sites do not want to share links with a newbie or low ranking site with no presence, but a good presence requires backlinks. See the problem?

Continue Reading – The Power of on page SEO

Hi, Marshall and Gary here

At Small Business Internet Marketing, we focus a lot of our posts on how small business can raise their online profile. However, for many small businesses the profile of the owner(s) and/or key staff can be equally, if not more, important.

Personal promotion on the internet has been generally done through business networks like LinkedIn, although blogging and social networking are becoming significant but do require a lot of attention and time. We come across lots of new online products, service  and ideas; most we closely analyze and then discard – but some really grab our attention.

One that we find useful for small business is from Google who have recently released a new product that directly addresses how to raise your personal profile for a Google search. It is called Google Profiles and can be found at http://www.google.com/profiles.

Continue Reading – Raise your personal profile

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