South West eCommerce Newsletter
Hi %%First Name%% and welcome to this edition of the South West eCommerce newsletter.
In this issue...
- Our Secret Search Engine Weapon
- Yahoo & Microsoft Search Merger
- Facebook: Who Can Work It Properly?
Our Secret Search Engine Weapon
A large part of our business strategy is getting sites ranking to the top of the search engines. We do this as a service for others, but also for our own affiliate websites.
Ranking up the top of the search results isn't easy, but is certainly possible, and we want to share with you one of the biggest "secrets" to getting to the top of the search results.
There are lots of important things to consider when trying to get to that number 1 position, but one of the most important of all, we would summarise as this:
You need to pick your battles.
What we mean is that you need to pick keywords to target that you actually have a chance of ranking number 1 for. Sure, you can rank number 1 for "shoes" in Google, if you have 5 years to wait and $500,000 to spend. You actually will eventually get there. But who has those kinds of resources, or wants to go through all that effort?
The truth is that there are thousands of alternative keywords out there that you can rank number 1 for within months, and they will still provide you with decent traffic. Basically what you are looking for are keywords that have a high enough level of traffic to be worthwhile, but also have a low amount of websites competing for them. This is the key. Too many people target keywords that have millions of websites competing for them. And you simply aren't going to rank high for them, without considerable time and expense. On the other hand, there are also lots of people who quite proudly say that they rank high for certain keywords, but in fact these keywords generate little or no traffic.
So you need to pick your battles. That is, pick the keywords that you can easily rank for, yet will still provide the traffic you need. But how do you find these keywords? There are actually dozens of factors to consider, most importantly search volume and the number of competing websites, but also the makeup of the top 10 competiting websites is important, including how old the domains are, how many backlinks they have, what kind of backlinks they have, how well they are optimised, and much more.
Unfortunately, researching and finding this information by hand takes hours per keyword. But we have discovered a tool developed by an Australian company, that finds all this information for you with the click on a button.
It's called Market Samurai, and the way it works is that you enter your main keyword (eg. "shoes") and which countries you want to target, and it goes away and researches all of the data it can get from Google, Yahoo, and other sources. It then comes back with a full list of keywords, showing you which ones you would be able to rank high for with little effort, and what traffic they would bring you, if you were ranked number 1. Further than that, it will then drill down and analyse the current top 10 sites for those keywords, and show you all their data, such as how many backlinks they have (and from where), where they've placed their keywords, and much more. This effectively shows you what you need to do to beat them.
We have been using Market Samurai now for around 4 months and can say that we no longer build a website or purchase a domain until we have run the data through this software first. And with the results it provides, we are now able to ensure that our sites obtain first page rankings within a couple of months, and then work their way towards number 1 soon after that. It's certainly not "set and forget", there is still a fair bit of work to do (eg. building links, altering code, and so on), but because we have picked the right battle to fight, ranking number 1 is now achievable.
Market Samurai provide a free trial of their software, which will let you try it out at no risk. We would also recommend that you watch the videos on their website, to get a better understanding of how it works, and how it can help you, as well as some basic background to search engine ranking.
Get your free trial of Market Samurai today.
Yahoo & Microsoft Search Merger
In recent news, Microsoft and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance in the United States and European Union.
This means that Yahoo! and Microsoft will be combining their search results and advertising platforms, in order to provider a better service for advertisers. It will also provide better competition against Google, which still controls most of the search market. This new alliance is set to be implemented in the USA by the end of 2010, with additional countries following on a staggered schedule beginning in 2011.
Exactly how this will affect search engine advertising and optimisation we're not sure yet, but will keep you informed as we learn more.
Facebook: Who Can Work It Properly?
Facebook - a dilemma for your humble correspondents.
Regular readers of our blog will know that we’re building up a bunch of income streams and learning as we go. You’ll also know that we want to get cleverer all the time so when things come our way, we try to consider them.
The other day an offer came through to get onto another course and learn how to use Facebook for marketing purposes. It was full of marketing hype, you know the stuff, "I’m making a million, you can do it too". The offer didn’t seem to be bad either. The cost was significant, but not really big, and it promised to hook us into the way to monetise our exposure to Facebook. We've taken the plunge with a couple of things over the years and they're the basis of our modest but growing success.
Here’s the dilemma for us. We have to do the things we know at present, because we are on a deadline to be making enough money to pay our bills by the time some other cash from selling part of the business runs out. The things we know will make us cash but they are demanding our attention. A very successful blogger wrote about it a little while ago and said the secret to making a dollar was to work hard, and work hard every day.
Facebook on the other hand presents a dilemma for us. It is massive and we have learned that any use of the internet that generates significant traffic can be used to generate cash. So we’re faced with a choice between a tried and proven path to success, or a possible path to faster success and that day off we’ve been craving.
Anyone who’s been following the blog will know that while we desperately want to get on the Facebook thing, we’re going to take the percentage shot. Our processes through Niche Blueprint are working and the month will show some growth. If we work that lot steadily and diligently, we’ll get to the end we need and have some time to check out exciting opportunities.
The offer seemed good, but in this world we’ve come to know that some offers aren’t everything they’re cracked up to be. We really wanted to offer this to you and see who could make it work, but we only promote things that we’ve tried and we know they’re good value.
This brings us to a point where we’re going to ask for feedback from you guys (gender free term by the way). Facebook is massive, its revenue generating capacities are untapped and we know that the biggest, easiest money in such things happens when someone grasps to how to work it, and works it hard until everyone else catches on. We don’t have time to figure what makes great facebook ads, or offers. One of you knows it, or is convinced you’ve got an insight that’s going to work. We want to ask you how it’s going and will you share it with your fellow travellers on this road.
Not sure what the first one wins, but we look forward to your feedback.... how do you make Facebook work for you?
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Until next time!
South West eCommerce
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