In this article, I want to answer all of those questions and outline the various strategies and steps you can take after you achieve your #1 rankings.

Like it or not, obtaining #1 rankings for a bunch of competitive keywords is not the end of the road for your SEO campaign. If you’re lucky enough to even be in a situation like this, there are still quite a few things you can do to solidify your position for the long term and further increase traffic and conversions.

1. Increase the page’s “linkability” – reinforce your position

As you know, SEO at its core is all about good content and inbound links. If you have both, you’re more likely to rank favorably in the engines. That being said, the competition (ranked 2-10) is out to get you and you can’t afford to sit on your hands.

At the bare minimum, you need to increase the “linkability” of your ranking page. If you’re on top for a popular search keyword, you’re probably getting a lot of targeted traffic. The good news is that high SEO rankings are essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re ranking #1, more people will see your content and potentially link to it, thus reinforcing your position at the top spot.

What you need to do is encourage these natural links that come about from a top listing. A lot of people trust Google’s rankings so they search to find resources to link to (e.g. bloggers). Your job is to improve “linkability” by proving to everyone that Google isn’t making a mistake by ranking you first.

Here are a few ways you accomplish this:

• Improve your site’s design. When it comes to attracting links, looks do matter.
• Expand your content and make it head and shoulders above the rest (i.e. something that can’t be found anywhere else)
• Temporarily remove advertising. I’m sure you’d want to monetize your rankings, but too many ads can be a turn off for links, especially if you overdo it. It might be a good idea to limit the ads for a while until you try to get some more links. This will help you to make even more money later on.

2. Aggressively seek out links

Once you have a top ranking for a competitive keyword, you can leverage your position to gain even more links. For example, a link you add to a relevant Wikipedia page is more likely to stick. You can also contact bloggers and ask them to link, especially if they have the related content on their sites already.

Look for opportunities to gain links whether it be through guest posting, article marketing, or just plain begging. Not only will the added links make it more difficult for others to overtake you in the rankings, but you can also mix up the link anchor text to try and get the same page to rank for other related terms (more on this in point 4).

3. Optimize click through rates and conversions

Are you maximizing the benefit of your #1 ranking? Chances are, you’re not. There’s always room for improvement, especially with click through and conversion rates. Below are some tips for each.

Click through rates
Just because you have a #1 ranking doesn’t mean you’ll get X number of visits per day. While positioning is definitely important, you can still greatly increase the chances of your listing being clicked by tweaking the following items.

• Title tags. This is the bolded link text that you see in the search engine results pages. Try adding a symbol like “*” or “->” to the beginning of the title to attract attention. Alternatively you can play around with the actual title text to see how it affects CTR. For example, you can shorten the title to make it an exact match of the search query or you can make it a little longer by adding catchy phrases like “Read This First!” The title tag is by far the most important on-page SEO factor so make sure your targeted keyword has the most prominence. Also keep in mind that the search engines need at least a few days or weeks to adapt to your changes. You don’t want to change things too much or too frequently or else you risk dropping in the rankings.
• Meta descriptions. This is the blurb that shows up with your search listing. While Google will oftentimes change this up depending on what’s being searched, you can specify your preference by inserting the meta description tag in the head section of your page. Add in a descriptive sentence with your targeted keywords and a call to action to pique users’ attention/curiosity.

Conversion rates
So you have a #1 ranking and the searcher clicked through to your site. Now what? You want them to convert! In other words, you want them to do whatever it is you want them to do on your site, whether it be signing up for your newsletter, clicking on ads, or buying your product/service.

Take advantage of the steady stream of traffic by constantly testing what works and what doesn’t on your site. For example, does having an orange button convert better than a green button? Now’s the time to test, test, test. Besides performing A/B split testing, use a service like Crazy Egg to see where users are clicking most.

4. Expand on ranking opportunities

#1 rankings in Google are nice, but there’s opportunity for even more visibility. What can you do? Well first, you can expand the keyword scope of the ranking page to target even more keywords. For example, if your title is “Blue Widgets” you can expand it to something like “Blue Widgets for Sale in New York”. That should allow you to get even more rankings for various more-specific keywords. Sure you may be diluting the keyword density of the title tag for your main keyword, but if you’ve been adding links as I suggested in points 1 and 2, your ranking should be able to hold. Remember that the majority of searches are long-tail so don’t be stuck narrowly focusing on just 1 keyword.

Additionally, you can add a second indented listing to your search result. If you have 2 rankings on any search engine result page, Google will bump up the second one to show up right under the first. For example, if you have a #1 ranking and a #10 ranking for a keyword using the same domain name, Google will automatically bump up the #10 ranking to #2. So essentially you only need to get to #10 for a #2 ranking. This is definitely worth the effort. Create a related page and go for it. In case you haven’t seen it before, here’s how it looks.

Targeting misspellings of your keyword might also be a good way to get additional exposure. Just make sure there is significant search frequency so you’re not wasting your time.

Finally, if your #1 organic listing is driving a lot of traffic and conversions, the logical next step is to bid on that keyword in paid search. Since you know the value of each visitor (from your analytics), you’ll know exactly how much to bid while remaining profitable. It’s a no brainer. Furthermore, supplementing your #1 organic listing with a paid search ad has the potential to have a 1+1=3 effect, meaning the presence of one can improve the effects of the other.

5. Future-proof your SEO rankings

SEO as an industry is extremely volatile and your rankings could easily change or even be wiped out as a result of algorithmic shifts based on new technology and trends. So what can you do to prevent this? The key is to future proof your SEO by building your campaign around long term signals of quality. Exploiting loopholes or using tricks to rank might work now, but probably won’t stand the test of time. Solidify your position now so that you can continue to reap the rewards later.

In addition to the good content and quality links, below are some of the types of things search engines will look for in the near future to determine the authority of a site.

• Traffic / user engagement. Google has a lot of information on user behavior and it’s only a matter of time before they start using it to influence the search rankings. Work on building a popular site that fulfills user demand and the search traffic will come naturally.
• Branding. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that “brands will clean up the Internet cesspool of misinformation”. Do you want to build a brand or be part of the cesspool?  Don’t just build a generic site that’s replacable in the SERPs. For example, if you’re getting the majority of your traffic from search, that just looks unnatural and could set off some red flags. Build a strong brand and business. That way, if Google doesn’t rank you highly, it looks bad on them.
• Social media. Social media is all the rage these days – and for good reason. Networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have a ton of user data and all of this can be leveraged to figure out popular news stories, blogs, and websites. Be sure to be active in these areas promoting your site if you’re not already.

That pretty much sums it up – the 5 steps you should take after achieving a top ranking in Google. Can you add anything to the list? What have your experiences been in maintaining and improving your #1 rankings?

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



5 Strategies to Maintain and Improve Your #1 Rankings in Google – After You’ve Reached the Top

• A Headline Title Trick to Maximize Social and SEO Traffic – The One Two Punch
• inLinks Review – An Arrow to Google’s Achilles’ Heel?
• 5 Ways to Optimize Your Existing Links for Maximum SEO Benefit
• Stop Building Invisible Links – 3 Ways to Find Them
• Ranksense Review – Point & Click SEO Software

Or is there?

Despite my urge for spelling perfection, it turns out that a significant percentage of web users are sloppy with their language – particularly when using search engines like Google.  There are around 10 million misspelled search queries every single day.

For example, below are the local search volume numbers (USA, January 2010) according to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool for the common misspellings of “jewelry”.

Sure, there’s a huge difference between “jewelry” (3 million searches) and the misspelling “jewlery” (60,000 searches) but 60,000 monthly searches is nothing to scoff at. This is especially true because misspellings generally have much less competition and are thus easier to rank for. After all, most webmasters use spell check and wouldn’t go out of their way to intentionally spell a bunch of words incorrectly.

This is where you can capitalize with your SEO efforts, particularly in competitive industries where it would be nearly impossible for you to realistically compete for the main keywords (spelled correctly).

Since SEO is all about optimizing for keywords that people are actually searching for, misspellings present a pretty big opportunity to gain visibility in search. You could potentially get more traffic and make more money from organic search by targeting a few strategic misspellings. Just don’t tell your 5th grade English teacher about it.

An important thing to note is that in the past few years, Google has changed the way it displays search results for misspellings. They now show “Did you mean:” with a link to the correct search query and its top 2 results.  See the screen shot below.

While this change significantly decreases the benefit of ranking for misspellings, there is still a lot of opportunity.  In my view, a #3 ranking for a popular misspelled keyword is better than no ranking at all.  And if you’re lucky enough to have a top 2 ranking for a competitive keyword, you can gain even more visibility by adding another ranking on the same results page by optimizing for the misspelled version.

Finding High Potential Keyword Misspellings

Now that you know about the advantages of targeting misspellings in your SEO campaigns, how do you identify the keywords with the largest opportunity and traffic/money potential?

Below are the three different types of misspellings.

• Common misspellings. These are words in the English language that are difficult to spell and are frequently butchered. Examples include “jewelry”, “archaeologist”, and “etiquette”. For more, see this list of common misspellings.
• Proper nouns. These include names of people, places, and things with ambiguous spelling. For example, Google previously ran a 3 month experiment to analyze misspellings of “britney spears” in its search engine. The result? There were 593 different variations with 20% of all queries misspelled. The misspellings “brittany” and “brittney” accounted for 16% of searches.
• Typos. These are simply typographical errors that lead to misspellings. For example, check out thisd awesomew sentnce. Obviously, I know how to spell those words, I was just in a rush and my fat fingers refused to cooperate.

So how do you find high potential misspellings for your targeted keywords? Start a list using the 4 methods below.

• Research. If you know your market, you should be able to identify popular misspellings. Scour blogs and forums and do a search in Google for keyword + “misspellings” to see what comes up.
• Internal search logs. What better way to identify keyword misspellings than to get them straight from your current visitors? Check your analytics to see what people are searching for. Of course this works best if you have a high volume site.
• Trial and error. Try and think like a bad speller. What are some variations that might occur? Add these to your list.
• Keyword typo generator. Finally, plug your targeted keywords into a keyword typo generator. This will get you a comprehensive list of all the different variations that might occur as a result of typos.

Once you have a pretty long list of misspellings, the next step is to find out how often they’re being searched for in Google. There’s no point in optimizing for and ranking for a keyword that no one cares about – especially if it’s a misspelling. You’ll just look like a fool.

Plug your keywords into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to analyze the search frequency numbers. Be sure to use Exact Match so that you get data specific to each keyword.

Find any gems? In the next section we’ll go into how you can appropriately integrate your targeted keyword misspellings into your SEO campaign.

6+ Ways to Optimize For Misspellings

1. Use SEO best practices as usual – not recommend
The first and most obvious option is to optimize a page for your targeted misspelling as you normally would for any keyword. This means including it in your URL, title tag, header tag, content, and navigation. However, having misspellings on your site front and center is very unprofessional and could cost you a lot of links and credibility. This hurts you in the long term and isn’t really worth the immediate gains you get from ranking for misspelings. I don’t recommend you do this.

2. Turn the misspelling into a brand name – get the exact match domain
An alternative is to get creative and use a common misspelling of a popular keyword as the brand name for your site. Isn’t that what Flickr.com does? By utilizing this method you get the best of both worlds – optimization for your targeted keyword and a popular misspelling. Plus you don’t sacrifice any credibility in the process (as long as the misspelling isn’t blatant). If you do decide to go this route, be sure to pick up the exact match domain for the misspelling (more on this in the next point).

3. Build microsites using exact match domains for your targeted misspellings
Google and the other search engines tend to give websites with the exact match domain for a keyword a significant boost in the rankings. For example, regardless of links and site authority, Cars.com gets an advantage in Google rankings just because it’s domain name exactly matches the search query. Use this to your advantage for misspellings of your keywords. Buy up the most popular misspellings of your targeted keywords (if available) and build out microsites for each. It’ll be much easier for you to obtain #1 rankings for the misspellings this way and then you can add links back to your main site.

4. Add in a “commonly misspelled as” section
Another way to add misspellings into the body copy of your pages is to add a phrase or section that states “…commonly misspelled as…”. Of course the effects of this method won’t be huge because the misspellings won’t actually be in important elements like the title tag, but it can still be effective when coupled with links to the page using the misspelling as the anchor text (more on this in point 6).

5. Add the misspellings in user-generated content on your site
This one’s my favorite way to get misspellings on a site. If you have a blog or a forum as part of your website, simply add in a few fake comments or forum replies that make use of the misspellings. This won’t take away from the credibility of the site because it’s someone else making the errors, not you. This happens naturally with user-generated content anyway. Extra bonus if you can create a forum thread with a misspelling that shows up in the title of the page.

6. Build links using the misspelling in the anchor text
If you remember, a bunch of bloggers engaged in something called “Google bombing” a while back to get President George Bush’s website to rank #1 in Google for “miserable failure”. All they did was simply link to that page using the “miserable failure” keyword as the link text. Well the same principle can be applied here with misspellings. First, try to get the actual misspelling on the page you’re trying to rank for by using tip #4 or 5. Since Google has put filters in place to prevent Google bombing, having the actual misspelled keywords on your page will help. Once you’ve done that, build links to that page using the misspelling in the anchor text. Blog comment links (without nofollow) and links in blog and forum posts are the easiest and should help you move up in the rankings.

Additionally, you can even create links on your own site using the the misspellings as the anchor text.  Of course you wouldn’t want this version to show publicly, so what you can do is place the link in a noscript tag so that only search engines see it.

Bonus Tips

Here are a few more tips related to optimizing for misspellings…

7. Forget about the meta keywords tag
There was a time when search engines actually used the meta keywords tag to determine the relevancy of a page. No more. This was once a good place to insert keyword misspellings, but it’s pretty much useless now.

8. Bid on misspellings in paid search
Similar to SEO, there is opportunity to drive traffic and make money with keyword misspellings in paid search. Since competition is generally very low for these terms, clicks will be very very cheap. Add some of your misspellings in a PPC campaign and test it out. You might be surprised at some of the keywords that drive traffic and convert well.

9. Buy up typo domain names for type-in traffic
Finally, look into buying up misspelled domain names for their type-in traffic potential. For example, a domainer named Kevin Ham shrewdly bought up the .cm domains (Cameroon country code, misspelling for .com) for popular websites like the New York Times. Needless to say, he’s doing very well for himself. The potential payout for domain name “typosquatting” is huge. Google supplies about 60% of the ads on these types of sites and makes $497 million per year. Wow.

Have you discovered any opportunities with keyword misspellings in SEO or PPC?  If so, how much traffic and revenue are they driving? Share some of your experiences and tips in the comments below.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



6 Ways to Optimize Your SEO for Misspellings – And Why It Pays to be a Bad Speller

• The Incredible Value of an Exact Match Domain Name
• 5 Ways to Optimize Your Existing Links for Maximum SEO Benefit
• How to Find the Perfect Name for Your Website Business
• 5 Strategies to Maintain and Improve Your #1 Rankings in Google – After You’ve Reached the Top
• Shoemoney Tools Review – SEO, PPC & Link Building Tools

There are so many opportunities online to make money and make a difference. If you ever wanted to get started in this space, now’s the time.

I know that I’m a few weeks late, but I want to use this post to reflect on the past year in terms of what I learned about online business building and marketing. I’ll outline my top 5 learnings from 2009 and share my Internet marketing predictions and tips for the new year. Cheers!

1. Time is always against you – focus, hustle, and outsource
As I pile on new projects and campaigns on my plate, I’m learning more and more that time is always against you. There’s only so much you can do in a 24 hour day, so those who manage their time wisely and use it most effectively are going to win.

My biggest tip? Don’t spread yourself thin with too many projects and sites. You may think you’re doing yourself a favor with “diversification”, but in this case, it’s better to put your eggs in one basket. That way you’ll be able to focus all of your attention to growing one or a few sites to reach critical mass. Otherwise, you’ll likely see no results whatsoever.

Furthermore, don’t be afraid to spend money on outsourcing some of your work! Some people insist on doing everything themselves, but remember, time is more valuable than money. You can always make $100 back, but you’ll never be able to the get the past 10 minutes of your life back. Outsource whenever possible so you can focus on the activities that yield the greatest ROI.

2. The early mover advantage is growing
Back in May ‘08 I wrote that the window of opportunity is shrinking for independent publishers online. A lot has happened since then, but my theory still holds true. Webmasters who started their sites back in 2000 have a huge advantage over their more recent competitors. Not only are they given preference by the search engines simply based on age, but they’re more likely to have accumulated high quality links, social mentions, and stronger branding over time.

In some super competitive niches, it’s almost coming to a point where new sites with small or medium-sized budgets have absolutely no chance of competing. Even smaller less competitive niches are getting saturated very quickly.

The solution? Don’t delay any longer. Focus your attention on just a couple branded sites and build them out like there’s no tomorrow. You’ll want to start by focusing on and dominating a smaller sub-niche.

3. Buying established sites is a great shortcut strategy
In the summer of ‘09, I had my first experience buying an established site (a personal finance blog) in the 5-figures range. I’ve always wanted to get involved in this industry, and buying an existing site with good traffic and positive cash flow offered a great opportunity. Not only was I able to get a large head start in the personal finance industry but the cash flow allowed me to invest monthly profits back into the site for further growth. It’s a great strategy especially since growing a new site these days is increasingly difficult (as I mentioned in my previous point #2).

Monitor online site marketplaces like Flippa, Digital Point Forums, and eBay on a regular basis. You may be able to pick up a distressed site for relatively cheap – especially in this economy. People are more willing to part with their sites to gain cash quick.

I have a detailed case study about my experience buying an established site for 5 figures as part of my Winners Circle membership program. Check it out.

4. Ad-based business models aren’t reliable – build out your own products
If there’s anything the recession has taught you, it’s that you shouldn’t rely on advertising to make up the majority of your site’s revenue. I’ve written before that blogging for ads is dead and I think this is a trend that will continue moving forward. If you have a large site that gets a ton of page views, then sure monetizing through advertising can be very lucrative. But for 90% of sites out there, making a significant amount of money through advertising isn’t really feasible. Plus, an ad-based business model forces you to be at the mercy of sponsors. Who wants that?

A much better way to make money online is to create your own products – whether they be e-books, DVDs, subscriptions, or an actual physical item. It’s definitely not easy (I’ve experienced this first hand through my Winners Circle membership program), but the rewards are greater and much more steady even for small sites.

It’s fine to start monetizing through ads, but I think all online publishers should work towards some sort of paid model. With the web being polluted with free low-quality content everyday, readers will increasingly begin looking for better paid sites to cut through the clutter. You’ll want to be in a position of authority with your products ready to go when this happens.

5. You need creative & aggressive marketing strategies to stand out
As I mentioned, the competition online is getting stiffer and web surfers now have more options online than ever before. So why should they go to your site to fulfill their needs? You can say that you have better content, better features, blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to marketing. Yes, I agree that content is important, but what’s equally important, if not more, is getting people to actually see your content and come back again and again.

For that, you can utilize marketing strategies like social media votes, contests, link bait articles, software and tools, etc. In fact, I’m currently holding a huge contest over at Money Crashers with $8,300 in prizes. In just 2 weeks, RSS subscribers have increased from 500 to 3,000. Of course, for promotions like this you need the content to back it up and get people to come back when it’s all over. Even so, big promotions are great for giving your site a boost and actively putting your site in front of your target audience.

The most important thing is to keep hustling and working smart in the new year to see success. Consistency and persistence are always rewarded.

Do any of my tips and experiences resonate with you? What are your goals for online business in 2010? Share them in a comment below.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



Top 5 Crucial Internet Marketing Tips for 2010 – Are You Prepared?

• 3 Important Factors in Selecting Your Internet Marketing Strategy of Choice
• The Money Tree Online Business Formula – Who Says Money Can’t Grow on Trees?
• Micro Sites = Mega Mistake, Why You Should Focus on One Site
• 6 Crucial Factors to Determine Whether Continuity is Right For Your Business
• Don’t Just Make Money Online – Build Business Assets that Last

Khalid and Ayat over at Invesp do an amazing job with conversion optimization and put together a solid list last year – Top 100 Internet Marketers of 2008. I even did a followup post called How to Be a Top 100 Online Marketer in 2009 – 8 Lessons in Personal Branding which many of those included helped me to promote. In fact, my goal was to use the very principles I talked about in that post to get on the list for 2009. Well a year later, I made it… but it does feel bittersweet.

I’m not alone in voicing my issues with the list either. Rae Hoffman wrote a pretty comprehensive post (in her usual scathing hot style) outlining where the list went wrong – including all of the top marketers who were left off. No Chris Pearson? No Michael Streko? That’s like playing NBA Jam back in the nineties when Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal were left off in the game due to licensing reasons. Not as fun.

Anyway, I realize that a list like this is mainly for linkbait purposes (hey, I’m writing about it afterall). But the process could definitely have been streamlined to come up with something of higher quality.

Are you thinking about creating a Top X of 2010 list? Here are some of the biggest considerations and tips that you should have in mind based on the flaws of this latest list.

1. “Top People” lists work great, but…
Let’s be honest. Top lists of people work because they cater to people’s egos. Everyone likes seeing themselves included on a list – so they’ll share it and make sure others take notice. That’s free marketing that you can take advantage of.

On the flip side, the same lists can be double-edged swords. Sure, those included will help you promote but what about those people who were left off? Or what if bloggers and social media users damage your reputation because they don’t agree with you? As an example, John Chow went as far as to say that Invesp is on his **** list. That in itself probably offsets a lot of the benefit obtained through the strategy.

My point? If you plan on creating any sort of list that plays on people’s egos, be careful. Do it right, or don’t do it at all.

2. You can’t please everyone
Like anything in life, you can’t always please everyone. This is especially true for top lists. There are always going to be different opinions, different vantage points, different relationships and different priorities. Just because you think someone should make the list, doesn’t mean the person next to you will too.

So if you’re creating a list of top people, develop a reliable system to base the rankings on. Ideally it would be something that would be hard to argue with (e.g. a list of top marketers based on income, not user opinions).

3. Use numbers and justify reasons for inclusion
You can’t argue with numbers. If possible, base your rankings on actual numbers rather than intangibles like popularity. For example, if you want to create a list of top bloggers in 2010, use metrics like traffic, revenue, social media, etc. Leaving the rankings to biased user opinion is a recipe for disaster. My list of the best Internet marketing blogs works so well because it uses a large set of data to determine the rankings. If someone has a quality blog, all of the numbers should tell the story.

Furthermore, add some reasons why that particular person is placed at the specified rank and why he or she deserves it. Invesp really dropped the ball here because it seemed like all of the rankings after the top 10 were completely arbitrary. To make matters worse, my bio was taken straight from the about page here.

4. Don’t leave it to public voting
I was actually quite surprised when I saw that Invesp opened up their top marketers list with a public call for nominations. Basically, anyone could add anyone else they wanted for consideration to the list. I get why the Invesp team might have wanted to do that to increase exposure and public interaction, but it certainly did not help the process. Many people nominated and voted for themselves and Shoemoney and John Chow decided to endorse a rather unknown marketer just to game the system. That caused quite a negative backlash that I’m sure did not help Invesp’s cause.

What are some of the ideas that you have for top lists? You’ll definitely want to consider all of the points I mentioned. Otherwise, you could end up doing more harm than good. Thoughts?

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



Big Flaws in the “Most Influential Online Marketers of 2009″ List and 4 Ways You Can Avoid the Same Mistakes

• 100 Most Influential Internet Marketers of 2008 – Who’s In?
• How to Be a Top 100 Online Marketer in 2009 – 8 Lessons in Personal Branding
• 3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Numbered Lists in Your Posts
• Get Off the Blogging Bandwagon & Set Yourself Apart
• Exclusive Interview with the Missing 41st Blog Blazer – Finally Revealed

You can see the full text of the FTC’s final guides governing endorsements and testimonials (link to PDF on the right sidebar). It’s an 80 page document, but it may be worth going through if you’re doing any kind of advertising or endorsing online through your blogs, sales pages, marketing campaigns, etc.

The new guidelines state the following:

1. Endorsements must be based on the honest opinions and experiences of the endorsers. Paid actors must be disclosed if they are used.

If you’re a blogger offering paid reviews, you can’t write glowing recommendations (against what you really think) just because you were paid for it. Reviews and endorsements must reflect true opinions and any money being exchanged must be disclosed (described in #4).

2. Endorsements may not contain any representations which would be deceptive, or could not be substantiated, if made directly by the advertiser.

If you’re an affiliate of a certain product, you can’t claim any benefit or result unless it’s something that the advertiser can say directly. For example, you can’t say that a weight loss product helps people lose 20 pounds in a week unless it can be proven by the advertising company.

Believe it or not, a lot of shady affiliate marketers used to write fake reviews of products with outlandish claims, just so that they could make more commissions. This sort of practice is very deceptive and wrong, but there’s no denying that it works in terms of making money. Thankfully, under these new guidelines, this sort of thing is now banned.

3. Endorsements must be representative of what most consumers can reasonably expect to achieve. Any claim made by the endorser must reflect the opinion or experience of a significant proportion of consumers. Disclaimers like “results not typical” are no longer sufficient.

A common marketing tactic is to display testimonials or case studies where amazing results were achieved. Examples include how a certain diet pill helped someone lose 50 pounds in 6 months or how an online training course helped someone else make $1 million. Advertisers frequently used these types of stories to lure people in – without having to clearly specify that similar results are actually very difficult to obtain (other than a tiny “results not typical” disclaimer).

Under the new guidelines, any claim made by endorsers must be indicative of results for the majority of people, not just a select few.

4. All material connections between the advertiser and the endorser (including research or medical organizations) that consumers would not expect must be disclosed, including free products or monetary compensation.

All payment for reviews or endorsements must be disclosed, including monetary compensation and free products/services. This is especially relevant for bloggers and celebrities who write paid reviews/tweets/whatever.

Who Does This Apply to?

If you make money online, chances are pretty high that these new regulations affect you in some shape or form. Bloggers must be transparent and honest, advertisers can only claim “typical results”, and affiliate marketers must stay within the confines of those advertiser claims. And in case you were wondering, these new regulations apply to all areas of the web – including blogs, social media, sales pages, emails, PPC and banner advertisements, etc – but only in the US.

Apparently you need disclaimers on tweets and Facebook status messages too. But paid links (for SEO purposes) and affiliate links by themselves are likely okay.

The penalty? Fines for violating the new rules could be up to $11,000 per instance. However, keep in mind that the FTC guidelines do not have the force of law (although the FTC can still sue for violations) and are mainly for advertisers (not individual bloggers). In fact, back in October, Mary Engle, associate director for advertising practices at the FTC stated that they will not be patrolling the blogosphere or investigating bloggers. Responsibility falls on the advertisers and that’s who the FTC will be targeting with the guidelines.

My Thoughts on the Guidelines

The Good
I’m definitely all for the FTC cleaning up spam and protecting consumers from shady marketing scams online. I’ve seen this sort of stuff first hand, and it really isn’t pretty. It’s easy for people to be tricked by the deceptive ploys online – which could negatively affect their health or finances. If anything, the regulations will instill confidence in the minds of online shoppers and further legitimize the real businesses out there doing it right.

Bloggers especially stand to gain. Being transparent is never a bad thing, and I think the disclosure will make bloggers more trustworthy overall. After all, it’s okay to write paid reviews – but readers deserve to know the motivations of why a certain product or service is being featured (sponsored or not).

The Bad
That being said, marketing online will become much more difficult with these regulations in place. For example, effective marketing tools like hype, case studies, and testimonials will take a major hit. How do you get people excited about something if your claim is something unspectacular like “lose 0.5 pounds in 3 months” or “make $10 working from home on the Internet”?

It’s the extraordinary claims and possibilities (even though they represent uncommon results) that sell people on an idea – and these claims don’t necessarily have to be deceptive or misleading. The new rules essentially take this option away and advertisers will need to find new ways to play on people’s emotions. Product Launch Formula guru Jeff Walker recently had to take down all of his students’ case studies.

The Uncertainties
I understand that the FTC’s intentions are good, but the steps for implementation and enforcement of the new guidelines are vague at best.

For example, what exactly is a “typical result” and how is it defined? How will the FTC police all of the marketing and advertising activity that goes on online? What about the offenders who operate outside of the US? Furthermore, can a review or endorsement truly be “honest” if money changes hands?

The FTC has stated that they will only go after advertisers in cases that are black and white and that they are “not interested in playing gotcha in gray areas”. But really, with such vague guidelines, what’s black and white?

Practical Applications
Alright so now that you’ve spent some time learning about the new FTC guidelines and how it applies to your business as a blogger, affiliate marketer, or advertiser, what are some things you should be doing now?

If you’re a blogger who accepts compensation for posts, create a disclosure policy page. For ideas, John Chow has a humorous one here and Jim Kukral has a more serious one here. You can generate your own at DisclosurePolicy.org. Also, be sure to disclose your affiliations with the product or company at the end of reviews or endorsements – whether you were paid up front, paid affiliate commissions, or even scored free review products. Michael Gray recently listed one out at the end of a review post.

Disclosure: This was not a sponsored post; however, I was comped a subscription to easytweets. A positive review was not required or incentivized in any way.

Again, the FTC will not be going after any individual bloggers, but this is all good practice so that advertisers will be willing to work with you under the new guidelines.

As for the “typical results” claim (#3), be sure to frequently survey your customers so that you have a better understanding of what you can realistically offer. Of course, you never want to stretch the truth, but you can always present the data in a way that is favorable for your marketing (e.g. amount of money made by users who finished an entire Internet marketing training program AND started an online business).

What do you think about the new FTC guidelines? Do they significantly affect the way you run your online business? Leave your thoughts in a comment here below.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



New FTC Guidelines for Bloggers & Internet Marketers – The Good, The Bad, and Everything Else You Need to Know

• Does a Paid Review Mean a Positive Review? My Recent Blogging Dilemma
• The 12 Essential Elements of a Highly Effective Blog Review – Make More Money
• Affiliate Income is Most Stable
• What To Review On Your Blog – 7 Ways to Find the Right Products & Services
• Gasp! Advertising on Twitter with ad.ly & Sponsored Tweets… Is It Okay to Make Money?

It’s every webmaster’s dream to go popular on social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, and Reddit. A front page feature on any of these sites brings a flood of new traffic – thousands of visits in a single day. Of course, that kind of reward attracts a lot of competition and the social sites are thus protected by tough voting algorithms. You not only need good viral content and a large network of friends to help you, but also a lot of luck. Hitting it big on social media does not come easy.

Enter the Reddit Self-Serve Advertising Program. A few weeks back, Reddit announced that it will be opening up its homepage for anyone willing to pay. How does it work? Advertisers bid for the space at the top of the Reddit homepage, where the adverts pretty much look the same as regular Reddit listings, only they’re labeled as “sponsored links” and have a border and blue background. The ads should get a ton of visibility. Here’s an example of what they look like:

The bidding process for the advertising space is actually quite interesting. Advertisers bid a certain amount per day, anywhere between $20 and $9,999.99. All of the money is then placed into a big pool, and advertisers get a proportional amount of exposure based on how much they bid compared to everyone else. For example, if you bid the daily minimum of $20 and there are 9 other advertisers, each bidding $20 as well, then your ad will show up 10% of the time.

Of course it’s be a lot more complicated than that. While this bidding system is great for Reddit’s income, it does add a bit of uncertainty for potential advertisers. How much can you expect to get for your money? There’s a lot of outside factors involved – including how many other advertisers there are and how much they’re bidding.

So how do you know whether or not Reddit advertising is worth your while? You don’t. Like with any other advertising, you just have to try it and see if it sticks. Getting in early while there are less advertisers will likely give you an advantage.

The Reddit self-serve advertising platform is not yet open to the public, but I did manage to get an invitation to the beta. I decided to throw $40 into it for a day and analyze the results. In the rest of this post, I’ll describe the process and outline my findings.

My Results with Reddit Advertising

Setting up a promotion using the Reddit self serve system was very easy. Just fill out a form with title, URL, duration, and bid amount and you’re good to go.

Once you create your ad, the Reddit team will review and approve/reject it. You do need to submit two days in advance of when you want to start.

I decided to promote a recent article I wrote here on Winning the Web called 3 Reasons Why Google Needs to Buy Twitter in Order to Survive.  After $40 and 24 hours, these were the results.

In 24 hours, my listing was shown 26,050 times (to 3,187 unique visitors). The link in my ad was clicked 419 times, resulting in a unique click through rate of 13.15%. Not bad – that’s about $0.09 per click.

Let’s take a look at the quality of that traffic by analyzing Google Analytics data for Reddit in the same time period.

As you can see, there does seem to be a discrepancy between the visits in GA and the clicks in Reddit. It could be that the platforms are using different tracking methods and/or some of the clicks are not necessarily being interpreted as visits in GA. Regardless, you can see that the quality of the traffic from Reddit isn’t particularly great – an average time on site of only 19 seconds, although the bounce rate is low and visitors load 2.11 pages per visit. Furthermore, I did not gain any new RSS feed subscribers nor did anyone download my free Internet marketing e-book.

The lackluster results could be because I promoted a rather controversial Internet / tech article on the homepage of Reddit. Something more general and interesting for Reddit’s demographic would probably fare better.

Other Advertisers on Reddit

Since this new program involves a bidding war between different advertisers, the competition does affect prices. See the breakdown of statistics for all advertisers in recent days.

When there were 28 advertisers on 11/19, CPM was $0.92 and CPC was $0.13.  However when the number of advertisers decreased to 13 on 11/23, CPM went down to $0.43 and CPC to $0.04. It’ll be interesting to see how these numbers change when even more advertisers come on board.

There does seem to be a diverse set of advertisers so far in the beta program. Here are a few running on the Reddit homepage right now – including a promo for a giveaway, a social media article, an affiliate offer landing page for a free phone, reddit t-shirts, website software, and an ad for a DVD movie on Amazon.

Final Thoughts

Advertising on the Reddit homepage is a great way to get social traffic to your site fast without having to play the social voting game. The program is still in beta but it’s definitely worth a shot once it launches (in a few weeks). Since you get more for your money when there are less advertisers, it’s best to get in early (as an advertiser myself, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this). Based on my very small experiment, the traffic doesn’t seem very sticky or targeted, but test what works and scale up your campaigns once you find something that clicks with the audience.

What do you think about the Reddit self-serve advertising platform? A good model worth trying out? Leave your thoughts and experiences in a comment here.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



Reddit Homepage Advertising Beta Test Results – What I Got For $40

• Why You Should Change Your Blog to Show Excerpts on the Home Page
• Gasp! Advertising on Twitter with ad.ly & Sponsored Tweets… Is It Okay to Make Money?
• Why I Use Private Advertising & How I Determine Prices
• Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days
• A Headline Title Trick to Maximize Social and SEO Traffic – The One Two Punch

The bigger your list, the better. As your pool of targeted leads grows, you develop a solid foundation that’s not affected by how much search traffic Google sends you or how many of your blog posts go popular on social media sites. Sure, all of the marketing strategies help, but a big targeted list means you already have a high quality customer base you can market to over and over again at will. In other words, your job as an Internet marketer becomes easier and much more stable.

So why wouldn’t you develop your list? Every type of online business (including blogs, e-commerce sites, membership sites, forums, etc) can benefit from email marketing. Now is the time to get started if you haven’t already. I recommend Aweber as your autoresponder service to manage your email campaigns.

How to Build Your Email List to Massive Size

Okay, now that you understand the huge benefits of building an email list, the next question is, how? Do you just put up a random email form in the sidebar of your website? Or is there more to it than that?

The first step is to come up with a compelling free offer. What can you provide your potential customers that will entice them to give up their email addresses to get it? After all, you can’t expect people to sign up for no reason – especially with email spam running rampant. Free instant downloads of digital products like e-books, audio, video, and software demos tend to work best as long as you’re providing real value. A little bit of hype helps too. Just make sure you’re able to back it up. Here are some ideas for free products you can use.

If you haven’t noticed, my free ebook, The Winning Way – Ultimate Checklist of 500+ Proven Internet Marketing Strategies, is my offer to build my list for this site. So far, it’s worked incredibly well – netting me around 2,000 email subscribers over the past year without doing much promotion off site.

After you’ve figured out what you’re going to give away, the next step is to create a squeeze page that’s optimized to maximize sign ups (we’ll get more into this in the next section). You’ll then drive traffic to the page via banner ads, paid search ads, blog promotions, SEO, etc and tweak the set up as you go along.

The Squeeze Page

So what exactly is a squeeze page? It’s a destination where visitors land, created for the purpose of getting them to opt in and give up their information (name and email address).

Believe it or not, there are a lot of intricacies involved and the best squeeze pages are those that have been split tested countless times to maximize conversions. For example, a slight change in layout, a tweak in the headline, or even a new color can have drastic effects on the sign up rate.

Some great examples of squeeze pages are below. In fact, you may already be familiar with some of them.

Facebook.com
I’m sure you’ve seen this one. In fact, you probably signed up. Facebook has XX million users and this simple yet effective homepage played a part in that.

DoubleYourDating.com
Eben Pagan is well known for the design of this squeeze page – which is the first step in the sales funnel of his $20 million per year dating business.

TheMotleyFool.com
This is a popular investing information site. The form is very simple, and the headline leaves you wanting more.

SqueezeTheme.com
This is a squeeze page created by Unique Blog Designs for their upcoming Wordpress Squeeze Theme. It looks pretty good. Gotta practice what you preach.

All of the above pages look very different, but they share some common characteristics that help them to generate a massive number of sign ups.

7 Components That Every Squeeze Page Should Have

1. Simple layout
First of all, make the layout of your squeeze page simple – no frills. Include a headline, maybe a paragraph of text or a short video, a sign up form, and submit button. That’s it. Make sure everything is above the fold and eliminate all distractions that may prevent users from signing up (e.g. external links, unnecessary images, clutter, etc).

2. Catchy, attention-grabbing headline
The headline is probably the most important component of the squeeze page. If there’s just one thing that a visitor reads, it’s the headline so make it count and entice people to continue on in the process. The best headlines are at the top of the page, big and bold (red usually works well) and are focused around people’s emotions.

3. A play on emotions
Simply put, emotion sells. Find out the hopes and dreams of your target audience and deliver on that. For example, don’t just offer an ebook with a bunch of information. Provide a manual to gain confidence with women. Or a method to finally make money online. Or a guide on how to get accepted by a dream college. You get the idea.

Also, be sure to touch on as many emotions as possible when writing your copy. Fear and urgency work best when trying to get people to take action.

Here are some examples.

Urgency: “Special limited time offer for the next 50 subscribers only.”

Fear: “3 out of 4 people lose money in the stock market. Find out how you can be in the top 25%.”

4. Selling on benefits
When describing your offer, sell on benefits not on features. In other words, explain how you will fulfill subscribers’ needs and desires. As the old marketing quotes goes, people want a hole not just a drill. Visitors don’t need to read through another product description. What they really want to know is, “what’s in it for me?”

This is essentially how you can give your offer a high perceived value. A PDF ebook in itself probably doesn’t have much value. But a guide on how to improve a person’s life in some way definitely does. See the difference? Use it in your marketing.

5. Minimal web form
Never ask for more information than you need. Can you get by with just an email address? If so, it might be worth limiting your form to just that. Get rid of all barriers to conversion. Not many people are going to want to give away all of their personal information for a free download.

6. Loud and clear call to action
Rather than use generic words like “go” or “submit” for your form button, use a clear call to action like “download now” or “get your free ebook now”. These tend to lead to much higher conversion rates.

Also test different colors, button sizes, and placement. You’d be surprised by some of the small changes that have a big effect.

7. Disclaimer and privacy policy
This is one component that a lot of marketers ignore or forget, but nevertheless is very important. Always include a disclaimer and privacy policy on your squeeze page. Not only will they protect you in case of a lawsuit, but they also help you to obtain the trust of your visitors.

Include a line like “We hate spam just as much as you do. We will never share your information with any third parties.” Displaying a security badge (e.g. Verisign) next to the web form also helps to prove legitimacy and thus improve conversion rates.

Final Thoughts

The guidelines listed in this article offer a good starting point for your squeeze pages, but you have to remember that you must constantly test things out. No matter how great you think a conversion rate is, every squeeze page can be further improved with testing, testing, and more testing.

So what do you think? Are you making the most of email marketing and squeeze pages to gain more leads for your online business? Share some of your favorite squeeze pages and testing results in the comments below!

Also, for more information on this topic, be sure to check out Squeeze Pages 101, a free report from Unique Blog Designs. The team over there is releasing a new Wordpress theme called Squeeze Theme next week specifically for squeeze pages and I’ll be reviewing it here when it comes out. Stay tuned.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



7 Components of a Killer Squeeze Page that Gets Thousands of Leads

• Squeeze Theme Review – Squeeze/Sales Pages on Your Blog Made Easy
• The Secret to Successful Marketing for Your Information Products
• Assembling the Internet Marketing Puzzle – Learn What Goes Where
• Make Money Online Ebooks – Are They All Scams?
• 16 Ideas For Free Products That Will Double Your Subscribers & Leads

• spreading brand awareness
• directly interacting with customers
• syndicating links to related content
• running special promotions

In fact, Twitter has its own Twitter 101 Guide for businesses and includes basic how-to, best practices, and even case studies. There are quite a few big brands effectively utilizing Twitter with new ideas to gain traffic.

However, almost all of the marketing being done on Twitter right now is direct through company profiles and viral marketing (retweets). What if businesses wanted to spread awareness by paying prominent and influential Twitter users to advertise for them to their own audience? Is that allowed..?

Twitter currently has no such program and many cringe at the idea of incorporating advertisements into tweets. However, I think it can be a win-win situation for everyone involved and the advertising doesn’t have to be so bad.

Advertisers get a ton of exposure by leveraging the audiences of the top users and seeding viral campaigns. Users get paid handsomely for a bunch of sponsored 140 character messages. And Twitter is finally able to generate some revenue. Sure, you might argue that incorporating advertising may turn people off and hurt Twitter, but which communication channel today isn’t attached with ads? (TV, print, radio, blogs, web mail, etc) People seem to deal with it just fine. Besides, if Twitter doesn’t do it, third party sites will.

Which brings me to my next point…

Make Money with Advertising in Your Tweets

There are already a handful of startup ad networks that specialize in connecting advertisers with Twitter users willing to publish sponsored messages to their followers.

The networks with the most promise so far are ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets. ad.ly has received a considerable amount of funding and has the support of celebrity publishers like Kim Kardashian, Dr. Drew, and Brooke Burke and top advertisers like Microsoft, Sony, NBC, and Universal Pictures. Sponsored Tweets has Kendra Wilkinson, Bethanny Frankel, CarrotTop, and many more.

So how exactly does it work?

Advertisers on the ad.ly platform choose which Twitter users they’d like to pitch their advertisement to and submit bids. Users then have the option to either approve or deny the bid. If accepted, the advertisement message is automatically sent out, usually 4 times over the course of a week. Of course, the messages are marked as ad.ly ads as shown in the example below.

As for tracking metrics for advertisers, there’s a dashboard that displays clicks and estimated impressions for all targeted publishers. Of course, each campaign would need to be tested and tweaked to achieve maximum results.

How much money can you make?
After signing up as a publisher for ad.ly, the system gave me a suggested weekly price (~4 tweets) of $67. My personal  Twitter account @gyutae has around 5,000 followers.

This is based on a quality score that doesn’t necessarily rely solely on the number of followers. For example, a Twitter user with a loyal following of just 500 could make more than someone with 5,000 random bot followers.

The rate that I got from ad.ly is considerably better than what Sponsored Tweets offers me per tweet – $6.05.

Obviously, the more followers you have and the more engaging you are on Twitter, the more money you can potentially make. Another reason to build up that Twitter account!

Money making examples

To give you some examples of what’s possible, John Chow recently made $1,000 for his first tweet (he has 50,000 followers) on ad.ly. Shoemoney made $15,000 in one month for tweets he sent out using ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets.

Very impressive – and these guys are very small compared to the celebrity Twitters out there. I don’t even want to know how much Kim Kardashian gets per tweet (a user with millions of followers gets 5 figures per tweet).

Sign up for ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets as a publisher, and try them out. How much money do your tweets command?

Advertising on Twitter – Does it work?

Personally I have not tried out any of the pay per tweet services as an advertiser, but I think it could bring interesting results. After all, if publishers are making a lot of money it means advertisers are making even more, right?

The main benefit that I see with Twitter advertising is that sponsored messages could lead to organic retweets and sharing. In other words, you could potentially get a lot more for your money by igniting a viral campaign starting with the ad networks. Of course this will require a lot of trial and error, but the strategy is definitely on my to do list for marketing my sites.

Check out some of the experiences other marketers have had using pay per tweet advertising from Sponsored Tweets and ad.ly:

• Is Paying For Tweets Worth It? – Shoemoney
• Sponsored Tweets: Results as an Advertiser – Ian Fernando
• Sponsored Tweets: a case study in Twitter marketing fail – eConsultancy
• Sponsored Tweets Review – Eric Nagel

Results are mixed so far, but like I said, Twitter advertising requires quite a bit of testing before finding something that works.

What do you think about ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets, and the other pay per tweet ad networks? Would you use them as either a publisher or advertiser? Leave your experiences and thoughts in a comment here!

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



Gasp! Advertising on Twitter with ad.ly & Sponsored Tweets… Is It Okay to Make Money?

• How to Harness the Power of Twitter in 4 Easy Steps
• Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days
• 6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration
• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search
• New FTC Guidelines for Bloggers & Internet Marketers – The Good, The Bad, and Everything Else You Need to Know

As you know, Google is the search engine and controls an obscene amount of traffic on the web. In fact, it’s not uncommon for many users to spend at least 25% of their time online on Google properties like Gmail, Google maps, and news. With a cash cow business model (a monopoly in search advertising) and a killer brand (“google” it), Google is living large and seemingly invincible. But is this really the case? Is the Google search engine as stable as it seems?

With the rise of social media, the search game has changed dramatically. Users no longer just want a single source telling them what to look at. Instead, they want recommendations from real people with similar interests and experiences. That’s precisely the reason why social networking is so hot right now and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Social media isn’t just a fad – it’s here to stay and will revolutionize the web in the process.

Twitter, in particular, is interesting. I’ve written before that Twitter is the future of search and I still stand by that claim 100%. In fact, both Google’s and Bing’s recent partnerships with Twitter to incorporate real time status updates into the search results is a clear step towards that direction. More and more people are starting to use Twitter, and the social platform will play a pivotal role in shaping the web and the online community. And no, not even the mighty Google is immune to the coming changes.

Mark Cuban explains it well…

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK are platforms that allow the news sources, like newscorp to post breaking news and gain value from their brand. Google does not. In other words, if I trust a newspaper, tv or any brand, I can follow it on twitter and expect the news to come to me. The concept of “If the news is important, it will find me” works better by the day. If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter feeds I follow.

Having to search for and find news in search engines is so 2008.

The solution for Google? If it wants to remain the dominant online powerhouse that it is today, it needs to adapt to the shifts in the social landscape and buy up Twitter before it’s too late. Sure, Google’s own social innovations like Wave, Social Search, and Search Wiki are nice – but they’re way too late to matter, especially during this critical stage of shifting user behavior.

Back in March 2009, Google CEO Eric Schmidt questioned the usefulness of Twitter and called it the “poor man’s email”. Boy, was he wrong. It’s a mistake that could cost Google $6 billion or even more, especially if they fail to swoop up Twitter any time soon.  Google as well as Facebook have tried to buy up Twitter in the past, without success. Twitter is resistant to a sell off, even at $1 billion, but anything can be bought if the price is right.

Here are the 3 main reasons why Google needs to buy Twitter in order to survive. The price tag will not be cheap, but if there’s any company that can afford it right now it’s Google.

1. Twitter gaining fast – huge amount of data

Twitter is mentioned and promoted everywhere these days – CNN news broadcasts, popular radio stations, celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O’Neal, the majority of blogs big and small, and even the ESPN homepage.

Everyone and their grandmothers are on Twitter and the rapid growth will only accelerate as Google and Bing incorporate status updates into their search results. In fact, we’re only a few years away until Twitter receives mainstream acceptance as a communication channel – just like email addresses, phone numbers, and website URLs. People are already placing their Twitter usernames on their business cards.

So why does this matter? Twitter is essentially collecting the daily life streams of millions of people around the world – breaking news, opinions and reviews, interesting links, connections between people, interests, etc. Once a larger percentage of the population starts using the service, it’s scary what’s possible. With the right technology, Twitter could potentially mine that data to pretty much find out about anything important happening in the public world. It could also figure out which websites are the most popular and trustworthy sources.

Hello…Google..?

2. Google’s ranking algorithm in danger of being outdated

Google’s current search ranking algorithm relies heavily on link analysis to determine what’s important and what’s most relevant to a given search query (e.g. a link from CNN implies that the page is important and worthy of high rankings). While this technology was revolutionary to the search industry in the mid 90’s, it’s in danger of quickly becoming outdated in the current landscape.

First of all, users now want information in real time – especially for things like breaking news. Because Google works by indexing web pages, the search engine is clunky and unable to keep up with real-time queries.

Secondly, user behavior is changing online and links are becoming less and less reliable in terms of determining the authority of a page. Webmasters represent only a tiny fraction of the overall population and some hobby bloggers are leaving their own sites for social media sites like Twitter. So why let the few in power control the rankings with their links? Link manipulation is a common tactic used by search marketers and a relatively new site with regurgitated content could potentially rank #1 for a competitive keyword simply by buying some under-the-radar links. It’s a glaring weakness in Google’s algorithm.

Once Twitter goes mainstream and is used by the masses (not just the tech savvy), imagine all of the data that Google could utilize to perfect its search rankings. Compared to links on actual web pages, links found in Twitter status updates represent a larger sample of people.

What does this mean? If Google were able to incorporate Twitter data into its current link analysis algorithm, search results would be better with less spam – something that’s integral to Google’s core business of search advertising. If that’s not a reason to buy, then I don’t know what is.

3. Play keep away from Bing – competitive advantage

Twitter has enormous potential – there’s no doubt about it. But while Google overlooks Twitter, what if it was bought up by Bing? Microsoft has already acquired Yahoo’s search business and seems a step in front of Google in the social sphere. If Google is smart, it’ll block Bing’s moves at all costs and prevent Twitter from springing up with its own search engine in the future.

Let me say it again in case you missed it – Google needs to buy Twitter.

What do you think about a Google acquisition of Twitter? Bound to happen? How would the deal affect the search industry? Leave a comment.

Also, just to clarify, I’m not necessarily for Google buying Twitter and taking over the Internet. In fact, I think it’d be a nice change of scenery and good for the Internet if Google lost some of its dominance and met some fierce competition from Bing and/or Twitter. Time will tell.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



3 Reasons Why Google Needs to Buy Twitter in Order to Survive

• 6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration
• 6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search – Google Beware
• 5 Crucial SEO Tips For the New Binghoo (Microsoft Bing Overtakes Yahoo Search)
• The Google-Digg Prophecy – 5 Ways a Deal will Change the Internet
• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search

The exact details on implementation aren’t yet clear, but it’s likely that real-time Twitter and/or Facebook updates will be added to the regular search results – particularly for breaking news and queries where articles and blog posts have not yet been written (hence “real time” search).

The services probably won’t go live until at least a couple of weeks, if not months, but you can see an example of what’s to come on the Bing Twitter Search page. Pretty cool stuff.

So is this a game changer for SEO and Internet marketing? I vote yes. I’ve written before that Twitter is the future of search and this real-time search integration is clearly a step towards that direction. The addition of Twitter and Facebook updates in the search results will open up new opportunities to market yourself and your business.

What are the steps you need to take to prepare yourself for this Twitter and Facebook search integration? I’ve already gone over Twitter SEO and how to optimize your site for Twitter search, but this new development further adds to the strategy’s importance. Below is a list of ways you can get the most out Twitter/Facebook once the status updates hit the search engines.

1. Get on Twitter & Facebook and be active, duh
This one’s a no-brainer. If you’re not yet on Facebook and Twitter, what are you waiting for? You’re missing out on boatloads of opportunity. Set up branded accounts on both Twitter and Facebook and make your updates public so that the search engines can access them.

Integration of these tools into Google and Bing will further increase awareness of social media and usage should quickly become mainstream. What does this mean? You’ll be able to market to all kinds of people with different interests and demographics. No more complaining that Twitter’s audience is too tech-savvy blah blah blah. Same goes for Facebook.

2. Use your own branded URL shortener
URL shorteners like tinyurl and bit.ly are commonly used for Twitter and Facebook status updates to save space and track clicks. If you’re linking to your own site, however, this is less than ideal because you’re missing out on a great branding opportunity. How are people supposed to know what’s behind that bit.ly URL? This becomes even more important when status updates are integrated into the search results.

The solution? Use your own URL shortener hosted on your domain. Sure you might lose out on some characters, but in my opinion the branding exposure of having your full domain displayed is worth it. Check out this article for instructions on how to set it up for your blog: How To Easily Create Your Own URL Shortener With WordPress.

In Bing’s initial Twitter search demo, the source domain is shown in parentheses next to the shortened URL. Still, my guess is that having your own domain name in the clickable text of the URL is more effective for showing off your site.

For example, which of the links below do you think is better?

3. Do extensive keyword research for your updates
Much like SEO for your web pages, keyword research will be integral for optimizing your tweets and status updates to get them to rank in the search results. Are you using the best variation of your keyword with the highest search frequency? What other related topics and keywords can you include to maximize the search visibility of your updates? You’ll find the answers to those questions in your keyword research.

Use the Google Keyword Tool to look into top keywords you’d like to rank for. Then use them often in your updates. This research might seem like overkill to write a 140 character message, but the subsequent exposure and visits to your site can make it worthwhile.

4. Write about hot topics and trends
In addition to keyword research, stay on top of the hottest trends related to your niche and write about them on Twitter and Facebook. If you have an authority account (more on this later) and your messages rank for hot topics, you could get a lot of exposure.

Google Trends is a great tool for this purpose. For even more, take a look at my post: The 3 Biggest Sources for Uncovering Hot Topics & Trends Online

5. Avoid duplicate content
Search engines tend to devalue duplicate content in the rankings (i.e. web pages that have the same or similar content to others on the web). That’s why as SEO’s we try to minimize duplicate content as much as possible. So why should status updates on Twitter and Facebook be any different?

In fact, the Twitter integration post on the Bing blog stated that “if a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower.” In other words, the ranking algorithms will favor the original source (by timestamp, or by account authority) when it encounters any duplicate messages.

So how do you avoid duplicate content with your Twitter and Facebook updates?

• When re-tweeting updates, don’t just add “RT” to the beginning and repost. Instead, change it around a bit and add your own flavor. That way, your tweet or update is more likely to rank in the search engines (and avoid any duplicate content filters).
• Don’t tie your Twitter account with your Facebook so that the same updates go to both (i.e. duplicate content). Instead, write unique messages on the two accounts so that they have the potential to rank in Bing.

6. Build up authority for your profiles so you can rank
How Google and Bing will rank the fire hose of information from Twitter and Facebook is still a question mark. However, it’s likely that the following factors will be heavily considered.

• Relevance to queries
• Quantity and quality of followers (i.e. account authority)
• Quantity and quality of re-tweets for a specific update
• Links to Twitter profile

I suspect that re-tweets will be the currency of Twittersphere, much like links are the currency of the web. Google and Bing will look at who’s retweeting who to determine which updates are the most important. Your best chance at ranking? Build up a Twitter profile with lots of followers and retweets. See my post: How to Harness the Power of Twitter in 4 Easy Steps

What’s even more interesting is how Google and Bing will use the data from Twitter and Facebook to influence the organic search listings, if at all. For example, now that Google is easily able to index the entire Twitter stream, what’s stopping them from using the links on Twitter as a quality signal for web pages? More on that in my next post…

What do you think about the Twitter/Facebook integration into the search results? Big opportunity for online publishers and business owners? Leave a comment with your thoughts and any other notable strategies you have in mind!

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