SEM Gets Your Shiny Objects to the Top of the Page

What do you think about the segue from Search Engine Optimization to Search Engine Marketing at the end of the last section? Pretty smooth for an Internet Marketer I’d say. Anyway, I’ve now destroyed the whole point so let’s just jump back in.

As a mouse trap seller to-be, you’ve discovered that it is a very good thing to be at the top of search engine result pages. But you also learned that, I hope, that it can be pretty darn complicated and time consuming to get to the top of the list. Taking steps to get to the top of the list through SEO methods should be part of your plan, but what if you want to sell mouse traps today, not in months?

That is where Search Engine Marketing (SEM) comes in. Remember the listing at the very top of the search engine result page? Also, think about the ones on the right hand side of the page. Forgot? Take a look at our Google search for mouse traps again.

The websites that were listed in those spots did something very special and very super secret to get those prime spots. “What did they do that was so special and super secret?” you might be asking. Well, I can’t tell you about the super secret part, but the special thing they did was to PAY for the spot.

That’s right, they paid to get those great spots. Isn’t that cheating you may ask? (You’ve got a lot of questions today…). Nope, it’s just how it’s done. Think about the commercials for Fruit Loops Cereal that show during the breaks of a children’s television show. What about the product placement ads during your favorite movies? Didn’t you notice the bag of Reese’s Pieces on ET? Paid search results or sponsored links, also called Pay Per Click ads, are no different.

So how does a mouse trap seller get in on this wonderful super secret special way of getting top placement on search engines? The most prominent program today is Google’s AdWords ™. AdWords allows you to display sponsored links on Google search results as well as on content sites that display Google sponsored links. As a matter of fact take a look at the top of this webpage. You’ll notice, and hopefully click, two sponsored links just above the post title. Most search engines have similar programs such as Yahoo!® Search Marketing and Microsoft® AdCenter.

Speaking of clicking on ads, the great thing about Pay Per Click is that you only, well, pay per click. That’s right, you only pay for the ad if someone reads it and clicks its, thereby visiting your website. How’s that for a great value? Think of it as running an ad for your mouse traps in an International magazine with billions of subscribers. Think how much that 1 by 1 inch ad would cost. Lots and Lots… But now assume you got the same exposure, but only had to pay based on how many people actually saw, read and took the time to visit your business website. Much better deal right? That’s Search Engine Pay Per Click. Even better, something the clicks only cost pennies each.

The premise is pretty simple to use these services although they can be quite overwhelming for new mouse trap sellers. Basically you select keywords and phrases for which you think your potential customers will search. As an online mouse trap seller you’d likely select keywords like as ‘mouse trap, ‘rat trap’ and ‘kill mice.’ You’ll then create short ads that will be displayed when someone searches on a keyword you’ve selected. Lastly, you’ll ‘bid’ on placement for the ads. The bid determines how much you pay for each time your ad is clicked and how high up it appears on the list. Bid low, pay less, but show less and lower. Bid high, pay more, but show more and higher up on the page or in the list of results.

As a new mouse seller you might consider using an expert to manage your Pay Per Click campaign. There are a number of companies that will do this for varying fees. Shameless Plug Alert! Riverbank Consulting offers Pay Per Click Services for Small and Home Businesses through its Webs 4 Small Business services. I warned you a plug was coming….

So that’s an overview of Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click advertising. There is much more that you can learn about Pay Per Click. To get you started here are a couple of blog posts where you can read for even more information: Internet Marketer Handbook and Small Business Internet Marketing. You may also want to check out Google and Yahoo! for more information about their specific services.

If you’re keeping track we’re almost done with our lesson. Next up we’re going to take a final look at marketing an online business… Okay, here’s one more mouse trap video to hold you over until the next section.

To be continued...

Review of Webs 4 Small Business Blog

Webs 4 Small Business Blog was recently reviewed by the folks at Pro Blog Reviews.

Here's an excerpt from the review:

"Still I dug deeper into the archives to discover some really well written posts on how to use blogging as a way of helping the small business owner"

You can checkout the full review at Pro Blog Reviews.

While you're there make your you check out some of the other reviews and discover some of the great blogs you may have missed.

SEO - A Shiny Object Mice Killers Can Not Resist

We’ve got cheese, in the form of great content, like a video of an exploding whale, and we’ve got our first shiny object to attract the mouse killers, viral or social marketing. If you haven't clicked the exploding whale video you've just got to do it now. Go ahead, I already apologized to PETA for both of us.

As a quick regression, when we were talking about viral/social marketing I forgot to mention my favorite place to sneeze when I’m trying to spread my viral message. Check out the blogcatalog blogger community. I’ve found it to be a great way to spread the word and meet some great people in the process. Make sure you stop by my profile and add me as a friend if you decide to add your blog. I’d love to hear from you and the ‘shout’ or comment would give you another chance to spread a little of your viral joy. Hint.

Okay back to this section… The next shiny object we are going to look at is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In a nutshell the whole reason for Googles, or Yahoos! or MSNs continued existence is that when someone needs to find information about, say, mouse killing, they can find it in one of those places. They type is a search query in the little box like ‘videos of mouse traps’ and the search engines scour their databases to find websites that will most likely have a video of a mouse trap.

The search engine then shows you a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that is basically a list of the top 12 or so website links that it thinks will satisfy your request. If you’re following along at home take a look at the Google SERP for our mouse trap video search.

We may each see slightly different results, but in general you’re going to see some webpage titles, like Cool Videos – Mouse Trap or How to set a mouse trap or Crash the Bowl. You’re also going to see a description under each of those titles. I found ‘A man uses Doritos to lure a mouse to a trap…’ and ‘Mouse Trap That’s a way to get the cheese without being caught by the trap… Funny Videos.

Notice something about the bolded words. Yep, they match what our mouse killer typed into the search box. So the lesson here is that if you want to attract mouse killers, your content should be relevant to what mouse killers would search for. The title of your website and the description obviously have a lot to do with how highly your page ’ranks’ in the search results.

The other thing you’d find if you dug into the pages listed on the SERP is that the content within the page is relevant to our search. For instance the search words or ‘keywords’ are likely included a number of times within the webpage. Likely the videos are ‘tagged’ with terms like; mouse trap, mouse and video and any images may have descriptions that include mouse trap.

The search engine would also look at things like, how many times were these links clicked when other people searched for mouse trap videos. It would look at how many other websites decided to become neighbors with the web pages it thought were relevant. The thought is that if lots of ‘other’ websites think a website if ‘relevant’ than maybe it is.

Obviously, Search Engine Optimization is a great deal more complicated than what I’ve described here. I’d recommend finding some sources dedicated to SEO to get more details. Take a look at this SEO information right from the horse’s (Google’s) mouth. You may also consider finding a company to help you polish up your shiny object by providing SEO services. There are great companies and really, really bad ones. Google also has some great tips on what to look out for. I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug my company’s SEO services so check out the article What Should You Look for When Selecting an SEO Partner and the Riverbank Consulting Approach to Search Engine Optimization.

In a nutshell, though, Search Engine Optimization is about trying to make your mousetrap show up in that to 13 links. To do this you have to make sure your website is relevant, in the eyes of the search engines and real people. That means having page content that matches the search, being in the right neighborhoods and have tiles and descriptions that make mouse killers want to visit your website.

Last thing on SEO: you may have noticed that the top 2 or 3 listing in the search results and all the ones in the right column said ‘sponsored links.’ That means someone paid to have those links show up in the results. That makes a great segue into our next shiny object, Search Engine Marketing.

To be continued.

Oh, yeah, you can get help with your website by visiting Webs 4 Small Business or calling 877-468-6402.

But wait there's more... You can email us at contactus@webs4smb.com.

And, if you act now... we'll throw in a set of Ginsu knives... Sorry, not really...

Viral Marketing and Attracting Mouse Killers

We hunted for mouse killers and we found where they hang out. Search Engines, Blogs and content websites about mouse killing seem to be favorites. We also see that we need content and other shiny objects to attract them into our website. Let’s look at viral/social marketing as the first or our shiny objects.

Unlike the name, viral marketing is not about making your potential customers sick. Rather, it’s about making word of your great mouse trap, or other products, spread like a virus. Basically, you’ve got to create the high-tech version of word-of-mouth marketing. You job is to set the message into motion and then let the viral aspect do the work, with a little nudging from you.
Ever notice how easily and effectively a cold passes from person to person? It’s really not as easy as it looks. A number of things have to be just right and interestingly, although maybe not for readers with a weak stomach, those right things have a lot in common with making viral marketing easy and effective.

First the cold virus needs a living host to survive. In the internet world a living host is an active blog site, forum or content website. Just like a cold virus, if it is passed on to a doorknob, for instance, it will soon die unless someone, a living host, touches the door handle and picks it up. The lesson here is that for viral marketing to survive the ‘virus’ has to be spread to vibrant, active, highly trafficked sites. You’ll need to look for sites that have high readership, relative to other sites in your niche, and have fresh content.

The other thing a virus or viral marketing message needs it needs is a way to spread. For the cold a robust sneeze works great, or being left on the front door knob of a busy office. For viral marketing to work you have to essentially create a sneeze and make sure you hit lots of front door knobs.

The sneeze in viral marketing case is spreading your message, and website link, over a wide range of places. You’ve found the places where the mouse killers hang out so you know where to sneeze. Content related blogs are great places to drop your message and link. Find (and actually read) several good blog posts about mouse killing (our whatever you’re selling) and then add meaningful comments making sure that you include a link to a relevant page on your website.

These comments will serve multiple purposes. First they deliver links to your website. This make you become a next door neighbor of an already established store. Remember the next door grocery store? Next, they build your credibility as an expert in your field. This goes back to the (and actually read) comment. Your posts need to be on target with the site you’re at and add value to the discussion. Otherwise they’re just so much spam to be ignored and likely deleted. Lastly, and most importantly, they attract mouse killers to, wait for it… YOUR MOUSE TRAP WEBSITE. (You got the ‘How I Met Your Mother’ reference, right? Can’t help it, I enjoy the show.)

The last thing a cold needs to flourish is for it to spread. Your marketing message, reputation and links now need to be spread by others. By creating a credible reputation, by attracting mouse killers to your website and then by delivering high quality services and products you have created potential carriers of you viral message. You can even do things to encourage them to spread the word like hosting a dead mouse photo contents, giving away free somethings, offering to exchange links or whatever interests your target audience.

I think I’m beginning to feel feverous so enough of the cold virus analogies. We’ve learned that for viral marketing to work we have to find active, complementary websites, blogs and forum and sneeze on them (okay, last cold reference). Once we’ve started the viral message on its way we then help it along by prudently dropping our message in other places and encouraging others to do so also.

Next up we’ll look at another shiny object, search engine optimization, where we’ll learn a little more about attracting those mouse killers who hang out at Google and Yahoo!.

This is the point in our series where we're obligated to throw in our shameless plug. If you need help getting your small business website off the ground or in growing your existing business, Webs 4 Small Business can help.

We provide small and home office businesses with affordable, budget friendly internet services including internet marketing planning, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising managment. We also provide Raleigh, NC and Triangle business with on-site consulting services through Riverbank Consulting.

Visit us on the web at Webs 4 Small Business or contact us at 1-877-468-6402 to get started today.

To be continued...

Selling Products Online - Shiny New Mouse Killer Hunter Weapons

So, you’ve found out where the mouse killers hang out. And you’ve figured out that you’ll need some shiny new weapons in your arsenal if you’re going to be successful in catching a few.

In Internet Terms the cheese is content and the shiny objects are viral/social marketing, search engine optimization and search engine marketing. These Internet terms are really just ways to make sure you are ‘near’ websites of ‘the same interests.’ On the Internet being near something means being linked to and from it. That link can be anything from a blog comment that contains your URL to a banner ad to even a sponsored link. It means making sure that when the mouse killers are reading about mouse killing at another website, they to see a link to your website.

Let’s look at these new internet marketing tools. First let’s explore content. Content in its simplest form is a bunch of words, or pictures or videos or sounds that appear on a website or a blog. For the mouse trap seller content might be images a mouse riding a frog (seriously, click the link I found a picture of a mouse riding a frog). It might be articles about the joy of mouse killing or 101 things to do with a dead mouse or even an article exploring the confessions of a reformed mouse killer. Maybe it is a video clip showing the new Super-Duper X 1000 mouse trap in action. Whatever the type of content, the important thing is that it is relevant to mouse traps. Videos of exploding whales might indeed be fun to watch but they really won’t help here.

The value of the content is really two-fold. First mouse killers like to view pictures of frog riding mice and read about the exploits of other mouse killers. So they will seek out articles, pictures and videos on the subject. And once they find a good source of content they will likely come back there next time they want to catch up on the latest. And, even better, when other website owners like the mouse killer blog we came across earlier see the articles they will create a link to your article. And viola, you’ve got a next door neighbor. This is the beginnings of a viral/social marketing shiny object that we’ll cover later.

The second reason is less fun, but it is all about search engines like Google and Yahoo!. They eat up content, almost literally. All other revenue sources notwithstanding, search engines stay in business by delivering highly targeted content to searchers. If someone, say a mouse killer searches Google for ‘stories about mouse killing,’ the results page (SERP) better have a bunch of links to websites with stories about mice and killing them. If it were to return links about, say PETA, the mouse killers are likely to go somewhere else, like Yahoo!, to look for stories. Google lost a customer, but more importantly they lost the possibility that you’d click one of the ‘sponsored’ links on the page. Sponsored links is another shiny object that we’ll cover shortly, but suffice it to say that Google makes a lot of money on those clicks.

One last point about content: It needs to be ‘keyword rich’ meaning to attract mouse killers it should include words like ‘mouse’ and umm… ‘trap.’ But be careful, content that is too rich can be overkill and actually make it harder to find. That’s something for another shiny object, search optimization.

So, we’ve got our cheese content. Now we’ll explore the shiny objects like viral/social marketing, search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

To Be Continued...

Selling Products Online - The Hunt for Mouse Killers

Back to our tale of Selling Products Online...

To catch you up... Now comes the hard part of selling your Mouse Traps online... Location, Location, Location and, oh yeah, Competition.

When you first buy a domain and build a website your location is much, much, much worse than that back alley site you considered earlier. Your location is almost literally ‘No Where.’ You can’t get drive-by traffic, depend on the grocery store next door because no other website is next door to yours. Your only way to get buyers is for them to magically drop out of the Internet sky. Of course if they know your domain name (http://www.best-mousetraps-ever.com/) they could type that in but who, other than you and your family knows that?

And what if mousetrap buyers did drop out of the Ethernet sky? Would they land on your website? In your small town (go back and read the last post) there is only one or two other competitors for that sky dropper. But on the internet there are possibly millions of competitors. Do a quick Google search for ‘mouse traps.’ Go on, I’ll wait…. How many competitors? I found 184,000 when I checked. What if you sell ‘shirts?’ That Google search comes back with 257,000,000 competitors. So if you sell mousetraps you have a 1 in 184,000 chance of catching that sky dropper, right? Nope. As a new website owner you’re most likely not even included in that list of 18,000 competitors. You are in ‘No Where’ location. For you SEO wonks, maybe you’re in the mythical Google Sandbox.

So what do you do? If you were in town you probably run an ad in your newspaper, on the local radio station or on a local TV channel. But on the internet ‘local’ has a different meaning.

Local (get the tie in with ‘Location?) on the internet really means ‘of same interest.’ You have to get your website in front of potential buyers who want or need to kill mice one at a time. That means your location now becomes whatever websites mouse killers frequent. So where do mouse killers hang out on the Internet?

Obviously they frequent search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. According to Yahoo! searches for ‘mouse traps’ and similar products (like ‘rat traps’) were at the high end of 15,000,000 last month. Google searches would be many multiples of that. So you have to be located on the search result pages (above the other 177,000 competitors) of the major search engines. How do you get that location? In Internet Marketing terms that you need to do Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.

According to most studies, the majority of mouse killers, possibly 80%, start looking for mouse traps on search engines. (This statistic is true for more than mouse killers) That means the other 20% start somewhere else. That somewhere else is likely a content website such as http://www.mousekilleranonymous.com/ or a blog such as DiaryofaMouseKiller.myBlog.com.

So your hunt for the mouse killers has been successful. You’ve found out that they, you potential customers hand out on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. They also hang out at popular content websites and blogs. Now that you’ve found them, how do you catch them? With cheese and shiny objects, of course.

To Be Continued...

Selling Products Online – If You Just Build it They Won’t Come

So you have a dream to make money selling products on the internet. Easy right? Well, not so fast. Just like selling something in the ‘real’ world, selling something on the internet takes more than desire and luck.

Many first time online sellers have created or acquired products that they thought would sell well and, in their enthusiasm, spent lots of time and or money is setting up a website, paying monthly hosting fees and possibly paying for product inventory. They toasted ‘launch’ day and then waited… And waited, and waited, and waited..

Building a baseball field in a corn field apparently worked for Kevin Costner, but for the rest of us it is not so easy. Building the best baseball field, or the product, or the service is just the first part of what it takes for ‘them to come.’ You have to let them know that you built it, whatever ‘it’ is. And, while the principals may be the same as in the offline world, letting people know you built it can be a daunting, albeit rewarding, task.

Let’s say you’ve just decided to sell mousetraps. You decide to set up shop in your local town to sell the mousetraps. What would you do next? You’d pick a location, buy an inventory of mousetraps so your shelves aren’t empty and then open the shop. Think about where your location would be. Would you locate on a back alley on the bad side of town or on Main Street? Maybe, even better, you’d locate near a large community of houses where you’ve heard there is a big mouse problem because of the adjacent landfill.

What about your shop? You’d decorate it, put up a nice flashy sign, probably with a picture of a dead mouse on it. You’d install a cash register and shelves. You’d then display the mousetraps in an appealing way (if that’s possible…). And then you’d open the shop. What if you did nothing more? How many mousetraps do you think you’d sell? If your guess is anything beyond ‘almost none’ you’re probably wrong.

So what did you miss? You’ve got a great product, a great location and a great shop. Heck, you even have with a nice picture of a dead mouse on the sign out front. What you’ve missed is ‘MARKETING.’ How do people know about your new store? Maybe a few drive by on the way to work? Maybe some are your friends and family? Maybe some were shopping at the grocery store next door, that by the way also sells mice traps and even for less money. The reality is that without marketing; letting them know you’re there, they won’t come.

Now sell that same mousetrap on the internet. Your shop and sign is that great flashy website. Your inventory is simply pictures on the website because you’re using a drop shipper to handle distribution. Sound’s good so far… No need to lease a shop, no need to by inventory upfront and you can work whatever hours you want. Now comes the hard part… Location, Location, Location and, oh yeah, Competition.

To Be Continued....