PROFIToCRACY: Common Sense Marketing Strategies header image 2

So how do you value a link??

August 13th, 2009 : 6 Comments ·

Let’s start with Google Page Rank. It’s a topic that can generate a lot of passion and a lot of opinions, some of which is based on an individuals analysis and experience, but far too often it’s based simply on what someone reads on a forum.

One of the first things you learn in SEO is not to follow or believe what you read in forums, but believe what your eyes and data tell you.

There are a lot of myths perpetrated on a lot of forums regarding Page Rank, and really anything related to search engines.

I’m not going to come out and claim I know everything about how page rank operates, nor every dark secret about SEO, anyone that claims they do is a liar. And that would include most of the folks who work at Google. Only a few are really privy to that info.

But the continuing obsession I see from many regarding Google Page rank is not only foolish, in many cases, it is just plain wrong, and more importantly, really wastes a lot of valuable time that could be used pursuing more profitable activities.

Let’s talk about a couple basics.

1) Don’t put much stock on what you see on that little green toolbar. At best it is nothing more than a really rough estimate of your true Page Rank from a snapshot in time that often is many months ago. It has virtually no relationship to your CURRENT internal Google page rank, which more than likely is a constantly moving and adjusted value.

2) The toolbar’s main purpose has always been as a data gathering tool for Google. Sure it offers you some features other than the little green bar, but just be aware that if you are using Page Rank checker, you are passing info on to Google about your surfing habits.

If you have no issues with this, no worries, but if that’s all you need a better option if you are using Firefox is to grab this extension.

http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

So does Page Rank matter?

Well it’s pretty clear that the influence Page Rank has on actual rankings is very mixed at best.

Now let’s not confuse Page Rank and Authority. Remember, Page Rank is factored on a page by page basis, Authority is more likely site specific.

Let’s say you got a link from a major authority site, whose front page has a PR of 8, but your link is somewhere on an internal page that shows little or no page rank. What is the true value of that link?

A link from an authority site regardless of the PR of the page is going to be weighted more heavily than a link from a page on another site with an equal PR, that has far less authority.

Page Rank may be indicative of the general authority status of the site, but the PR of the specific page is not what passes the real value to your site as far as the effect it will have on ranking.

Authority also can be talked about in terms of trust, how much is the link from a site trusted?

So use Page Rank as a very basic guide to trying to come up with a site’s authority or trust.

Another important factor to consider in determining the value of a link, is the spidering frequency that a site receives from Google. A real easy way to check this, and it’s far from fool proof is to just check the cache date of a specific page.

If you have a site that is both deeply indexed, and getting the internal pages deeply spidered on a frequent basis, the site has some quality to it, regardless of the actual Page Rank being displayed.

While it is generally true that sites whose PR is higher tend to get spidered frequently, that is not always the case. But so can sites who PR is low or zero why? Well, if your site is indexed, your PR is higher than zero, and you have no idea of the true internal PR Google is using. There are a few tools that try and guess it, but it’s just that, an educated guess.

The reality is there are many factors that you need to look at when trying to place a value on a link, and far too many people are only looking at the Page Rank of a site and that is a huge mistake.

I have a lot of sites that are ranking in the top 5 for fairly competitive keywords that have a PR of 0 or maybe a PR of 1.

These are not new sites or sites that just showed up in the top spots recently, these are sites that have been hanging around the top 1-20 positions for quite a while.

The first thing I look at when trying to place a value on a link is the possible authority status of a site. Again, I’ll use the front page PR as a guide but it is just a very rough indicator of authority, but if a site has some perceived authority I don’t care what the PR is of the page my link will be on, as long as it is spiderable.

You can also try and gauge authority status by looking the Alexa rating of a site. Is the trend going up or down? Is traffic steady or very spiky?

I then focus on site saturation which can easily be done by entering

site:www.domain.com

…into Google.  The more pages indexed the better.

I then look at the cache dates of the front page and some random internal pages. It’s important to make sure the internal pages are getting spidered fairly often as well.

Another possible item you can look at is the actual age of the domain. do a whois search. An older domain is always better, but not if the domain has had multiple owners, and has been dropped at a registrar multiple times, so this one I don’t worry about too much.

I rarely concern myself with the PR of a specific page.

So, even if a site has a low or no PR, even on the front page, if that site is getting indexed heavily with very frequent cache dates, I’d still gladly take a link from that site.

Google tends NOT to aggressively spider crappy sites, at least not consistently.

I’m still amazed when I see threads of excitement on forums stating that Google has done a Page Rank update, Great you now have a very rough estimate using a totally generic methodology, of what they thought of your site some time in the past.

And also remember, Google updates the toolbar PR, probably 3-4 times per year, at most. Why not more often? What’s the need? They get exactly what they want out of the toolbar now without having to expend much in the way of resources to get that data.

- Dave -

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Are You Throwing Away Great Ideas?

August 10th, 2009 : 14 Comments ·

Ideas are the foundation upon which we all make money.

I don’t care if you are an affiliate marketer or someone who creates their own products and services.

Without a good or great idea you’re really dead in the water.

I never had a problem coming up with ideas for products or ways that I thought I could better do something that was already a part of my business.

Where I had the trouble was in remembering them 10 hours later.

Maybe I would be in my car, a great idea would pop into my head. I’d make a mental note of it, and tell myself I would write it down once I got home, and then guess what? By the time I actually got around to being able to put it down on paper, I really couldn’t remember all the details that I had just several hours ago. It’s not that my memory is bad, it’s just that often, in the time that transpires in between you having that possibly great idea and being able to put it down somewhere, a lot of events can transpire that just relegate other previous thoughts to the background. Sometimes you remember them, other times, not.

I now don’t go anywhere without my little 8 year old hand held Sony digital recorder. It’s cheap, old, obsolete, but still works great.

Any time I have an idea, I just hit the record button and verbally record my ideas.

Just this past weekend alone I added 14 verbal entries, which I finally played back and made written notes of this morning.

I have literally about 25 pages of written notes filled with potential money making ideas sitting on my desk printed out, and 100% of them are from items I recorded into my ancient digital recorder.

Without having my little digital recorder handy I’m guessing I would have less than 1 page of ideas.

Right there in front of me is enough to keep my coders busy for the next 2 years.

Ideas come and go and what you may think you’ll remember in a few hours or the next day often proves to be a very incorrect assumption, and one that could really cost you a lot of money.

I don’t care what you use to record your ideas, the bottom line is, if you’re not doing it, it’s almost certain that you are losing money from ideas that were there one moment, and then gone the next.

- Dave –

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This is one of the Coolest Wordpress Plugins I’ve EVER Seen

August 9th, 2009 : 1 Comment ·

Every now and then you see a product come along that is so unique and different, that it just makes you go ‘Wow”

Well I’ve just come across one of those ‘Wow’ moments

If you use Wordpress, this is the one ‘Must Have’ plugin for 2009. It doesn’t matter if you have one site or one hundred.

Check this out..

And another vid for you..

See More Right Here

- Dave -

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Do you spoof your whois info?

August 9th, 2009 : 2 Comments ·

This is a real simple question:
Do you spoof your whois info when registering a domain?

If your answer is yes, are you aware that the registar can literally disable your account and essentially confiscate your domains?

If the registrar has reason to believe that the whois info on a domain may be spoofed, it is not uncommon for them to send a snail mail notice to the address on record, and if it bounces back as undeliverable, there is at least a reasonable chance that your account and domains could go bye bye.

There are many reasons that could trigger this action but more often it results from a complaint of some type being received by the registrar, often these are spam complaints, even if you are not spamming, just having a double opt in mailing list can still result in complaints being logdged.

So while overall, the risk may be low, you spoof your whois info at your own risk.

- Dave -

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10 Simple Steps to Writing Better Sales Copy

August 7th, 2009 : 3 Comments ·

I’m not going to claim I am the greatest sales page writer, in fact compared to some of my buddies I downright stink.

But when I do need to write sales copy for myself, there are 2 things I know.

A: Imitate the best
B: Follow the basics of laying out good sales copy.

When I say imitate the best, I am not advocating you actually take someone elses copy, in fact if you did that I hope you get your a*s handed to you, but there are some really great sales letters in virtually every market that if you take time to study them, are literally a free master class on how to create great sales copy.

There is one thing that virtually all sales letters have in common. They all tend to follow a certain formula.

Let’s take a look at 10 basics of writing a great sales letter.

1: ATTENTION: You MUST grab the visitors attention immediately with your headline. You’ve got about 2 seconds to get their interest or they are gone. How many web sites have you seen that start out with a phrase such as “Thank you for visiting my web site. Here you will find some great products” BLAH BLAH BLAH. Bye bye visitor. I can’t imagine anyone would still write this way but there are a lot of sites that read just that way.

The headline of your site must pull the visitor in, make them want to learn more. If you don’t have a killer headline, the rest becomes somewhat irrelevant.

2: INTEREST: Once you’ve managed to convince the always skeptical visitor that they need to keep reading with your great headline, you need to start building overall interest in your product or service, how will the potential customer benefit from your product or service. Never EVER start talking about yourself, you must focus on the benefits your product can provide to the visitor.

3: BUILDUP and CREDIBILITY: So far so good, you haven’t lost them yet. Now comes the tough part. Up to this point you’ve lured them in with some great writing, but now you have to start backing up your claims. This is where you need to throw in some testimonials. Any testimonial you use must be 100% authentic. When someone sends you a nice email complimenting your product or service, thank them and ask them if it’s OK to use their words as a testimonial. Do it every time! Make sure you ask them to offer the wording they would like used and if it’s OK if you do very minor editing.

4: PROVE YOUR CREDIBILITY: I recommend you always use the person’s real name, and location in the testimonial, also asking the person giving the testimonial for a picture you can use next to their testimonial adds credibility. This one will be a bit more hit and miss but you’ll find the majority of people really don’t mind giving you their picture to use.

Testimonials that simply use someone’s initials are always looked at with a skeptical eye, and you know why, no one really knows whether they are real or bogus. Guess which is most often the case?

5: BELIEVABILITY BUILDERS: Make certain at this point you offer a no hassle guarantee. A Strong guarantee does not increase refunds, it reduces them. Make the potential customer know that you stand 100% behind what you sell and if they have a problem or are dissatisfied in any way, you are there to help them.

Don’t make your potential customers have to hunt around for contact info. A simple, ‘contact us’ link at the bottom of the page usually does the job, but don’t ever link it to an email address, link it to a support page that offers an FAQ or a form where the customer can submit questions.

Don’t make financial claims you can’t backup. If you are going to brag about how much money you have earned, you better be prepared to actually prove it. Screenshots can be easily faked. If you haven’t made $500 per day selling a given product, don’t say you have. Keep it real. But if you have some serious earnings, this is where you want to hit the visitor with that info. It creates sort of a WOW effect.

6: SCARCITY: The limited time offer has been working wonders for years, in all kinds of businesses. Now that you have them WOW’d with your earnings, you’ve got to get them to feel like they are going to lose out if they don’t take action.

Giving the visitor a deadline on pricing or membership levels, tends to build a sense of urgency. If they don’t act now they may lose out. And stick to it. Using a bogus deadline worked 7 years ago but not very well anymore. If you say you are going to raise your price or close the membership on such and such a date. DO IT!

7: ACTION: Quite simply, make it easy for the visitor to order now. ie; Call this number to order now: or, Just CLICK HERE to go to our secure order page.

Don’t make the visitor jump through hoops or have to look all over your site for a place to make an order.

8: THE WARNING: Learn to play on the visitors fears and emotions. Use a simple statement like this:

“Listen, you can go on making no money for the next year, It doesn’t matter to me, but if you’re serious about changing your life, what are you waiting for?”

(Now that is an example of really crappy sales writing, but hey, it’s just an example!)

The key is to try and touch an emotional flash point. If they’ve gotten this far into your sales letter, you obviously have their interest, so hitting those emotional buttons can be the one thing that makes that sale.

9: NOW: This is building off the emotional buttons you pressed in #8. You need to again drive home the urgency. Convince them they owe it to themselves, that they don’t have to struggle anymore, that there is a better way etc. This is pretty much the icing on the cake.

10: THE POSTSCRIPT: Always end with a PS. You can restate #6, while rewording it differently, remind them this is a limited offer. You can also use the PS to throw in added bonuses by stating that if they act now you will throw in this bonus, or that bonus. You start piling on.

If you’ve followed these 10 points you pretty much have the outline of how some of the best copy writers in the world construct copy that has turned ordinary people into millionaires.

Remember that getting the visitor to your website is just the start. Once they are there you better know what to do with them.

- Dave -

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Customer Service Sucks, But it Doesn’t Have to..

August 6th, 2009 : 5 Comments ·

Let’s look at a couple things that are as certain as death tself.

If you sell a product online, specifically one that you own, you’re going to have to deal with customer support issues.

I don’t care how great your product, how good the materials you’ve provided your customers ahead of time, you’re going to get a lot of support issues. That is a fact.

You’re also going to have customers who want refunds, again, it doesn’t matter how good your product. It is just a fact of life of doing business online.

You’re also starting the game with 2 strikes against you.

What do I mean?

Well how often do you get a refund request from a customer who is threatening to open a dispute, file  a charge back, report you to the Better Business Bureau, etc, and you’ve never even had a single email exchange with this person?

While these certainly don’t make up a majority of refund requests you will receive, I’m pretty certain that everyone that sells anything online has received more than a handful of requests that more or less follow that pattern.

It’s human nature for us to just blow this person off as a nut job, maybe a few are, but let’s look at this a bit deeper, and look at it in a way that each of us can relate to.

The bottom line is, customer service and support online and off has become so GD AWFUL that it’s what people have come to expect.

People have been pre conditioned to expect the worst, becuuse that is exactly what their experiences have likely been. They’re not ticked off with you, but have probably been screwed over so many times before that they just assume that’s the way things work.

Sure, there are businesses both online and off that still deliver, but the burden is now on the business to prove that they actually give a damn about the customer. Unfortunately, most don’t.

It has come pretty much full circle. Probably as recently as 25 years ago, you just accepted that companies and businesses would stand behind their products and services. Now most people just assume they are on their own when they make a purchase because the ugly truth is, in most cases you are.

We see it everyday, from dealing with airlines, to just walking into a department store and trying to get someone to wait on you or find someone who has even the slightest clue about what they are supposed to be selling.

Here’s a question?

Which side are you on?

Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you would be happy with YOUR own customer service?

In the online world there’s a really simple way to answer this.

How long do you make your customers wait before replying to their inquiries?  After all, most of our support inquiries come via email.

If your answer is not at the very least same day, or a lot faster, you’ve got a problem you need to resolve.

The fact that customer service across the board is more or less worthless, means this is one area where almost anyone can stand out in a crowd quite easily.

When I started in the SEO business in 1996, virtually all of my customers came to me via word of mouth.

But here’s something that might surprise you. It wasn’t my paying customers that sent me most of my new customers. Nope, it was the people who I turned away.

How’s that?

My phone rang a lot, and in the early days of SEO, let’s say pre 2000, a lot of folks were getting ripped off big time by SEO companies. Most people had no clue what they were doing online, especially when it came to search engine marketing. I can’t tell you how many people that called me had already spoken to other companies who had given them quotes of absolutely outrageous prices (at the time) for services these people didn’t need.

I’d do a bit of research based on the info the caller gave me and I’d often discover that many of these folks were doing just fine on their own, they had no clue why, but they were already in many cases, ranking very well for the exact terms others wanted to charge them thousands for.

A lot of these people I just sent away telling them to save their money and use it elsewhere, that they didn’t need to spend it with me or any other SEO service, some ended up doing a 1 hour consultation just to get a better grip on the basics of what they were doing right.

The ones who I turned away, are the people that sent me the most customers over 8 years. Many sent me a LOT of customers. I had built up a level of trust with these people.

What percentage of online business do you really think have built up a level of trust with their customers?

Not many, and you know what, it really doesn’t have that much to do with whether your product is a great one, an average one, or one that really stinks, it’s how you respond to your customers when they have concerns.

Customer support is something that you have 100% TOTAL control over. Do it right and you build trust. Mess it up and you likely won’t be doing this 10 years from now.

If you are selling online, you are running a business, I don’t care what size or what volume you do, you’re running a business. Treat it like one, and remember who pays the bills. It’s those people sending you the emails.

What are your thoughts on customer service??

- Dave -

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