Three Things You MUST Know if You're Selling Products or Services Online in 2004! by Corey Rudl
"Three Things You MUST Know if You're Selling Products or Services Online in 2004!" Happy new year!
2003 was a big year for me, and for everyone on my team at The Internet Marketing Center. We finished with a "bang" by launching the new Version 2004 of our flagship course, The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet... and as the new year begins, we're working like crazy, developing and testing some really exciting new strategies and software to help you explode your profits in 2004!
As I'm sure you're aware, 2003 was a dramatic year for everyone involved in Internet marketing. There were major industry changes in search engine optimization, Internet marketing software, pay-per-click advertising... just about everything related to selling products and services online. And online sales continued to grow...
Here's one number that made my head spin: According to the latest eSpending survey, holiday spending in the US came to a record 15.8 BILLION dollars in 2003! That's up 37 percent from the same period last year!
With all this growth and all these changes, it's more important than ever to stay on top of the latest industry developments. So as my way of thanking you, our clients and subscribers, for making 2003 the best year yet for The Internet Marketing Center, I've put together this special issue on key trends in Internet marketing for 2004. It examines three big changes that you absolutely MUST know about if you're planning to make money online this year!
1. Keep Your Google Listings from Dropping out of Sight!
If you rely on search engines to drive traffic to your site -- and especially if you're using search engine optimization strategies such as link popularity -- then you've probably already heard about the changes to Google that have been nicknamed "The Florida Dance."
Back when Google used to update their servers with new web pages once a month, the monthly changes came to be called "Google Dances" because site rankings "danced" up and down the search results pages. Now that Google makes updates on an ongoing basis, the big "dances" only happen when Google makes major changes to the way they evaluate pages. And the latest one has damaged the rankings of so many web sites that it's been nicknamed "Florida" after the destructive Florida hurricanes!
So if you haven't checked your Google listing recently, you might want to do it now... because even if you've been ranked well with your Google keywords, your site might have dropped by hundreds of positions -- literally overnight!
One marketer we know told us that her thriving online business had seen a tenfold increase in sales in 2003... until the changes in Google dropped her web site listing from a #9 position to somewhere below #999! Now she's doing very little business, and she's desperately looking for a way to bring her listing back up.
Here's why these changes are occurring: Like all search engines, Google uses a variety of programs called filters and algorithms to rank web pages in its search results. The company is constantly changing and updating its programs to ensure that listings are "relevant," meaning that they are actually related to the keywords people are searching for.
Now, if search engines don't make these changes regularly, "search engine spammers" can actually trick search engines into making unrelated sites appear in the top listings. (Imagine searching for "affordable gift ideas" and finding that all the top listings link to gambling and adult web sites!) But the newest changes to Google have done more than penalize "search engine spammers." A lot of online business owners who have been using ethical, commonly accepted techniques to improve their search engine rankings are finding that their Google listings have dropped right out of sight.
The new changes have caused headaches for a huge number of online business owners by penalizing "over-optimized" web pages -- meaning that if you've spent time and money trying to push your page to the top of the listings, you might actually be punished for your hard work with a diminished ranking.
If your site listing has dropped in Google, you're probably scrambling to figure out how you can fix the problem -- after all, a lower listing practically guarantees that you're losing money!
So what should you do?
We've researched the changes and listened to the industry buzz, and it looks like the best thing to do now... is to wait. Google is still fine-tuning this latest round of changes, so before you start overhauling your web site, you should wait until the final tweaks to "Florida" have been made.
Frustrating? Yes. But if you've been burned by these changes, here are a few things you CAN do to ensure that potential customers are still finding your site while the dust settles:
Make sure your site offers relevant, high-quality content. Remember, Google's goal in making these types of changes is to ensure that top positions go to sites offering valuable resources and information. Google uses sophisticated software to measure the "relevance" of your site's content to keywords that people search for -- so adding well-written content to your web site is still an effective way to improve your ranking.
Be careful not to "over-optimize" your site. In the early days of search engine marketing, people discovered a number of "loopholes" -- tricks that sent sites to the top of the search engines even if they had little or nothing to do with the keywords being searched for. These tricks include:
Hidden links and text (i.e., white keywords on a white background)
"Mirror" sites (copies of a site that are optimized for a single search engine)
"Link farms" (multiple web sites whose sole purpose is to link to each other)
"Doorway" pages (pages designed primarily for search engines, not for users)
Google can now detect these and many other tricks, and it penalizes sites that use them by dropping their ranking dramatically. If you've hired someone to optimize your ranking, make sure they're not using any of these outdated methods -- or they may actually be damaging your chances of getting a top ranking!
Likewise, if you're using extensive affiliate links to create "link popularity" for your site, you should be aware that indiscriminate use of affiliate links can hurt your ranking under the Florida changes... so be careful to link to sites with content that is related to yours.
Consider using paid listings to keep traffic coming to your site. I know, I know... If you're still smarting after losing your coveted position in Google, the last thing you probably want to do is pay them for advertising! Still, as a short-term way of recouping your losses until you're able to get your ranking back up, you just might want to look into paid advertising.
If you do, be sure to do your research and calculate how much you can spend while still making a profit. Pay-per-clicks can be an effective way to get traffic coming to your site in just a few hours, but be careful: A hastily implemented pay-per-click campaign can quickly get expensive!
Explore other search options. Google isn't the only search engine! While it's t
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