A little rant about slaps

Most everywhere you go that has to do with Internet marketing, you’ll find discussions of the latest Google slap. Google changes things to improve what they call quality and many perceive it as a slap! It’s good news for me and anyone else who bothers to add quality to the Internet.

Google is not the only one slapping bad content, a recent slap was from Squidoo. They removed all the pages that users set up with only one module. Squidoo now requires a minimum of 3 modules with good content. More good news. Too bad for those that abuse Squidoo and other sites with junk in an effort to get traffic or sales!

So why is a Google slap good?

Quite frankly, I’m tired of people trying to game the system and messing up good techniques for the rest of us. On the other hand, I love it when the gamers get slapped. Lets face it, we all hate spam! Those that use Pay Per Click on Google to send traffic to poor quality sites get slapped, plain and simple. Marketers trying to game the system are playing a losers game! As the shady techniques get slapped, they constantly have to find new ways to game the system! Not a good way to build a solid business.

Some marketers even charge membership fees and teach members how to game the system to get high page ranks in Google. Imagine paying someone to teach you how to build your business on quicksand! Building any business on a house of cards will fail every time. Sure, you may make some great short term profits. The sad fact is that you will always have to rebuild when the shady technique falls apart.

Winning with Google Slaps

Winning is not that hard, in fact you’ll beat most of the competition just by doing things right and avoiding the latest scams.

As long as you provide quality information on your site or anywhere else you put content, you’ll never get slapped. When people that try to game the system get slapped, those of us that try to do things the right way move up the ranks. Very cool.

Here’s a few slap tips:

Participate in all aspects of the market you are working in. Only participate with quality answers or content. Post comments on blogs, forums, or anywhere you can find a community of people in your market.

Become known as someone who helps others and knows the market. Use the signature file with a link back to your site or a page on your site. Never spam with affiliate links. The more you post helpful information, the more people will grow to trust you. The traffic will follow if you put some effort into what you say on other sites. Add quality to the Internet where ever you go and the Internet will be a better place for all of us.

The more places you provide quality answers and content, the more links you’ll have pointing at your own site. The reality is that back links pointing at your site help get you free traffic. Back links also get you a better standing in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

Don’t fall for the gimmicks or try to game the system. Anyone who posts comments on other sites that are filled with affiliate links and spam are sure to get deleted or not posted at all. Seems like a complete waste of time to even attempt to post junk anywhere on the Internet. You may get a small amount of traffic for the effort, but quality content will bring you quality visitors.

Conclusion: Slaps are Good for Business

Now that we know that slaps are good for our business. Go add some quality to the Internet! Show people in your niche and the world that you have something worthwhile to offer. You’ll be richly rewarded for the extra effort.

John Stiles

Before we get to the frog

Here’s my disclaimer: No harm was done to any frog in any way. The frog is used in this story for illustrative purposes only.

This story was told at a sales seminar I attended about 25 years ago. The graphic nature of the story, plus the common sense truth of it could be why it stuck and I remember it. Just goes to show that story telling helps get your message to stick!

Can a frog story help you?

I here many complaints about information overload and this little frog story may help. There have been many times over the years that I’ve suffered from too much information.

We all learn by degrees, like a slowly rising thermometer! In other words, one step at a time. As babies, we crawl, then we learn to walk, then we run. We don’t start our lives with the ability to read novels either. We learn to read in steps with small words, then we go on to the big words.

A graphic presentation of information overload can be told using a frog as an example.

Take a pot of water and bring it to a boil. Think of this as all the information dumped on you at once. Now take a frog and toss him in the boiling water! The frog jumps out immediately without getting hurt.

Many people get overwhelmed by all there is to do and learn with Internet Marketing. When overloaded as humans, we flop around, never really getting things going. Then we either jump out of the boiling pot or sink to the bottom, buried in information overload!

Take the same frog that jumped out of the boiling pot and put him in a pot of water that is only room temperature. He now swims around like a happy little frog would do in water.

Keeping in mind that frogs and people are different. Turn the temperature of the water up a degree at a time each hour. The frog will continue to swim around and never know to jump out as the water heats up. Hours later when the water gets hot, the frog is cooked. Poor little guy didn’t know any better and never jumped out.

How can you apply this to your business?

Take apart all that needs to be learned in building your Internet business and break it down into small chunks. Learn each chunk, one degree at a time. Once you learn all the steps to building your business, one degree at a time. When you get to the end, your business will be cooking!

The moral of the story is that any time you start to get overwhelmed and reach your boiling point, don’t jump out. Break down your projects and tackle them one degree at a time!

Hopefully this little story helps you as much as it helped me over the years.

John Stiles

Why Google is the king of Pay Per Click advertising

The more PPC marketing that I do, the more amazed that I get with the way the companies that offer pay per click operate. Is it any wonder that Google is dominating the market? Google offers some of the best tools available for managing a Google Adwords account. The other big players in pay per click are seriously lacking in user friendly software to manage an advertising account. There are hundreds of sites available for pay per click advertising which could learn from the Google advertising model. In the interest of time and space, I’m only going to discuss what people call the big three, Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Google’s free Adwords Editor

I’ve learned to love the free Google Adwords editor and wonder where the software is for the other two big players. In managing my advertising accounts, I had a need to split some campaigns up for more concentrated targeting of the ads I wanted to run. While I’m not going to list all the great features of the Google Adwords editor, the Adwords editor saved many hours in doing something I would consider very basic account management.

All I wanted to do was to split up an ad campaign into multiple ad campaigns. Seems like such a simple request. Just move some ad groups with ads and keywords intact from one campaign to another. The Google Adwords editor allows you to do this simple task with ease. I simply moved the ad groups I wanted to move using the Adwords editor on my computer, then uploaded the changes to my Google Adwords account. By the way the Adwords editor is conveniently located under the Tools tab in your Google Adwords account. Where are the software tools to manage an advertising account for MSN or Yahoo?

Change hundreds of ads in minutes

Anyone following this site will know that some of the pay per click advertising that I do is for Cost Per Action (CPA) offers. Some people call this type of marketing click flipping or traffic brokering. Now that my campaigns are split into more targeted ad campaigns, I can switch all the ads or links with a few mouse clicks! Making changes on the fly with minimal effort and time is the name of the game in this business.

You can use the spreadsheet templates that Microsoft provides for doing mass edits, but this method does not even come close to matching the power that Google gives you with the free Adwords editor. Google really seems to listen to their users and it’s clear that the Google advertising model works, the other players could learn some lessons here.

Yahoo and Microsoft have improved a little

Recently Yahoo made some long overdue improvements when they rolled out their new platform. All we can do is hope that Yahoo continues to improve. Forcing an advertiser to send traffic only to sites that you own is very limiting and it would be great to see Yahoo open things up and allow direct to merchant advertising. As long as this limit is in place at Yahoo, they are destined to lag way behind Google. If Yahoo added an editor similar to what Google gives their users, that would go a long way too.

On the other hand, I’m shocked by Microsoft and their lack of software to make advertising with them easier. Though I have to say that I’m not surprised, Microsoft adCenter seems to be in permanent beta testing mode. Just recently they added the ability to paste in keywords with broad match, exact match and phrase match set. Just a short time ago, you had to check a bunch of silly little boxes.

You would think that a big company like Microsoft would know that time is money. Creating a user interface that has cute little windows and toggles is not always fast and efficient. In this day and age, faster more efficient software is needed in order to compete. The fact that Microsoft is a software company would lead you to think that they could do a better job to compete with Google.

Advertising Business call to action

You would think that anyone in business knows that you should keep a close eye on the competition. Knowing what works for your competitors, you can improve on what they are doing and use it to grow your business. Who am I to suggest that Microsoft and Yahoo take a closer look at what Google is doing. Any business should take the time to go out in their markets to out what customers want. Then find out what the competition is doing to provide it.

Perhaps the obvious needs spelled out

With the massive resources available at Microsoft and Yahoo, it should be easy to become real competitors to Google. Simply survey the market, open accounts with all the players to see what they are doing and then improve on what is working. Providing the advertising market with more choices only improves business for everyone involved. Attention, Microsoft and Yahoo, more advertisers use Google Adwords for a reason! Find out what those reasons are, improve on what advertisers need and provide it to the world. Competition is good for the market, step up to the plate and compete with Google.

John Stiles