A few Internet Marketing Strategies that made me a more productive marketer
Well, I was mid-swing into writing an epic “how to build an authority site for you internet marketing campaign” post and was right around 4,000 words when I realized that to do it justice, the post would probably be in the 10k-20k word range and abandoned ship. All this said, I do have a couple tips to help those of you who are struggling with managing your time in regards to marketing. And while you may not use either of these tips, understand that they are effective strategies and will better you, as a budding marketer. So, enough with the fluff….
Take your online work offline….
Most of my closest online friends know that I am very rarely on the internet. Other than the short time I spend uploading files and doing link building runs, I spend very few minutes (comparatively) online. And yet still I consider myself an internet marketer. Let me explain….
The internet is nothing but one big, fat distraction. It is. And it is very easy for you, internet marketer, to get caught up in this distraction because for whatever reason, most seem to think that to do internet marketing, you need to constantly be online.
Let’s take a look at a very likely scenario-
So, you wake up, grab a cup of coffee and get online. You check your email, check your favorite forum, maybe head over to the NYtimes for news, check your analytics, ect. ect. Only then, do you get to work. You write an article, submit it and then wander off to a forum or blog and get side tracked. You spend the next 30 minutes lost in la-la wasting time land before you start writing more content. Rinse and repeat.
By the time the day is through, you have written 3 articles for the day and wondered how in the world the day got away. You promise yourself that things will be different tomorrow. They won’t but that is okay.
Sound familiar? Getting sidetracked is so friggin’ easy that it is probably one of the most difficult things to overcome.
About a year ago, I wondered what it would be like to NOT work online. The results were absolutely astounding.
These days, if I am building a new website and want to fill it with content, I will typically start a folder with the afforementioned niche. In it, I will save web pages (sometimes entire websites) in the folder….it could be 20 for a small niche….it could be hundreds for a larger one.
I take that folder, move it over to my laptop and then remove myself from being online. There, I will write article after article and develop a heirarchy of similar articles. On this laptop, I also have dreamweaver and xsitepro (I spend more time building static websites over blogs because the heirarchy of the site is easier to “visualize”).
By the time my day is through, I will have written more content and have a better blueprint into the niche I am trying to exploit. This is all done sans the internet.
Of course, this is assuming that you have a plan for your content and aren’t simply writing from day to day whatever is on your mind (which is a haphazard way of building content…you should have a structure for any money making venture you plan…for instance, content should be well written and formatted with all the potential internal link structure mapped out…)
So what about keyword research and link development you ask? The same thing applies to this as well:
When it comes to keyword research, I will plan a complete day (if it is a small niche) or an entire week (if it is large) for it. Without getting into tools of the trade, I will start with a very general search, throw it into an excel sheet and then start to drill down into the niche. The niche gets its own folder for general terms. Each keyword goes in a subfolder. I will drill down at least 10 levels and download onto an excel sheeet. By the time I am finished, I will have a pretty large folder which will then get printed out in which I will go offline with.
Linkbuilding is another story which I will get into in the next tip.
The moral of the story? Remove the source of your distractions and you will get a lot more done and be far more productive.
A good marketer plans ahead
Sometimes it isn’t enough to have an over abundance of content. You have to have a plan of action. Since the majority of ranking involves getting links from authority sources (or making your own if the content can’t stand on its own), link building is probably one of the most boring things that is involved with internet marketing.
And to make things worse, you can easily get lost in the amounts of links pointing to each site or secondary site. In other words, if you can’t keep detailed records, you will sink yourself very quickly (assuming you are doing it all on your own).
I can’t remember the marketer who said it but the saying goes something like this…..
A professional marketing campaign is always a year ahead in its planning
What that means is that everything most of you are doing is not what you should be doing. At best, I imagine there are a few of you who plan the week out. There are a few more that may have a loosely plan for the day. The majority of you will fly by the seat of your pants day-to-day.
So, let’s take a look at how I link build. Once again, I am not saying that my way is the “best” way but that the strategy I employ works for me.
The first place to look for links is your competitors, right? Most of you won’t go any further than the front page to see who is linking to it. I run deep research on my competitors to pull up links that would otherwise be missing. I identify my competition.
I will copy and paste the urls of the links in a .txt file along with a note as to the nature of the link (is it a blog comment? a “partners” page? in text?…ect.) and what the page is talking about in context to my competitor’s page. This, along with keyword research, is where I spend the majority of my online time by the way.
Depending on the size of my niche, by the time I am through, I will have hundreds, sometimes thousands of links.
From there, I will itemize the links into “immediately doable” or “work links (meaning I will likely have to put in the work for them).
I will take the immediately doable links and write out a 260 day plan of action. For each day, depending on the amount of links I uncover, I will have 5-20 links that I will work on each day, not including directory links (which I still use but sparingly and only the ones that matter). These go in 260 separate .txt files, one for each day of work. These links will have places on my site that they will point to and will most certainly be pages deep in my site.
Sounds like a lot, right? Well, this kind of research is thorough and will set you up for success. Most of you won’t do it because it involves a lot more than making a blog comment here and there while you are spending your day wasting your time.
The research involving links can take a week or two but in the end, you have an entire year planned and mapped out in front of you. Pretty crazy, right? And the best part is that it is regimented….ie. on Monday, you get 6 links…on Tuesday, you get 20 links…on Wednesday, you get 2 links, ect. ect.
Of course, you could simply outsource this task and pay someone in India weekly to do it for you on the cheap.
Always keep your eyes open for new niches
I have an idea bucket where I keep all my ideas for niches. For example, just recently my wife printed out Guilana’s diet plan (from reality show Guiliana and Bill). She gave me a list of things to go get at our local health food store. One of the things was a drink called Kobucha. Doing a a little research, I realized that Kobucha tea gets a fair amount of traffic. And although the top competitor is Wikipedia, there is a marketer down on number 3 of the first page which is offering a free PDF on this product in exchange for an email. There isn’t a ton of competition for this keyword in general and it gets a fair amount of traffic.
Plus Kobucha fits my profile for a potential niche site:
- Has traffic and interest
- Has a rabid fan base (not kobucha but the organic food market)
- Can’t be bought everywhere (most towns won’t have this freely available)
- Has the opportunity to upsell with backend products
Anyway, my point is that you should always keep your eyes open to potential niches that you would otherwise miss that you happen upon in your day to day life.
Another place where I look for opportunities is places like hubpages and squidoo. The gist goes like this:
- Identify the profile of a marketer- Less astute marketers will lump everything into a single profile. This is particularly effective for contextual ad sharing networks like adsense in which the marketer has done the leg work and found long tails that have advertisers.
- Get alerted whenever they write something new
- Analyze what they are doing and why they chose the niche
I typically don’t like to spend a lot of time online doing this (once again, most of my work is offline). So, if there is a good idea with traffic, I will take the webpage, save it and throw it into my idea bucket.
Okay, so let’s put it together. Let’s pretend that I am going to build an authority site on Kombucha (the tea I mentioned). I can most likely expect to see 20k in traffic a month (most of the traffic will come from long tail traffic….)
Here is what I would do online….
- I would probably spend 40 solid hours on keyword research and trolling content.…this would include saving all web pages of my competitors and analyzing their linking structures
- I would gather all the direct links of my competitors and put them in a .txt file and separate them into separate .txt files, for a day to day linkbuilding plan. These links would only go to my deeper pages. I would save my front page for directory links (at least at first). This makes for a more natural looking link structure. This would once again probably take 30-40 hours of work.
The rest of my time would be spent building content (or outsourcing it…or both) offline.
My offline work would also be spent developing a solid navigational plan for my soon to be website (working silos if necessary but making sure that the pages I link to are synonymic and relative to one another).
Considering that this niche is fairly small, after a month I should have a site with at least 20 pages of solid content. I would launch it and add a blog. On the blog I would build pages that link to my internal pages AS WELL as other topical items relevant to the niche. This can be done on a day-to-day basis although most of the time, I include this in with my link building files.
By the way, this is just an example niche and you can take it if you want. I have been working on a new niche for an authority site for the last 2 months (which is why I haven’t written in a while). The keyword research took me about a month but is finally done and I have roughly 80 pages of solid content, all siloed out. I still have the link building daily plan to go along with roughly 200 more pages of content. This is BEFORE I even make it go live.
Anyway, that is it for today. For those of you hard pressed for time, you should try out some of my time saving tips. They made me a far more productive internet marketer and I have nearly doubled my money by simply following them.
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23 Responses to “A few Internet Marketing Strategies that made me a more productive marketer”
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This is way to advanced for 99% of the Im’ers out there. Thank goodness not everyone is as detailed and skilled as you are. This post was enough to probably chase away a lot of newbies who will now realize it is waaaay to hard.
Hey Kenneth….it actually isn’t that advanced. The only point I am trying to make is that the majority of folks don’t have a winning plan. Let’s face it. Most will sleep walk through a marketing campaign, going from book to book…from site to site….without a plan of where they will be 6 months from now, never mind a year. The pudding is in the details and regardless of who you follow, chances are they have done some serious keyword research (with the exception of Ben who does it by sheer volume and brute force) to figure out the best path to success. Anyone that says any different is trying to sell you a system that simply doesn’t work.
Most folks in the online marketing world seem to think that being successful online is easier than doing it offline. The same business plans are there.
By the way, the site I am about to launch will be an authority type site which requires a lot more planning than a smaller site. It is partly why I have spent so much time in the beginning stages before launch. Authority sites rank from bottom up and to ensure that you get immediate traffic, you need an assload of it.
You totally nailed my daily routine, Leo. I’ve been at this less than a year though and am making slow progress with my 3 articles a day lol. A couple questions. Is there any significance to having a 260 day routine? Why 260? And the 5 – 20 links, is that dependent on their level of difficulty? What kind of approach do you take to tackle the harder links?
Great post. Thanks.
Phil
Hi Leo, thanks for the post.
I’m a wannabe internet marketer (less than six months in TKA and not even half way to my first Adsense cheque), with a full time job and limited amount of time to dedicate to IM. I’m trying to see if a blog of mine has potential for a supersite and I started a massive keyword research. I left out all other IM stuff, just for that and I was starting to burn out and to ask myself “should I not be writing posts or building links?” After reading your post I feel relieved, it looks like what I’m doing makes sense after all, so I’ll stick with that until it’s finished.
I have a question: what are the immediately doable and work links and what do you exactly do with them?
Thanks again
I agree, this is hardly advanced. It’s just difficult for people with low self-control and focus levels. (Those folks also have difficulty with “success” though.)
I thought this was an excellent piece, man. Thank you.
Hey Andrea, immediately “doable” links simply mean links that are easy to attain on your own. For instance, you may see that the site is getting links from a forum signature. This is immediately doable. A working link is a link that you may have to contact the webmaster or work out a strategy to barter for a link. Sometimes this is as easy as asking. Other times it may be one of those things where you join their community and make yourself known. Those kinds of links are pretty much negligible if your content isn’t worthy of the niche you are in though. They are the links that you want the most.
By the way, the keyword academy is a good place to start because Court teaches in a way that can get you started and focused on doing the things you need to do. I don’t actually agree with the focus on PR but I can see where it would be a good gauge for a beginner to decide what will work and what won’t.
@ Phil The 260 is just a full year of daily plans minus the weekends. Of course, I leave out other holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving but the point is that you should always be about a year ahead of schedule in as far as plans are concerned. It will keep you more focused and goal oriented and while it may seem daunting at first, it really isn’t. Once you have a plan in the works and a list of links to work from, you can easily build your schedule in about a day.
The 5-20 links is just an example and would really depend on your niche, the competition in your niche and how quickly you can rank. The hard part is the original content of the website, the keyword and competitive research (aka market research). Once that is done, building links becomes easy.
Of course, there are other things to consider. I know a lot of people speak about content not being that important but understand that when you if you build a site that isn’t unique and doesn’t have good content, you will have to spend a lot more time on building axillary pages for your links and “tiers” yourself. The better the content, the more likely you will freely get links from those in your niche without asking for them. The only key is to make yourself visible enough for them to know you are around.
Obviously, I am not talking about a 4 page micro niche site here. Those types of sites rarely will get linked up from other webmasters. I am talking about building a large site with useful content that the authorities in that niche would deem as informative and good enough to link to. If you do the leg work and learn your niche, you will make life on yourself a whole hell of a lot easier. Most internet marketers don’t think like this though and it is primarily why they don’t try to tackle large projects that requires them to actually become an expert in their field….they would rather write junk articles for ezine and point them to their junk site.
As far as approach to tackling the harder links, use your imagination. Sometimes, you can simply ask. Other times, you will need to join a community. Sometimes a little payment will work. If you can’t get them to link to you, check out the links that link to them. If nothing works, simply move on to the next.
Thanks Justin. Those kinds of comments kind of take me aback. There is this belief that internet marketing is easy. It is if you are attacking microniches and long tails. Anyone can make a couple hundred bucks a month doing that. But if you want to earn a living online, the not-so-fun stuff is what separates the chumps from the winners. And I can’t think of anything more “not fun” than keyword and market research, content development, site development and building a long term plan…..ummmmm….wait a minute….isn’t that what internet marketing is about?
Hey Leo,
Been keeping up with your blog for the last couple of months – you’re one of a small handful of Internet marketers I’ve found worth reading. I really like the approach to link building that you laid out. Separating it out down to tasks for each specific day is a perfect way to stay focused and keep moving in the right direction. I’m looking forward to applying it to my own projects.
So True Leo, lol. I thought moving from my job to full time would make me more productive — NOPE. I may just have to do a significant portion of my work offline now — it’s just way too easy to BS around instead of do work.
Good tips!
Ben
Great post. I like how deep into the details you get and how “elegant” your approach is.
So you have about 80 high quality articles for your authority site, 200 more articles, in addition to the keyword research and link building work. Just out of curiosity (assuming you write all those articles), how much time do you put towards work each day?
Saving web pages to refer to offline really made me have a “duh” moment. Such a simple idea but I never thought of doing it. The link building strategy is brilliant. It’s posts like this that make me love this blog.
@ Anthony Less work than you think but more than most.
I spend roughly 4 hours in the morning working and then 4 hours late at night after my wife goes to bed. I used to work a lot more but a few years back decided that allowing a business to totally consume your life is not the most healthy of choices. These days I take off weekends and spend as much time with my wife and daughter as possible.
@ DL- Yeah, the more offline you can go, the more productive you will be. Very few bother for whatever reason but the online world is a toxic time sink. Working offline for me at least, means solid hours of work with no temptations to check email and other junk. All in all, I spend more time with my family and have more time to do the things I love.
Hey – your little notice at the end of your posts wants me to say what I think, so I will.
Your writing is one of the most useful things I’ve read on the web – I feel like I have a grasp of the basics but reading your posts has taught me at least 3 very valuable concepts just today, and I’ve already implemented some of it on some of my sites (linking to other trusted sites, in depth analysis of competitions links). Thanks!
you definitely gave me some things to think about with this post. I’ve been playing around but I think it’s time to settle down and get serious with IM in terms of building authority sites and waiting as long as a year to rank up.
One question, do you think it would be possible with any topic? Say going up against a company that does everything BIG, advertises online/offline/billboards/television/radio and all.
Sounds to me like something I would back away from, with my experience level, but could there ever be a possibility? I know it might be a few years, but that is one cool accomplishment to have.
For example, I want to rank for “McDonald’s recipe”, and the ranking site is obviously Mickey D’s. Say they get hit up with massive amounts of links, they have the trust offline/online, and for now let’s say they own the fast food business. If someone wants a quick dirty meal, Ronald and his gang of characters instantly come to mind.
But I come along and want to rank for that same word. It seems that it gets a good volume, and there are even advertisers claiming to have a recipe, and they’re making some good money – who nows, but it’s working and has been for a while, so they may be onto something. So I go for it, but I check the top 10 and see M.D. hitting #1. They have a page on the recipe, nothing special just boasting how cool it is, and the page gets 50 links from fans and a couple “famous” people in the news who have this unstoppable craving and just want the world to know how good this food is. Now I see that page with a few links and I know something is off, I check the overall site and the links are out of this world – around 150k ish with a lot of reputable sources in the Big G’s eyes.
My question is, would it be worth my time going after “McDonald’s recipe” going head to head with a business that advertises wherever the human eye will land on and is a pretty well known company worldwide. Would it be worth it solely as an adsense publisher, or would a guy with another fast food company, say Burger King, be better off in that race.
I’m wondering where the limits are to hitting it with adsense only, and then when to “step it up” to make a serious business online against the big boys.
I know I’m thinking big for a noob, but I can’t help to think big in whatever I’m thinking about. I’m ready and willing and…. I just can’t knock anything out with a niche site. I could build authority sites left and right, hit them up with good content and promote 6 ways until Sunday…so I’ve pretty much given up on the little guys and decided to sit in for the big ride and have 1 -3 authority sites up this year and see how the journey goes.
Any advice? As you already know, my own writing and ideas get thrown around a lot and I should probably let this site for a while and try to clarify, but I’ll be glad to post this now and answer anything later – being lazy is one bad habit that has been with me from birth. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll settle down and knock anything out of the park, but when I get off that track, this train won’t be moving for awhile.
Hey Franck…that is actually a pretty good question and I guess it all depends on what your hopes are in regards to the search term. Chances are pretty slim that you will get enough links to oust Mcd’s out of #1. It ain’t impossible but it is likely improbable, especially given the fact that google’s new algo seems to favor brands.
All that said, you could strategize a little. For instance, if you could rank #2 and your description was appealing enough (folks do read the descriptions)….say controversial…then you could draw them in.
Personally, I don’t go up against corporate giants. There are too many other terms out there that are far easier to rank for though.
Great information as always Leo.
I can really relate to working offline to create all your content. I am afraid I tend to work by the seat of pants in the sense that every day I sit down and start to write without a clear idea of where I am going. I have a list of keywords I want to hit for my site but I really don’t have it mapped out. This post helps to clarify where I need to get for the next step.
I want to work this from a part time business into a full time and I can see I really need to spend more time on the front end and making a plan. I had thought about how a business plan would work on IM but really never had a good direction. This post gives me some great ideas and maybe a kick in the pants to move my game up a notch.
Thank you, help like this means a lot to me as I try to build my business into a full time endeavor.
Kenneth is correct, a lot of this is over my head right now.
“(working silos if necessary but making sure that the pages I link to are synonymic and relative to one another).”
Say whaaaa?
But it’s a good thing. It means I am learning. This blog is full of posts that I come back to over and over. Some I copy and paste so I can read them offline over and over. Sometimes I wish that some of the more difficult stuff was spelled out for my little newbie mind, but I go away and do stuff for a month or two and then come back and read the same article again and learn more from it. This is way better than 99% percent of the sites out there that I waste valuable minutes skimming, only to find that they are rehashing the same old info.
Thanks for sharing this info, Leo.
@ Kenneth
Just keep plugging away. You will get it. Internet marketing is more of a journey than a destination. I find that I am learning still….doubt that will ever change anytime in the future. If there comes a point where I think I know it all (which won’t be the case), I will probably quit and do something else. The challenge is the reason why I enjoy it.
Hey Leo!
I’m a newbie to your site and a newbie to blogging. Arrived here via Allyan Hayne->Griz->here I am!
It looks like you have a good art/science worked out for this so if you have the time, I think a lot of new folks might benefit if you would be kind enough to break down the money making strategy to see if I have the basics correct?
Premise 1 (as understood by me from reading this post): Finding the right keywords so that your money site gets found + inbound links for more targeted traffic and higher search engine rank is the key to getting high volume and targeted traffic to your site –
Right?
Unstated premise 2 – you make your money by writing good content on your niche topic (like Kabucha tea, for example) and then selling advertising/affiliate links etc. Assuming you are drawing in a lot of traffic based on premise #1.
Correct?
Tactic # 1 – Keyword research – So what I know about keyword research as a newbie is that you go to google keyword tool find out the volume of various search terms and try and use those terms in your content. Now that is like saying an atom is made up of electrons, and protons – it’s technically correct bit there is obviously SO much more to it.
So what am I missing – a keyword program like keyword academy or something like that?
Tactic # 2 – Link building/competition research
A) So, you state that you need to find out who is linking to your competition.
How? What tool or mechanical Google backlink search capability do you use to do this?
B) Okay, assuming you’ve found a bunch of sites linking to your competition – is your goal to then go to those sites and try to get a link to your site too?
Am I getting that part correct?
Assuming that’s correct, you say you break it down into 2 categories:
i) Immediately doable – does this mean it’s like a simple directory site or something where all you have to do is list your URL (alongside your competitor’s?).
ii) Needs work – is that something akin to blogengage or Facebook or something where you have to actually write content and build a presence in order to get folks to link back to your money site?
Do you have to keep revisiting those sites to keep dropping links. No body likes a link spammer so I do’t think I understanding this step correctly…
Now in each scenario of the link building strategy, you mention that you link deep within your money site – what is the significance of that. Doesn;t that also mean you have to write a ton of keyword optimized content before you eben know where you’re going to promote it?
Premise # 3 – Okay – how in the hell does anyone expect a Mom from Topeka who “doesn’t even have a wensite” to make “a fortune online”. Well – obviously noone does – but how are newbies like me and many of the commenters here supposed to compete with folks like you who alrady know what they are doing and have this welloiled machine already in place? I”m still struggling with trying to fond out if I have Google Analytics set up aright and if my blog permalink structure is hurting or hindering me.
And cononical links – WTF?
In other words – jeesze – theis stuff seems like chasing the horizon sometimes, the closer you get the further away it goes…
Hellllppppppppp….~
Thanks!
- Don
Hey Don, you are over-thinking things, man.
Exactly…if your goal is to use organic search to get traffic. Sometimes, you can find targeted traffic by just using your noggin’ and figuring where your market congregates. However, if you go this route, you can’t depend on them clicking adsense ads..because most likely they won’t.
Keyword research tools are overrated and tend to oversimplify things. Knowing your market first will help you hone in on their online conversations. I can’t state that enough. I do use keyword research tools but I tend to use them to hone in on general keywords. Google gives you all the clues you need to figure out what your market is searching for (go to google.com and start typing in what you are searching for…you will see google give you a number of options that it thinks you are looking for….now go to a search query and scroll down to the bottom…..you will see “related searches”….now look at the ads around it….these are from real people who are spending real money and trying to target the same people you are hoping to reach….)
All that said, I use micro niche finder sometimes.
Partly right. You do competitive research to see what kind of work went into getting to where they are at. If you can get the same links that they are getting, good. If you can’t, you will need to find other creative ways to grab links. I usually try to find links in weird places using the premise that if anyone can get them, they aren’t worth a lot. Most niches have golden links that for whatever reason, will help to boost authority. A lot of times it has to do with where they are getting links. Going about getting these links is another story altogether. Sometimes, you can ask for them. Other times, you buy them. It really just depends.
Yes, a directory link, in most cases is immediately doable. So is an article for an article directory. They aren’t worth that much but whatever.
Links that need to be worked on typically means either networking with other webmasters or writing link bait, vying for guest posts, ect. These aren’t as easy to get as you would think.
No. The links you get from these types of site are typically negotiated or they think you are crazy cool. The spam type links should be far removed from your site until you gain authority from Google.
Deep linking simply refers to linking to pages other than your “home” page. Natural link acquisition usually happens from within pages. People rarely mention websites naturally…they mention articles and pages. You link juice should filter upward naturally to your main page.
You simply learn. I didn’t get here yesterday. What I know (or think I know, lol) was accumulated over many years. You learn a little, take a couple steps forward…fall on your face…get up and think “I don’t want to do that again“….wipe yourself off and take a couple more steps forward. After awhile, you find something that works for you and you simply create a system.
I know that people like Griz make things look so easy that anyone can do it. And for him, it is. But I will use the example of when I used to play and teach guitar. I would play something for someone who couldn’t even make an E chord. They would watch and tell me things like “I will be where you are at in one year.” Most never made it. They didn’t take into account that I had been playing for 15 years. They thought that just because I made it look effortless, that they should be able to too. The ones that stuck at it, made it there, but it wasn’t within a year.
Do you understand the point I am making here? Stick with it, take your lumps….learn from your lumps and if you are smart, you will begin to figure it out. It takes a bit of time but nothing that comes easy is worth it. And if the dip associated with making money online was not that steep, more people would be making money online, but the payoff wouldn’t be near as big.