2-17-12 Newsletter: Live Training, R100k, Cool Tools – It’s All Happening!

Hello!

We have some great announcements, and some great freebies for you, so let’s get to it!

Live Training

In case you didn’t see our email or forum post on Feb. 10th, we mentioned that we were looking to start providing free live training, and asked for your feedback – suggestions on what you would most like to see us go over.

The response was strong (thanks to those that took the time to post or email us) and gave us a good picture of where many of you are, and your current needs.

We’re now ready to begin. We’ll be offering training 2x per month, on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays. The first one will be this coming Thursday, February 23rd, at 9pm EST, and run for 1 hour. We’ll be sending out a link to sign up on Monday.

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Stepping Into Google’s Mindset: Creating Effective Websites

Though there are numerous ways to make money online without having your own website, most internet marketing business models revolve around building one or more sites. And for most purposes, many of the objectives are the same: traffic & conversions. But as with so many things, it’s often the details that make the difference between success and failure.

In this new “Internet Marketing 2.0″ world, we’re seeing more critical and more frequent changes in how sites are ranked, how and where traffic is generated,  and the viability & success of monetization methods.

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Keyword Ranking – What Doesn’t Work, What Does, and How To Do It

keyword rankingFor as long as Google has been around, marketers and webmasters have been trying to rank for specific keywords. Before Google, most search engines mixed ‘real’ (organic) and ‘sponsored’ (paid) results, and it was easier to rank by simply buying a position. Regardless, the available traffic – the number of searches and amount of commerce – was still relatively low.

Once we reached the point where significant sums could be made by targeting individual keywords & phrases, the ‘game’ was on. In the “early days”, when the sophistication of search was considerably lower, it was possible to gain top rankings through simple tactics such as keyword stuffing. As search evolved, the effort required evolved with it.

Since the value of a top listing can be huge, and grows along with the general growth of internet usage, a whole cottage industry of keyword ranking has grown up in the internet marketing industry. Along with various keyword and website tools, products such as George Brown’s “Google Sniper” and “Google Sniper 2″, and John James Robinson’s (‘xfactor’) “Micro Niche Adsense Course” exploited these opportunities with courses in how to build and rank these ‘single-keyword-focused’ sites “quickly & easily”.

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It Had To Happen: Disruptive Correction, and the Death Of Internet Marketing

death of internet marketingIf you are involved in Internet Marketing, your world is about to change, in a profound and massive way.

There have already been some huge changes, or “shifts” in the Internet Marketing space this past year – chief among them Google’s “Panda” updates, but many others such as the Federal Trade Commission bans.

As big as they are, however, they’re just the “tip” of what’s about to happen. Everything – really, everything – is about to change. I don’t mean an algorithm change / update, or a TOS change, I mean everything.

And not just at Google.

What follows is a report I wrote entitled “Disruptive Correction, and the Death Of Internet Marketing”. It describes and explains what is undoubtedly the most significant change in internet marketing since the field began, the death of “Internet Marketing 1.0″

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The Post-”Panda” Internet Marketing Article On Article Marketing

Article marketing is still one of the quickest, easiest, and surest means to generate traffic. While article marketing is used extensively for link building, it is also a tremendous source of very targeted traffic. With as little as one article, we can begin generating quality, targeted traffic almost immediately. Taking it a step further however, article marketing can be one of the strongest, long-term traffic strategies there are.

Anyone who has perused the various Internet marketing forums has probably seen numerous threads proclaiming the “death of article marketing”. Fortunately this couldn’t be further from the truth. What is true however, is that the days of profiting from low-quality, poorly researched articles are long gone.

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The New Rules For Content Quality

Whether you’ve been making money online for a while, or are just starting out, one truth that holds for every business model and strategy is the old maxim “content is king”. In fact, it’s truer today than it’s ever been – and with deeper implications.

The purpose for our content may vary – articles for article marketing, website content, Web 2.0 posts as a platform, or for linkbuilding, etc. – but whatever the purpose, we need our content to get indexed in order for it to ‘work’. In some cases, we want it not just to get indexed, but to rank well.

Beginning in Feb. 2011, Google’s ongoing “Panda” updates imposed some sweeping changes on the world of content. “Low quality” content is increasingly disappearing, being de-indexed or not indexed in the first place, and at best, struggling to rank well.

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The “New World” of Internet Marketing: Where’s It All Going?

A few years ago, I read a report by Internet Marketing legend John Reese about the future of IM. In it, he talked about how the industry was reaching that shift from the “early adopters” to the larger, more mainstream world at large. His premise was that IM would become more competitive, with higher barriers to entry, and as such those in developing nations would begin to have the edge.

When the costs begin to rise, those who can profit by earning $100 from 40 hours of work will start edging out the “easy money” crowd who can’t compete on that scale.

That report changed how I viewed the industry profoundly. Most significantly, I began to consider the longer-term changes and trends – what they might be, and what effect they might have.

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Choosing A Niche, Part 1

I get the awesome opportunity to do a lot of presentations & webinars. Most of them are in support of one of our “$100k Blueprint” courses, and go over some ‘common’ concepts and information. We always end with a Q & A session – plus the webinar application allows attendees to post questions during the presentation. As a result, we get an invaluable perspective on what marketers are thinking, where their uncertainties are, and what aspects of the business they feel least certain about.

Invariably, niche and keyword research top the list of things internet marketers want to do ‘better’.

Niche marketing is at the heart of virtually all of our making money online efforts. Whether we’re building Adsense sites, email opt-in lists, or affiliate marketing sites, everything revolves around a niche. Choose the niche properly, and everything else moves forward smoothly. Choose poorly, and no amount of effort is going to result in optimized returns.

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Boost Conversions, Boost Income

Shortly after releasing “Adsense $100k Blueprint“, we began to get feedback on the course, and customers specific efforts. The two things we heard most often were, how do I get more traffic to my site, and how do I apply these methods to other ways of making money online – other business models i.e. Amazon affiliate sites, video marketing, etc. That was the genesis of “Traffic $100k Blueprint“.

When we began work on our Adsense course, our goal was to provide a step-by-step plan that virtually anyone could follow that would enable them to build a strong, sustainable business. When all was said and done, we realized we had two ‘complimentary’ results: how to build & rank a niche website, and how to optimize a website for maximum Adsense revenue.

Within the A100k course, the ‘traffic equation’ was all about ranking: providing you did your upfront keyword research properly, you would follow the plan to get your Page 1 rankings for your keyword phrases, which in turn would translate into traffic to your site. But search engines only represent a part of the overall available traffic. And so we set about to list all the other free traffic sources we were using ourselves, along with some explanations on how to best leverage them. That took care of the traffic question.

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Quick & Easy Rankings Boost For Your Blogs After “Panda”

Google Panda UpdateMany people have seen their rankings tank after Google’s “Panda” update, or been unable to improve their current rankings. This is due to the two main ranking aspects of the update: de-valuing of certain backlink types & sources, and new “quality signals” for evaluating the quality, strength, and relevance of pages.

Since the update, I’ve been experimenting with some “passive” ways to boost blog rankings. By “passive” I mean without getting new backlinks or adding new content. While these are certainly the means for good and improved rankings, I wanted to see if current rankings could be affected by modifying a blog “as-is”, while not significantly altering it’s already-indexed URL’s.

“Two and a Half” Modifications

There are three modifications that I’ve found to have the most consistent positive impact (I say “two and a half” since one of them is already implemented with many themes; for some, all three might be implemented). These are homepage content configuration, site-wide internal linking & content, and tags, specifically “H1″ tags.

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