There have been so many BIG Google changes recently, it can get kind of difficult to follow. The talk for over 12 months has been the impact of Panda on the internet. Now it seems Google are handing out penalties for “un-natural link building” left right and center. As always though, with these penalties, Google is vague, never explaining what actually constitutes an “un-natural link”, where yours are and what they expect you to do to fix up the issue, so the poor business owners have no way of working out what to do from there to rebuild their reputation with Google.

Quite a quandary really  given in most cases you have absolutely no power over who links to your website.

How SEO Companies Seem To Be Responding

Being in the industry, I keep my ear to the ground all the time. I am very interested to hear what the seasoned (and initiate) SEO professionals think about each set of Google changes. Even more interesting is their take on the SEO strategies that still work and what all the new strategies are. I find it interesting as up to this year, there has always been talk about the best ways to operate given Google’s “new rules” – or the best way to take advantage of the new environment. Strategies to get around or take advantage of.

Over the last month or two, from my perspective something has shifted. Most of the talk now seems about how to operate effectively with Google’s new rules, how to create an internet that is useful for everyone, which gets rid of all the junk out there. Most of the strategies about content seem to emphasize quality and useful information. Many of the link building strategies seem focused on ensuring your link building is aimed at directing qualified traffic to your website, rather than just SEO.

The internet seems to be evolving – the industry seems to be moving in behind the great leader.

Where Will SEO Evolve To From Here

The real problem that seems to be coming out of these rule changes and Google penalties is that they get applied to businesses for things out of those business’s control. As mentioned in the first paragraph, at the end of the day the only website that you have control of the links on, is yours. That means that it is next to impossible for you to get rid of “suspicious” links to your website and also, other people (ie. you competitors) can build these suspicious links with the specific intent of damaging your business. There already seems to be a disturbing industry growing to do just this, which the professionals are calling “negative SEO”.

Talk about Yin and Yang – no positive can exist without the opposing negative. Will Google ever achieve what it strives for? And will it do so before everyone gets tired of the continual slaps and changes and finds other sources of traffic. Only the future will tell.

The top of the tree in Google should be the goal for any website looking to achieve results; however, there are sensible ways of pursuing this goal based on research and facts. Before taking on an SEO Company, a business should take the time to test what that company is already doing for other like businesses.

Firstly, check out the SEO Companies own website to see whether it is optimized correctly. Would you work out with a personal trainer who was overweight or go to a mechanic who drove a bomb that always broke down? Of course not! So why then trust the SEO of your website to someone who can’t keep their own site updated, functional and current. Make sure you can find the internet marketing company in Google when you are searching for their services.

Secondly, find out what they are actually quoting you for. If the quote seems too low in comparison to others, then expect more bills along the way for extras not included in the initial quote. If the quote is much higher than the rest, make sure absolutely everything is included in the price so there are no surprises. Whenever a quote is provided by an SEO company, ask them to justify it with some analysis, statistics and an indication of work involved.

Next and most importantly, ask them for the phone numbers of their past and present clients so you can speak to them. A testimonial is a powerful tool and many people buy simply from the strength of word of mouth. If they can’t provide a solid, current example of someone you can verify their services with, then forget them.

Finally test some of their client’s websites for keywords and rankings. Find out the keywords they were targeting and type them into Google. Do you see their website? Do they seem like an authority for that industry? If not, then the SEO Company hasn’t done their job properly.

Don’t just trust an important step like SEO to just any SEO Company. At Ocean Feather Internet Marketing they stand behind their professionalism and experience in the industry. Check out the testimonials tab on their website to see clients raving about their services. Ocean Feather welcomes the opportunity to provide the contact details of any of their clients for verification of their services.

It is an useful fact to know that internet marketing is both an expense for and an investment in your business.

It is an investment as every dollar you spend helps your business win you more leads, clients, revenue and profits which ultimately improves the value of your business – which is an asset in itself. Every dollar you spend wisely on effective internet marketing will pay you dividends with a more profitable business

Your accountant records spending on internet marketing as an expense though, as it is money spent on operating the business which is directly correlated to producing income in the business. Most importantly though, your accountant will record this spending as a tax deductible expense.

These two points are very important to understand as we come into the end of the tax year, as this is when we all look for ways to reduce our tax bill for next year.

How To Save Money With 6 Month and 12 Month Internet Marketing Plans

Have you done your tax planning for the 2011/2012 financial year yet? Have you recognised that you will have a large tax bill at the end of the year that you are looking for ways to reduce? If so, we have a perfect solution for you. You can now reduce both your tax bill for this year and tax installments for next year, while investing in your online marketing and business for 2012/2013.

To help both  our clients and any future clients who come on board with their tax planning, we offer 6 month and 12 month advanced internet marketing plans. What these plans do is lock in 6 months or 12 months of internet marketing services for next year, while making sure you can claim the tax deductions this year. This means that when you do your EOFY tax return, your tax bill will be smaller, saving you money and improving your cash flow.

Further, as your tax bill is smaller this year, you will have smaller tax installments during next year and therefore your cash flow position will be better off for the whole of the 2012/2013 financial year. Now, we are not accountants, so don’t take our word for this – but do speak to YOUR accountant to verify how this works.

On the investment side of the equation, internet marketing is an ongoing effort and we encourage all our clients to take a long term view. There are no magical wands with internet marketing. For the best long term results, you need to have a long term view. This is the other benefit of a 6 or 12 month investment, you lock in the work for the following year meaning you absolutely get the benefit of a consistent and comprehensive long term approach to your internet marketing efforts.

12 Month Internet Marketing Plans and Bonuses

As mentioned above, we encourage all our clients to take a long term view for their online marketing. We actually demand this and do not take on clients who want an immediate fix – one off jobs just do not work. So to show our commitment to our clients and to them taking a long term approach to internet marketing, we offer some bonuses to those who do commit to paid in advanced internet marketing plans. Currently the bonuses we offer to clients who pay for 12 months internet marketing are either:

• A brand new lead generate website, which would also then be tied into any SEO or PPC marketing

OR

• 7 nights accommodation in Thailand

OR

• $600 worth of website or blog copy writing

Obviously two of these bonuses will further enhance your internet marketing presence, the other will reward you for all the hard work you have done. You get to choose which one you want though.

6 Month Internet Marketing Plans Bonuses

Similarly, we have a choice of bonuses with 6 month’s advanced internet marketing commitments too. If you commit to 6 month’s internet marketing up front, you can choose from:

• A mobile site set up for your website plus 1 years hosting of this site (so people can use your website properly on iPhones and android phones etc)

OR

• A professionally designed FaceBook Page for your business

OR

• $300 of professional copy writing for your website and/or blog

So if you are looking to save tax and invest in your business, there really is no reason not to call us. Our number is (07) 5641 4660. We look forward to hearing from you.

Most businesses start up a website to generate more leads. With this in mind, the website design needs to reflect this aim. Ultimately the design of the site should professionally represent the products or services the business is selling. In turn this professional showcasing of the brand should effectively sell these products to the customers the business is targeting. Over time the website should continue to do this successfully, but in a cost effective way.

Quality design is the cornerstone of a successful website; however, this does not have to cost a fortune. Ocean Feather Internet Marketing specialise in providing a base website design package that is affordable and effective. This package includes features like a professional design, fully integrated blog, administrator rights for the customer, optimization and full training.

Despite a quality website that effectively promotes the brands of a business, the base package has many other benefits. The ability to self-administer the site means as changes need to be made to the site, it is not necessary to spend more money with web developers for alterations.  The search engine optimisation service makes the website appear higher in Google more quickly, thus generating more potential sales. Finally, with full training provided on all aspects of the site, there is a real sense of ownership by the customer. There is nothing worse than a business that feels their website is beyond their control.

Sometimes a business needs more than the base website package and Ocean Feather also provides more complex website styles to cater to different needs. For a larger investment, businesses can include shopping carts, membership facilities and auction and trade functions on their websites. Most importantly, Ocean Feather ensures all their website projects are structured to be as effective as possible in Google.

Like many aspects of business, you truly get what you pay for with website design. From base level websites with a specific budget, through to more complex sites with special functions, Ocean Feather caters to all needs. They make sure all their designs are reflective of the initial online strategy derived by the customer.

Assuming a solid strategy has been developed for the online offering of a business, the first step is a professionally designed website. Many businesses fail at this simple first step by either spending too much on their design or not enough. By spending too much, they leave themselves with no funds for the other steps in the marketing process or by spending too little, they end up with a compromised site that doesn’t reflect what they are trying to achieve. Effectiveness in website design comes from making sure the site showcases the products and services of the business, but is also affordable and maintainable over time. Ie. You need to find website companies who are familiar with both design and the marketing elements of the websites.

The next step is to generate copy for the site that will not only help sell the products and services of the business but help the site be recognised by search engines as one of importance in the industry. The copywriting stage must be guided by an Internet Marketing Professional, otherwise simple mistakes can be made. There is no point having the greatest website in the world with all the bells and whistles if no-one knows it exists.

Next in the process comes traffic generation. How are people going to make their way to the site? Again an Internet Marketing Professional is essential, especially initially to perform Search Engine Optimisation for the site. This will allow the site to start to become recognized by Google and the like. The business itself can also help drive traffic to the site through various advertising mediums such as pay per click and social media marketing. However, these must be performed in an integrated fashion and stay true to the original strategy of the business.

Sometimes, if a business has not enlisted the help of a good Website Marketer from the start, despite all the above being performed, the website may not be converting well. This results in unresponsive traffic. All is not lost though because a good Internet Marketing Professional can test the site to ascertain what is stopping the traffic from becoming leads and ultimately customers. Normally it is simple things causing the issue that can be measured and fixed over time, like variations in headings, sales copy, structure or colors.

The pathway from initial idea to strategy formation and ultimately fully functioning website is long and full of potential traps. This is typically where Internet Marketing companies like Ocean Feather can add real benefit to your company. By structuring all your online marketing effectively, we can maximise your ability to generate leads and sales using the internet, providing long term profits for your business.

Website Marketing Isn’t Design, SEO or Social Media

One of the challenges you will face when marketing your business using your website is that the internet marketing industry is very specialised. There are many elements to a successful internet marketing campaign, yet each element requires specialist skills to some degree. For example, in your campaign you may need:

• Designers to get the best of the visual aspects for your website
• Copywriters to ensure the words on your website sells as best they can
• Developers to build the technical aspects of your website
• SEO professionals to improve your positions in Google
• AdWords managers to ensure your paid online advertising works efficiently
• Social media gurus to help build your followers

The list of experts you require is extensive. The main challenge most businesses hit is that they choose a specialist in one of these fields and get an awesome result for that specialty, but as that specialty was undertaken in and of its own right (rather than as a part of a robust marketing plan) it doesn’t necessarily achieve the goals the business owner really wanted.

So the point of this post is to give you the four key elements to setting up and executing a successful online marketing campaign.

Step 1 – Internet Marketing Strategy

The first thing you need to do is work out an internet marketing strategy. I really recommend writing it down formally. At the least this should specify exactly what you are trying to do (leads, sales, develop your database etc) and how this fits with your overall marketing strategy. There are other things you should consider too. Some of these considerations include:

• What is your monthly budget
• How much time you can work on your internet marketing yourself
• How much can you afford to spend before you close a client

Once you get all this information down, you can use it to guide your online marketing specialists, no matter what their niche expertise is. Just keep them accountable to your documented strategic goals

Step 2 – Website Marketing: Designing Your Advert

Your website is not a piece of art, nor is it an online brochure, it is actually an advert trying to sell the message you defined in your internet marketing strategy. So when designing, building and populating your website with content, always ask the question “is this activity consistent with the goals of my strategy?” Everything you do should promote your marketing goals and further your ability to achieve what you documented in the strategy.

As you progress with your internet marketing objectives, you can keep going back to the strategy, reviewing your website and seeing if there are things you can change to promote your strategy better and get a better result. If recommended changes improve the performance (as per your strategic objectives) of your website, these changes should be made. If they are gratuitous though and won’t impact results, the changes are just a waste of time and money and should probably be avoided.

Step 3 – Traffic: Targeted People To View Your Advert

There are many different ways to get traffic to your website. Search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising are just two of them.  What you need to do when working out the best way to get people to your website is answer the following questions for your industry:

• Where are my prospects today?
• What do they do when looking for my services?
• What messages do they respond to when looking for my services?
• What is best way for me to put my message in front of them so they respond by visiting my website (or calling me direct)

Once you answer those questions you will have by default, developed the traffic steps of your internet marketing strategy, all you need to do from there is implement that strategy.

Step 4 – Constant Improvement: Test, Measure, Refine

The final stage of the process is testing and measuring the results. If you get the perfect results immediately – well done, that is really impressive. Really ramp up your efforts and start cashing those cheques. If things are not working out 100% at this stage, don’t lose heart your part of the 95% of the rest of us. Don’t give up though, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Follow these steps to improve your results:

1. Review your strategy and refresh in your mind exactly what you are trying to achieve?
2. Review your website – are there elements in it that are getting in the way of the end goal?
3. If so, take the appropriate corrective action immediately. Doing so will immediately improve your conversions and therefore profits, without even needing to increase your traffic
4. Then review your traffic sources and volumes. Are these targeted correctly? Are the volumes sufficient to achieve your goals?
5. If not, take immediate corrective action. Improving your levels of traffic will increase conversions in proportion to the additional traffic.
6. Test and measure the results of these changes

Successful internet marketing is not a set once and leave proposition. You really do need to take a long term approach and keep working at it.

I hope these 4 steps give you a great guide for how you can accomplish improved business success, through online marketing.

I have a little bit of a different view of the impact of Google Panda than what many of my esteemed industry colleagues do. In fact, I am quite bemused by the ongoing “end of the world” style of emails that I am bombarded with as the Panda changes are deployed. To me and the team at Ocean Feather though, nothing really has changed. It is business as usual. There are two main reasons why by my interpretation and I am putting them down in simple terms for you to think about.

What Does Google Want?

The first point I want to raise is that though Google continues to change (you’d actually be amazed by the number of changes Google makes – over 500 a year) their overall direction has always been the same and that is to provide an exceptional search engine so you can find what you are looking for, when you are looking for it. What this means is that Google wants to see quality information and products on websites, so when you are looking for advice or something to solve a need you have, not only can you find it simply and easily, but you can find the most relevant option first.

What Google Doesn’t Want!

Simply put, Google doesn’t want anything that gets in the way of this. Three BIG examples of how this has manifested on the internet is rubbish, illegible and useless information being dumped on websites, information being copied from one website then rehashed everywhere and websites being put up to be purely full of advertising material. Each of these examples creates pages and information that takes you, Google’s end client, one step further away from finding the solution you need. These three examples are by no means exclusive either.

How Panda Fits And SEO Today

Unfortunately, many SEO companies have insisted on pumping ridiculous amounts of rubbish information and websites throughout the internet, with the intention of boosting their or their client’s websites in Google’s results. Its pretty bad some of the practises that I have seen over the years. The worst from my perspective has been picking up SEO clients who have had the wording on their websites completely re-written with just search engine optimisation in mind. Reading some of my client’s home pages has been impossible as the information is grammatically illegible gibberish. But it is packed with keywords assisting improvement in Google’s rankings. The key point with these types of strategy is that even if these websites do well on Google, they won’t sell anything as they information doesn’t make sense. It is really counter intuitive.

What Panda has been and is, is Google having another big effort at cleaning up the internet, getting rid of all the rubbish. Caffeine was an example before this, and there have been other examples before that. Interestingly, none of my clients have ever been negatively impacted by these changes, many have actually improved their positions. Many people ask me how this can be. The answer is simple.

Google wants quality, unique information on the internet. This could come from a variety of different media, but to do well in Google, you give Google what it wants. Quality Unique Information. You do this with every single element of you online marketing efforts. You make sure your website information, your blog posts, your social media posts, your link building efforts and anything else you do online, adds value to the internet and makes the internet a better place.

I’ll give you an example. If you look at my blog here, I have hand written every post. I have not found some cheap article writer or VA to pump out copious quantities of material that is practically worthless, rather I give my industry expert opinion on matters I think are relevant to you. With this post for example, I have not rehashed someone else’s information, rather I have given you my personal thoughts on what I think Panda means and my tips on how it applies to your online marketing.

That’s providing quality and unique information. That’s what you should be doing in your industry.

If you keep this concept as your #1 principle with online marketing, over the fullness of time you will do very well. If you look for the next “quick cheap cheat” to get to page 1, you may have some short term success, but at some stage you’ll be panicking about the next Google clean up and how it has devastated your online marketing and possibly your business.

One of the most common challenges I find with internet marketing is getting clients to move away from heart decisions and move toward head decisions. What do I mean by this?

Its simple really. Typically a business at some stage will or has decided to go online. They make this decision as they want to increase sales and recognise that everyone uses the internet to find businesses they are looking for – so no doubt their clients are looking for their products on the internet also. So the driver is “We need to go online to make sure we get more clients – online marketing should be part of our overall marketing efforts.” This decision is a head decision. One which is driven by logic.

The next step is where the process breaks down. The business owner will find a web designer, a graphic artist or someone else who develops websites and say something like “I need to be online, please develop me a website, this is how I want it to look“. The most important factor to most businesses at this point in the process is making sure the website looks good. This is a heart decision. It goes further than that too though. You would be amazed by the number of new clients who come to me saying “I am not getting any business from my website, but everyone tells me its great. I love its style, the way it looks, so I don’t want to change it”. I find comments like this pretty amazing – how can a business person love a website that isn’t generating business. This is exactly the same as saying that you love your yellow pages ad, or newspaper ad despite the fact no-one is buying from you. All these types of comments come from the heart. Unfortunately, heart decisions in advertising don’t make you money.

Why You Must Use Head Decisions With Website Marketing

The first question you must ask yourself when doing website marketing is: “What is the purpose of this?”. Especially when you implementing things like website design, where the result of the activity will be set for some time. Your website is your online advertisement. The first thing you should tell your designer is not how it should look, but what it should do. “I’d like this website to generate leads for my sales guys to follow up” is a much better directive than one based on design. The design should fit the purpose of the site, not vice versa.

If you don’t believe me, you should ask me to show you some tests I have conducted on high end website designs, where I have created a website variation which completely strips away all design leaving just the website conversion mechanism. Often these convert up to 50% better than the beautiful websites. These test results leave clients with a real head/heart dilemma – do they want a website that they love the look of or a website that makes them money. Which one would you choose?

To celebrate the launch of this new brand, we are going to give away:

7 Nights Accommodation In Thailand

We will give this away to someone who fills in the form on the right hand side of this page with the message “I want to go to Thailand”. People who tell us their most frustrating internet marketing challenge or are followers of our FaceBook fan page will be considered. Here is the link again to Ocean Feather’s FaceBook Page

Details of this package include:

• Up To 2 People Sharing
• Pool or Hillside Room at the Patong Grand Ville in Phuket
• Breakfast Daily
• Valid for travel between 1st May 2012 and 31st October 2012
• Only 5 minutes to Patong Beach

(Note: this does not include flights)

So fill in the form, like our FaceBook Page and wait till the 16th April 2012

First step for an internet marketing strategy

All internet marketing strategies should begin by answering the question:

“What am I trying to achieve with online marketing?”

Its amazing how few businesses deliberately reflect on this question… and the answers are many and varied. Here are some variations which have been relevant to many of my clients:

• Direct sales for a shopping cart website
• Lead generation for a professional client
• Sign up to an email database for someone preparing for a new product launch
• Assist with brand awareness – no direct online sales but part of the sales process
• Provide information for existing clients (in this case students)
• A membership site for gambling tips
• Add credibility to the tender process

You will see how different each of these purposes is. Given each is so different, they should each have a completely different structured marketing strategy.

Document your purpose before you undertake any internet marketing work.

Step 2 for an internet marketing strategy

Once you understand why you are doing this, what you are trying to achieve, you can create your advertisement. In most cases, your advertisement will be a website, but these days it could also be a social media presence.

Regardless of the form of advertisement, when creating it it must be done with the specific intent of achieving the purpose you have defined in step 1. The structure of your advert AND the copy will be very different depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Ie. There is no point in having a direct response sales letter on a brand building style of website. This will simply make your piece of branding look tacky. Similarly, information copy on shopping cart websites just do not sell.

Step 3 for an internet marketing strategy

Next you put your advert in front of your target audience. This means you need to generate traffic to your online advertisement. There are many ways you can do this, I have included some ideas below:

• SEO
• Pay Per Click advertising
• Social Media activities
• Email a database
• Use business cards
• Networking and or seminars
• Any form of print advertising

Yes – you can use non-online means to promote your online efforts.

Step 4 for an internet marketing strategy

Now that you have people looking at your advert, you need to monitor what they are doing. Is your target audience responding to your advert as you expect them to do, converting commercially in the way you defined in step 1 of this process? You need to be able to measure this.

Once you are getting statistics about the performance of this marketing strategy, you can take measures to improve it.

Final step for an internet marketing strategy

Review step 2, 3 and 4 of your internet marketing strategy. Are there things you can improve? Think logically and creatively. If there are, do NOT just plow ahead and put them in. Take a deep breath, find some testing software and set up some tests.

Each time you want to try something different, split test performance against what you currently have to make sure the change adds lasting value to your business. Random and untested changes (including brand new websites) are simply gambles.

Think, test and measure to get lasting and long term improvements in your online marketing performance.