Marketing your muse online successfully

[Livingit]

So how many of you are successfully marketing your muses online? I've spent a few years trying to make my muses succeed online before getting it down right. I thought I'd share it with you all.

In my experience getting in the natural search engine results for my products will make or break a muse. The key is finding the right company to do it. I tried to do it on my own with mediocre to no results, then hired a company and got ripped off, then I finally got major results with a good company that was referred to me from a friend.

Whomever you hire for your search marketing just make sure to do the following things:


Check references (at least 5).
Ask them what keywords they rank for in the search engines and check them out
Check with the online BBB or the BBB of their state for complaints
Find out what kind of muses they have (Especially important). If they dont have their own internal web-sites that have good rankings and produce real income they are most definintley not a good SEO firm (or they are still in training and you are their practice).


Find a few good companies, get proposals and compare prices. A good SEO company will detail almost exactly what they are going to do. You should get monthly reports of: traffic, keyword rankings, and what they've done. A good SEO firm will tell you what they are doing to build your back links in addition to optimizing your web site.

I started out with a web site that was making $2,500 a month gross with pay per click (when I hired my firm). Now I net about $45,000 1 year and 1/2 later with top natural rankings and ZERO pay per click. (I also do some affiliate marketing).

Good luck!

p.s. If you want the info on my SEO firm i'm glad to give it out as long as your not a competitor. =)

[Musefunding]

I would love to know who you use. I have been considering hiring a professional after my testing is complete.

-Bruce

[Mingo]

I am currently looking for a good online marketing company. I would greatly appreciate hearing whom you hired that delivered such an increase in traffic & sales.

[4HourMuse]

I am in the process of setting up my first muse and would appreciate the name of your SEO firm. I am also interested in finding out if you have an affiliate program. Thanks.

[webgal]

ditto regarding what 4hourmuse said. I'm interested more in affiliate marketing from an advertiser's side (instead of publishers). I incorporate SEO in copywriting and do well with it but it wouldn't hurt to see what someone else is doing.

[Livingit]

what kind of businesses do you guys have?

[gregsatt]

I own an online apartment locator service in Texas (www.FreeRentMoney.com). I need someone to optimize my site. I would greatly appreciate the name of your SEO company. You can send me an email at greg (dot) satterwhite (at) freerentmoney.com

(all the cryptics to try and cut down on the amount of spam...)

Thanks,
Greg

what kind of businesses do you guys have?

[ross27]

p.s. If you want the info on my SEO firm i'm glad to give it out as long as your not a competitor. =)
Congrats with your results, Livingit! Quite an achievement.
Just joint the forum. I'm in the business of buying real estate notes.
I would greatly appreciate the name of your SEO company.
If I'm not a competitor ;) , would you please email it to me:

brmkn@aol.com

Thanks so much for your help!
Ross

[Sven]

Remember me not to sell you anything that I come up with. It seems you will infringe my copyrights as soon as you get my work...

[James Grey]

What’s with the big secret about who you use for SEO? – that’s sort of shady dude


~James Grey

[micah7]

I'm interested in who you used, please PM me... thanks...

[James Grey]

I bet you one trillion dollars that you get a link to a sales page


~James Grey

[webgal]

I think you are exactly right James.

[EditorDude]

Going slightly OT, this is about another marketing issue. Suppose, for example, you have written an ebook about writing a novel. However, you have only written short stories of which perhaps only one has been published in a local publication. From a marketing point of view, for this sort of product, I assume people will want to know if you yourself have written a novel - it's not the same as marketing a speed reading course, such as Tim's PX Method, where only a company or product name is given, they want your name.

So, given this, should one market this product as:

1) an ebook about writing fiction in general (making adjustments to the said ebook) whilst offering website content about writing short stories (as this is what you have already accomplished) and have the option of buying this ebook
or

2) set up a blog, get some appropriate content on website and again have an option to sell ebook - in this way they become familiar with you
or

3) could a company or product name, such as Tim's PX Method, only be given with testimonials to sell this ebook - that is no information about the author and it's accomplishments will be given.

So what I am asking is which of these is the appropriate path to follow? Or if there is another marketing solution - please do share. Thank you.

[Essence]

You forgot the best option: write a novel, and publish it. :)

There's some good resources in one of the Bonus Chapters on this very website for getting the writing done, and there're a bunch of places online that will publish your book for a cut of the profits if it's successful (lulu.com is my favorite).

[bellavita]

my husband has a website for his illustrations (www.aleocha.com) and before we build it out more, we need help implementing a SEO plan - we don't think we're a competitor and would love to contact your resource.

please send info through the contact page on his website or post back.

thanks!





p.s. If you want the info on my SEO firm i'm glad to give it out as long as your not a competitor. =)

[Madmouse2]

Livingit,

I am a total newbie and cannot even afford to pay anyone to do SEO, but if I ever get to that point, it would be good to know who is good at it.

I am going to try to sell products that I design (I am an artist) and have them drop-shipped. I also want to get into affiliate sales. If I don't conflict with what you're doing (and I probably don't; you are probably doing something much more lucrative!) I would like to know who does your SEO.

Thanks.

[Nineset]

I would really appreciat the info, pertaining to the SEO company you use.

Thanks in advance

[zhongguohua88]

Livingit,

I am a total newbie and cannot even afford to pay anyone to do SEO, but if I ever get to that point, it would be good to know who is good at it.

I am going to try to sell products that I design (I am an artist) and have them drop-shipped. I also want to get into affiliate sales. If I don't conflict with what you're doing (and I probably don't; you are probably doing something much more lucrative!) I would like to know who does your SEO.

Thanks.

If your budget is limited, you might consider getting the job done by a company in India since they are much cheaper than American ones.
Elance (http://www.elance.com/rfp?rid=1BY93) and Get a Freelancer (http://www.getafreelancer.com/) are good places to start. Getting an affiliate system installed on your website is also relatively cheap and easy using these ressources. You can even pay someone a few dollars to have a search-engine optimized sale page (like Tim's speed-reading website).

It will take you much more time to do the work yourself and it probably won't be as good as a professionally done job; although it's not "free", it is worth the investment if you think your product will sell. You can also use Tim's product testing method (Chapter 9).

[shanerbock]

What’s with the big secret about who you use for SEO? – that’s sort of shady dude

~James Grey


Uh huh... Thats what I was thinking.... any SEO company would be happy to have their name on here... :)

Here is the first lesson in SEO....
1. you can go a long way, by doing it yourself! I'll post some info on this if you tell me the answer to number 2 below...

2. The kind of business, and your market, will make a HUGE difference in what is necessary and if you should ever even think about hiring someone for SEO...

Part of my businesses is to do SEO (http://netdevelopment.com... but the site is not completely ready yet so dont write me and tell me stuff isn't working...I know it isn't, I haven't relaunched the webiste yet... its still being developed.)...

And we are planning an SEO seminar for local business owners in various cities... although this page is not live yet, take a look at this for info on the workshop... You'll have to remove the spaces... I dont want this found in the the search engines... http:// net development . com / seminar.html

Anyway... I was considering holding this seminar in the form of a teleseminar (shhhh... don't tell anyone, I dont think anyone is doing this :) )... would any of you be interested in a deeply discounted rate... like... if I were to give this on a webcast for like 2 hours each meeting, once/week for 3 weeks... or something like that? For this group... I might actually do it FREE... but again.... shhhh.... dont tell anyone :) would you be interested? would you show up?

If I do it for free... I would only be asking 1 & 1/2 things of you...
1) If you like it, I'd like a testimonial... Video or mp3 would be best :)

.5) Although the first one is also optional... I don't want anyone to feel like they have to pimp their friends or anything.... so I am just over-emphasizing that this is very optional.... If you like it, and you know anyone that might benefit from it... you would refer them to future sessions...

Let me know what you guys think.


Make it a great day!
shane

[houstonscreenprint]

SEO firms / companies are so over rated. The best way to get your web site listed high in the ranks is CONTENT relevant to your product or service. It also helps to have the right meta tags on all your pages with keywords.

Google Adwords will also help get you traffic, but only after you have a well built web page with CONTENT.

JR

[shanerbock]

SEO firms / companies are so over rated. The best way to get your web site listed high in the ranks is CONTENT relevant to your product or service. It also helps to have the right meta tags on all your pages with keywords.

Google Adwords will also help get you traffic, but only after you have a well built web page with CONTENT.

JR

Actually, meta tags don't really matter much these days... most of the major SEs dont need them.

Content is great, but its not as simple as saying to just have content. That content needs to be implemented correctly to maximize the effect... for instance, one of the number one mistakes is having an unrelated title tag. The title tag is important... H1 tags are important... keywords in your links is important... keyword balance, or looking natural is important; you can't just put in boatloads of keywords and expect it to work.

Additionally, quality backlinks are important... sitemaps are important... etc, etc..etc..

Also, adwords are unrelated to SEO... sure you can get traffic from them, but it has nothing to do with SEO.

Either no one read the post I made about having a free teleseminar series... or no one thinks its a good idea... If it is a bad idea and there is no interest... that's fine... please let me know what you think either way.... I am very interested in your opion.


Thanks!

Make it a great day!
Shane

[houstonscreenprint]

Adwords gets you listed in Google faster then just waiting for your site to be index.

Case in point 1: My tshirt business - Houston Screen Print - was not showing up in Google until I started an Adwords campaign. I was already listed in the top ten on several search terms on Yahoo and MSN.

Case in point 2: I use to run an online hobby shop called Houston Hobbies. I did nothing but put about 3,000 plus products online for sale. I soon got listed on all the search engines within the top 10. I operated that site for about 4 years and then I started adding "How to" pages on several topics one being spraying latex paint with a HVLP gun. Within a week of posting the page to my webserver I was listed #1. See for yourself, Google - spraying latex paint with a HVLP gun. Even though that topic is unrelated to hobbies, it has content directly related to the search subject matter. Tie that with the fact that my website has been around for a number of years ads creditability (sp?) to my site. Something else that Google keys on.

So I beg to differ with your Shane.

JR

[shanerbock]

Hi JR,

I certainly don't like to argue... but, I do like to make sure we are propagating factual information on here as there are many people that will take advice from this forum and use it as the truth... And in this case, I'm 99.999999999999999% sure you are wrong. People should not be thinking they can buy adwords and get better search engine placement.


Adwords gets you listed in Google faster then just waiting for your site to be index.

Case in point 1: My tshirt business - Houston Screen Print - was not showing up in Google until I started an Adwords campaign. I was already listed in the top ten on several search terms on Yahoo and MSN.


On your Point 1...
Perhaps this was just a coincidence... it does take time for you to get indexed and climb the results pages sometimes... maybe it just appeared to you that they were related...

Adwords gets you listed in Google faster then just waiting for your site to be index.

Case in point 2: I use to run an online hobby shop called Houston Hobbies. I did nothing but put about 3,000 plus products online for sale. I soon got listed on all the search engines within the top 10. I operated that site for about 4 years and then I started adding "How to" pages on several topics one being spraying latex paint with a HVLP gun. Within a week of posting the page to my webserver I was listed #1. See for yourself, Google - spraying latex paint with a HVLP gun. Even though that topic is unrelated to hobbies, it has content directly related to the search subject matter. Tie that with the fact that my website has been around for a number of years ads creditability (sp?) to my site. Something else that Google keys on.


On your point 2....
Yes, age of your website can make a difference... as far as the rest of your point in number 2... I didn't even understand what you were trying to say... but, again... if you were trying to say you climbed the listings due to adwords...

Please try to find just one authoritative person/website/whatever to verify what you are saying... and post up the link.

I actually wrote google and will post the answer when I get it back.

For now... the only references to adwords improving organic rankings were all in the negative... just like this one that was just discussed today at the digital point forums (no I was not on that thread... I just happened to find it).

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=906787&highlight=adwords


Again, this is not meant to cause an argument... but just to make sure we pass along facts... We are all told things, and sometimes experience things, that lead us to believe something that isnt true sometimes. It seems that maybe you had an experience leading you to think this was true... but, my experience, and things I have read, and experiences of people I work with in this business... all shows us there is no correlation.



Make it a great day!
shane

[houstonscreenprint]

It doesn't matter if you believe me or not, I know it worked for me. And if people want to waste money on SEO companies then so be it. But I'm not going to send them a dime.

What I was trying to convey with the HVLP gun article is that once you have a site that is listed good in the search engines it's very easy to get other pages listed as long as you have relevant content. And it also helps that your website is seasoned, meaning been around for a few years.

In the early days you could get a good listing by simply repeating a lot of keywords. But as the search engines evolved they started checking more for content. Just like your Word Processing program can tell the difference between a correct sentence and a fragment, so can the search engines. They can differentiate between a site that is relevant to a particular search topic or not.

Regarding the Adwords, I started a campaign specificaly to see if it would get me listed and it did! So I've continued my campaign spending up to $90 a month for the past 2 years. Google probably will not admit to it helping your ranking but I have first hand experience. Now it may have also been the combination of the CONTENT on my site too. At any rate I'm merely posting my experience and people can try it out for themselves. If it works for them great!

JR

[hockeydoof]

So how many of you are successfully marketing your muses online? I've spent a few years trying to make my muses succeed online before getting it down right. I thought I'd share it with you all.

In my experience getting in the natural search engine results for my products will make or break a muse. The key is finding the right company to do it. I tried to do it on my own with mediocre to no results, then hired a company and got ripped off, then I finally got major results with a good company that was referred to me from a friend.

Whomever you hire for your search marketing just make sure to do the following things:


Check references (at least 5).
Ask them what keywords they rank for in the search engines and check them out
Check with the online BBB or the BBB of their state for complaints
Find out what kind of muses they have (Especially important). If they dont have their own internal web-sites that have good rankings and produce real income they are most definintley not a good SEO firm (or they are still in training and you are their practice).


Find a few good companies, get proposals and compare prices. A good SEO company will detail almost exactly what they are going to do. You should get monthly reports of: traffic, keyword rankings, and what they've done. A good SEO firm will tell you what they are doing to build your back links in addition to optimizing your web site.

I started out with a web site that was making $2,500 a month gross with pay per click (when I hired my firm). Now I net about $45,000 1 year and 1/2 later with top natural rankings and ZERO pay per click. (I also do some affiliate marketing).

Good luck!

p.s. If you want the info on my SEO firm i'm glad to give it out as long as your not a competitor. =)
Hope I'm not a competitor. I plan to dropship outdoor furniture and would love to have the referral to you SEO.

Thanks so much!

Russ

[repguy]

I have not seen anything to prove to me that adwords has an effect on natural ranking. For example I ave heard hundreds of stories about ppl who dump a tonne of $ into adwords and yet rank like crap in natural results. If it does have an effect it is minimal and Google is lying, which sure goes against "Don't be Evil" and everything else I have seen from them thus far.

The fact is the majority does not see a direct link between the 2 with regard to natural results. "spraying latex paint with a HVLP gun" does not rank you (it returns only one result and it is this thread) where as spraying latex paint with a HVLP gun does without quotes does, so I'm guessing it ranks well for other phases as well, Your results could have to do with onpage content, backlinks or even the amount of clicks it received....god knows I have had much stranger things happen then that. Who knows how Google defines what fits into a hobby site as it is. Their are too many variables to account for. I had an article on a topic outrank the item creators page which was well optimized and had many many more backlinks then mine...I never figured out why..I chalk some things up to a randomness in the Google algo.

I don't think anyone has done enough study on the topic to conclude that adwords effects natural ranking. I do agree though that using adwords most likely gets your site spidered/out of the sandbox faster but not on it's ranking in the results. I can't see a logical formula to incorporating adwords into a search engine algo.

Quality over quantity is king, I feel quality backlinks have more impact on results then anything but as has been said their are many factors we know have an effect so it would be best to concentrate on those.

[JerseyGirl]

I have not seen anything to prove to me that adwords has an effect on natural ranking. For example I ave heard hundreds of stories about ppl who dump a tonne of $ into adwords and yet rank like crap in natural results. If it does have an effect it is minimal and Google is lying, which sure goes against "Don't be Evil" and everything else I have seen from them thus far.

I actually just did a post about this back on 8/9 on my blog (www.affpreneur.com).

While I don't think that dumping money carte blanche into AdWords will affect your organic search results for 1. Very Saturated Niches or 2. Niches where you have no relevant content... I have seen some results that differ from your theory.

For example, when I have a highly targeted niche website where I know my competition is either a) pretty narrow, b) I have a really strong USP (Unique Selling Position) or c) I have better, more relavant, or more content- buying some crawls from Google AdWords and getting hits has gotten me into the 3-5 position in as little as 24 hours.

Yes, there are a lot of caveats there. But if you are affiliate marketing with any seriousness, you are probably choosing a highly targeted niche anyway.

At least- until you become a superaffiliate and have a Black Card at your disposal for AdWords spend.

[Vince]

Before you spend a dime on SEO by an 'expert', learn something about it yourself. It's worth the investment in time to at least understand the basics that serious Internet Marketing professionals use every day in their businesses. You can also learn for free, if you know where to look.

I'm a member of the Warrior Forum for Internet Marketing (http://www.warriorforum.com/index.php). It's free, has mega-tons of content on all the aspects of marketing online and is one of the best places to network with the heaviest hitters in Direct Response Internet Marketing.

WARNING: this is also a place that's guaranteed to give you 'information-overload' if you don't pick and choose what to look at. You'll find that it can become addicting to read and post there.:eek:

DISCLAIMER: I don't make a dime if you go there.

[webgal]

That forum has good info and bad info. So do pick and choose. It also has some who are desperate.

[JerseyGirl]

That forum has good info and bad info. So do pick and choose. It also has some who are desperate.

Webgal speaks the truth.

Other good forum-based resources also include:
DigitalPoint
WickedFire

The first, much like Warrior Forum, is a mixed bag of spam and useful information. It is pretty good to find free coupon codes for Yahoo Search Marketing/ Google AdWords vouchers.

WickedFire, on the other hand, has tons of great info and- not so much spam- but a lot of juvenille debates, rickrolling (google it), and NSFW material. It's also by far the unfriendliest place for n00bs. I got banned from that site for "link spam" because I accidentally double-posted a new thread discussing a new affiliate forum that went up. After I put up 65+ high-quality posts. Go figure.

Bottom line: you can get good information from anywhere, you just have to wade through the muck. In the process, though, you get really good at discerning what is and is not quality content - and that will behoove you in other business arenas later.

[jackson]

Would love the name of your SEO company.

Thanks!