Mistakes of search engine marketing

Typically I reserve this SEO case study information for my Dan’s Notes, but I thought I’d turn it into today’s blog post. Mistakes of search engine marketing attempts will certainly lead to no traffic. So here’s some tips to help you for sure.

I met with a group who needed marketing help this week, but they said they didn’t need SEO help – they needed Social Media help. That sounded fun, but after meeting with them, I realized they needed something I don’t do.

They needed someone to start and manage their social media. I don’t think any company should have an outsider speaking for them in the social media sphere so I can help them with the structure, design and strategy but they’ll have to do the social media interactions on their own .

I did send them some tips about their website SEO though, and thought I’d include them here.

WEBSITE PAGE NAME

I stumbled around the site for a category page to see how it was optimized. This was the url of that page: (I changed the site name so that link shouldn’t work).

http://www.holydoly.com/categories/281

Category pages are great pages to optimize for the search engines  because they see new content when anything new is added to that category.  However, their page wasn’t optimized for anything so let’s take a look at some things you could do.

Let’s start with their URL (http://www.holydoly.com/categories/281). Their site is about Gourmet Foods so the keyword Gourmet Foods should be in the url. Try something like  http://www.holydoly.com/gourmetfoods/ or http://www.holydoly.com/category/gourmetfoods/

TITLE BAR AND KEYWORDS

Secondly, the title tag (the words you see at the very top of the computer screen) reads: Gourmet Foods, by Holydoly – Your Source For Luxury Shops Online

Other than Gourmet Foods, none of those other terms are relevant to that category page. The title tag bar is more useful to search engines than buyers, so optimize it for the organic searchers. One of the mistakes of search engine marketing is to ignore how people search and assume you know what’s best.

And unfortunately, Gourmet Food and Gourmet Foods are really too difficult to compete in with a retail site. The other problem with the term Gourmet Foods is that it is a really broad term. Buyers start searching with wide terms and then narrow the search the closer they are to buying. Gourmet Foods is that “first search”.

Better, more targeted and easier to dominate keywords would include:

  • Gourmet food stores
  • Gourmet food retailers
  • Gourmet food gift basket(s)
  • Gourmet food online

These are the terms I’d focus on for this page. I’d then change the title tag to something like:

Gourmet Food Gift Basket | Gourmet Food Stores Online (you don’t need the name of your company in the title tag on a category page)

INCOMING LINKS

Now this is going to be a bit more advanced, but it is important. You really want to rank in the search engines for all four of those terms. So when you link to your site from other sites, use those terms as the text that links back. We call that anchor text.

The words SEO Tips in this sentence are the anchor text links that lead back to this page.

One other thing, they don’t have any meaningful text on the page, just pictures of the products they’re selling. If you add a description on the page at the top, you’ll be able to use your keywords on the page. And a description can help build a story and pre-sell these items. I’d suggest having between 350 – 500 words per page – even if that means the text is scattered amongst the photos.

OPTIMIZING PHOTOS

Images need to be optimized. I right-clicked on a photo on the site and pressed “view photo”. The url at the top said:

    http://www.holydoly.com/images/HomePagePhotoRetouched.jpg

If you found that photo on their computer, it has the name HomePagePhotoRetouched.jpg, but the photo itself was of gourmet wine. They need go back to the photo on their computer and rename it gourmet-foods-wine-online.jpg or something like that – and then upload that to their website. (there probably are better gourmet wine keywords than that).

Other than some additional information about the internal linking structure of their site, that’s pretty much what we discussed. If you can think of some other general SEO tips to look for onpage, leave a comment. Otherwise, sign up for Dan’s Notes (below) and read more about our meetings.

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Getting to the top of Google (the poem)

Getting to the top of Google
(a poem by Dan R Morris)

Beautiful pictures and
colorful web design
are no help to search engines
for their bots are blind

Progress is made
when Google figures out,
through the words alone
what your site is all about

Words are the bat
that hits the home run
Through smart use of words
And you’ll climb to #1

The search engines really can’t see. They can only read. And there are millions upon millions of sites on the web to read. If a search engine is to be successful, it’s goal must be to deliver web pages that provide the most relevant information to it’s “customers’” search queries.

In order to do that successfully, it scours the internet for your webpage and anything else on the internet that refers (or links) to your webpage.  Since most people aren’t the best about creating search engine friendly web pages, Google has figured out how to learn from others what your site is about. If 1,000 other sites link to yours from pages about stamp collecting, the search engines are going to think your site is about or related to stamp collecting.

Then it combines that information to the words on your webpage and figures out what your site is about. Headlines, Titles, photo names and internal and incoming links really help Google understand your site.

After it figures out that your site is about stamp collecting, and a hundred other sites are about stamp collecting – it must determine which is #1, #2, etc. . . That’s where your internal site structure, the number and value of incoming links, the size of your website, how old is your website, how long people stay on your page before hitting the back button even how long it takes to load your web page become important.

The first question you must determine is whether Google understands what your site is about. Load your site into Google’s Webmaster tools and you’ll see what they think it is about.  And search your site for keywords using Google’s Keyword Selector tool, too. That’s another way to see what keywords it pulls out. Once you’ve successfully taught the search engines that your site is about stamp collection – move on to the next step – and prove that your worthy of the #1 spot.

Each Friday, I post my notes from my meetings during the week about internet marketing and moving websites to the top positions in Google’s rankings.  The Friday morning e-mail changes each week and covers topics like article marketing, use of videos, internal site structure, backlinks, and even offline topics like press releases, postcard marketing and capturing customer contact info. Please sign up below and ask as many questions as you need!

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It’s hard to connect content and marketing

Business schools just don’t understand the value of content in your marketing efforts. Rarely do I run across a business owner who truly appreciates the term “content”. And we’ve found even those who do, don’t have time to create it because “they’re too busy marketing and finding new customers”. Connecting Marketing and Content

The bottom line is this, if you don’t understand that the internet has changed the game – then content will never make sense. For most people marketing classes were about the three P’s and “location, location, location”, and branding. And in all of those cases, the examples in the book were billboards, product packaging and sales letters.

That’s it!

To expect Master’s degree wielding marketers to grasp the Shift from post cards to websites is maybe too much to ask. But in the same breath, aren’t those same people the ones who shop, research and buy online?

Somehow, it still baffles me when I can’t make the connection between the content on the sites they’re currently buying products from – and their inability to translate that to marketing analysis.

Building the bridge between yesterday’s marketing classes and today’s marketing environment is the key, for sure. I find once business owners fully understand how the web works, what Google’s role is and how consumers find goods – the light bulb will have gone off. I’m not yet sure if it’s the mechanics of Google or the mechanics of the internet – but one of them solves the other.

Words. It comes down to words. When you search for “Honda 355 Motorcycle 600 cc Nashville”, Google’s job is to find something to return to the person searching that matches their query. And the ONLY thing they have to go on, is words.

I heard you screaming in the back. Yep, you’re trying to tell me that links are just as important. Well, you have the right idea – but you’re not using the right “words” to convey it. A link is code someone types onto their website that references yours. No matter what, that link is made of words – even if it’s a picture.

Together, the words used to link one page to the next, the paragraphs of text on web pages, the names of the photos you’ve loaded up to the web pages, the title of web page and the words people use when they comment on your posts – that is content.

Content + Search Engines = Marketing

If you’ve got great, structurally correct content – then you’ve got a marketing plan any professor would be proud of. (Even if that means you have to show them how many units you sold first).

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Local Business Internet Marketing – What it isn’t

You’re on the verge on being inundated by local business internet marketing services.

While you dote methodically on growing your company, internet marketers are planning to visit your company in droves in the near future. Because the need is so great and the experience level so small, small business owners are going to be getting phone calls by the dozens by June of 2011.

And what you’re going to hear is this, “Let us get your site to the top of Google, so you can stop paying for billboards and yellow pages”. They’re going to tell you about the antiquated nature of newspapers, and the inability to track revenue from billboards. And you’re also going to hear that the ability to follow-up with your customers is where the gold is.

Guess what? That’s all it’s going to take to get millions of business owners to sign the dotted line.

But that is exactly what’s going to get those same millions of companies to switch from one local business internet marketing professional to the next, month after month. Because local search marketing is not about getting to the top of Google – and it’s not about following up with your customers. Local Business Marketing

To acquire customers using the internet, you’re going to have to be found – that’s the part about getting to the top of Google. But being on top doesn’t mean people are taking their credit cards out ready to buy.

Local business owners who are personable on site are going to need to extend that personality to the computer monitor. Products that sell themselves at the register are going to have to be marketed online. Nobody’s buying that last second “Hershey” bar on your site, if they have to wait 7 days for it to arrive.

The bottom line is this: until you’re on the first page of the search results, and until you can both capture and follow-up with your customers – you’re not even in the game.  But once you accomplish that – that’s when the game begins.

Realtors for instance get many more leads from Realtor.com, Homes.com and Craigslist than they’ll ever get from their sites alone. So what if you’re at the top of Google for Mayberry Real Estate? If everyone in the town is searching for listings on Homes.com – your hilltop position will be quiet as a mouse. So don’t let a marketer sell you the #1 position for Mayberry Real Estate if all your customers are on Craigslist.

Once you climb the search results to page 1, and get your customers to the front door, then you’re going to have to use your charm, your personality and your guile to meet their every need. You’re going to have to test and restest, to try things and fail, to ultimately become a friend to your customers.

Local Business Internet Marketing isn’t about being on top of the mountain. It’s about getting to the top and then proving to your customers that you deserve to be there. And ultimately to “employ” your customers to help you stay there by blogging about you, tweeting about you and making videos for you.

Local. Likable. Learned.

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Marketing small businesses is more than keywords

Internet marketing for small businesses is marketing. It’s not a separate category, or something special some companies do. The internet is part of our lives and with the advent of the iPad, it’s soon to become a larger part.

I find it interesting that most of my “business” clients don’t really do much “marketing”. They do some advertising, but that’s about it.  I get the sense that there’s a “build it and they will come” mentality among small business owners. Well, guess what? There is a better mouse trap.

Let’s try this. . . think of the internet as a tool you can use to reach your current customers. That’s it. Don’t think beyond that.  What would that allow you to do?

internet marketing for small business

internet marketing for small business

Well, e-mail is an internet utility that is virtually free. If you’re about to introduce a new product, you could tell all  your current customers using e-mail – for free. You could invite them to a Grand Opening. You could even help your neighbor and invite them all to his Grand Opening. (If it’s next door, wouldn’t they stop in to say hello?)

Simple enough.

Now, if you can see how efficient that is, and ultimately how successful you could be doing that . . . how do we get more of our customers’ e-mail addresses?

You could have a pad of paper by the cash register.  You could have a drawing where people toss their business card into a fishbowl. You could call them all and ask for it. You could even put a form on your website where they type their name and e-mail into it themselves.

So the next question would be how can you get more customers, so you can get more e-mail addresses, so you can send more notices, so you can make more sales?

That’s where it gets personal. For a real estate client we use Craigslist. A buddy of mine uses eBay. My folks use Google.  A car dealer may use billboards.  And a personal injury lawyer may just find the best tool is the back page of the yellow pages. That’s where you really start to make headway.

My challenge to you is ask your clients how they think they got from not knowing who you were to hiring you.  Let’s put together a road map of how someone who’s never heard of you, eventually hears about you, is impressed with you and then hires you.

When we can master that and begin to understand the “ladder of value” we’ve already got in place, then we can start creating a network to find more people who want what you do.

Therein lies the art. the joy. the wonder of internet marketing.

And therein lies success.

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Local Business Marketing: It’s not all me

Some important folks visited my blog this week. I say important because they’re important to me, but it’s not like the guy who invented Oreo’s stopped by to read this stuff. :) They’re stopping by occurred the same time I was working with a new client. And unfortunately the lesson I was trying to teach the client, I hadn’t adopted myself.

In our first meeting together, I was explaining what my role would be. I was explaining how my job was to bring new clients in the door using the internet, how I was going to go about capturing the information about the new clients and then how we were going to keep marketing to them via e-mail or mail or whatever.

Well, it occurred to me while I was there that the local business had a job too.  While it’s my job to get new clients there, it’s the local businesses job to keep them there and leave the door of possibility open that the person would come back.  What I mean by that is their job is to be friendly, clean, current and fair. Even if you have what the client wants, if the place is not inviting – they’ll unsubscribe from our e-mails.

That lesson came back on me. It’s hard to have a dirty blog, but it’s not hard to have outdated information. After getting back from my meeting with them, I took a look at this blog and realized the About Me section is from the first week I started. Lettersfromdan has morphed over time and that part is just not relevant.

What my important visitors thought when they visited, I’m not sure. But I can tell you right now the About Me section doesn’t reflect what I told them I was writing about. So this weekend, it’s time to take my own medicine. You can read the old “About Me” section right here, otherwise, I’m committing to you that all parts of this blog will be up to date.

Thanks for stopping by!

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The custom blog magnet tool

I gotta tell ya, this blog comment magnet is the coolest tool I’ve seen in a long time. There are a lot of tools out there, and some of them are pretty ingenious. I love programs like Market Samurai and Traffic Geyser, and Firefox plug-ins like “Screen Capture Elite” and “Google Global”.blog magnet tool

But seldom do I actually promote products. In fact, over the last 2 years I’ve only promoted 3 products. I did so for the P90X Beachbody folks for a while, but with all the informercials they didn’t really need any help.  And then I’ve been a huge fan of GoBrevity (which you can read about here) and SiteBuildit. Those are two great services.

But then today I came across the Maxblogpress Subscribers Magnet, which for some reason I call the blog magnet tool. This is a WordPress plugin that does the work of 3 other things and also does a few things that nothing else can do. I’m going to list out a few things it does, but I really want you to go to their site and see the video.

Just seeing it is enough.

So, should you enable these things, here’s what it can do:

  • Add an opt-in floating light box to your site – with a time delay if you want. (Also available in aWeber).
  • Add an opt-in form to your sidebar (which is available free with WordPress Plugin)
  • Add a “subscribe me” button to the comment form at the end of each blog post (not sure if that’s available elsewhere)
  • AUTOMATICALLY fills in the name and e-mail address of your visitors when they arrive at the site. That means they only have to press the “subscribe button”.
  • Add an opt-in box to the beginning or end of every post
  • Add a floating footer bar at the bottom of screen with newsletter opt-in form embedded
  • Silently subscribe anyone that leaves a comment on your blog. They’ll then automatically get a “thank you for leaving a comment” e-mail, along with the “confirm your subscription button.
  • Fully customize everything – and it works with AWeber, 1shopping cart and most other opt-in box providers.

I’m not sure if that’s enough or not. The plug-in costs $147, but now you can finally have an e-mail capture strategy, design and tool. Truly an amazing tool – one I’m proud to help promote.

I urge you to check out this sales page of theirs: http://danmorrismarketing.com/blogmagnet – and see for yourself. If you’re a local business and you’re driving traffic to your website, this is the best hands off method to help capture that traffic.

Check it out . . . and take a look at their form below.

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Mistakes in internet marketing: conversion rate

One of the biggest mistakes in internet marketing is failing to understand the true nature of your conversion rate.

Conversion rate is such a lousy term, but for many business owners it has come to mean profit.

Unfortunately, businesses that want to provide you with internet marketing services will use the term conversion rate to get your attention and sell you services. But that’s precisely what you don’t want to hear.

more Mistakes in internet marketing: (…)

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Getting Started In Internet Marketing?

Are you just getting started in internet marketing? I put this together as a follow-up e-mail I sent to a business group I met with. Ultimately, I decided I should immortalize it by turning it into a blog post. Before I did, I rewrote the list from a “chronological” standpoint.

If you don’t have your own website and you’re just getting started in internet marketing, then the first thing you need to do is get one. There’s no way you can market anything on the internet without a place for people to go. Sure you can send affiliate links out for the next 20 years. But if you spend your time doing that, then you’ll know that everyday you’re not working – the internet is not working for you.

So with that in mind the first step would be “get a site up”:

STEP ONE

Building Blocks

Building Blocks

I believe there are three basic avenues:

1. Build your own site with a package like SiteBuildIt.

I would make this its own step because SiteBuildit is a complete package – everything you would possibly need in one – and they put it in the correct order for you. This is a great option if you know nothing about website design because it is specifically designed for people who don’t.

CHECK OUT SITEBUILDIT HERE

2. The second avenue, not necessarily the second step is to build your own website from scratch.

Here’s a simple tutorial on getting a web page up, but not necessarily a website. For that I’d say you’d need some technical “code” training from either a book or a school.

If you don’t want to use SiteBuildit but also don’t know enough code to do it on your own, you can always hire a web designer or use E-lance and bid out what you want accomplished.

What if you want a blog instead of a typical website? Both require some code skills. Here’s a good discussion for you to help make that decision: BLOG OR TRADITIONAL WEBSITE
td align=”left” valign=”top” width=”200″>

  • (Pssst. . . If you decide to go the avenue of the blog, this is the free blog upload tool. Using this will ensure that you have a secure blog. This is a much better tool than fantastico.)

The problem you’ll have going the route of designing your own site or blog is good design doesn’t necessarily mean people will find your site on the web. You’ve really got to have a designer that understands your marketing plan before they even comes up with the first draft. If you plan to market heavily using advertising- then search engine design becomes less critical. But if you plan on building a site people can find with the search engines, SEO is more important than anything.

That’s one of the training benefits you get with a package like SiteBuildIt.

I’m sure you can find a web designer, but would be happy to collaborate with you on the SEO portion if you’d like – otherwise, they may have what you need.

The Tools
With this and the option of having someone build you a site, you’re going to need both a domain name (like www.IamGreat.com) and a hosting account. You don’t need either with SiteBuildit, they come part of the package. (here’s the services they offer )

Get yourself a domain name at GoDaddy (this link should get you a domain name for $7.99.)

Here’s my affiliate link to Hostgator, as well. I highly recommend them. I haven’t used any other hosting company, so I can’t say if they’re better or not. But I can say I’m quite happy with them.

You’ll also need an autoresponder to send regular, scheduled e-mails to people who “subscribe” at your sites. I’ve used aWeber quite a bit and do enjoy using them. Here’s a link to them: AWEBER If you get to the point you need them, please ask me why I like them over the others. (SitebuildIt has it’s own internal autoresponder – so you don’t need that either).

3.The third avenue is THE FREE ROUTE.

You can get a free blog at wordpress.com – if you want as well, but it won’t have the tools you really need to have a successful blog. Nevertheless, they are easy, can be up in five minutes and are used by many, many people. You can also get a free “webpage” at Squidoo. They call their webpages “lenses”.

There are a few other FREE places to get a webpage, just remember you get what you pay for. I think you should definitely utilize the free website services like Squidoo, Facebook, Flickr and WordPress.com – but I think you should use them as ways to drive traffic to your main website.

STEP TWO

This could be the first step if you’re just getting started in internet marketing but already have your own website (and I don’t mean a company provided MLM website.)) This step is called “Understand the Buying Process.”  You need to figure out what your goal is. If you are selling something, what? (You don’t have to sell anything to make money, sometimes all you need is traffic).

What stage of the buying process does someone need to be in to pull out their credit card? Specifically, if you’re selling computers, does the ordinary consumer do research first? Do they compare prices and stores? Do they just buy on an impulse? What do you need to accomplish in order to make the sale?Here’s a link to the discussion I put on this blog about it. Don’t start marketing until you understand this concept.

This might help, too. Here’s a great article on Direct Marketing you might like to read: http://sn.im/9f7n9

STEP THREE

Keyword research

I put this after the buying process part because it’s important to know the goal of your site before doing keyword research. It helps to know whether you’re building a site called “Benefits of Linux Based Computers” which you’ll drive people to a place to buy Linux Based Computers or if you’re building a site called “Cheapest Linux Based Computers” at which time you’re expecting your audience to have done their research and you just need to provide them the best deal.

(If you’re using Sitebuildit, then you won’t need the following tools, they’re included). If you aren’t using it, there are some good keyword tools like, Google’s Keyword Tool and their Google Wonderwheel.

The SEO Quake Plug-in for Firefox is good too, but we’ll need to discuss how to use that in person.

STEP FOUR

Take what you learned above and apply that to your website, meaning either add content or revise what you have.

STEP FIVE

Marketing Information Collection

Here are the things you want to start before you’re done building your site:

  • Join the Last Niche for $1 and start getting that information.
  • Sign up at Clicknewz and start getting that information
  • Set up a gmail account and get Google Alerts for your keywords. Don’t go to googlealert.com, that’s a different company. Get a Google Account and then click on “My Account” and find Google Alerts. Start an e-mail address for Google Alerts to track your keywords. This will help you with content creation and will alert you to people talking about your niche.
  • Keep track of all your sites with Delicious.com This is a great place to save all the websites you use. If you save them as “private” you can save your passwords and stuff too. I use them for social networking. Make a list of your favorite sites and send it out.
  • In fact, check out usernamecheck.com in this “delicious” list here to see what explore some user names you’ll be using at places like Twitter and Facebook. If you’re name is already taken, use your middle name or something. Try to find one name you can use everywhere.
  • Get this free list and pareuse the sites and how they’ll help you

STEP SIX

The Work. The Marketing.

$$. Google First Page Formula is the talk Joe Marsh at NAMS uses when teaching how to get onto the first page of Google. This one’s not free, but definitely worth having in your arsenal

FREE – Ezine Articles is the best. It gets 15 million hits per month.  Read about how to do article marketing at Jeff Herring’s Site (he’s the main guy in this field).

$$ – Alertrank is the service that manages Google Alerts. I recommend it if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate.

FREE – Another good tool is to start a Facebook Group. Here’s the one I started to help build a list of people interested in family travel:  My Favorite Place To Take Kids On Vacation Is If you’ve got kids, there is a lot of content on here of great places to take kids on vacation.  Join us! If you’re going to do this, let’s chat. You need a strategy before you just start swinging your arms.

$$.  If you’re serious about making your business work online, I’d really, really recommend going to NAMS in January. If you’re not sure, get the recordings of the last one here: NAMS Recordings This includes one hour where we actually recorded a “how to” webinar and then proceeded to post it online and started selling it (actually making sales) within an hour. The entire how to is here.

$$. Angela’s Backlinks $5/month you get 30 high page rank sites from which you can create backlinks.

$$. Instant Capture Page:  I haven’t used this, but it’s fascinating. Watch their little video.

FREE. Video Marketing -Jing is the free computer screen video capture software.  You can see a screen capture video in action at Mike Stewart’s site, or can download it here and watch their tutorial: Jing Project This one is awesome!

$$. Email Marketing – ConstantContact.com and MyEmma.com are great e-mail mktg sites. SiteBuildit comes with e-mail marketing software so you won’t need that if you use it.

FREE. Start establishing yourself in SOCIAL MEDIA -
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Brightkite, SPNBabble and many more.

STEP SEVEN

GET ORGANIZED

Ron Mueller is a tax guy that specializes in HomeBusiness Tax. I don’t know of anyone local who really specializes in it.  Most people know how to do taxes for a home office, but few know home business.  I used this book last year and got $15,000 back on my taxes. In the book he includes all the IRS references to where in the tax code he pulls certain things. You can use it to do your taxes on Turbo Tax or you can use it to “help” guide your tax guy.

Mozy is a great place to back up all your home computer files and websites. You never know when your computer will crash

Finally, seriously consider coming to the Niche Affiliate Marketing Workshop in Atlanta in January. On this page: http://sn.im/namsx3 there are a lot of details including the list of topics we’re discussing. If you’re interested in making your site sell well- this is a great workshop to learn stuff at. It’s called a workshop because we do learn and do work. It’s not a pitch fest with a bunch of people selling their products. You’ll actually learn.  http://sn.im/namsx3SIGN UP, IT’S FULLY REFUNDABLE AND IS THE BEST INTERNET WORKSHOP AROUND.

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The Hub and Spoke Internet Marketing Strategy: A Twitter Clinic

I haven’t done one in a while, but spent some time at a biz strategy meeting tonite and feel like tonite is a good nite for a twitter clinic

Tonite’s twitter clinic is about your basic internet marketing strategy and how to create the structure. I’ll post this later on my blog.

So let’s get started. First of all I don’t think you’re going to get very far without a website. That means a blog, a sales page or a site.

more The Hub and Spoke (…)

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