Internet Marketing Blog

Competition – we’ve all got it in one form or another. No matter what kind of website you run or what items you promote and sell, there will be other people out there doing something similar to you.

The great thing is how much you can learn from them – and they won’t even know you’re doing it.

I always think that part of every internet marketer’s strategy should be to do some regular research regarding their competition. What are they doing that you could be doing? What do they seem to be getting good results from? Do they have a newsletter? A constantly changing home page? A fresh range of products every now and again?

I don’t advocate that you copy anything directly. That’s a recipe for disaster, and you should be finding ideas to try that are unique to you anyway. But you can use the inspiration you get from lots of different sources to help you in developing your own site and internet marketing efforts.

Internet Marketing Techniques

When you’re looking at what your competition is doing, try thinking also about WHY they are doing certain things. It may not always be immediately obvious, but some internet marketing techniques are more subtle than others, and you might be able to spot an overall strategy you could emulate on your own site.

A good way to get in on the inside is to subscribe to a couple of newsletters you like the look of. Study the emails you get and figure out how certain products are promoted. Are there any techniques used to try and get more people clicking on links? Are lots of products promoted in each newsletter, or is the focus on one single item?

This is a great activity to try if you feel that things are getting a bit stale and you’re losing your focus. It will help your internet marketing techniques.

Keep an eye on the competition…

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007

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A popular practice among internet marketers is to use free articles sent to online article directories to generate traffic and sales for their products. This is also an internet marketing tactic used by Wealth Creation Affiliate and the associated affiliate program to gain exposure on Google, Yahoo and MSN. This all ties in with our SEO.

Arguably the most important part of these articles is the resource box at the bottom, which contains a link to the website or product that needs traffic. But for that to be of any use, people need to get that far in the first place.

For that to happen, you need to make sure you have a good title for your article. Don’t forget any articles you write will be competing with thousands of others, so you need to make a real effort to grab as many readers as you can. Internet Marketing can be very competitive.

Article Headlines Are Important

Practical features in your Article Headlines that can be of immediate benefit to the reader are a good bet, as are any ‘top tip’ style pieces. ‘5 Top Tips On Getting More Traffic’, for example would be better than ‘Good Ideas for Traffic Generation’.

Of course the content is just as important; it’s got to be able to deliver what the headline promises. But the more people you can grab with that title the better. I’d go as far to say you should spend almost as long working on an outstanding title as you should on the article itself.

The same applies to any articles or content you write. General articles for your website, copy for your marketing newsletter and even email titles all need to be tempting enough to entice people in to find out more. Think about how many websites are out there, and how many emails get sent every single day (that’s got to be in the billions, surely). That’s a heck of a lot of competition.

There is some good news though. Many Internet Marketing Experts make do with average standards. Don’t settle for second best. Stand out and be unique.

Do you want to up that to excellent standards? I thought so.

Practice your article headlines…

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007

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We’re always being told how important it is to make sure we insert those all important keywords and phrases into our content, whether it’s for blogs, websites, or sales pages. But that’s where the usual advice stops.

It’s true that keywords are the equivalent of waving a flag at Google and saying ‘Hey! I’m over here!’ but you need to be able to make your words flow as well. If you don’t all you’ll get is a clumsy piece of writing chock full of keywords that is so hard to read you’ll only succeed in sending browsing surfers elsewhere.

Internet Marketing and SEO

Whenever you sit down to write some new copy, make a list of the keywords you want to use in that copy. They will be part of your SEO strategy. Think about what you want to say I usually think of this as the focus of the article, and it helps me to stay on track. Your future in internet marketing will be good if you master this area.

It’s important to get those keywords in there, but you want to be known as a competent writer as well – someone whose copy is always enjoyable to read. That’s the whole point of good search engine optimization; if you do it well, it shouldn’t even be noticeable. Unfortunately some people get so hung up on pleasing the search engines they forget to please their customers as well.

I’m not saying that SEO is unimportant – far from it. But it is just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is internet marketing, and if you’re concentrating on it to such an extent that you’re ignoring every other aspect of your marketing campaign, then the benefit you’ll get from it will be minimal anyway.

It’s all about balance, and it takes time and practice to achieve that. But keeping that one word – FLOW – in your vocabulary will help you establish good working patterns to stick to.

Make your SEO flow…

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007

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