Let me ask all the business owners in the WealthNet community a very important question.  When your Webmaster and you met at the end of last quarter to review your internet marketing plan and statistics, what did he or she tell you about your Keyword Analysis?  Some important follow ups you may have reviewed.  How about conversions?  How much did your permission-based email list grow last month?  Is your social marketing helping you or hurting you?

Chances are your Webmaster doesn’t hold quarterly meetings with you.  Chances are your Webmaster is not an expert in statistics, business development or internet marketing strategy, although they may very well create beautiful sites.  Or not.

The bottom line here is it is not enough to build a pretty website and expect the world to find you and give you money.  Here’s a case study for a new client that will hopefully help you understand the power of search engine optimization (SEO).  Remember, last week I wrote that SEO is about getting the right people to find your website when they’re looking for information, a product or service.  Once people find your site, do they become prospects and customers?  And even if they don’t do business with you on the first visit, how can you collect their email address with permission to follow up so they do business with you when the time is right for them? (List building.)

Online marketing, leveraging the internet in a way that your ideal clients and customers find you and choose to do business with you, is widely misunderstood.  People tell us all the time that they already have a website.  We hear that their Webmaster did their “metatags” correctly so they are all set.  We also hear people say they got ripped off by some marketing company that told them they could get them first page Google search results for $49 a month, guaranteed.  So people are naturally frustrated and often sit on their hands while the internet-savvy competitors kick their butts.

No wonder so many people get frustrated.  Successful online marketing is about developing a plan that fits your business and budget.  It’s also about building websites that your customers can find easily.  And once at your site, can people navigate easily enabling them to choose to do business with you instead of your competition?  In order to be successful leveraging the internet and automating your marketing, you need to understand the most powerful factors in the search engine ranking system.  You can’t trick the search engines.  The two most important factors impacting traffic to your site are…

1. The number of links back to your site.  No, this can’t be done by “exchanging links” with your buddies.  It’s about how many other legitimate and relevant sites online are talking and referring back to your site. (Quality counts.)

2. Your site’s content which is why a Keyword Analysis is so critical.  If your content is about Poodles, Poodle People will probably find you.  If it’s about your business you need your ideal clients to find you.  Not Poodle People.

So here’s an overview of this recent client in SPIN format.

Situation. The client is a real estate-related software company with one primary website with a decent domain name that fits their business well.

Problem.  They are losing money on marketing and not getting results writing and publishing articles and content on their website and in other online marketing efforts.

Implication.  They are very frustrated with lack of results.  They are losing money on marketing.  They are losing market share to competitors with more evolved internet marketing strategy.

Need.  Develop a solid plan.  Analyze the competition and keywords for their ideal customer searches.  Get much better return on invesment from marketing investment.

Here is what our research revealed regarding the client’s original site stats and how they stacked up against the competitors for one of their most appropriate Keyword Phrases. (Specific words selected for the client’s ideal prospective client.  The Keyword Phrase we’ll share here is “Agent Office Software” and there are a total of 14,800 searches per month.)

Site 1. Rank in Google is 1.  There are 655 Inbound Links.  There are 338 Indexed Pages.

Site 2. Rank in Google is 4.  There are 117 Inbound Links.  There are 112 Indexed Pages.

Site 3. (Client) Rank in Google is 83.  There are 22 Inbound Links  There are 7 Indexed Pages.

Site 4.  Rank in Google is 10.  There are 104968 Inbound Links.  There are 44001 Indexed Pages.

As you can see, the #1 site has a 30 times more links than the client and 50 times more indexed pages.  You can also see that search engine ranking is based not only on quantity, but also on quality and relevance, otherwise site #4 would be getting the best results at #1.

Now let’s take a look at the return on investment comparing SEO with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns which can be an effective component of a marketing plan.  With PPC you can expect that approximately 1% of people who see a PPC ad will click on it.  This means that an effective PPC campaign for the above phrase would bring in about 150 visitors per month.

While PPC is about buying your traffic, SEO is about attracting traffic organically.  In other words, pull versus push marketing.  Think about when you and millions of other people search online.  About 50% of people click on the first organic search result they see.  About 3% of people click on the 10th result they see.  This means that an effective SEO campaign for these same terms would bring in 450-7500 visitors per month

Clearly there is a huge difference in conversions, and typically in resultant revenue and ROI, with proper SEO compared to PPC advertising.  The client wasn’t getting results because they hadn’t done the proper research and planning.  Given this, you can expect to get a solid return on your internet marketing investment with the proper analysis and planning.

For a nominal fee we are happy to conduct a Comprehensive Keyword and Competitive Analysis for any company and website.  The example above is a simple snapshop.  Our typical research includes dozens of phrases and much greater strategic detail with which to clobber the competition.

So there it is.  Leveraging the internet and focusing more on attraction-based marketing can make a huge difference in your marketing results.  Once you get beyond all the most common myths about internet marketing, it’s essential to focus on the real disciplines involved.  Successful marketing, especially with the internet, is NOT a one-time proposition.  It’s an ongoing investment that must be tested and analyzed every week.

I do give credit to and thank Noah Dyer, WealthNet’s COO, and his team of internet marketing experts, for helping me and our clients develop these disciplines.  Please let us know how we can help you.

Clifford Jones, Founder
WealthNet Partners, LLC
“Discover The Art of Business Development”
Scottsdale, Arizona
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