Search Engine Marketing Spot

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So you want to be a successful search engine marketer, show your clients or put on your resume of having a certification for SEM or SEO. There are websites out there that do offer certifications you can purchase and take courses online, which I will list at the end of this article for you to look more into. If you have the money to waste and time to invest then by all means go out and get a certification if you want one that bad. Currently there is not one certification that is required by any company to have and no accredited certification that the general public will know about and actually understand. The only one that might stand out is the Google Adwords Qualification because most people know the Google name.

If you want to prove yourself worthy to potential clients or to a company for a possible job position then try and build a nice portfolio showing the work you have done in the past. That portfolio will go a longer way then any certification will because it proves the work you have done gets results. By having just a certification that does not prove anything, that just shows you paid some money, took a few tests and that is about it. That certification does not prove to anyone that your work will produce results, it just shows you have knowledge in an every changing industry. Put that certification up against a decent portfolio and I bet the portfolio gets the client or job offer before any certification.

These certifications are currently a waste in my opinion if you are just starting out in this business, as often as this industry changes that certification and what you learned does not go very far. If you got that certification a year ago, chances are what you were taught is either of no use now or not as relevant as it was 12 months ago. Now if you have experience already in the industry, have a decent portfolio displaying your work then getting a certification is just an extra bonus to add the “wow” factor for any potential new client. If you going for that new job opening then the company might look at it in two ways. One being you wasted your time and money getting that certification, but since your portfolio is good and proves your work produces results, they will still hire you. Or two they will see that certification and portfolio and be in total amazement and hire you on for even more money now because of that certification (although I highly doubt it).

The only certification I would say is a great tool to have is the Google Adwords Qualification. As stated before most people know the Google name and by having that on your website and portfolio adds more credibility to your work. It is not that hard to obtain, it currently only takes 3 months of managing an account of $1,000 or more and passing the test. Google has a great help section setup that has videos and practice quizzes for each section. Taking the time and going through these you will probably learn new things about Google Adwords and PPC in general.

Currently there are no colleges that offer SEM or SEO on there course roster, if there are please let me know so I may list them. If you would like to get a certification in SEM or SEO then you can do some more reading on the following websites. Details, pricing and contact information should all be here for you as well. If you do decide that a certification is in your best interest then I wish you the best of luck, and no I am not being sarcastic.

 

SEOCertification.org

SEMPO.org

Expertrating.com

Alzains.com

 

 

 

Georg Rauh - Email Me

SEO - Webmaster & SEO Blog

After a number of sites, mostly affiliate marketing i went into the SEO/SEM business providing my own SEO services like site analysis, link building or keyword research. A main focus is also my SEO blog and i try to share and give tips for webmasters and entrepreneurs. My interests are mainly focused on google since google is essentially what it’s all about and we all depend on Google if we want to succeed on the web. I see myself as a new, still small player in the field but i do my best to gain knowledge and also want to make this knowledge available to webmasters or small business owners.

Services offer:
SEO Analysis, SEO Blog covering various aspects like SEO/SEM, methods, internet marketing etc.

Outlook for SEO/SEM market:
I see SEO/SEM as a huge market where there’s no telling wheether it will ever be saturated. As far as i know this market is steadily growing. More and more people start with their own presence on the web and therefore the demand for SEO services will increase too. This is not easy since Google is as dynamic as it gets. We SEOs constantly need to adapt to their ranking algorithms and give this knowledge to our customers. Its important to keep up-to-date with everything related to search engines, mainly Google, if you want to succeed on the web.

With the success stories all over the internet, everyone is in a rush to copy someone’s success and riches for there own.  I am not against anyone trying to do that, in business sometimes the best ideas are not thought of but instead borrowed (some say stolen).  One very important thing that a lot of people do not seem to grasp is that the individuals who have made there good fortune on the internet did it with a lot of hard work, time commitment, and good preparation.  They did not try and take any short cuts to save time because they just did not feel like doing something.  The successful people you read about are not lazy; in order to make a living you cannot be lazy and try to cut corners.  Stay focused, dedicated, committed to your end goal and keeps the passion alive and you will succeed.  Here are some common things that internet marketers tend to be lazy on in order to try and make there money faster.

Drive and Determination – You have a new product, great idea, new financial outlook on life and ready to go.  Great now you just have to follow through with that concept.  Being lazy and not driving forward and keeping your determination to succeed is a sure bet for failure?  Stay focused and determined with your website, keep the drive going forward to success.  When you get lazy on this step, then your idea is basically dead in the water.  If you are thinking to yourself right now “Man I wish I would have done…” well guess what, GET OUT THERE AND DO IT TODAY! If you have already started, then I want you to continue to have that same drive and determination you had when you first started your marketing campaign.  You lose this and you will lose your grasp on the end goal of making money for yourself.

Keyword Research – With there search engine marketing campaign either people do not even take this step into consideration or they do and are just lazy about doing so.  Instead of spending the time seeing what keywords or phrases are actually a realistic approach, some people just go for the broad range of keywords to get started right away.  This can end up costing you a lot money in a very short amount of time.  You need take the time and research what keywords would best fit your marketing campaign.  Keep in mind that your budget is part of your marketing campaign if you’re using PPC.  Going over your budget limit because you are too lazy to spend the day or two researching your keywords is a sure bet for failure.  Negative keyword research is a must for any PPC campaign, not using this in your keyword selection is just more money wasted.  If your product is clothing and you do not sell baby cloths then some negative keywords you will want to use are:  

-baby cloths

-baby clothing

This way when someone uses the term “baby cloths” your website will not show up thus saving you some money from potential clicks. 

Spelling and Grammar Errors – This is a very important step when marketing your product or services.  If you have obvious errors that can be unattractive to your viewers which can result in loss of sales and or leads.  I did this myself last week with a post I made, 45 FREE Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites I was in such a hurry I forgot to check the spelling and posted it anyhow.  Before I even noticed the error it was too late.

Horrible Landing Pages – You want your site to generate money and become rich by next week, yet your landing page is weak. You spend very little time planning and designing your landing page or you pay a graphic artist without giving him/her feedback to design it for you.  Notice I said graphic artist and not internet marketer, how does a graphic artist know where to position things on the landing page?  In most cases they don’t know and only care about the look of the page, which is what they are suppose to care about because it is there job.  They are not a marketer, do your homework and see what color’s work best, where to position your punch line, buy or click buttons, amount of text to use, what words not to use etc. 

Short and/or Bad Content – Some people might disagree with me on this one since they feel the viewers do not read the site entirely.  Well there are people out there who do read everything before making a decision, so why not target them as well?  Having content on your site is one thing, but having it be one paragraph or just down right horrible is another.  You need to sound enthusiastic about what you are trying to sell, be informative, and make your points known to the viewer.  Having just a few sentences will hinder your sales and income potential, especially if it sounds like crap.

Copied Content – This one is pretty popular these days, because people are just do **** lazy to write there own content.  Copying someone else’s content is the lazy approach to adding text to your website.  For SEO purposes you do not want to have duplicate content on your site because the search engines will see that and penalize you for the copied content.  For a PPC campaign point of view having copied content could result in loss of income because the viewer could have read it someone else and or you could be violating copyright laws. 

Incomplete Website – This is another common occurrence, people want to start making money right away so they fire up there PPC campaign or start submitting there site to directories, RSS feeds, friends, family etc.  Why try and market a website that is not even done yet?  That is like trying to sell only half of something.  Get your self out of easy mode, get the drive back into yourself and get the website done.  When the site is complete then start moving forward with your marketing plan.  Money will come in better if the site is complete.  If you have a half ass website, then your marketing campaign will be half ass.  Don’t be lazy and just get it done!

I understand you want to be successful like some others on the internet, but once again they did this by hard work and not being lazy.  Take these above steps along with the fact that making money online does not happen over night.  If it was that easy to do, then you would see a lot more people talking about there success.  Stay focused and determined on your end goals, if you are lazy with these steps then you are sure to fail out of the starting gate.  As with any marketer out there, I wish you to take these steps into consideration and good luck with your projects.

Google is currently the only search engine who will try and penalize websites that sell paid link advertising or try and penalize websites who buy the links. Currently the only way a website gets penalized for buying them is Google will take the paid link that they found or that was reported to them and devalue it. In other words it will not carry hardly any weight what so ever for the website that bough the link. It will not pass for PR and basically becomes a no follow link. They will not do anything with your current spot on the SERP’s for buying text links like they do for keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc. In the long run if they found hundreds of links that you bought from high PR sites then that could have an effect on your overall ranking since we all know that one way links are currently a very big factor in achieving higher rankings with Google.

In the past buying banner space was very popular for driving traffic to your website in hopes of increased sales and conversions. This can still hold true depending on where you are buying the banner space from and Google does not care that you buy banner space to advertise your website with. The reason why they are trying so hard to stop or shall I say slow down the text link buying is the simple fact that they were dumb enough to make it such a big deal in there algorithm and how it truly does effect your ranking on the SERP’s. John Chow had achieved the number one spot on Google for the term “make money online”. He did this with his link back campaign where anyone who had reviewed his blog was asked to use terms similar to that one to see where he would rank. Well low and behold he go the number one spot and made it public. Google then banned him not only for that keyword, but also for his own name.

That is not buying text links, that is finding a flaw with the Google algorithm and exploiting it to the fullest to prove a point. Of course you would get banned for something like that because it was on a large scale and then you bragged about it. Well to this day one way links with your keywords as the anchor text hold a lot of value with Google. If you were buying banner space, Google adwords or other forms of online marketing you have to spend money. Well it holds true for text links, you have to spend the money if you want your link to get out on the internet faster. In today’s business world company’s want to see there profits go up faster then you could imagine. You tell some companies to start writing good content for a blog that they do not even really need and in 3-6 months you should start to see the results. Those results being more links to there website by people talking about the article and so fourth. Or you could tell them spend this much a month and you will have your links over this many websites by the next few days as well as paid directory listings. Yep, the check will be written and the link buying will begin. In today’s market they want results and they want them now, not in 6 months. Yes I understand that search engine marketing takes time and patience, however if you could buy up links to boost your link count, having great one way links and drive some more traffic to the site then why not.

Buying a text link from a website that is no where near in the industry as you or that will have Viagra, porn, gambling links is a sure way to get caught by the Google radar. Buy links from sites that are in the same or relative to your industry and that do not support the crap links from the above listed niches and you will be fine. If the website title’s the spot as “paid links” or “advertiser links” then you might want to refrain from buying that link as Google could possibly see this and detect it as a paid link even if it is an image. Google is not stupid we all know this by now.

Purchasing advertising space has been around the internet before Google was even born out of that garage. You can still go out and buy up all the directory listings you want and they will not count them as paid links since the directories have to actually read, review and then post each submission. Directories claim you are paying for the “review” of your submission, yea and once again what a load of crap.  Seriously though, how many directories out there will deny a listing as long as it is not related to the typical viagra/porn/gambling spam and not stuffed with keywords. You can buy up hundreds of these paid directory listings and be just fine, it will boost your link count and in return your website reputation and PR. Directories to me are nothing more then paid links, they just come with a short description and are on a website that nobody will ever really look on. For Google, it was there screw up in having one way links be such a strong influence on there algorithm and where we rank for our keywords. I know they want websites to use the nofollow tag on the paid links, but then who would really spend that much money on those links since they will carry very little weight with Google? They messed up and are now trying to stop the wave of paid text links that websites are buying to improve there rankings. Ok my rant is over, what is your take on this matter?