Several years ago I was marketing an online business that seemed to be fairly legitimate. I won’t give the name here because it has since been completely dissolved. Although search engine optimization (SEO) is something that people hear now on a regular basis, at the time it was an intriguing novelty. A company called me up and said that they would guarantee me first page listings for several search terms for only $3200 through SEO.

If I would’ve taken that $3200 and thrown it in the trash, at least I would’ve known where it went!

But I knew that the Internet was the future and although it really upset me, it did not deter me. In fact the more I learned about the Internet, the more I became infatuated with it. I bought almost everything I could find and spent my life (and my life savings) on learning what this all meant. There was something so intriguing and interesting about this new medium. I had been involved in digital printing and was a pioneer in the industry since 1992, but was too involved in that at the time to take advantage of the new things on the Internet happening in the late 90s. I wasn’t a pioneer this time.

But this was something different. All the traditional mediums of newspaper, television, radio, billboards, posters, bus wraps, banners, postcards, etc. were means of advertising that were “in your face”. Every one of them tried to jolt you out of your trance to get you to buy their product or see their show. I know, because I printed thousands of them for hundreds of customers.

The Internet is a place for people to go to find things you sell to solve their problem. And, as I soon found out, it had the ability to track just about every single aspect of an online consumers experience. It could track where they came from, what webpage they were on before they visited this one, which search engine they used, what search terms they used, and even the resolution of their monitor (if you wanted to know that).

This ability to track consumer behavior was absolutely fascinating to me because you could find out in an instant what was going on: if a certain search word work better than another; if one color work better than another; if one video worked better than another; if one banner ad pulled in more customers; if one browser worked better than another, etc.

No other medium had this power!

All of them had some “human” way to track what was going on, mostly just by measuring the number of sales created. Television and Radio had its Nielsen ratings and newspapers promised to broadcast your ad to everyone in the Valley if you will just put it in there long enough to get the results you’re looking for. But the Internet had instant feedback like nothing else and accuracy that defied the best traditional prognosticators of marketing available.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided that if I was going to spend all this money on all kinds of programs, coaching, seminars, webinars, telephone calls, books, CDs, DVDs, and the like related to this industry, then why not do it the right way, in an organized fashion from experts in the field who could be verified as legitimate in their knowledge? Why not do it in such a way that would make sense? Why not follow a specific and organized plan that could bring about the results I was looking for?

I decided to go get a Masters Degree in Internet marketing and I achieved my goal as of October 1, 2010. Even though it was an extremely difficult 13 month program that required between 20 and 35 hours per week (rarely seeing my family and never having a free Saturday!), it was worth it. I also am proud to announce that I won “Best In Class” from a vote of my peers and the professors. I didn’t even know that was an option until 3 weeks before we graduated!

So what does all this mean to you? It means that you can know that I’m not a fly by night organization or company. You can know that I put forth the time and effort to become an expert in the field. You can know that I’m here for the long haul and want to make things right to produce the results you’re looking for.

What I didn’t really know, was that I was jumping into an industry that is becoming laden with shysters and profiteers alike. I have been talking to a woman who owned a hairdressing salon about doing some marketing with her. She wanted me to come back in a month when he thought she would have some more money. Two weeks later an individual came along promising her all kinds of results if she would just pay $100 per month. Apparently he was quite persuasive because after he got his $10 haircut, she paid him $100 and was looking for some results.

He never called back. She paid him $90 for the privilege of cutting his hair!

I wish this was a singular story but apparently it is happening over and over again. There is great mystery surrounding the Internet and people are being taken advantage of because they don’t really have time to understand all of the details and ins and outs of such a complicated medium. To say that the Internet has changed over the last 10 years would be the understatement of the decade. To try to keep up with that change is about as difficult as building any business could be.

My goal is to do everything I can to get your business found online. Most people know that the yellow pages don’t work anymore (except for just a few industries). Most people have seen diminished results from traditional advertising mediums and they know they need to market online, but they just don’t know where to start or know what to do. They get phone calls every single day from Internet marketing call centers all over the country promising them great results for only a few hundred dollars per month, but the results never seemed to materialize.

I’m here to change that, but I need you to know that there are some ground rules that we have to follow. Here are just a few of them:

• Marketing on the Internet is a “learn as you go” program. We need to find what works best for you. No two businesses or markets react the same way online.
• While every business needs a website (contrary to what some people will tell you) a website is never enough. Without marketing that website, your results will be nowhere near your desired goals.
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Never buy a packaged program that “works for everyone.” They never last.
• The advertising battleground has now been reduced to the size of your monitor for the attention of customers and prospects.
• The competition is going to get worse and worse down the road. Be prepared to keep up with those changes.
• There are more and more laws relating to the Internet that are being written on a daily basis. It is important to keep up to date with what is considered legal online.
• Blackhat techniques (methods that are unethical) are never a viable option for your marketing efforts. They will always produce a negative result over time.
• Your website needs to be a living and breathing thing that requires daily (or at a minimum weekly) attention. Long gone are the days when you could hang out a “shingle” called a website and leave it there for people to find you. They will not.
• We have only seen the teeniest, tiniest tip of the iceberg regarding this industry! I’m here to tell you that you have no idea how much the Internet will affect your business in the coming decade! If you are aware of its potential, invest in its future and keep up with the changes, you will reap rich rewards.
• If you are not online now, that teeny little iceberg will sink your business unless you make drastic changes.
• Internet marketing is more than just a SEO or PPC! It’s far bigger than most people realize and encompasses things such as: video marketing, article marketing, PPC, RSS, game based marketing, branding, social media (Facebook, twitter, etc.), banner advertising, e-mail marketing, mobile marketing, etc.

If you’re ready to get more customers for your business through all the methods under the umbrella of “Internet Marketing” please call me at 775-722-4949 or e-mail me at KellySmithMarketing@Gmail.com. I promise you that I will do my best to help you reach your marketing goals. And you will get a weekly report showing exactly what is happening with your website.

Call me today and you can get a free video analysis of your site to show how well its doing and some things to change to make it rank better. Call me at 775-722-4949 but you must hurry because I can’t do everyone. There is a limit on this offer and first come, first served.

Here’s one of the things I see that definitely needs to be looked at: functionality. Some websites are beautifully done. They’re a masterpiece of visual subtleties and intricate designs. Flash images and excellent photos adorn their pages.

But they are on page 49 in the search!

Google can’t read photographs. All it can read is text. In fact I am currently working with one customer right now who is suffering from the same problem. They hired a designer to create an elaborate webpage and so that’s what they got-something beautiful to look at and impossible to find.

This is only one of approximately 30 very specific and important areas that websites need to fulfill in order to achieve a decent ranking. I say approximately because believe it or not, every market is different. While some things are not disputable in this discussion, others are.

I recently presented a detailed website analysis to a company who had spent a lot of money on a website. They were highly suspicious of what I was able to offer them until they saw my final product. To say they were blown away is an understatement.

If you would like me to analyze your website and show you a number of things that need to be done to help it in its rankings I am offering this service to you for a $150 minimum investment (I will let you know if that will work for your site once I see it). You will receive a detailed report outlining specific areas that need to be addressed. In my previous example I found that by doing one simple thing it moved them from page 2 on Google to page 1 overnight. Doing some of the other things I suggested they will probably be in position 1, page 1 very shortly.

Do you know how valuable it is to be in position one? There is one study that suggests that someone who is in position 1 received 8 1/2 times the clicks as someone in position 5! How much would that be worth to you? And I’m not guaranteeing anything, no one really can in the world of Internet marketing. Even if they did promise something that most likely will change and need to be re-addressed soon thereafter.

But that’s the nature of the Internet. We are creating it as we go. The future of the Internet is probably far different than most of us can even imagine. Things are happening right now in the Internet world that are changing the world in more ways than one.

I believe that eventually every company that does not have a full-time person or staff to regulate the positioning of their website regarding specific key terms, will go out of business. The amount of money associated with Internet traffic has only begun to scratch the surface. Web 3.0 is just around the corner but don’t ask me to explain what it is-that’s almost impossible to do. Why? Because we are creating it as we go along.

And who can decide which direction a crowd goes anyway?

If you want to take advantage of my website analysis program just click on the PayPal logo below and send me your information along with five keywords you are trying to target. If you want to get left behind, don’t bother.

1-Do you need additional sales or customers for your business? Believe it or not, some people don’t need additional sales and are doing fine just supporting their existing customer base.

2-Do you have a website or a least a webpage to show your business on the Internet? While every business may not need a full fledged website, we can’t think of anyone (nor can most business publications including BusinessWeek.com) who can’t use a least a webpage, a single page of basic information to be accessed with the quick search.

3-If you do have a website, how is it performing for you? Are people able to find it? Are you generating leads on a daily or hourly basis for your products or services?

4-Supposing again that you do have a website, how are you marketing it? The reality of placing an unanalyzed website on the Internet is akin to the phrase, “if you build it, they won’t come!”. Every website must follow basic search engine optimization techniques (SEO) in order to be found.

5-If you have tried marketing your website in the past what have you found that worked for you?

6-Are you taking advantage of the latest in social media such as: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. to bring in additional sales?

7-Do you realize that it is now very easy to use geo-targeting technology to market your business to local customers only? You don’t have to go to the expense of trying to broadcast to the entire world and since 62% of all people who search for businesses or products on the Internet are looking for local providers anyway.

Our company can help you in every single one of these areas. If you currently have a website we’ll take a look at it and see how it is performing. If you don’t have a website, we can create one for you and have members on our team with the capability of creating any type of website from the simplest of HTML landing pages to complex e-commerce monsters.

We will then give you a proposal for which basic Internet marketing avenue we recommend pursuing to attract more customers and business.

We also have a number of interesting methods and programs to market your business to local customers only. This can be a profoundly powerful source of income and sales for you.

Please give us a call today at 775-722-4949 schedule a free, no hassle analysis of your current Internet marketing programs and our recommendations of how to make it better.