Most of you are familiar with the childhood story of the Tortoise and the Hare. The rabbit is quick out the door, but along the way he gets sidetracked and overconfident. On the other hand, the Tortoise is methodical and precise, carefully working his way through the track, which ultimately allows him to win the race.
Business is a lot like that. Many times companies come out of the gate at a fast pace, excited and ready to rule the world. But staying power is the key to success.
The Same Can Be Said About Marketing…
Especially Internet Marketing. Take web design for instance. We all have a niece, nephew, son, daughter or friend who claims that they can build you a website. Most likely they can, but how professional it is and how well it converts is usually questionable.
Many companies also think that Search Marketing is a fairly easy concept to grasp. Throw up a PPC ad on Google, send it to your home page, and relax while you reap the rewards. What? You spent a lot of money and really didn’t get many sales? I guess that stuff just doesn’t work!
Try That SEO Thing Instead…
Throw a bunch of keywords into your content, maybe buy a bundle of keyword-rich domains, send them all to your website, and wa-la, You’ve Got SEO! Hmmm, didn’t work so well after all? That stuff just doesn’t work!
And What About Those Automated Programs?
Submit your website to 5000 directories across the web in a matter of minutes! Quickly create hundreds of doorway pages to target individual keywords. Or easily set up your PPC program through an automated program where one ad can be used to send hundreds of keywords to your website.
Sound Too Good to Be True?
You can certainly do all those things if you’re looking for the quick fix or cheap approach to marketing your business on the web. Will they work? That’s debatable.
The 5000 directories won’t help your business at all since Google and Bing will view it as spam. Most likely it will end up hurting you.
Google has also changed its algorithm to specifically hunt for doorway pages, especially ones automatically created by programs on the fly. They’ve given the search engine bots a “hunt and destroy” mission when looking for the doorway pages. (That just means they remove them from the search index when they find them.)
While it may seem like Google runs the world, they don’t always get it right. I’ll talk more about that and other hints and tips about Google and PPC ads, in part two of this blog post on Thursday so make sure you bookmark this page and re-visit the blog for the second half.
