Brent Hodgson, Copywriter

I received a question via email about a recent post I made entitled Conversion Pages Convert, Traffic Pages Generate Traffic
In this post, I talk about keeping your conversion content separate from your traffic generation content - and optimising each for its own specific purpose.

The email I receive asked:

… Does this mean we should send Adwords traffic to article pages instead of sales letters?…

No, generally.

In some cases, (because of Google’s Quality Score guidelines for Adwords,) you might be able to get visitors much cheaper if you do send them to your articles pages.

But because only a small percentage of those visitors will click through to your sales page, it will generally be more profitable to send visitors straight to your conversion page.

People generally realise that they’re going to be taken to a sales page by reading the content of your ad. So they click on your ad expecting to see your offer.

When I was referring to optimised Traffic Generation pages, I was referring to them being Search Engine Optimised to rank well in natural listings, and to be valuable content which people would naturally want to visit and link to.

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Google Adwords has released an update to their Display URL policy which will come into effect on April 1st, 2008… (no, it’s not an April Fools joke).

Advertisers will still be able to use Google Adwords Tracking System urls (thankfully, due to the scheduled launch of Tracked.to).

However, the destination URL and the display URL must be the same.

Previously you could occasionally sneak the occasional ad through with a different Display URL to the Landing Page…

For example, if you owned ProductName.com and CompanyName.com - you could occasionally use ProductName.com as the display URL, and redirect traffic to a product information page at CompanyName.com

This was also incredibly valuable if you had a keyword-specific domain as it would invariably increase Click Through Rates.

In recent months, we were increasingly having trouble doing this (it would get rejected during a manual review MOST of the time - but if we kept resubmitting the same ads, they would eventually get approved).

But with this update, unfortunately this loophole is closed.

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When you go fishing, you attach two things to the end of your fishing line - the bait, and the hook.

Each serves a different purpose - and if you forget either of them, you’re unlikely to catch any fish.

If you’re running a successful online business, then chances are you’re also using some “bait” and a “hook” too.

You have some Traffic Generation Content - its purpose is to attract visitors to your web-site. It’s the bait on the end of your fishing line.

Then you have your Conversion Content, which is the the hook on the end of your fishing line - it’s there to “catch” visitors and get them to take an action (to buy, opt-in, etc).

Each serves a different, but necessary purpose.

A mistake I see a lot of people making is they try to make their bait into a hook, or their hook into bait.

They try to Search Engine Optimise long-form salesletters to get more visitors…

They might get a *good* ranking, but it won’t be anything like what they could get if they poured the same effort into SEO’ing good lead-generation content.

(Note: Do you have any idea how hard it is to get quality links to a salesletter page? No quality website owner in their right mind will give a good quality link to a sales page!)

OR… They try to get people to buy from the bottom of lead generation pages.

They’ll get *some* conversions - but nowhere near as many as they could get if they were sending those same leads to a purpose copywritten, conversion maximised sales page.

(This can also causes them a whole bunch of duplicate content issues too, especially if they’re using the same long-form conversion content on the bottom of each page.)

All of my most successful clients understand this.

In fact, it’s a principle I use myself too.

The reason I’m able to devote time to this blog is because it makes me money.

I write interesting content for my blog as Traffic Generation “Bait” to bring in visitors.

AND at the bottom of each blog post, I monetize that traffic by inviting people to find out about becoming a client of mine - that’s my Conversion “Hook” Page.

It’s really simple:

1. Create interesting content to attract people to your web-site. Make sure it’s information that potential customers want, which is relevant to the products or services you provide (a classic example is financiers creating mortgage calculators on their site);
2. Then, from the bottom of each page, invite your visitors to view another page - where you ask them for the sale (this is where the financier then asks people to contact them for a consultation);

Try it for yourself and see - nothing attracts more traffic than a purpose-built traffic generation page, and nothing converts better than a purpose-built conversion salesletter.

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Internet marketing is really a simple business. There are only two things any successful web-site needs;

1. Traffic, and;
2. Conversion.

That is, you need visitors coming to your web-site and a way to turn those visitors into customers.

The more visitors you have coming to your web-site, and the more visitors you can turn into paying customers, the more profitable your web-site will be - it’s that simple really.

So where does your web-site fit?

If your web-site is consistently and profitably turning visitors into buyers, then your problem isn’t conversion - it’s traffic. It’s getting as many visitors to your web-site as possible.

But if your site is getting thousands of visitors, and the occasional sale - your problem isn’t traffic - it’s conversion. You need to look at ways to improve the conversion rate of your web-site.

A lot of clients I deal with mistakenly believe their problem is traffic - when in fact it’s conversion.

They see 1 sale coming through for every 100 visitors - and look for “cheap” ways to get 100’s more visitors, instead of looking for ways to get sales from the 99 visitors who didn’t buy.

But once you improve the conversion rate of your web-site, traffic becomes simple.

That’s because, generally if you have your site’s conversion rate running well, you can just buy the traffic you need.

You can bid for the #1 spot in Adwords on all of your keywords because you’re using your traffic more profitably than any of your competitors, which means you can afford to pay more per lead, and still make more money than any of them. You can afford to invest time and money into Search Engine Optimisation - not just for long tail keywords, but more generic searches. In fact, you might even be able to buy your competitors’ businesses.

That’s why internet marketing is a really simple business… If you realise that there’s only Traffic and Conversion.

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A client asked a question today: “Should I use a Country-Specific Domain Name (TLD) If I Am Targeting [That] Market?”

The short answer is Yes.

There are several benefits from doing this, and having a site aimed at each country you are targeting. But there are also some “traps” to watch out for if you do plan to do this.

Let me start with the benefits:

Increase Your Search Engine Rankings Where It Counts (Benefit #1)

This is the most simple, fundamental benefit of having separate web-sites for each country you are targeting - you get a big rankings boost.

Because most of my clients are Australian businesses who target an Australian audience, I work a lot with Australian (.com.au) domain names.

And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that it’s clearly easier to rank better in Australian users’ Google Search results if you have an Australian .com.au domain name.

Have a look at this (click on images to see rankings):

Check it out - 9 out of the top 10 results are Australian web-sites.

Here’s what people in the U.K. see when they do the same search:

(Here 5 out of the top 10 results in the Search Engine Rankings are British web-sites.)

And for comparison, here’s the same page in the International version of Google:

Here you see a different set of results again - this time, more American and International web-sites, with 8 of the top 10 sites being owned by American companies.

So we very clearly see there’s a very clear positive correlation here between having a site targeted to a particular country, and search engine rankings.

Increase your Click Through Rates (Benefit #2)

If SEO isn’t your style, and you’re more looking at Adwords results, consider what a country-specific domain name does to your credibility in that market.

If you have a .com.au domain name as the display URL in your Google Adwords account, and you’re targeting an American or British audience, in the half second it takes for someone to review your ad and decide to click, the seed of doubt enters their mind and they decide your site is “probably not relevant”.

On the other hand, if you were targeting an Australian audience, and your display URL showed a .com.au domain name, you would immediately GAIN credibility.

Increase your Conversion Rates by Tailoring Content to Each Market (Benefit #3)

Finally, one of the great things about having separate web-sites for each country you are targeting is that you can tailor the content to suit your market.

For example, the American market is less offended by heavy-selling, hyped-up advertising copy - whereas Australian, New Zealand and British consumers are generally more conservative in the marketing messages they respond to.

This presents businesspeople who own several different country targeted web-sites a unique opportunity to optimise their content in the same way that some successful direct mail marketers will segment and target their lists.

WARNING: Duplicate Content

But… There’s one BIG issue to consider if you’re planning to set up a second version of your web-site under a country-specific URL.

Duplicate Content on Multiple Domains Case Study #1

Recently, a client’s web-site was ranking poorly in search engines.

Found they were running the same site on both the .com and .com.au domain names - and every page (on one of the two sites) had received a duplicate content penalty. That meant roughly half the pages on each site were working.

The client was targeting an Australian audience, but they wanted to avoid some domain squatter or competitor owning the .com version of their domain name - so they registered both.

…And they couldn’t bear to not use the .com version of their domain (and let it sit there, going to waste), so they set their site up so that it would run on both the .com and .com.au domains.

It all seemed pretty logical to the web developer who set up their web-site… but little did they know it would end up causing big problems for their client.

When Google found their web-site(s), they quickly found all of the content was identical on the two domains and had to decide which version of the domain was the “legitimate” owner of the content, and which should be penalised for copyright infringement.

Google ended up deciding some of the content legitimately belonged to one web-site, and some belonged to the other - and it penalised both web-sites.

Ouch!

It only took a tiny bit of Search Engine Optimisation work to fix this.

We 301 (permanent) redirected all pages from one version of the site into the other (so that they kept the links that they had on both domains), changed some settings in their Google Webmaster Tools accounts (to fix a second issue to do with domain canonization) and did some minor on-page SEO tweaks.

Ever since, their rankings have been improving, and their positioning in search engines has never been better!

The Lesson: The lesson here is simply - if all of your customers are in one country, don’t run two web-sites.
(Oh, and speaking to an SEO guy can pay off - even if you’re *logically* doing the right thing. )

Duplicate Content on Multiple Domains Case Study #2

This one’s a doozie… and it happened just prior to the last Google Algorithm update.

Another potential client - a corporate marketing firm - came to me asking to help them improve their search engine rankings.

Their web-site was part of a network of partner companies, each providing the same service in different regions. His site was targeting Australia.

I looked into the job and found that one of the major issues they faced was duplicated content… the same content was repeated over the multiple web-sites.

I’m not just talking about content which described their packaged services and business philisophy - they also had duplicated links pages which served to cross-promote the various partner companies.

But the client didn’t want to change these duplicate pages.

“I can’t do that. Part of the agreement with the international partners says we will all display these pages. They help us to get links to our sites, and mean we can cross-promote each other. And we haven’t been penalised so far…”

Famous last words…

A few weeks later when Google’s Algorithm was updated, all of the partner sites dropped significantly - all pages lost page rank, and the sites no longer featured on the first page of Google for any significant keywords.

They’re now “reassessing their options”.

The lesson: Don’t copy and paste content. Even if there is a short term benefit, it’s poison for search engine rankings.

Final Tip: Google Webmaster Tools

Australia (and many other countries) have tight restrictions on who can own their country-specific domain names. In Australia, there are a whole host of restrictions - and in general, you need a registered business entity in order to own the domain name you want to register.

But, if you don’t want to go to the effort of setting up structures in other countries, or if you already have a perfectly good .com domain name which you want to target to a specific country, the alternative is to set up a Google Webmaster Tools account for that domain and tell Google which country you are targeting.

Set up, or log-into your Google Webmaster Tools account, and make sure your site has been verified. Once you have done that…

1. Click on Tools;
2. Then Set Geographic Target;
3. Then Associate a geographic location with this site, and finally;
4. Select the Country or Region you want to target

Google does use some of its own tricks to work out which country or region a web-site is targeting, (you would have seen several British .com web-sites ranking well in search engines in the examples above,) but this helps to make sure they get it right.

This is as good as a country-specific domain name for Search Engine Optimisation purposes.

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We’ve known for a long time that your Adwords Quality Score affects your Minimum Bid on keywords.

So when Google announced they were adding a new “Quality Score” column, there was excitement among Search Engine Marketers - perhaps this would give us a better insight into how to improve the Quality Score of our ads?

But there was something they didn’t tell us…

…An important piece of information about how the “Good”, “OK” and “Poor” Quality Scores relates to your ads.

Here’s the Truth: It turns out your Quality Score is just represents your minimum bid on a particular keyword - nothing more, nothing less.

In fact, in Google’s own words:

“…minimum bids provide a more accurate estimate of your Quality Score.”

Here’s the full text of what AdWordsAPIAdvisor had to say about this on the Adwords API forum:

“The new Quality Score column (https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=53024) displays a keyword’s quality and minimum bid at a glance. The idea is to provide traditional users of the web interface with a simple visual cue. Since a minimum bid is a direct reflection of the Quality Score, the data in this new column (values: Great/Okay/Poor) can help advertisers decide if they should take any action to improve the quality of their keywords.

That said, we currently do not plan to release this column’s data via the API since minimum bids (already available via the API) provide a more accurate estimate of your Quality Score.

Just to give you a rough estimate of how minimum bids and these quality “buckets” currently align… “Great” keywords have a minimum bid less than or equal to $0.04, “Okay” keywords have a minimum bid between $0.05 and $0.30, and “Poor” keywords have a minimum bid that is higher than $0.30. Please note, these ranges may change over time.”

This means the information displayed in the Quality Score column is representative of your Minimum Bid - not the other way around.

At least now we know.

So we can all turn off our Quality Score columns - they don’t provide us with any more valuable information than we already have - and focus on the Minimum Bid instead what’s displayed as the Adwords Quality Score.

Stumble This!

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Twitter doesn’t make any sense on the surface:

“Some startup is paying squillions of dollars so that you can broadcast free SMS messages to your friends worldwide?

And people actually sign up to have their mobiles clogged with annoying and mundane text messages of no-more-than 140 characters?

And some venture capitalist actually paid for this to get off the ground?”

It reeks of a type of here-we-go-again - dot-com-boom - this-time-in-Web-2.0-form hysteria - and sounds (on the surface) like some venture capitalist was so eager to jump onto the Web 2.0 phenomenon that he bought the first thing that came through his door.

Or at least this is what I thought when I first heard about Twitter.

“Where’s the value in this?” I asked myself.

But the more I scratch the surface (of the Twitter riddle, not my head), the more potential value I see in it.

Twitter is Growing at an Exponential Rate

Twitter’s membership base was said to be 100,000 strong as of late March, and was doubling every three weeks, according to Technology Review

And if the Unique ID’s of the RSS feeds are anything to go by, then as of earlier tonight (when I checked it out) there were at least 4,177,800 users!

And thousands more sign up every hour!!

This is a growth rate which new Web 2.0 services dream of - They type of massive growth experienced by MySpace and YouTube.

And already fan sites are popping up – like Twitterverse – a mashup which looks at the most commonly used words on Twitter.

As Steve Rubel points out, with these sorts of vital statistics it’s only a matter of time until Twitter gets snapped up.

Twitter’s Value is in its ability to Communicate

From a user’s perspective, the real value of Twitter is in its ability to help you communicate with people.

In that way, it’s just like a blog.

If you’re running an internet business, you probably already know the value of a blog: The more you communicate with people, the more likely it is that they will think of you and want to buy from you.

Twitter is just the same – although it has its own strengths and weaknesses.

On the downside, you can only send messages of up to 140 characters.

On the upside, people can receive your messages straight to their mobile phone – meaning you can access them in their daily lives in places where blogs, e-mail and other web technologies can’t reach.

And Twitter foots the bill for you!

What’s more, people WANT to hear about the mundane stuff that happens in your life.

Check out the Twitter account of 2008 U.S. Presidential hopeful, John Edwards - he already has over 2,000 people signed up to find out what he’s doing on a particular day.

Check it out:

(from staff): 1st quarter fundraising deadline is tomorrow…Sen. Edwards will be in KY, IN, OH, and FL today for the final push.

Riveting!

So what’s in it for Twitter? How does Twitter benefit from all of this?

Twitter’s Value is also in Its Huge Database

But from a business perspective (ie - from Twitter’s point of view) the real value in Twitter is in the size of its database.

SMS marketing companies pay millions to build their databases.

Twitter already has a database of millions of users.

If I had this sort of database, I know what I’d do.

• I’d start collecting demographic data from people (as they signed up, or next time they accessed their account). Age, gender, location – and perhaps some interests;

• I’d then start profiling the database, looking for what people are interested in / what they do. For example, a quick scan of the Twitterverse shows coffee is used often;

• Then, I’d look for companies who wanted to market to these people, by targeting their demographics or certain keywords.

Imagine it - Starbucks sends a broadcast out via Twitter to all users who had ever mentioned the word “coffee”, who lived in an area close to a Starbucks coffee house advertising their latest frappe – and offering people a free upsize if they show this SMS when they order!

Something like:

Try Starbucks new Lychee Frappe: Get yours upsized for free if you show this message when ordering. Today Only At Starbucks.

And you still have characters to spare!

This is all well and good - but it doesn’t answer the question:

How Can You Profit From Twitter?

Ever since Ed Dale posed the question on his blog, making money out of Twitter is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and researching.

I plan on talking about more in a few days time (so if you’re not subscribed to my RSS feed, then I recommend you hook yourself up right away).

Here’s just one idea – Woot (the site that sells one thing every day) is using Twitter to let people know about their daily specials – and already they have 2054 people signed up!

(Sorry John Edwards - more people are interested in hearing about cheap LCD TV’s than your 2008 Presidential Campaign. ;))

So how do you plan on cashing in from Twitter? What are your ideas and strategies?

Let’s get the conversation started - (and if I use your ideas in my next blog post on Twitter, I’ll be sure to reference you or your blog).

Brent

P.S. - If you’d like to add me to your Twitter account, or find out more about what Twitter does, you can visit my Twitter account.

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Master Sales Copywriter, Gary Halbert, died in his sleep on Easter Sunday.

• He was the Prince of Print.

• He was one of the fathers of direct marketing copywriting on the internet.

• A man who made (and lost) more money from direct marketing than most copywriters will see in a lifetime

• And a man who delighted in calling practically anyone a “shitweasel” (as an endearing term, or an insult - sometimes both at the same time).

I was shocked to read the news on Ed Dale’s blog, but not surprised.

To tell the truth (warts-and-all), anyone who followed Gary Halbert would have seen his health deteriorate over the years - in fact, Gary regularly wrote frequently and frankly about it.

He didn’t look the best on the video testimonial he did for John Reece’s Traffic Secrets course - and then there was the announcement that he was going into rehabilitation after being on some highly addictive pain medication - and most recently the announcement that Gary Halbert, (a man who had lived his whole life around the printed word,) had tragically gone blind.

As I say, I was shocked to hear about his passing – but not surprised.

It was a sad way for anyone to go – let alone the best copywriters who had ever lived.

And I mean that with complete sincerity - he was the best copywriter who ever lived.

A few years ago I invested in his massive swipe file, Gary Halbert’s “The Motherlode Collection” – and what I received was pure, unadulterated gold.

Look, if you don’t have it already, check out the final ever edition of his newsletter “The Gary Halbert Letter” – in it you’ll find over a dozen of his best-selling headlines and intro’s.

Do any of those look familiar?

I’ll bet they do!

Gary’s work has been so influential in shaping online direct marketing during the internet revolution that I wouldn’t be surprised if his headlines had been “swiped” and used on more web-sites than any other.

Chances are that something Gary Halbert worked his ass off to discover, you swiped and made thousands of dollars off – and didn’t even know it was Gary Halbert’s who was partially responsible for your success.

This is how he left his mark on the world, and how he’ll live on.

It’s a sad day for copywriters everywhere - we’re all a little poorer having lost the Prince of Print, and our favorite shitweasel.

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“Help! My site has been dropped from Google’s index!“

For many webmasters who rely on Google for traffic, having their site dropped form Google’s index is just about the worst news they could possibly imagine!

They see their front-page rankings on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) disappear overnight, their traffic shrivels up, and they get a cold, sick, heavy feeling in the pit of their stomach as they ask themselves -

“Could this be the end of my web-site?”

Fortunately, it’s rarely as bad as you might think - and it happens to a lot of webmasters.

The good news is, if you’re doing everything “right”, then your search engine rankings should be back within a few days!

In fact, it happened to a close friend of mine recently. Here’s the story:

Case Study: What to do if your Site is Dropped From Google’s Index

On Wednesday last week, I received an e-mail from a close friend, Alister Cameron.

Here’s the e-mail -

Fella,

I’ve just been “dumped” from Google… or so it seems!!! My stats have dropped really badly. They’re now sending me a paltry 20 referrals a day.

So now I’m trying to work out what happened.

I still rank well for “Alister Cameron”, “Blog consultant”, “blog coach”, blogologist, etc… but keywords in post titles have totally died!

I do a search for [nicole eggers gorgeous]:

http://www.google.com/search?q=nicole+eggers+gorgeous

Now, I’m the original poster of a story on that. I’m not the splog entry, I’m the original poster!

But in the SERPs in Google, my original story is ranked #22!!!

Again…

I do a search for “real reason nobody ready your blog”, which is ALMOST the exact text from my title, and I’m almost at the bottoms of the first page.

Some almost-splog ranks #1 and I’m way down the list!!!

I feel sick.

Do you have any ideas?!?!?!?

–Alister

Ouch!

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor bloke.

On top of being one hell of a nice guy, Alister’s a top notch blogger (www.AlisterCameron.com)

In fact, he’s so good that he was recently invited to join the b5 Media group (the blogging network which Darren Rowse helped create).

Alister puts a lot of time effort into his blog, and takes a lot of pride in how he’s been able to build up traffic.

So to see so much of his work suddenly disappear from Google – and sites which were blatantly ripping off his content rank higher than him – I imagine, it all came as a bit of a shock.

I immediately sent him an e-mail:

Hey Al,

Don’t Panic!

Chances are it’s just a data update, and your site will be back up in a few days!

I’ll look into it as soon as I get a chance though.

Brent

Aren’t data updates just part of the Google Dance?

Just quickly - If you’ve been on the “wild wild web” for a while, you’ve no-doubt heard of the Google Dance.

The Google Dance refers to the 6-8 day process Google used to go through every month to load up the monolithic databases of search engine data.

But I say “used to” because it no longer happens

Here’s an explanation from Google’s “Alpha-Geek”, Matt Cutts, himself:

From the summer of 2000 to the summer of 2003, index updates tended to happen about once a month. The resulting changes were called the Google Dance…
Over the years, Google’s indexing has been streamlined, to the point where most regular people don’t even notice the index updating.

So the old test (where you’d check one of the old Google Dance tools) no longer works.

How to Investigate whether your Site has been Dropped From Google’s Index, and Fix the Problem!:

Here’s are some simple steps to follow if you believe your site has been dropped from Google’s index:

1. DON’T PANIC!

First and foremost, remember the wise line from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC!

This stuff happens all the time, and chances are you’ll be back up in the SERPs in no time.

This was the first thing I told Alister.

2. Check Google’s Webmaster Tools

Once you’ve stopped panicking, look at your site status in Google’s Webmaster Tools.

It’s a good place to start, because (increasingly) Google is using the Google Webmaster Tools to inform webmasters of problems with their sites (although you’ll probably need to log in to see the exact detail of the problem).

What to look for:

If you’ve got no idea what you’re looking for, or at, there are two specific things you should look for:

• In the Site Status wizard, you want to see two big green ticks - one each beside “Pages from your site are included in Google’s Index” and “Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on…”. A problem with the former might indicate that your site has been banned, or was never indexed in the first place. A problem with the latter suggests Google might be having trouble spidering your web-site.
• Use the site: function in a Google search (ie - I would search for site:www.brenthodgson.com ) to see all the pages indexed for your web-site. This should vaguely match the number of pages you have on your web-site. If the number of pages indexed by Google is zero, then you could be being penalised. If it’s fewer pages than you expect it to be, then there are potential indexing problems.

These were all OK in Alister’s case.

3. Check Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

If you’re unfamiliar with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, it’s worth having a flip through them to make sure your site is doing all the right things.

If you’re worried about where you rank in Google, then this should be your Bible.

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines make up about 90% of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - the remaining 10% is just tweaks that manipulate imbalances in Google’s ranking algorithms.

Something seemingly innocent (like using the same bio page for your company on several web-sites) can be a poison-pill when it comes to your rankings in Google.

In Alister’s case, I knew he was a good boy who played by the rules - but I double-checked that his latest redesign was OK according to Google’s webmaster guidelines (just to be sure he didn’t accidentally do something silly).

Note on Duplicate Content: Even though Alister’s site was being “Splog’d” (or scraped by spam blogs), this rarely affects rankings in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Google’s system is designed to be smart enough to pick this up in most cases.

In fact, Google says:

Don’t worry be happy: Don’t fret too much about sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your content. Though annoying, it’s highly unlikely that such sites can negatively impact your site’s presence in Google. If you do spot a case that’s particularly frustrating, you are welcome to file a DMCA request to claim ownership of the content and have us deal with the rogue site.

4. Wait

If everything’s fine, and your site is still indexed (although your ranks have dropped - like it did with Alister), then the next step can be the hardest:

Waiting…

Give it 4 days (I told Alister to wait over the Easter long weekend) and your site’s ranking should be back to roughly normal.

However, if your site isn’t back up within a few days, then it’s likely something has gone wrong… Find the problem, fix it, and then get your site re-indexed.

So what happened to Alister’s site?

There’s happy ending.

Remember how I told Alister not to panic, and to wait a few days to see what happened?

Well, I checked his site later that night and it was back up in the Search Engine Results Pages - and higher than ever!

The moral of this story is: If You’re Doing Everything Right, DON’T PANIC: You’ll Be Fine!

Another reason to stick to White Hat SEO!

Brent

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Hope you had a good Easter break!

I think I’m suffering from a chocolate overdose

Anyway, I came across this little Viral Internet Marketing campaign on a forum:

Maybe it’s just my sick sense of humor, but I got a giggle out of it

The 3 things I liked about this Viral Internet Marketing campaign were:

1. It was Timely (hey, it’s Easter if you haven’t noticed!);
2. It was Humorous (and memorable), and;
3. It had a “Sell” at the end (instead of going for “brand recognition”).

There are some things that I would have done differently in the implementation to try and boost the results (all of these tips are covered in: 7 Steps to Viral Internet Marketing Success)

But what they’ve done so far has been successful - after all, it was “infectious” enough to reach me on a forum which had nothing to do with marketing!

Brent

P.S. – This video reminded me of that horrible magic trick from the movie “The Prestige” where the bird gets killed in a cage. Although even that trick wasn’t as disturbing as seeing David Bowie act!

P.P.S. - I signed up to Twitter this weekend. If you have an account, you can add me here: http://twitter.com/brenthodgson

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