New SEO Project
July 31, 2008 | 1 Comment
To many readers, I have been away for some time.
After the Advanced SEO workshop, I was studying and doing some thinking on my business direction and making some changes to my marketing plans.
With more knowledge comes more research, planning, execution and monitoring. The advanced SEO workshop helped me to open my eyes to more opportunities. Now its a matter of taking action to reel these opportunities in.
Taking action is the most difficult part of the whole exercise. We have to fight against our brain who is used to the current life we have. Even though we want to work for a better life, our brains will fight against us because it wants to watch TV or do something familiar or sticking to our normal daily routine.
This being said, I will be focusing a lot of my time in my new SEO project and this will eat up my time on blogging. So, though I will not be blogging everyday, I’ll still put up relevant stuff on this blog regularly.
Advanced SEO Workshop
July 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I have finally completed my Advacned SEO certification by Search Engine Workshops. This class was taught by Fabian Lim and it was a mind blowing, eye opening workshop.
I’m glad that I had attended this workshop as it helped me to appreciate the finesse of SEO. There is more to what people talks about SEO than meets the eye.
With my new knowledge and skills, I’m going to go after more competitive niches where the big bucks are!
Fabian Lim’s Advanced SEO Workshop
July 17, 2008 | 8 Comments
I will be travelling to KL to attend Fabian Lim’s 5 days Advanced SEO Workshop from 18 July to 22 July. This is the first ever class in Malaysia. The previous classes were all held in Singapore.
Due to the nature of the class, Fabian said we have to sign NDAs…so I suppose I can’t reveal much of what I learn here. But fret not…once I’m certified, my SEO services is available to all!
I’m really looking forward to this class to help propel my SEO skills to the next level.
The Buyers’ Mentality
July 16, 2008 | 2 Comments
Today I read a post from a friend, Corinne Edwards that really make you laugh.
She brought up the issue of chain emails that we receive almost everyday. Whenever we received such emails, often people pay attention to it and more often, believe in it as well.
If you read the readers’ comments of that post, you can see that “fear” is the driving force of people believing what may be hoax. Readers will want to be careful or take precaution, just in case. The “fear” is to avoid pain or suffering.
Now you know a bit of the human psychology of avoiding pain or suffering, you can apply this in your internet marketing campaign.
What is a bigger driving force for people to buy? To avoid suffering or to enjoy pleasure. The majority is avoid suffering.
In your internet marketing campaigns, when you point out a problem or problems, link it to the suffering that the person may be facing now. Eg, feeling humiliated because of ugly acne, or feeling lonely because unable to get a date. Humiliation and loneliness are a form of suffering.
In your salescopy or headlines, link your highlighted problem or problems AND associate it with sufferings. Then link your product or service to solving the buyers’ sufferings. This way, your product or service is so much more enticing to your buyers. Remember, people want to avoid sufferings.
Try this and you can see your online sales improving.
Roger Loh’s Basic Internet Skills Workshop
July 15, 2008 | 2 Comments
Last weekend, I helped my friend Roger with his Basic Internet Skills Workshop. The class deals with hands on training for newbies or people who would like to start their internet marketing journey.
The class was fun but packed with technical training and traffic strategies that students were bomb blasted with so many things. Towards the end of the 2 days class, many people had a good grasp of how basic things are done and also the potential of internet marketing.
It’s great that I can help the students work out their difficulty on the technical stuff and help them understand some of the concepts. Gave me a chance to practise what I had learned in my own internet marketing experience.
People tend to get stuck and is scared to proceed because they are not familiar with the website or software interface. But once they had tried it a few times, they know how to use it with confidence.
Whenever we venture out of our comfort zone, we all have a sense of fear of doing something wrong and spoil something or a sense of shame of failing.
Everyone faces this and what separates the successfully entrepreneur from the lost ones is Action!
Successful people take action despite of fear. The money is outside your comfort zone. You need the effort to go pluck the fruits.
The students learn fast because they had the mindset of learning despite all the mistakes they make. More often than not, we stop learning as fast as when we are a baby because of our own pride and fear of failing and shame. So, put on your learning cap and be humble, that is when we will really grow. T Harv Eker said something very profound…the most dangerous words are “I Know That“…
Even though I have more experience than the students from the class, it was a good reminder that getting things wrong is just a temporary sign that you are doing it wrong. So just persevere on but do it differently and learn the process. The more effort we put into it, the faster we achieve our target.
Me On the extreme left and Roger in the middle with the tie.
Google Keyword Tool
July 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This morning I was checking my AdWords account and read a notice that Google has done something that has revolutionised keyword research.
Remember we used to do keyword research on Overture to get an estimate of the keyword searches on Yahoo?
Now Google Keyword Tool has incorporated Approximate Search Volume for the past month as well as Approximate Average Search Volume for the year! This is so cool. Now instead of looking at green bars to indicate search volume, you get to see the estimated searches compiled by Google.
Since this feature is really new, the June month Approx Search Volume is almost the same as the average full year. I suspect that its a new feature so the yearly figure is not up todate yet.
Now everybody will have an extremely good keyword research tool to do their keyword research. Mind you, Google is the leading search engine by far, so the data will be fairly accurate and will represent a good picture of the market.
So how about Wordtracker or other paid keyword research tools? Well, IMHO, I think Google may have just flatten the competitors and strengthen itself as the leading research tool…what do you think?
How To Find Hot Selling Products That Really Sells?
July 10, 2008 | 3 Comments
Finding hot selling products on various popular affiliate programs is not difficult. Most of the popular affiliate programs have a ranking system to indicate the salability of the products. But there is a lot of market research to do to find out if these hot selling products are indeed selling. These research are not difficult to do…just that it is tedious.
There are 3 things that you need to do to before you really pick a product to sell:-
1. Does the product satisfy a Want, Need or Problem?
The main reason why people buy is because they want it, they need it or they they have a problem. So the minimum requirement to make a sale is the product must satisfy a Want, Need or Problem. If you don’t understand the product or how it can help the potential customer to satisfy such basic requirements, then you should avoid the product.
Don’t pick a product out of a blue.
2. What is the competition level?
The competition level may indicate the profitability of the market segment or how big is the market. When assessing the competition, make sure that you can sell the product as an authority in it or an expert in it. You should be able satisfy your customers’ wants and needs, fighting competitors and stay in profit. The more “expert” or authoritative you are in the market segment, the bigger market share you can dominate.
3. What is the general demand level of the product?
 Photo by david.orban |
Knowing about the demand level of your market segment is important. This is because it helps to put the competition in perspective. Is the market too saturated with competitors based on the demand level? Or the pie is so big that you can carve a piece out for yourself easily. In putting the numbers and results together, some of the things you need to consider are:- |
- High competition or low competition. Large number of competitors may indicate big market but also mean more intense competition and harder to sell your product. Low competition may mean smaller market or maybe the product has just launched but you can dominate easier.
- In low demand, you may not have enough sales to sustain. High demand may mean more potential sales but competition will increase as well.
Finding the right balance of product offering, market competition and general interest level in the product is more of an art. You have to base on continual testing and past experienced. This is how you build your business acumen. As you do more and more research and put up your product for sale, you will slowly build up a “gut feel” whether the product can sell in particular market segment with certain level of competition and customer demand.
Going MIA For A Few Weeks
July 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I have been away from this blog for a few days and I could feel some withdrawal symptoms! I wonder if its because I’m so used to writing every morning that I feel like I’m not doing something when I’m not contributing to you.
This few weeks I have jumped from one internet marketing course to another and helping my friend Roger with his class in Penang in between 2 courses. Yup its a busy month.
The law of attraction really bring me the opportunity to learn more of what I want to learn and at such good offer as well. That is why I signed up for a course next week.
I will be focusing almost all of my effort in promoting an affiliate product now, so my posting will not be so frequent. Do subscribe to my RSS or even better, my free newsletter and I’ll notify you whenever there is a new post.
I have also re-arranged some of my post into articles so that you can have a more systematic way of locating information that can help you in your internet business. Its in My Articles section.
Drop me an email if you want to know more about certain things and I’ll reply you as soon as possible. In fact, you can email to me on things that you want to learn and I’ll try to help you out.
Fabian’s Leadership Training Program
July 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Today I’ll be travelling to KL for Fabian’s Leadership Training Program tomorrow. There will be a lot of things to learn and improve myself. I really can’t wait for the class…
Your Keyword Research Is Critical
July 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I’ve had many enquires on how to do a web page and get it listed on the search engines. Many people get a web designer to do up a nice looking website about their company and expect their website to be listed on the search engine. After some time, they can’t find their website when they search for it, except when they search for their company’s name. What happened? Why can’t I find my website?
This is a common thing that people do when they start internet marketing. After the website is up and they have paid for the website, they don’t get the results they want. Then they keep wondering what went wrong.
The problem lies with the keywords that the person uses. In most cases, web designers will ask the person what does the person want. That person will most probably say that they want to advertise the company or firm, or the person is in this or that business.
So the website is designed with the company’s name or the industry name or the nature of the business as the primary keywords.
 Photo by notsogoodphotography |
But have you ask yourself whether do people search for your company’s name or industry or nature of the business on the web? Keywords are words that search engines use to index and rank your webpages. An example is, if your website is done up with keyword, Company A Ltd. the seach engine will index your webpages as Company A Ltd. So whenever someone searches for Company A Ltd., your website will be listed. Now, if search engine like Google indexed your webpage as Company A Ltd, it won’t appear if people search for your product lets say “Graphite Fishing Rods For Children”. |
This is because you didn’t use “Graphite Fishing Rods For Children” as your keyword. So it is really simple. Use keywords that your customer will search in the search engine to find your product or services.
So how do I research for keywords relevant to my internet business or offline business?
You have to start with marketing 101…that is doing a SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis is an analytical method that you use to assess your Strengths, your Weaknesses, your opportunities and Threats. In other words, you need to have a good idea of what you can do and what you can’t do. Then you need to analyse your market whether it is a lucrative market or not. Finally you need to analyse your competitors.
Assessing your strengths and weaknesses is pretty straight forward. Sell what you are really good at doing and don’t do something that you are not so good at. The point here is to be focused on either one product or service first. Don’t try to be like amazon offering thousand and one products and services and lose your focus.
Analyse your online opportunities by doing keyword research. Use Google to search for your product or service that you intend to sell.You should also use keyword search tools such as Google’s Keyword Tool and Free Wordtracker.
Generally, if there are lots of searches made and many pages in the search engine result page (serp), then it may indicate that there is a big market in that particular niche. Try to find keywords that are relevant to your product or service offering that have a balance of not too big or too small niche. To big and you have to fight really hard to get ranked on 1st page of the serp. Too small and you won’t get much traffic.
Read up all your competitor’s webpages and see what are they doing. The general indication is more competitors mean bigger market. See what your competitors are doing and imitate them. Do what all the top ranking competitors are doing but don’t copy their materials. You can get ideas from them but since you are really good at what you are doing, producing your own materials is not difficult.
| Brainstorm as many keywords as you can and run each keyword through the SWOT analysis to shortlist your keywords. Remember, getting the right combination of tightly related keywords in a well balanced niche market means getting good targeted traffic with minimum or medium competition. So spend most of your time looking for good keywords. I have met internet marketers who can spend up to a few weeks to search for their keywords. |  Photo by Jacob Bøtter |
Finding the right keywords solve almost half your problem of getting the right traffic. The design of the webpage is the least of your worries. So emphasize on your keyword research and you will strike your own goldmine.
Once you have your keywords, you can give it to your web designer and tell them you want to have a website designed with your list of keywords. For more tips on search engine optimisation, you can go to my previous articles listed the in SEO Tips category.
Give your web designer the guidelines on what to put and what not to put in your webpages and they’ll design something nice for you which is probably search engine optimised. You can find from my earlier articles under the category SEO Tips on what are the guidelines that you or the web designer can do.
You should also tell your designer how to use your keywords in the meta tags, title page and content. My earlier SEO articles touched on this.
Finally, track and monitor your webpages and see how it is doing. If you have done it correctly, then you should be moving up the ranks in your niche.
Search Engine Optimisation is a whole topic that its best you learn something about it. Armed with good basics, you can tweak and optimise your own webpages to help it move up the serp’s ranking.
Don’t depend on your web designer. They may not know much about search engine optimisation. Remember, ranking on 1st page of your niche give you free targeted traffic to your website. Traffic means potential customers!
You can learn some of the basics first, and its good enough for you to dominate long tail niches and make some money. Once you get a hang of it, you can learn advanced SEO techniques which will give you skills to fight with the big boys and that is where big money lies.
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