Google Page One - How Important is It?

Is Page One on Google The Ultimate Goal?

In an earlier post this week I published that this blog was on Page One of Google. But is being on Page One of Google the end all and the be all in internet marketing?

NO!

There is a perception out there that unless your business/site is on Google’s page one, then you’ll be whistling Dixie. Yes. In terms of online real estate that is an enviable position to be in and certainly not to be discarded, but there are plenty of other ways to promote online and make good money without having reached the dizzying heights of PAGE ONE!

Before going into some of the other options I want to make it clear, that getting on page one is not all that difficult … or so it seems as witness my 6 month blog doing fairly decently for the keywords “blog along with me”. It really does depend on the keyword that you get ranked for and not all keywords are created equal. The collective wisdom of the gurus is that we should go for keywords that have a decent daily search, over 80, but which are in a small market of ideally not much more than 50,000 returns for that keyword - much more than that and the competition gets stiff. That is what is called a NICHE market or as they like to say “inch wide, mile deep”

But there are huge markets out there which if tackled right can bring in the moolah as well. Anything on money, wealth and wellness, and personal development is a huge market and not only are these markets huge, but they have a lot of activity, that is people are searching, clicking and buying. It may take longer to make money in these seemingly saturated markets, but there are ways to shorten that time:

Adwords: This takes money and you do need to know how to manage this option. You pay Google every time someone clicks on your ad, be that ad is placed in pages of the search result for a keyword or on someone’s content relative site. It is the other side of Adsense, which if you recall, is when Google pays you for hosting relative content sites by Google and when those ads are clicked. With Adwords you need to develop a plan and set a budget and really get to know which of your keywords brings in the business.

A friend of mine is in the travel business. She does almost all her advertising online with adwords. The result is a multi-million dollar business – enough to keep 7 agents busy and a thriving inbound tour business at the primary destination that she markets.

List. This is one of those chicken and egg things … build a list and now you have a target market that is interested in your product. It takes time to build such a list and you need to have something to offer for free that catches your market’s attention. But what if you have a mature offline business and want to branch out to online? You have an income and part of that income should be budgeted for online marketing. You “rent” a list of your market. There are lots of list brokers who will rent you a list of qualified buyers for your type of product … you email this list two or three times for that one time “rental”. The conversion rate will determine whether it is worth a repeat. Good copywriting plays a huge part in conversion rates. If you are not a copywriting professional, it is worth the expense to hire one. The difference can be between no business and a conversion of up to 20% and sometimes even more!

Article Marketing. Another good way to get traffic to your site is article marketing. Write articles on the product you are selling online and publish those articles. They will be published in the category that you select. There are plenty of article directories, my favorite free ones are

Idea Marketers
Ezine Articles
Article Dashboard

You can also submit to for fee article directories. These articles directories market in paid subscription publications and so the interest of the reader on your topic is of a higher quality.

Joint Ventures: Works best with complimentary products … yes, that may mean working with your competition. What if you have a site that specializes in handbags and you joint venture with someone who specializes in shoes. These are really complimentary markets. You are not really competitors but it would be safe to say that you share a common market. Each of you has a list that already buys from you. Cross market to each other's list. Again, this is one of those things that takes time to develop but you might want to identify some of the key players in your broad market and start developing a relationship.

Blogging. Lest I forget …blogging is yet another way to drive online business. While this blog is on blogging, there are plenty of blogs that are specifically set up to promote the main product which may be a natural pet balm or a site on handbags.

PAGE ONE? Important but increasingly less so as other forms of online marketing become available.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogging for Money

PS........... its all about sniffing out the cheese.

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Idea Marketers
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