Free Website Marketing Advice from Freelance Marketing Group, Inc.

What does website marketing and podcasting have to do with each other? Simple, podcasting gives your viewing audience an alternative method to receive information on new products, product updates, additional services you are offering, etc.

Podcasting is a relatively new technology developed by Apple, Inc. to give people a way to listen to just about anything via the iPod. From the iPod to iTunes, podcasting has really taken off and now, there are several good programs that can download and listen to podcasts.

Podcasting is now also going to be factored into the algorithms that drive the up and coming Google Universal Search, which is really designed to bring all forms of website marketing together.

Benefits of Podcasting for Website Marketing:

Since Google has decided that Social Network Marketing is an important form of website marketing, podcasting has moved its way right to the top of the list, probably because it is currently one of the most popular ways of disseminating information.

Basically what you do is create small radio shows discussing products or services you offer. Once these are created, they are converted to the podcast format, a logo or other form of artwork is attached and the file is uploaded to your site. Once it is on your website (probably under “news” or “press”), you submit these podcasts to the major search engines and podcast directories.

One of the great thing about podcasts is that you can actually make the logo or artwork associated with each podcast clickable. So, lets say you sell website marketing which includes link popularity, website optimization and pay per click management; if you are doing a podcast about the importance of link popularity, you can have your artwork clickable and take the listener right to the page of your site talking about link popularity. The same goes for any podcast you do - just link the logo / artwork with a page on your site.

From there, it is just a matter of time before you get picked up. With Google’s new Universal Search that will be launched later in the year, it is possible and probable that your podcasts (if properly optimized) will be picked up and
displayed as part of the standard search results. Of course, these will only be displayed if someone searches a keyword that your podcast is associated with and promoted for.

Trevor Walter - Freelance Marketing Group, Inc. 

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later and it appears it is sooner. Over the next several months, Google will be implementing what they call ‘Universal Search’, a new way to search vertically for products or services you are interested in.

What is the difference between our current searches and the new ‘Universal Search’? Well, first off you won’t see a list of websites matching your search criteria, you will now see a combination of websites, video blogs, traditional blogs, Podcasts, images, maps, etc. Basically, your search will now return anything that is properly tagged with keywords related to your search.

The problem that I see with this method of displaying search results is that you will be subjected to things (blogs, video, Podcasts, etc.) that you don’t really care about. Suppose for a second that you are looking for Website Marketing services, you go to Google and type in Website Marketing, click search and voila, up comes the first 10 listings for your search. The problem now becomes apparent, you didn’t want to see home videos of some kid optimizing a website or listen to hours upon hours of Podcasts talking about optimizing websites. you definitely don’t care about images that someone has put up on their site with code in attached that tells the search engines this has something to do with Website Marketing; you wanted to see websites that offer website marketing services.

You see the problem? Google feels all of this extra content is relevant and should be displayed with each search but in reality, most people that want this other information go to search engines that specifically cater to blog searching, Podcasting searching, image searches, etc.

How will this affect you and the way customers find your site, products, services, etc.? Well, they now have a lot more ’stuff’ to work their way through before they really get what they want. This means that you are going to need to take a leap ahead in your current business technologies and start implementing some of these things such as Podcasts or blogs so that the search engines find you more relevant and want to list your site over sites that don’t use these methods.

The good news here is that we have some time to get these things implemented. Google has to work in phases if they want to get this up and running correctly, which gives us time to create a game plan. The other good news is that most of your competitors probably are not going to implement any of these new technologies anytime soon. That means you will jump ahead of them in search results.

Over the next several weeks, we will be sending out a some newsletters outlining plans to bring your site up to these new ‘Universal Search’ standards. Each newsletter will deal with a specific focus area (ie. blogs, podcasts, video), give you an understanding of what needs to be done and how it should benefit your site.

Trevor Walter - Freelance Marketing Group, Inc.

A little over two years ago, the first websites to sell one way text links started to appear. At first, myself and others viewed this as the start of something great but shortly thereafter, websites buying these links were losing value and appeared as if they were being penalized. Well, as it turns out, they were but not because of the one way text links themselves. It was mainly because the companies buying them were buying hundreds a month and only keeping them active for 2 or 3 months at the most. This in turn caught the eye of Google and other engines and soon became a taboo method of building link popularity.

Not long ago, Freelance Marketing Group, Inc. started experimenting with the possibility of buying relevant, high page rank text links with the intent of keeping those text links around for the duration of a marketing campaign. The result was “SUCCESSFUL”. Not only did the sites we purchase one way text links for gain link popularity but they also gained positions in the search engines, which resulted in an increase in search engine traffic as well as direct traffic from the sites where the text link ads were purchased.

The result seems to be success when buying text links to improve your link popularity but only if this is going to become a part of your monthly marketing program and not just a quick way to gain some top listings in the search engines.

Sites that we purchased links for but only kept them on active for a few months, didn’t gain much positive attention by the search engines and in some cases, actually caused negative affects. One of the sites has lost all page rank and appears to be in the Google Sandbox, while the other sites have dropped around 35% of their positions.

So, is this definitive proof that buying your link popularity through one way text link ads is a bad thing – well, with the short length of research, it would see yes but there is always the possibility that this was just coincidence. Further studies on our test sites will be conducted.

What we do know is that if you plan to use these purchased text links in your marketing program it has to be for the duration. Like anything with search engine marketing, the longer something is online, the more value it gains. Remember, the search engines were originally designed to provide quality information to people, not sell products and services. This means that quality content + relevant links (purchased or exchanged) equals a quality and unique experience for the visitors and search engines. That combination means top positions in the search engines.

Trevor Walter - Freelance Marketing Group, Inc.