[Editor’s Note: In this article, Thomas shares some very useful guest blogging tips. And his story demonstrates the power and importance of persistent follow-up. Nice work, Thomas!]

If you’ve read into search engine optimization (SEO) at all within the last two years then you have probably heard about guest posting or guest blogging in order to obtain links. Links pointing back to your site not only drive direct traffic from the hosting site, but Google (and other search engines) see these links as a signal that your site has content worth seeing and your pages are more likely to rank higher in the search engine result pages (SERP).

While guest blogging helps to increase your site’s traffic as well as search rankings, it also helps to promote yourself and your company’s brand to new potential clients that you might not have reached otherwise. Bellow I’ll detail how I went about getting a guest post here on Main Street ROI and my process for guest posting in general.

Finding Sites to Post On

The first two steps in guest posting is 1) finding sites that have shown that they’re open to outside contributions and, 2) making sure that they’ll allow outbound links within the article or author bio (where most “self-serving” links are found).

To find Main Street ROI, I ran the search query in Google – inurl:”guest post requirements” – which searches within a sites URL (not within the content) for the exact match of “guest post requirements.” I got lucky that Main Street ROI is in the online marketing niche, but if you want to take the luck out of it you could do a search like – inurl:”guest post requirements” + “online marketing” – which would help to focus in on a specific online marketing niche. There are a lot of search modifiers like inurl: – intitle: – or intext: that helps to find the keywords you’re searching for in different places on a site. For an expansive list of search modifiers and how to best use them, check out this great resource for guest posting opportunities.

Once you find a target site that you want to post on, it’s important to give it a “smell test.” Just like you sniff food you suspect went bad, the smell test is an important step in figuring out if the site you’re trying to post on is affiliated with spam or black hat SEO techniques. Being associated with these kinds of practices is never good since Google is cracking down on spam and you could see your rankings plummet if you engage in risky behavior.

Smell Test Basics

These are the basic steps in doing a quick smell test before you start outreaching to a site. Taking the time to discern the good from the bad can save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

• Read the Content: I always take time to scroll through the blog posts to see what kind of articles are being posted (this will also help me when I start writing) and to read a few of the articles. I check for proper grammar and natural language. If the content sounds like a hodgepodge of synonyms and poorly matched phrases it could be the product of spun content. Google’s web crawlers can tell this and you’re better off staying away from a site that features spun and/or duplicate content.

• Check Outbound Links: I always check other posts, especially guest posts, on the site and see where they’re linking to. If they’re linking to sites that are relevant and of high quality then I can be confident that the site is serious. But if they’re linking to low quality sites that deal in the three Ps (porn, pills, and poker) then you may want to stay away.

• Recent Posts: Sadly, there are many sites that have been left to their own devices and are no longer updated. They might be very relevant with great content and a solid linking history, but if they haven’t posted a new entry in the last six months (I’m pretty generous when it comes to time, three months might be a better rule of thumb) I won’t waste my time trying to outreach to a dead site.

Making Initial Contact

If the site passes your smell test then it is time to move on to contacting the blog owner. Every site is different, but if they have a guest posting or write for us page try to follow the guidelines as close as possible. In this case, I followed the application process. I was confident that my application and writing samples would be up to snuff which was why I was a bit put off when I didn’t hear back after about a month. Rather than resubmitting the application, I followed up using the contact page and explained that I hadn’t heard back after my application, and that I was eager be featured on Main Street ROI.

Not long after my follow up, I heard back from Pete who thanked me for my application and for following up. Since then I’ve had to follow up some more to keep the ball rolling, and had an article rejected (this is my second attempt). All in all, I started my initial application for a guest post here on February 5^th (it is now April 22^nd as I write this) which goes to show that guest posting for quality links can be a time intensive ordeal.

More Outreach Tips

Because it can take so long, many link builders like to use stock emails so they can submit posts quickly and efficiently, and many do not follow up if they don’t hear back. I urge you to go against this trend. Make each email original and write like a human being; stock emails come across as impersonal and can sound like a bad infomercial rather than a genuine attempt at communication. If you don’t hear back, follow up! I follow up at least three times before I call it quits, and even then I’m trying to get the editors’ attention in other ways by making good blog comments, tweeting their articles, circling them on Google Plus, and other means. Any way you can get your name popping up on the editor’s computer screen increases the chance that they’ll get back to your emails and guest post submissions. Even if the answer is no, getting a response is always better than never hearing back.

Writing the Article

While the article content is the most important aspects of getting a guest post, I’m not going to go on and on about how to write good content. Rather, here are a few tips to make sure you’re staying on track with a guest post.

• Write What You Know: I was recently reminded of this in my correspondence with Pete. The first article I submitted was on local SEO and utilizing Google Plus and it was rejected. While I know the basics behind both local SEO and Google Plus, I am not an expert on combining the two and this came across in the article. Pete let me down nicely, and gave me another shot at a subject I am much more comfortable with – guest blogging for back links. Writing about what you know ensures that your content will be strong and more likely to be accepted.

• Offer Something New: Do not offer up a topic to an editor that has already been covered on their site. Take the time to look through their recent entries, and even do a search on their site before coming up with an article pitch. If I’m pitching my idea to an editor rather than writing the article first, I’ll offer two or three unique ideas that are relevant to both of us and give them an option to choose from.

• Format Correctly: Every editor has their own guidelines on how you submit an article to them, but I always try to keep the article formatted as I imagine the finished product should look. For blog posts, this means breaking up the article into smaller paragraphs as often as you can and utilizing subheadings and bullet points to make the articles easy to scan by readers.

• Don’t Write a Sales Pitch: Typically, you do not want to focus your guest posts on your own products or services. This is nothing better than an advertisement and more often than not you’ll be rejected, or asked to pay in order to have the post go live. To avoid this, do not promote yourself and follow the guidelines for linking. If you have a concern about linking, just ask. It’s better to be upfront rather than trying to sneak something by an editor.

• Write Well: If you can’t write well, and you know it, don’t waste your time and the editors by trying. This may sound harsh, but the content simply needs to be strong. There are many a freelance writer willing and able to write strong content for you if you do not have the time or means to do so.

Believe what you will, but guest posting does work. I’ve seeing rankings for competitive keywords jump to page one after only a handful of high quality guest posts were published. Guest posting in the online marketing niche has also helped to build my name as a professional link builder which makes it easier to get posts on high quality sites such as this one. It may be time and energy intensive, but so is everything worth doing.

About The Author

Thomas McMahon is a writer and link builder for Page One Power, a link building company based out of Boise, Idaho.

Online reputations can be tarnished in an instant. Anyone can post or write anything they want about your company. Entire communities of people can start a thread about your company.

But do you know about it?

With your online reputation always on the line, it’s important to know where you customer base “hangs out” online. Whether it be social media sites, forums, blogs, in the comments section of articles written about your company, etc., you need to be there and be ready to take action when a crisis strikes.

But it’s not all about managing crises, either. When you engage a customer base outside the realm of your own business and jump into their territory, you get to interact with them, learn about them, and ultimately, when you engage enough, your customer base will see your company in a different, better light. It’s like giving a digital face to your brand.

Here are some tips to get you started…

Finding Forums

Go to Google.com, search your industry, then tack on the word “forum” to the end of it.  From there you can find a whole list of forums that are related to your industry and where people that are most interested in your products most likely are.

At the bottom of the page, there will also be related searches where you can find more specific versions of your search or different phrasing for your search. This will help you get even more results.

Participating in Forums

Once you find the forums, it’s important to choose sites that are the most closely related to your field. After all, there are probably hundreds of forums out there related to your business’ area of expertise. Choose a few forums that are well populated and join them.

Be sure to sign up as a member under your company’s name. This gives your company some visibility in the online world and with your customer base.

Be active. You want to be seen on the forums, so answer questions, participate in conversations, and always use your expertise to further discussions.

If and when a problem does arise, be sure to be honest with the people you’re talking to. Have a discussion with them about the issues they are having. They’ll appreciate the fact that you were there to talk with them about it, rather than having to go through customer service.

Finding and Participating on Blogs

Finding blogs is much like finding forums. But instead of searching on Google.com, use http://www.google.com/blogsearch

Again, you’ll need to find the most reputable blogs you can. AllTop.com is another good resource, if there’s a category for your industry.

And you’ll want to be active commenting on blogs. Just like with the forums, the more active you are, the more your customer base will trust you (plus you can also establish relationships with influential bloggers in your industry).

Another good way to see who is talking about your company on the web is to just search the name of your company on Google. You may need to scroll through a few pages to get past the business side of things, but you’ll always find stories (if people are talking about you) where your company name is mentioned.

This is really helpful in finding those less-than-flattering stories and jumping in to dispel any rumors or set the record straight.

Social Media

Having social media accounts is a must these days. Being on Facebook and Twitter gives you direct access to your customers. It also gives your customers direct access to you.

But it goes farther than that. On Twitter you can search key terms or even your company’s name. This allows you to see what people are saying about your company, even when they aren’t speaking directly to you.

The Twitter apps TweetDeck and Seesmic both allow the user to “follow” certain terms, rather than people.

Twitter also has its own search functionality, allowing you to search terms and see all the instances of your terms in other people’s tweets.

Facebook doesn’t have this functionality, but the “wall” does give you ground to speak your mind (or do many different marketing things). It also gives your customers a place to post their thoughts on a product, your brand, or whatever else is on their mind.

In Closing…

The most important part of being online is actually being online. Check out where your customers’ online hangouts are and go participate with them. This helps you not only build a rapport with your customer base, but also police your brand’s image.

Lance Trebesch is the CEO of TicketPrinting.com & Ticket River which offers a variety of event products and ticketing services. After nineteen years of Silicon Valley experience, Lance found the key to happiness is helping customers worldwide beautify and monetize their events with brilliant print products and event services. Listening to his customers and learning about how they plan their events – ranging from concerts to fundraisers has helped him gain insight and expertise on how to host a successful event that he is always eager to share.

Over the past year, I’ve reviewed dozens of Google AdWords campaigns. And in the process, I’ve noticed people making the same mistakes over and over again. In today’s article, I want to highlight one VERY common AdWords mistake that can cost you a ton of money if you’re not careful…

When you think about Google AdWords, then you probably think about the ads shown in the image below.

Those are ads on the Google AdWords Search Network. The benefits of advertising on the Search Network are the same as ranking naturally using search engine optimization (SEO).  You can show your business information at the precise moment your prospects are searching for your product or service.

But did you know the Search Network is only HALF of Google AdWords?

The other half is the Display Network.

And this leads us to the common mistake many advertisers make…

If you’re already advertising in the AdWords Search network, then it’s possible you’re ALSO advertising on the Display Network — without even realizing it.

How is this possible? Well, the truth is, Google is a little tricky with new advertisers and by default they opt you into BOTH networks.  So unless you (or your ad management company) explicitly opted out of the Display Network, then you’re unknowingly advertising outside of Google Search!

And if you’re advertising on the Display Network by accident, you’re probably draining your budget — big time.

Now, don’t get me wrong — the Display Network is NOT a bad thing at all… It’s actually a great opportunity. But it’s very important to make sure you’re actually using the Display Network on purpose, rather than by accident!

The Display Network includes millions of websites that allow advertisers to place text, banner, Flash, and video ads on their pages.  And according to DoubleClick Ad Planner, the Display Network reaches over 83% of the unique internet users around the world!  So, the Display Network is a huge opportunity to reach your target customers.

But you need to treat Display differently than Search…

Instead of showing ads to prospects searching in Google.com, you can show ads to prospects surfing on other websites.  That may seem like an insignificant difference (searching vs. surfing) since both actions are taking place online.  But it’s not the action that’s important, it’s the mindset of the prospect.

On the Search Network, your prospect is requesting information, so your ad is perceived as a helpful piece of research.  On the Display Network, your prospect is reading, listening, or watching a video on a webpage, so your ad is always an interruption.  No matter how relevant your ad is to the content on the webpage, your ad is interrupting your prospect’s behavior.  And that’s why it’s almost impossible to optimize a campaign on both Search and Display using the same ads.

Want to get started with Google’s Display Network?

Here are the steps I recommend you take…

3 Steps to Get Started with Google Display

First, if you’re already advertising in AdWords, then go to your Settings tab and check to see if your ads are targeting BOTH Search and Display.  If they are, then switch your campaign Settings to Search Network ONLY.  That will ensure your ads are only displayed for prospects searching in Google and Google’s partner search engines.

Second, if you want to test the Display Network, then set up a completely new campaign with the targeting set to Display Network only.  This new campaign will only display ads on Google’s Display Network websites.  So remember, you’re ads will be interrupting your prospects in this campaign.

Finally, the third step is to put yourself in your prospects shoes in order to create the most compelling ads and landing pages.  For the Search campaign, your prospect is requesting information about your products or services.  Use that information to your advantage to improve your offer.  For the Display campaign, your prospect is NOT directly requesting information.  Again, use that information and don’t assume the same ad that works well on Search will attract your prospect on the Display Network.  Typically you’ll need to create two completely different campaigns in order to take full advantage of both AdWords Search and Display.

For small or medium-sized business, it’s not always easy to win customers from competitors, especially if your competitors are bigger brands with bigger marketing budgets. But without the big ad budgets, how can you stand out from the crowd?

If you’re like most other businesses, you’re largely focused on getting people to your site in the first place. After all, you can’t sell to someone who doesn’t know who you are. But paid search and SEO are competitive arenas, and if you’re up against big competitors you may end up shelling out a lot of money just to be seen—and what happens next? Here’s where one powerful digital tool, retargeting, can help.

(Click the image below to get a better view)

Retargeting is the practice of serving ads to people who have previously engaged with you online, and it can help you capitalize on search traffic, get more out of your ad budgets, and look bigger than you are online.

What Is Retargeting?

Retargeting is a form of targeted display advertising that lets companies focus their ads exclusively on people who have already engaged with them online. Though you can serve retargeting ads to people who have taken a variety of different actions (like opening an email or searching for keywords), the most common form of retargeting, site retargeting, serves ads to people who have visited your site but left without making a purchase.

Site retargeting is effective for most marketers because it focuses exclusively on people who have recently visited your website. Your site visitors know who you are and are probably interested in your product or service. Often, all it takes is a few reminders turn an interested prospect into a valuable customer. That’s what retargeting does—provides those reminders.

Look Bigger Than You Are

The Internet is often hailed as a great equalizer–a channel for unknown artists, musicians, and authors to spread the word about their creations and for start-ups and small businesses to disrupt big industries or compete against established players. Retargeting is a great example of that equalizing power in action.

By serving ads exclusively to people who have already visited your site, you can serve more ads to your most valuable prospects, meaning they’ll see your brand everywhere. Retargeting gives your prospects the impression that you’re buying ads all over the web (just be sure not to overdo it). Not only does this repetition improve brand recall, it can make you look bigger than you are, helping you build credibility and giving you an even footing with your larger competitors.

For consumers who aren’t familiar with this tactic, retargeting makes it seem like you spend way more on advertising than you actually do, which makes your company seem as if it’s bigger than it really is. Even if your audience does realize they’re receiving targeted advertisements, they’ll still be seeing your brand everywhere, solidifying recall and awareness. People trust the familiar, and retargeting can help turn your company into a familiar (and therefore trusted) brand.

Capitalize on Existing Traffic and Boost ROI

In addition to helping you look bigger than you are, retargeting helps you get more for your money and more out of your other ad campaigns. By focusing on those most likely to buy, retargeting leads to more sales than many other forms of advertising because it focuses on convincing people who are already considering making a purchase.

But not only is retargeting a high-ROI channel, it assists the marketing tactics you’re probably already using. For example, if much of your marketing strategy revolves around paid search or SEO, retargeting is the perfect addition. You’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to get the right people to your site, but a single visit almost never results in a sale or a lifelong customer. Retargeting helps you get more out of the investments you’ve already made to drive traffic to your site.

If you’re a smaller business with large competitors, retargeting can help you look bigger than the competition while getting more for your budget. There are many different providers, ranging from self-service dashboards to full-service or managed solutions. Every provider is different, but with the right research you can certainly find the one that fits your needs and budget.

About the Author

Caroline Watts is a marketing manager at ReTargeter, a full-service display provider specializing in retargeting and audience targeting. You can find her on Twitter and Google+.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been giving you our SEO predictions for 2013. We’ve been explaining how Google is cracking down on manipulative SEO.

And as we’ve discussed, one of the big misconceptions about SEO is that it’s all about tricking or manipulating Google.  But that’s an ‘old school’ mindset that can get you into a lot of trouble.

Instead of trying to trick Google, you should aim to give Google what it wants.

Google’s Goal: Show The Best Results

Google wants to satisfy its users, so they’ll keep using its search engine.

Imagine… You live in New York City and you just got locked out of your apartment. You suddenly need a locksmith.  What do you do?

You pull out your mobile phone, go to Google and search for a locksmith.

How is Google’s going to choose which locksmiths to show (in the non-advertising results)?

Well, it’s in Google’s best interest to show you the highest-quality, most trustworthy locksmiths in NYC.

Google doesn’t want to introduce you to a locksmith who will rip you off… because if everybody becomes dissatisfied with Google’s search results and stop using Google’s search engine, then Google’s advertising revenue would plummet.

That’s just one example. But the same is true for informational websites and e-commerce websites. Google wants to make sure it’s serving up high-quality results. And Google analyzes tons of different criteria to determine whether you deserve to rank at the top — or not.

What Does Google Look For?

Google looks at tons of factors. But in most cases (in most industries and for most keywords), the single biggest factor is links — the quality and quantity of hyperlinks pointing from other websites to your website.

It’s important to recognize that not all links are created equal. It’s much more powerful for your rankings to get a link from the New York Times website than from Joe Schmo’s blog.

So how can you accomplish that?

How to Get High-Quality Links

Here are some steps you can take to help Google see you as a trusted resources for information, products, and/or services.

1. Build A Better Widget

What’s the ultimate best way to get great links to your website? Simple. Create something other people will actually want to link to, whether it’s an article or a video or some other kind of resource. Adam Henige’s recent guest post details a very practical method he calls Broken Link Building.

2. Grow Your Online Network and Audience

In addition, you should always be building the size and quality of your online audience (specifically, your email list and your social media following) as well as relationships with influencers in your industry (such as bloggers and journalists). Once you build up your online audience and network, you’ll have many more opportunities to gain awareness and distribution for your content — and as a result, you can attract more links. This is where SEO meets social media and public relations.

3. Leverage Your Offline Relationships

At the same time, don’t ignore the “real” world. As Phil explained in his article, Get Offline to Improve Your Search Rankings, you can leverage your in-person relationships to help you get more links. You typically have some opportunities you could take advantage of right now if you just spent a few minutes thinking about your offline relationships. Chances are you have a business partner who would link to you, or you know somebody who would let you publish a guest blog post on their blog.

Treat Google Like Your Partner

Don’t focus on trying to “trick” Google into giving you rankings. Instead, make sure you are providing search results and experiences that will truly satisfy Google’s users. And then use the 3 methods outlined above (among others) to establish your website’s credibility and authority. You’re in business for the long-term, right? So you might as well take a long-term approach to search engine optimization — and treat Google like your partner, rather than your opponent.

Over the past year or so, Google’s been rolling out new updates like crazy, including Penguin, Panda, Google+, and so on… And recently, people in the SEO industry have been shaking in their boots.

…Is SEO Dead?

“I had lunch back in March with Adam Torkildson, one of the top SEO consultants in Utah and one of the best in the country…Adam Torkildson, SEO guru, says Google is killing the SEO industry  (as we know it)… He said something to me that blew me away. “Google is in the process of making the SEO industry obsolete, SEO will be dead in 2 years.”

To be clear, I do NOT agree that SEO will be obsolete in 2 years. I don’t think SEO will ever be obsolete. But “old-school” SEO is dead — and it’s never coming back.

To explain what I’m talking about, I need to give you just a little bit of history… Back in the day, SEO was super easy — all you had to do was stuff keywords into your website’s pages.  But that also meant the search results were pretty crappy.

Luckily for all of us, Google changed this.

Google figured out a way to rank websites by looking at the quality and quantity of links pointing to your website, from other websites.  Suddenly, the “search engine spam” was gone, and Google became the most popular search engine on the planet, almost overnight.

3 Major Recent Google Updates

Here are the 3 recent Google updates you need to know about, so you can see where Google’s headed in 2013 and beyond…

1. Panda Update (2011)

Until Google made this update, many SEO strategies relied on pumping out tons of low-quality articles that were stuffed with keywords, and had little to no usefulness or originality. And for a time, these strategies were actually pretty effective. But then Google caught on and penalized websites with low quality content (i.e. dropped their rankings or kicked them out of Google altogether).

2. Google+ (2011-2012)

Google+ was Google’s answer to Facebook. This update highlights the growing importance of social media for SEO. Don’t get me wrong… Links are still the #1 factor in SEO, but social media signals are becoming more and more important (and I predict they’ll one day be more important than links.) And then, Google moved Google Places (for local businesses) over to Google+ Local, which was yet another step in the direction of integrating SEO with social media.

3. Penguin Update (2012)

With the Penguin update, Google started cracking down and penalizing sites for building suspicious links to their websites.  For example, people were creating fake blogs and fake websites for the sole purpose of linking to their main website.  And like most manipulative techniques, this was working for a while.  But then Google caught on and thousands upon thousands of website owners lost their valuable first-page rankings, overnight.

Where Is Google Headed?

Here’s what I predict for 2013 and beyond…

1. Google will continue to “crack-down” on manipulative SEO

My advice to you is to avoid “old-school,” manipulative SEO techniques. Sure, you can push the envelope and try to boost short-term profits, but it’s just not a smart business decision, in my opinion. I’ve been practicing SEO for many years, long enough to witness several cycles — and I’ve made my own share of mistakes along the way. If you want to maximize your SEO revenues and profits over the long-term, you should keep it clean.

2. Social media rise in importance

It’s clear Google believes social media is the future of SEO. Just pay attention to where they’re focusing their resources. In addition to rolling out Google+, Google has been on an acquisition spree, buying up social media companies. If your company isn’t using social media yet, you need to start in 2013… or you’re going to drop down in the Google rankings.

3. Local SEO becomes even more prominent

Local SEO is a huge growing trend, and it’s only getting bigger. And part of the reason why is because mobile Internet usage is exploding. By 2015 mobile traffic will be bigger than desktop computer Internet traffic (this eclipse has already taken place in other countries like India!) And 40% of all mobile searches are for local businesses. If you want to grow your business online, then you can’t afford to ignore these trends any longer.

What Does This Mean For You?

The real question is: How are you reacting to the latest Google updates?

You basically have 3 options.

Option #1. You can throw in the towel and give up on SEO. And I know many business owners (and even some SEO consultants) who have just walked away from the game because they couldn’t take the rollercoaster ride.

Or…

Option #2. You can try to “trick” Google with manipulative short-term tactics and try to stay one step ahead of Google’s team of PhD’s. (Good luck with that! Let me know how that works for you…)

Or…

Option #3. You can take the “Wayne Gretzky approach” to SEO

Wayne Gretzky – the greatest hockey player of all time – famously said, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

When it comes to your SEO strategy, you should focus on where Google’s going to be in 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years — and head in that direction TODAY.

So, don’t focus on trying to “trick” or “beat” Google. Instead, focus on what Google really wants — and give Google’s users what they really want. That’s how you’ll win over the long-term.

And, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to wait months to reach the first page of Google. Even today, there are several safe and ethical tactics you can use to gain first page rankings in as little as 30 days.

This week, I’ve been interviewing SEO consultants from all over
the country to see if their approach is a good fit for what we teach and recommend here at Main Street ROI.

(I’ve been recruiting new partners for our Main Street
Marketing Network because we’re building a national referral network of trusted SEO companies all over the US. Yesterday I broke a personal record with 9 conference calls in one day!)

When I’m interviewing SEO consultants, I’ll typically say something like, “Tell your SEO methodology…”  And then I listen to what the SEO consultant says.

And I know I’m talking with a solid SEO consultant when he or she starts talking about competitor research.

Competitor Research = SEO Shortcut

If you think about it, competitor research is critical for your success with SEO. It’s a powerful shortcut for getting Top 10 rankings in Google.

Why? Because SEO is a “zero sum” game. You just have to be a little better than the websites ranking above you, and you’ll start to climb your way to the top.

With this in mind, I’m going to share 3 simple steps you should take when researching your SEO competitors.

Step 1. Identify your top competitors

First things first, you need to create your list of competitors. I know, this is really obvious. But many people don’t know who they’re really competing with in Google.

Pick some keywords that you would imagine a prospect would search, look at what websites are ranking in Google, and copy down those websites into a spreadsheet.

Step 2. Look at your competitors’ keywords

Next, look to see what specific keyword phrases your competitors are optimizing for.

You’ll want to look at the keywords in your competitors’ Title tags on their homepage and main product/service pages.

(In addition, I recommend you pay attention to what keywords your competitors are advertising on in Google. If your competitors are advertising on keywords, then they’re probably worth trying to rank for in Google, as well. You can use KeywordSpy for this.)

Step 3. Look at your competitors’ links

Use OpenSiteExplorer.org to see where and how your competitors are getting their links. (You’ll need to create a free SEOMoz account if you want to run multiple queries. They’ll make it seem like you have to create a paid account, but a free account will do the trick!)

Export the list of links into a separate spreadsheet and take a look. You’ll likely find some new directories you can submit to. You might also find where your competitors are getting written up in the news, or where they’re publishing guest blog posts, etc.

Do It Today!

Take a few minutes today to study your competitors. Seriously, do it! Most of our students get really excited after they do a little competitive research because they find that most of their competitors are actually pretty weak. It’s a nice motivator. :)

Too Busy?

If you don’t have the time to do your own SEO, we’ve got relationships with several excellent SEO companies who charge reasonable rates.

Click here to get free SEO quotes

I will personally review your request and then directly introduce you to the best partner in our network based on the info you provide.

Online advertising is a massive and complex industry.  The risks are high, but the payout is even higher — making the temptation of media buying hard to resist. If broken into with tact and the right strategy, companies and individuals can see huge success and profits. The beauty of online advertising is that a small company can compete with large multinational corporations on a level playing field.

My Story

I personally started buying media at the age of 16 in my parent’s basement. By the time I was 19, I had bought millions of dollars’ worth of online advertising and was running a pretty successful performance marketing company. Buying ads across different websites and platforms, I was able to help scale advertising campaigns to huge levels. I did this with a strong business plan and effective strategy. And although the industry has evolved the opportunity for success is still there today.

No doubt, the online advertising space is still evolving every day. New ad formats get introduced, new standards come out and new technology is released, making entry into the space easier than ever before. But if you don’t know where to promote your product and whom to sell it to, you can lose a lot of money really fast.

Here are the steps I’ve used to profit with online advertising.

Step 1: Decide What You Are Going to Advertise

You need to create a compelling creative (ad) as well as a sales page (landing page) to catch people’s eyes, get them to click and then ultimately convert (buy).

Step 2: Decide Where You Want to Advertise

Once you’ve got your creative, you must also figure out where to place your ad so it succeeds. Finding websites where your product or service can be matched to the correct audience and demographics is key to your campaign’s success. Obviously, an ad that promotes birth control products is probably not the best fit on a website dedicated to men’s health. Media buying is all about matching your product with the perfect audience.

Step 3: Do Your Homework

Research is a key part to the success of your advertising campaign. If you can see where others are having success and what is working for them, you can take this into account with your own advertising — and, as a result, you’ll dramatically reduce your risk and improve the effectiveness of your campaign.

We created WhatRunsWhere for this exact purpose. Using WhatRunsWhere you can see the exact places anyone across the entire web is advertising and what creative their using. This allows you to quickly spot what elements work for them and bring it back into your own campaigns.

Step 4: Pick Your Placements and Outlets

Once you’ve figured out what and where you want to advertise, it’s time to get your hands dirty.

Most online advertising inventory is represented in one of two ways. The first is a direct relationship where you contact the webmaster who owns the property and negotiate buying the inventory directly from them. The other is through an ad network or platform that aggregates many different websites into one central place and allows you to buy on all of them (for example: Google Display Network or AOL AdSonar). Reaching out to either of these two parties will get you one step closer to getting your campaign up and running.

Step 5: Test, Analyze and Tweak For Success

Once you negotiate the terms of your media buy (some media buys are negotiable, others are fixed rates). You simply submit your creative, start running ads, and start tracking! You’ll see results start to come in. And by eliminating poor performing creatives and placements (ones that don’t send you the ultimate end result you want, whether that is a click, sale or lead) you can quickly start to create a successful online media buying campaign.

Max Teitelbaum is co-founder of What Runs Where, a competitive intelligence service for online media buying. Max founded his first startup at 15 and had spent millions in online advertising before he was 20. In addition to running WRW, Max is also an active angel investor who invests in 4-6 startups per year.

[Editor’s note: What Runs Where offers more insights than any other display advertising competitive intelligence tool. We use the tool ourselves and we highly recommend it if you’re looking to scale up your traffic. Click here to try it for 7 days for only $1.]

I was on the phone with another SEO a couple of weeks ago and we both started sharing war stories and he laughed about how no one has anything worthwhile to say in SEO anymore. If you read a blog on link building in particular, you’ll get 700 different variations of the same tired old topics. Yawn.

I think most link builders and SEOs like to think they’re protecting the magician’s code or something by not really giving away the details of what they do. I figure if people really wanted to start an SEO agency on their own they’d already have done it. If someone wants to try to start doing SEO for their own business, they’ll probably end up trying to handle it with existing resources (and failing) or hiring someone like my company anyway. One way or another I’m educating people, and the more that people know the more likely they are to hire a reputable company instead of someone working out of their mother’s basement.

Ready to look behind the curtain? I’ll warn you in advance that it’s not that glamorous, but here’s a legitimate system for building links.

Build A Better Widget

The Internet is old now. There are a ton of websites and pages that just don’t exist anymore or are so outdated they don’t really provide value. Find them and make a new version or a better version and reach out to the sites still linking to this old stuff and suddenly you’re in business! This is what those of us who do a lot of link building call “broken link building”. You can do a little research and see that there are a lot of fancy tools that you can pay for that will do this for you. But if you just want to get started here’s a list of free tools you can use and a method for finding “link rot”. See, you’re even learning industry terminology now!

The Free Tools

• Google Chrome (if you don’t have this, you’ll need it as your browser)
• Check My Links extension or Domain Hunter Plus Chrome extensions
• Simple Google Results Bookmarklet
• URLopener.com
• Mozcheck.com
• Bing Webmaster Tools (for a guide on how to use BWT for our purposes, go here)
• Internet Archive

The Process

You’ll need to do a few searches to figure out a way to find pages that have a bunch of dead links. So head over to Google and start tinkering. Come up with a short list of keywords that would be relevant for your niche. So, for example, if you had a website on mountain biking your list might consist of terms like mountain bikes, mountain biking, finding mountain biking trails, mountain biking vacations, selecting mountain biking equipment, etc. etc.

At this point, you’ll want to take your initial list of keywords and build upon them to create searches that will find you pages that will have lists of links. A few examples would be:

• List of mountain biking links
• Mountain biking resources
• Favorite mountain biking links
• Useful mountain biking sites

As you search through each one, scroll through your results and start clicking on a few of them and see if you’re getting pages that have a bunch of links to other sites. Ideally, you’ll find a long list of pages like this:

The bigger the lists the better your chances of striking gold. Ideally you want to come up with a few search queries that are still getting you pages of links all the way down to the fifth page and beyond in your Google results.

Once you’ve found queries that have output good results, you’ll need to collect all of these URLs into a nifty spreadsheet so you can scour them for dead links. Here’s the process for that:

• Change your search settings to the number of results per page that you want to collect (go to advanced settings to change this)
• Click on the Simple Google Results Bookmarklet and it will open a new tab in Chrome with all of the Google results scraped into neatly usable lists. Copy them from the section under “Plain listing” and compile them in a spreadsheet for later use
• Once you’ve collected your complete list of useful stuff (hopefully a hundred or more) go to URLopener.com and add about ten of your links page URLs at a time into this tool and open them in bulk (this is a big time saver, but don’t overload it or you’ll likely crash your browser)
• Once the pages are opened, go to each tab and begin running Check My Links or Domain Hunter Plus to check the links (quick note, these tools do make mistakes, but they’re right more than they’re wrong at identifying dead pages)
  • This is a little tedious (but made easier with DHP’s export feature) but you’ll want to collect all of the dead URLs that you find so you can check their links
  • Once you’ve painstakingly collected this huge list of dead URLs, you can run them through Mozcheck.com and see which ones have the greatest number of links
  • Create a targeted list of the sites that have the most links and then use Bing Webmaster Tools to take a look at what the individual links are to these sites. If they’re a whole bunch of spammy blog comments or low value directories, the site isn’t any good to you. However, if the links are largely high quality links from sites related to your niche, now you’re in business! The list of people linking to your dead resource are your targets, now you need to build something to reel them in
  • Go to archive.org and see if you can find what your dead URL used to be. If not, you should be able to deduce the basic content by looking at how the sites link to it (if the link says “list of America’s best mountain biking trails” you know your next mission). Build a new and improved version of this list and put it on your blog or a resource section on your site and now you’ve got ammo for your target
  • The final step in this process is to find the contact information for all of the sites linking to the old dead resource and make them a pitch to link to yours
    • There are a million ways to go about this, but through trial and error you’ll figure out what works best for you. Leading with a friendly approach letting them know you caught a glitch in their site establishes some rapport before you start selfishly asking for a link

So that’s a process using nothing but free tools for creating some linkworthy content and actually getting people to link to you. Sometimes this will turn up a whole pile of nothing and it can get pretty frustrating, but it DOES work if you stick with it. I would recommend outsourcing some of the really tedious tasks (or finding an intern who is good at such tasks) as that saves you from spending your valuable time on low value tasks. Otherwise, you may just want to go hire someone to do this for you.

I certainly recommend taking a stab at link building on your own first, though. You’ll definitely learn some valuable lessons that will keep you from having a bad provider take you to the cleaners.

Adam Henige is an entrepreneur who owns several businesses including SEO company Netvantage Marketing and online pool products retailer Swimtown Pool Supplies.

If you want to be successful in marketing, you should spend 50% of your time studying your competition and 50% of your time figuring out how to beat them.

And so I’m going to outline a simple 3-step process to do just that…

What I’m about to outline for you is very simple, but most people are too lazy to do it. But if you’ll just follow these 3 simple steps, you can gain the advantage in your market.

Step 1. Identify Your Competitors

The first step is to simply identify your competition.

Can you quickly name 5 to 10 companies that you’re directly competing with in your market?

If you can’t name at least 5 competitors without stumbling, then you have some homework to do. And the homework is simple, just “Google” your keywords and see who is advertising.

It’s a good idea to study competitors who are advertising. Why? Because if they’re paying money to display their messages, that’s an indication that their sales pitch is working (otherwise they’d stop spending all that money on ads).

Step 2. Spy on Your Competitors

OK, so you’ve identified some competitors who are advertising in Google.

The next step is to spy on your competitors, so you can see what’s working for them.

And here are the 3 things you’ll want to pay attention to: keywords, placements, pitches.

A. Keywords

Using KeywordSpy, you can “spy” on your competitors’ Google AdWords campaigns and find out what keywords they’re advertising on in Google.com.  This is a great tool and we’ve used it for years. We rely on it every time we launch a new ad campaign.

As your studying your competitors ads and landing pages, be on the lookout for commonalities among 2 or more competitors — that’s a great indicator that those keywords would probably convert well for you, too.

Click here to try KeywordSpy for free

B. Placements

Next, you’ll want to study what OTHER websites your competitors are advertising on, besides Google.

You can’t do this with KeywordSpy… but you can do this MixRank.

MixRank works just like KeywordSpy. You enter your competitors’ websites into the tool, and MixRank tells you what other websites your competitors are advertising on.

Normally MixRank is $97/month, but because we’re partners with MixRank, you can get a 30-day trial for just $0.67.

Click here to try MixRank for $0.67

C. Pitches

Next, you’ll want to study your competitors’ ads and landing pages, paying attention close attention to:

• Headlines
• Positioning
• Benefits
• Offers
• Pricing
• Call to Action

I recommend you use KeywordSpy to study your competitors’ ads in Google.com, and MixRank to study your competitors’ ads in the Google Display Network.

And again, be on the lookout for commonalities across your competitors’ marketing messages. You’ll likely find some competitors are promoting the same selling points, and that’s a hint that those pitches are resonating with your potential customers.

Step 3. Make Your Move

When you study your competition like this, you’re essentially taking a comprehensive “snapshot” of your market… and you’re seeing what it’s like to be a potential customer shopping in your market.

And what you want to do next is communicate some kind of unique advantage to your potential customers. You want to copy many of the selling points that your competitors have in common, because they’re probably effective. But you also want to say something unique.

For example, as you’re studying your competition, you might find that nobody is offering a money-back guarantee. And so you could stand out from the crowd by offering a guarantee.

Of course, every market is different… so I can’t give you blanket advice about how to gain the advantage. You’ll have to do the research and find out for yourself what your competitors are up to…

And once you get started, you’ll find it’s actually fun… One reason competitive analysis is fun is because you usually find some pretty crappy marketing, and that’ll boost your self esteem :)

Plus, like I said earlier, you can rest assured that most of your competitors are NOT doing this kind of analysis — so, if you’ll just follow these 3 simple steps, you can gain the advantage.

To Recap…

Here’s what to do now…

Step 1. Identify Your Competitors

Make a list of at least 5, and focus on the advertisers.

Step 2. Spy on Your Competitors

Analyze your competitors’ keywords, placements, and pitches.

Click here to try KeywordSpy for free

Click here to try MixRank for $0.67

Step 3. Make Your Move!

Borrow your competitors’ top selling points and communicate your unique advantage.