Neil Shearing’s Internet Marketing Strategies

I just wanted to mention Eric Holmlund’s trip to Belize.

On June 28th Eric’s taking his family (including the kids) on a mission trip to help some missionary friends of theirs in Belize (formerly British Honduras).

Eric has created 5 new products with PLR and Master Resale Rights, and he’s selling them as a package for the fundraiser. Eric says that all the profits go to the mission.

This is time-sensitive because Eric leaves on the 28th, so the offer only lasts until the 25th. You can check out more about what Eric will be doing on the mission, and the offer he has for you, at this page.

Good luck, Eric!

There was a PageRank jiggle recently… it didn’t seem to drop many bombs and passed quite quietly.

Soon after the PageRank jiggle, I got an interesting email…

—
Hi Neil,

I used Real Link Finder for about 30 minutes a day for a week or so when it came out. I posted relevant comments at related blogs and, I might add, enjoyed it thoroughly - discovering many new blogs and opinions in the process. This was a couple of months ago.

Today I was delighted to discover that my blog had gone from a Google PageRank of 0 straight to PageRank 5! That’s on a 6 month-old personal blog with absolutely no other promotion or link-building at all - seriously impressive results. Imagine what would be achievable with serious sustained effort using RLF!

I can’t recommend this simple powerful tool enough and wanted to personally thank you for making it available for free.

Kind regards,
Alex Poole
—

It’s always nice to get a testimonial… but it was also the first hint that something interesting was happening.

I asked Alex how he thought he got the PR5 and he said that, during his link building efforts, he got a few links from a PR6 blog, and he expected those links “to fade as new posts come out”. That was my first clue.

My second clue came from my Articles site, which was chugging along at 2,000 visitors per day. After the PageRank jiggle, the traffic dropped.

I thought I’d better start building some links into the site again because I hadn’t done any link building for a while.

My third clue came today, from Mike Liebner who wrote in his “Words Into Money” newsletter, “You need fresh links! Today and in the future“.

Ok, now I’m starting to see a pattern… “fading” PageRank from older blog posts, a site with “falling” PageRank and traffic because it didn’t get any recent links, and Mike saying you need “fresh” links.

So… here’s my theory…

1: Google loves quality sites.
2: Quality sites get links naturally, and they get more over time.
3: Google may have some kind of “PageRank Decay” where low value links expire over time.

This “PageRank Decay” would benefit Google, because if your site is getting low-quality links, and the PageRank of those links decays over time, you either have to always build more links, or give up.

Webmasters who are trying to manipulate Google will most likely be getting low-quality links. If they spend time building links, they’ll get traffic, but only for a while… unless other sites start linking to them naturally. If they don’t get any new links for a while, their traffic will fall.

On the other hand, if you build a quality resource that other webmasters choose to link to, your sites will maintain, or even improve, their search engine rankings naturally.

I’m guessing that Google only applies PageRank decay to low-value PageRank links. Presumably, the age of a link from a top-quality website would not affect its value. I would imagine that anyone who had a site good enough to get a link from a PR8 or higher site would not see the value of that link dwindle to nothing in six month’s time. Sites with PageRank8 or higher would thereby form a “backbone” of quality, trusted sites from which PageRank would flow to lesser sites.

What do you think? Do you have more evidence for PageRank decay?

The bottom line is that, if you accept PageRank Decay exists then anyone who works really hard to build “low value” links into their sites will have to keep working hard just to maintain their traffic.

PageRank Decay is like a hamster wheel for webmasters who build sites that don’t get natural links.

I follow the EUReferendum blog religiously. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best blogs in the world because of the way Dr Richard North collates a massive amount of information, sifts it, distills it and adds his own personality and insight. It’s a perfect example of how one independent blog can provide more valuable information than a truckload of “mainstream media” websites and newspapers that all quote from the same biased press releases.

Yesterday, Richard announced that he and Neil O’Brien, the director of Open Europe had started a petition at the British government’s website calling on the British government to “respect the result of the Irish referendum and abandon the attempt to ratify the Lisbon Treaty”.

Within four hours the petition had over 7,000 signatures. Within eight hours it had over 10,000 signatures. At the moment, roughly 24 hours since launch, the total stands at 15,507, which is a superb result. If you sort the currently open petitions by size, the “Abandon Lisbon” petition is the third largest.

From a marketing perspective, it’s a powerful case study for the effectiveness of viral Internet marketing.

From a personal perspective, I hope the petition is acknowleged. It would be wonderful if Britain could extricate itself from the “ever closer political union” that most of the people of Europe don’t seem to want, judging by the “no” votes from the Danes (Maastricht, the Euro), Irish (Nice and Lisbon), French (EU constitution) and Dutch (EU constitution) in referenda.

I only wish the Brits could deliver their verdict in a referendum.

update The petition received over 20,000 signatures in roughly two days. It wasn’t enough. The UK government ratified the treaty yesterday, the first to do so since the Irish “no” vote. In theory, the Irish vote should have stopped the EU constitution Lisbon treaty coming into force, but this is the EU and they don’t take “no” for an answer. Perhaps the Irish will be asked to vote again, to make sure they come back with the “right” answer, or maybe the rule on unanimous ratification will just be fudged. Either way, it’s a sad state of affairs.

This week, there have been two excellent products released… ones that should be in your toolkit if you want to get more traffic… and you *should* want more traffic, because it’s the root of all online profits.

The first product is Version 2 of XSitePro, by my friend Paul Smithson. Paul has pulled out all the stops and added almost every “wishlist” item to improve on the highly successful previous version of XSitePro.

If you’re looking for a website builder which is one of the easiest to use and yet also packs a huge “SEO punch” (for maximum free search engine traffic), this is the software
for you!

The other piece of highly recommended software released this week was Keyword Results Analyzer Pro by Andy Williams. Again, this software builds on a previous version which was
highly respected.

If you’re looking for software to tell you which keywords to use on your web-pages to get the most traffic, KRA Pro is the tool for the job.

One of the hardest things to create is quality software… there are many hurdles… believe me, I know! I’m truly impressed with the quality and attention to detail that both Paul and Andy have put into their software products. They created truly useful, excellent products and improved them based on what their customers wanted.

You’d be wise to invest in these both of tools to help grow your online business.

Both Jay Stockwell (who works with Allan Gardyne) and Eric Holmlund have launched free guides explaining to absolute beginners how to start an online business and start making money online.

Jay’s guide is called, “How to make $1000 a month online from scratch” and comes in seven parts. Already parts one and two are online, ready for you to read, with no opt-in required.

Eric’s hasn’t exactly called his guide anything… he’s just letting it fly from his redesigned “Eric’s Tips” website. Eric says that his guide will consist of 120 steps… yikes. Even if he releases a step every three days, it’ll take a year to finish!

I respect Eric and Jay/Allan highly. These guys don’t go for the “hype hype hype” method of selling online. They’re laid-back, but still know what it takes to start an online business and have the track records to prove it.

My suggestion is to sign up to Allan and Eric’s newsletters (there are sign-up boxes on both of the pages linked above) and follow along with their “how to make money online” guides for beginners.

I got a letter from my gas/electricity company yesterday… to paraphrase it… “we’re going to increase the amount you pay each month by 22%. As we take this money directly from your back account each month, you don’t have to do anything.”

Nice way to start the day, eh?

Let’s look at the big picture… oil’s gone through the roof, so petrol and diesel are up. The price of raw materials arriving at factories is up, as is the price of goods leaving the factories, which means manufactured goods will increase in price very soon if they haven’t already. Food prices are up, sometimes by huge amounts.

The pressure on the Bank of England to cut interest rates is enormous… the money markets have priced in three 0.25% increases by the end of this year… but…

The housing market has ground to a halt. The number of properties sold by the average estate agent in the UK is at the lowest level ever recorded (RICS survey). Increasing interest rates will send the housing marketing into a tailspin and put more homeowners, who are already struggling with higher bills, into negative equity.

So, the Bank of England can’t raise rates, but can’t cut them either.

It’s a situation similar to the USA, which appears to be further in the mire than Britain. We haven’t seen the jump in unemployment, but it’s probably only a matter of time.

So what can be done?

Every change brings opportunities… so what are the opportunities being created by these global financial storms?

In my opinion, the best strategy is to either start your own online business, or grow an existing one. The extra income could very well be the difference between sailing through these hard times with the “hatches battoned down”, or sinking in the storm. After the storms pass, you could have a healthy second income to spend as you wish.

I went to my local superstore yesterday and something had changed… they’d introduced self-service checkouts!

Wow.

You go around the store, put what you want in your basket, go to the checkout, swipe your own stuff, put in your credit card and pin (or pay by cash), get your printed receipt and walk off.

I haven’t tried it yet… I just stared in awe saying, “how cool is that?” to my wife.

I’m not totally sure how they know that you’re paying for everything, but I’m sure they’ve got that covered.

Years ago you’d have to go to individual shops one at a time in your local high street and ask for what you wanted… so you’d have to visit the greengrocer, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker etc… then the “superstores” appeared and started bringing all those existing services under one roof… you just filled your trolley yourself from the shelves and paid for it all at the checkout. Now it seems that you can even pay for your shopping yourself too.

Magic.

As you can see from that example, change happens even in the places you don’t expect to see it.

Most businesses (and most people) hate change. They like to find a comfortable rut and live happily in it.

Unfortunately, life is rarely that simple. Change is always happening… and the businesses that move fast and exploit change are those businesses that grow… at the expense of the businesses who won’t face up to a changing environment.

Make sure your business reacts swifly to changes and it will always be best placed to profit.

Just a quick note to add this to your diary, if you’re around tonight…

Michael Campbell’s next live streaming video show will be Wednesday May 21 2008, starting at 7:PM Pacific Time.

Sadly, I won’t be able to watch the live show because it starts at 3AM in England and I really need my beauty sleep (or so everyone tells me!).

If you can watch the show, do so. I’m sure it’ll be packed full of useful Internet marketing hints and tips.

Has anyone else noticed a new type of blog comment spam where the spam comment directly copies a previous comment on the same post?

You can see an example here…

Notice how the first comment and the last comment are identical?

The first comment is genuine, the last comment is spam, and I’ve removed the link to the website from it.

I’m thinking that this must be automated, but I use a captcha plugin which requests a little code is entered before accepting a comment, so, unless that has been hacked, the person must be visiting the site.

It’s the second time I’ve seen “comment copy spam” at the blog and I’m wondering if it’s a new type of blog spam. Preumably the spammer is copying an earier comment to try to be “relevant” to the blog post.

Is anyone else seeing it?

If you haven’t already seen this, check it out.

Aweber, a big autoresponder company, have released some very interesting email marketing statistics such as which days do most emails get sent and which days get the highest open rates.

The overall average open rate is an astonishingly small 13%.

Wow. 87% of emails sent from Aweber don’t even get opened.

I wonder what it is for GetResponse… :p

I’ve stuck with plain text emails, which means I can’t determine open rates… but I’m thinking it’s an important metric to track, so I may switch to sending HTML emails.

What do you think?

Dave And Heidi Perry at Home Business Online are having a sale to celebrate reaching PR5.

They say it’s hard to reach PR5 nowadays. Tell me about it. This blog has been stuck at PR4 forever, and I’m starting to think I may have to actually promote it to get to PR5! :p

Congratulations to Dave and Heidi, whose names I recognise as “old school” marketers… although I’m not totally sure why… perhaps they bought ads in my old newsletter or are members of my affiliate program.

So, the deal with their sale is… if you buy one or more of the product they’re selling (from as little as $5) you also get two nice backlinks.

Cool. I just picked up a couple of products and have claimed my links.