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I have been considering writing a post on this very subject for a while now and this morning received a great email from Dereck Gehl of www.marketingtips.com fame and I could not have put it better myself.

Here’s what he had to say…

“Here’s why I’m so steamed:

This morning when I first arrived at the office, I did what I always do. I checked my email to see what all the other online marketing “experts” were up to. (I’ve got to keep an eye on the competition, after all.)

And — as always — what did I find?
A bunch of emails from different marketers all promoting the EXACT same product — and all claiming it’s the greatest thing to hit the world of Internet marketing since — well, since the Internet.

But you know what? Most — if not ALL — of these self-proclaimed “gurus” have never even actually tried the product they’re trying so hard to sell you!

And I’ve got to tell you, I am SICK of being swamped by emails like this. I’m sick of being sold the exact same product a million different ways — by people who’ve never actually experienced any real success with it.

Where’s the value? How’s this helping anyone???

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are some really great Internet marketers out there… True experts I respect enormously, who sell top-quality products that they themselves have used to achieve phenomenal success.

But when I’m sent 12 different emails a DAY — all selling the latest and greatest marketing fad that’s supposedly “revolutionized” the way these so-called experts do business, even when you know they probably couldn’t even tell you how the darned thing actually works — well, my blood just starts to BOIL.”

Absolutely. Spot on Derek.

Most of us are getting brassed of with continual begging emails each trying to outdo each other with bonuses and not giving us any quality information which is why we signed up to their list anyway. Of course we appreciate there is a back end along the line but it would be more professional to keep the “good information / buy this product” see-saw a bit more balanced.

Ade

Technorati Tags: Affiliate-Products, Internet-Marketing

Article Content Evolution is with us.

The way we have been writing articles, you know from keyword stuffing, (we’ve all done it), to judging a keyword / keyphrase density and hoping it’s just right for Google is on the way out.

Semantics, the page theme, contextual relevance, phrase matching and seeing if you’ve included those little words and phrases that are specific to whatever niche you are writing about, (eg surfers have a language of their own), will all go toward the relevancy Google will place on your article before it is included in the index.

Don’t worry about Yahoo and MSN. They are still indexing just about everything published on the Net so keep using using the meta tags and other traditional procedures.

It may be the case that before long even the use of the title tag, heading tag and the filename may not be necessary for the purposes of “assisting” Google into what our content is about.

A brief thought but one of relevance… before the days of programmers, algorithms and LSI I am sure we used to write topical and contextually relevant content to give a good “user experience” anyway! See what article spinners have done to us?

Ade

Just wanted to share with you an email I received from Perry today.

Today, a few discoveries you may enjoy as much as I have.

First, I always liked the idea of a thesaurus but when I’m actually trying to write something, somehow I don’t find most of them the least bit helpful. But here’s an online tool I just love:

http://visualthesaurus.com - Generates visual trees of related keywords, sort of like a mind map. You type in a term and rich word trees spring up. Then you can click on the next word and the next word and the tree continues to morph. I just sent the latest Renaissance Club newsletter to the printer and I think I used it six or seven times to find just the perfect word. There’s a free demo and a yearly membership is a paltry $20. Give it a whirl.

Spy Intelligence: Sometimes it’s quite useful to have an idea of what your competitors are doing on Pay Per Click, what keywords they’re bidding on, what they’re spending, stuff like that. Disclaimer: Neither of these tools provides a completely accurate picture but they’re both very useful:

http://spyfoo.com/ - Gives you a list of major keywords your competition is bidding on, an estimate of their daily budget, data about their organic listings, average bid position, and how many competitors they have. Rather insightful.

http://www.googspy.com/ - A related technology, but presented in a different way. The keyword list it generates is incomplete but quite helpful.

http://www.lexfn.com/ - Type in a word and it gives you related terms and concepts. 

http://buzz.yahoo.com/ - Following pop culture to see what’s hot this week? This is a great place to do it, ‘cuz the clicks always tell a story. I don’t know that this is terribly useful for keyword research per se (unless you have a very deliberate strategy that plays on celebs & stuff like that) but it certainly gives you topic ideas that you can tie into newsletters, rants, etc. The equivalent tool on Google is called Zeitgeist:

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

Google’s Keyword Suggest - http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en - as you type a search term, Google suggests related words.

For $29.95/month I’m giving away my $49 Definitive Guide to Google AdWords and $570 of CD’s, reports and critique certificates, just for giving my Renaissance Club a good college try. The best no-lose, no-brainer proposition I’ve ever offered:

Another Great Deal From
Perry - Click Here

Have fun with this stuff.

Perry Marshall

-> If you give Amazon $16.47 and commit 10 minutes a day to reading my book The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, then 30 days from now you’ll be smarter than 98% of all Google Advertisers:

The Definitive Adwords
Guide From The Adwords Master - Click Here

http://www.technorati.com/claim/4mdy2hdenm” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile

OK folks,

Time to roll out this blog and I’ll titivate the decor as and when I have time.

Please feel free to ask any question you like relating to article marketing, starting your online business and SEO.

Fire Away!

Ade