Internet Marketing; There Is A Right Way

I entered the internet marketing industry around 2003. It all started for me with an affiliate program and a pay per click campaign. Back in 2003 there were not many savvy Australian internet marketers so I had very little competition for my campaign for quite some time.

Having had some great initial success, I got a little disappointed as I watched new entrant after new entrant come into the market, copying my campaigns and forcing the cost of pay per click (PPC) advertising up. This combined with Google’s enhancements (which did make their search engine work better, just not for affiliates) made the time involved in managing a Google Cash style business, to be way in excess what the diminishing returns would compensate.

So I changed tack. I’d pretty much learned all I could with pay per click advertising anyway. At this juncture I started building and optimizing websites. I spent thousands working out the most successful and enduring methods of search engine optimization (SEO) and applied all the techniques to my own businesses. I still own about half a dozen successful websites. Only one promotes my own product, a tourism service I set up a couple of years ago. All the others sell products in affiliate programs or advertising space.

Over the 6 years I have been active in internet marketing, I have picked up quite a few clients who wanted help with their web presence. I never promoted this service, they all came to me on referral or by word of mouth. They all had two things in common. Firstly they wanted a website that sold their product. Secondly they had been ripped off by an unethical internet marketer who took their money and left them with a website that didn’t work.

These clients of mine all had a pretty negative view of the internet industry when they came to me. Unfortunately they’d all been ripped off by one operator or another. That’s the problem with our industry though, its unregulated and we are all, by and large, self taught. There is no standard of quality, this lets the poorly skilled earn while their clients suffer.

These charlatans contact me every week trying to sell their services. I can see clearly their modus operendi. They base all their actions on the fact that most business owners are pretty ignorant when it comes to the internet. Therefore, a few nice graphs and some confusing industry jargon is all they offer and expect it to be enough to make a sale. This is despite their general lack of substance when it comes to delivery.

Gold Coast Surfboards is a great example to prove the point. This is my travel business. Its the only website I run to date which sells its own product, a long-term surfboard hire service. Do a Google search on Gold Coast Surfboard Hire. You can find me easily. Or even use the less specific search phrase Surfboard Hire. You’ll see how well this website is optimized in the search engines.

Despite this I get the so called “professionals” writing to me every week trying to sell me their SEO services. “We can put your business on steroids” they tell me, getting you on the first page of Google on such terms as “Surf Board Accessories” and “Holiday Rentals”.

I’ve worked out exactly what they do. They find my website and recognize it as a small business. They’ll do a few Google searches and see that I really am well optimized, so then they set about finding some search phrases that I am not optimized for. In their belief they know more than me, they then try to scare me into buying their optimization services for the less relevant search phrases. Phrases such as “surf accessories” and “holiday rentals”.

If I didn’t understand internet marketing, I may have used these charlatans. I’m sure many small businesses have been convinced by their slick presentations. And at the end of their work though, I would have a website which attracts completely irrelevant visitors. People looking for surf accessories or people looking to rent a hotel room, or car for their holiday. This probably would have undermined the optimization work I did on “Surfboard Hire” and related terms as well, meaning my real clients would have gone to my competitors.

Here’s some advice if you are in a business which has internet professionals hard selling their services to you. Think about the phrases your clients use when they search for your services. Ask them what they’d type into Google. Have an understanding of this and then reject outright the approaches from operators who tell you they will optimize your website on Google for different search phrases. These people are selling you services that will not add value to your business, services which may damage the good work you have already done on your website.

If you are thinking about using the internet as a way to promote your business, ask around. See if you can get a referral for an internet professional who has built and marketed a website for someone else in a way that brings them business. The good professionals run their businesses on referrals with little self promotion. When asking around though, be very clear with people. Tell them you are looking for someone who markets websites, not someone who builds websites. There are just too many people out there who will charge you a small fortune to build a masterpiece, one though which no-one will ever find.

If you are an internet professional reading this article, its time for all of us to smarten up. We need to look after the industry and we can only do this by being ethical in the manner in which we operate. So please, stop going out trying to extract a pound of flesh, go out to add value to your clients. Once you are adding value, the new clients will come, following your reputation. Continue operating as you are though and soon no-one will talk to internet professionals anywhere.

Damian Papworth, concerned with the lack of ethics in internet marketing, espouses ethics before profits. Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.

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