I’ve been watching the show Gold Rush and the similarities between gold mining and Internet marketing are very similar. The work that is put into gold mining requires huge efforts and sometimes produces negative results. The upside is that every once in a while, there is a huge payoff. Their choices of methods are similar in that some just go on a hunch while others invest in scientific methods. The payoffs vary wildly for each different method.

Image by hto2008 via Flickr

The first thing any gold miner learns is that nothing is going to happen without hard work. The only way to get gold is to dig up dirt. If you want someone else to do the work for you, you’ll need to at least invest your resources in a claim and share the profits or losses with others doing the work. If you go the lazy route, it’s going to still take work to find and monitor the efforts of the people you have mining.

Gold mining is a game like internet marketing. The only thing a player can do is attempt to increase their odds by working smart. Sometimes working smart means risking your capital to pay for more scientific methods. The last show I watched, one of the methods was drilling. They payed an operator to come out  and drill holes in different areas. He drilled until he hit bedrock, then they analyzed where gold was found in the dirt that was pulled out of the hole. When they found an area with a heavy concentration of gold, they knew where to direct their efforts for that claim.

I’ve had success using this same method with Internet marketing. Take any area of interest and that would be your claim. For this example only, lets use the ever popular pet category. You’re not going to find gold in the pet category, without luck. It’s just to big of claim. With customers spending huge amounts of money on their pets, you know the gold is there, but you don’t know where you can successfully compete. You’re going  to have to poke a few holes and see what comes up. Don’t start an entire website on one little area that you know nothing about. Use some tools to sniff out areas of pets that might hold gold. Find some terms that have decent traffic and reasonable competition. Then, use some free tools like blogger, HubPages, Squidoo, etc. and invest some time writing articles about it. If they get some traffic and interest, start the big dig by setting up a website about the topic.

Gold miners waste efforts and money in the same way that Internet marketers do. They spend to much time talking to others who haven’t made any money either. They listen to wild claims from other miners that aren’t true. They get discouraged when they don’t hit the mother load in the time that they thought they would. The miners that are successful though, they work hard and learn. When they do listen to other miners, they listen to those who are working hard and have experienced some proven success. I’m convinced the fortunes are still out there for those of us willing to work hard and work smart.

I’ve been asked why I give so much information away for free. I’ll tell anyone how the nuts and bolts of SEO and website development work. There’s no secret to it. It would be like a contractor thinking he could keep the steps to building a house secret. Understand web development and Search Engine Optimization  and actually doing it are 2 different things. Most will not do the work required, so there isn’t any danger of the profession being flooded any time soon or in the foreseeable future. The slight technical aspects of creating a website can either be learned for free on the web or hired out for cheap. Those who figure these simple aspects out may be my competitors, but more often I befriend them and we mutually profit by sharing knowledge and experience. 

I would actually prefer for more businesses to understand the process! The better that a client understands the process, the easier it is to work with them. When both parties understand that a website is a long term investment, everything goes smoother. Internet marketing and website development is rarely a get rich quick scheme. Few businesses experience instant magical traffic that changes their lives overnight. It takes hard work. 

For those who are interested, here is a free course that explains the basics of Internet marketing. It is truly a challenge as the name implies. If you would like to learn how to create a website and market it, try The Challenge.

Getting noticed through Google searches, advertising, and any other method on the web is simply a matter of beating your competition where your customers are searching. Google is the primary method of searching and mentions on other websites is a close second. Paying a directory to list you is just one small effort and Google pay per click advertising is not nearly enough. Building, maintaining, and promoting a website that you own is the best way help customers find you and become informed.

Web design is a race to beat your competition.Image via Wikipedia

So how does a business beat the competition’s website? You build an informative website that is updated frequently and promote the website by posting about it on forums, social media, blogs, and any other relevant websites. Many other blogs and websites want a business to interact with them in their efforts to discuss their own web content. This takes time and effort, but the actual costs are low. I can do this work for you and show you exactly what the efforts are producing.

When considering how much time and effort you need to beat the competition, look at how much promotion they have done. An old joke comes to mind: When being chased by a lion, you do not need to the fastest runner there is, only faster than the slowest runner in the group. Sure, there are websites that put a outrageous money into promotion, but if they’re not competing for the what you want to compete for, you do not need to match their efforts.

In Newark, Ohio, it doesn’t take much effort to beat your competition. Many websites lie dormant for years. Businesses do not realize that a website is never finished and are content to just let it stay the same. As soon as any competitor realizes the value of a better website with promotion, they take top position and the other websites in the listing lose their effectiveness.

The higher your position in a popular Google search for a term that profits your business, the greater share of that search traffic your website will receive. When a customer is searching for a business, they’ll stop searching as soon as they find the business that meets their needs.

Don’t let your website fall behind the competition. Contact a Newark, Ohio Web Design company and see what can be done to improve your web presence today.

Facebook has become a dominant entity in website development. For the most part, I find it a great resource. Anyone with a few minutes to read a few instructions can have a website. Any business or individual now has the power to get their message out for free. Not only that, they can pick and choose who they want to interact with. It is no doubt a powerful and useful tool, so what could be the problem?

The problem is that you do not own it. You have whatever control Facebook decides you will have and that can change at will. It seems free, but you still put time and effort into it’s maintenance. Facebook should only be used as a tool to communicate and it should be expected to be useless for your business whenever Facebook decides to make it that way or whenever the public decides to go somewhere else.

One way Facebook can actually cost you money is by placing your competitors ads on your business’s Facebook page! It can happen and you have no control for the exception of spending ad dollars to put your ad on other pages. Other businesses do have the ability to look at who is participating on your page and lure them away. On top of all of this, Facebook has the ability to compile data about who is interested in your business and sell that data to other entities.

It’s a trade off, but you can get the edge if you have your own website. If a website is owned and operated by a business, they can use it in conjuction with Facebook to double the effectiveness of Internet advertising efforts. Facebook turns into a utility to gain traffic that is diverted away from Facebook and onto the business website.

The attitude I’m seeing businesses give about Facebook is, “Web developers envy that I can do for free what previously they were charging thousands of dollars for.”. With some web developers, this is absolutely true. They were wowing their customers with beautiful designs but providing little in the way of traffic generation and content development. They were providing beautiful and ineffective websites and using the attraction to the design wonders to collect extraordinary fees.

Facebook has brought about changes that are great for business and web developers.

• Website artistic design is getting more reasonable. Look at Facebook’s artwork. Graphics are minimal, ads are more discreet, and the user interface is reasonable. This is bleeding over into website design.
• Traffic expectations are more reasonable. When customers see the numbers from their own efforts on Facebook pages, they get a more realistic expectation from what a website can deliver. They’re also learning that quality and not quantity is an important factor in traffic.
• Businesses are learning the value of informative content. Facebook thrives on producing content.
• Web developers are bringing their price and attitudes in line with reality. Their systems are being streamlined and standardized.

If you would like to know more about how you can use Facebook and other social media properties to work with your website or if you’d like to explore the possibilities of adding a website to your social media efforts, feel free to contact me. I welcome comments on this article too.