Marketing Tips for January
Hi,
This is my first blog post on this subject and I just wanted to say thanks for reading it. I hope to share with you thoughtful opinions about the online marketing world and helpful guides and tutorials. They won’t normally be mine, but rather curated from some of the best sources online.
When you launch a new website, you are immediately targeted by spammers of all kinds. The reason is twofold:
- you are required to register your site, meaning that, unless you’ve purchased privacy services, your contact information is available to anyone who can search the various online directories of site information; and
- some registrars and hosts likely sell their new client lists to the highest bidder.
Spammers figure anyone setting up a new website must have money. So they target you. The picture above is an example of one such scam. You can see it here. This spammer targets your naivete: “I just launched my expensive website. I need potential clients to find it. Google better know it exists.” So they prey on that fear. They claim you need to “register” with the search engines. In reality, the search engines “index” your site the moment it is hosted (provided your webmaster hasn’t prevented them from doing so). You can give them additional information both by putting information on your server and by using the search engine’s own tools for site optimization. But neither of these things is “registering” and both are free, or require a webmaster, depending on your level of knowledge.
The point is that this spammer preys on the ignorance of the businessperson. How do you know you are not supposed to “register” your site, especially given that you had to get your domain from a registrar in the first place?
When in doubt – and whenever someone asks for money and you’re not sure what you’re getting – walk away.
We’re all busy. We want to be able to do more with less. Well, one thing small business owners can do as a nice short cut to successful content marketing is to repurpose their existing content. This infographic from Marketing Profs outlines the ways you can repupose your content and how it could be successful.
View the whole thing here.
Finally, for those of you who wonder what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is: Though this may be a little dense, this is as good an explanation as I know of for what SEO people do. Rand Fiskin, of MOZ, breaks down the current state of SEO tactics. Watch the video.
Read the Complete Guide to Putting Your Small Business Online