Sweat Equity Internet Marketing

by Nancy Snyder, Marketing and Technologies Vice President, G7 Solutions

Sweat equity marketing is my Internet version of "guerrilla marketing", a term coined and defined by Jay Conrad Levinson in 1984. This approach relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. In short it's leveraging your creativity and determination to promote your product instead of your pocketbook.

We will provide an ongoing series of articles that concentrate on "sweat equity" for Internet success.

It's not always always easy -- but nothing of significance ever is --- paid for or not!

Strong passion and determination is all you need to market your products successfully with minimal financial impact.

The first in this series of articles will focus on organic search engine optimization (SEO).

Organic Search Engine Optimization
Organic search engine optimization is the energy you put into your website to make it searchable to those individuals looking for your product and/or service.

You are simply "optimizing" your content online to allow your customers to find what they want easily.

We could spend days discussing the best way to optimize as there are thousands of resources online. It is like anything else in the marketing world -- everyone has a spin and most with a price attached.

But we are focusing on the sweat equity approach and if you are like me -- you don't have time to read the articles much less execute their recommendations. So for this introduction we will focus on the "cliff note" approach to SEO.

All Search Engines are Not Made Equal
First there are are hundreds of search engines on the web, thousands if you consider those that focus on specific sites and/or subjects. However, there are only two that us "sweat equity" marketers need to concern ourselves with ... Google and Yahoo. Actually if you have even less time than I do -- skip Yahoo and focus on Google. At least for now.

Let me show you why ...

Top Search Engine - Volume
The following report shows search engines for the industry 'All Categories', ranked by Volume of Searches for the 4 weeks ending 05/23/2009.

Data provided by http://www.hitwise.com

Need I say more?

Furthermore, some search engine "brands" are just "front ends" for another search engine. For instance, currently AOL Search returns results via Google. Here is a list I pulled from Web Position Gold. Although I DO NOT recommend you use automated submission tools for any of the top search engines - as you risk being banned, this tool does contain a wealth of resource information and can be used for smaller directory and site submissions.

For example... submitting to Google with also get you listed in:

Submitting to Yahoo will get you listed in:

The are also parallel search engines, otherwise known as Metasearch engines, that simply pull from the results of many above. Two of these types of tools are listed below for further reference.

Dogpile - www.dogpile.com
Searches Google, Yahoo, LookSmart, Ask.com, MSN search, and more. Sites that have purchased ranking and inclusion are blended in so watch for "sponsored by" links below the search results.

SurfWax - www.surfwax.com
A better than average set of search engines that can mix with educational, US Government tools, news sources or many other categories.

And finally there are collaborative or social search engines such as Digg.com which determine the relevance of search results by considering the interactions or contributions of users.

So What's Next?
Now we know what search engines we need to focus on ... the next step is how.

First your site needs to be optimized to communicate easily with web spiders. Which by the way -- it is the only thing called a spider that we should cheerfully welcome in our web homes! Web spiders (or robots) are programs which scan page or websites by following each link and generates various information based on the type of search conducted. Once they come to "feed" on your data --- they do return on a regular basis. In short -- once you are in -- you are in.

If you want to know more about web spiders visit the subject on Wikipedia. Get a cup of coffee as it is a long but interesting read.

The best way to start is to go to the source itself --- Google. Listed below are step by step instructions pulled directly from the source. Details for Yahoo are also listed.

• All About Google's Spidering and Index Process
• Creating a Google Friendly Site
• Adding a site to Google
• All About Yahoo's Spidering and Index Process (YST)
• How to Improve Your Rankings With Yahoo
• How do I add my site to Yahoo's Search Engine Database?
• Bad Spelling Can be Good ... Ha -- tell that to your English teacher!
• Glossary of Internet Marketing Terms
  .

Other Resources: 

• Optimize Your Online Content for Maximum Visibility

May you be graced with spiders soon!