I have been a longtime fan of Sugarrae's blog (and some of her old posts back in the day on WebmasterWorld). She has been on the to interview list for a few years and we just recently finally did one. :)

How did you get into publishing and affiliate marketing?

In 1997 I had my first child and a few weeks later he suffered a massive bilateral stroke (he had a stroke on both sides of the brain at once, instead of on only one side as with usual strokes). My dad sent me an old office computer to research treatments and I built a small webpage on Homestead that told his story. I started to get emails from other parents who were searching for information on pediatric stroke (at the time, there was little information out there). Long story short, I founded the first international support group for parents and families of pediatric stroke survivors. I was spending a lot of time on the site and started to investigate the possibility of making some side money with it and stumbled into affiliate marketing. I built my first site and everything clicked from there. I loved the whole process of creating and marketing (via organic SEO) an affiliate site – and luckily for me, it seemed I was pretty good at it. I’ve got zero formal training... but I’ve got a decade of experience behind me now.

You have been pushing hard for people to evolve the affiliate model and add value. What are some of the easiest ways affiliates can do that? What are some of the most creative and intensive things you have done to increase the quality and value of your sites?

I’m a big believer in longevity. It’s no secret that I’ve dabbled in the blacker side of things in the past, but as the engines got smarter, it became clear to me that building a site that ranks because it should (meaning it is the best resource on the topic) and not because I’ve manipulated that weeks algorithm was the key to being successful long-term in the organic listings. That said, I still focus a lot on SEO and the algorithm, but the core of what we do is build good sites. It is a lot easier to get links when you deserve them. Campy? Yes. Supports myself and my entire company? Yes.

I wish I could say there were “easy ways” to add value to an affiliate site. But, that ability to create a POD is what separates the few from the many, in my eyes. Scour the sites you’ll be competing with and see what they are offering and then decide how you can make it better. See what they’re missing and create it. Maybe you’ve found a site with great information, but no way for the community to become involved with it. Re-create that good information, add even more to it and then add a community aspect. Every site is different and sometimes it takes us a long time to find our POD for them.

For instance, I’ve been in the telecom market for a long time. It was my first commercial industry. When we decided to build a site about prepaid wireless, we looked around at the competition. CNet had short reviews of only the major companies and no user reviews (at the time), About.com’s info was a bit of a mess and hard to understand. So we built a site that offered editorial reviews of twice the number of providers CNet did, with information broken down into layman’s terms and that were three times as detailed as the information of either fore-mentioned big brands. We also added the ability for users to leave reviews of every provider. Today we have editorial reviews of 25+ companies, we have over 3000 user generated reviews (more than any other site with prepaid information to our knowledge), we have a comparison tool, we run a blog focused on the prepaid industry and we even moderate panels at the Prepaid Press Expo. We have the best and most complete site on prepaid cell phones in existence. We rank because we should.

With BB Geeks, we focused on the “newbie user” while all the other sites focused on providing BlackBerry news or information to BlackBerry pros. It allowed us to find a crack in a competitive market and build ourselves a very loyal following and a very strong brand in the space. We also made early use of Twitter and targeted the same segment of folks – people looking for help using their BlackBerry.

Going Cellular was a bit trickier. I was stumped for a while. So many cell phone sites... How do you take on Engadget Mobile and Howard Forums? I admittedly shelved that project for a long time – I couldn’t find our POD. Then one day, something a friend said to me earlier about a project he was working on sparked an idea. We have a TON of reviews between all of our telecom sites – 4000+ in total. And everyone always focuses on the reviews by provider. But, we all know that sometimes, T-Mobile may have great coverage in one area and crap coverage in another. So, I got the idea to take our large database of reviews and make them searchable by geographic location. It is a hard thing to replicate if you don’t have the review volume to pull from. But we did (and get more daily). So it works. We just released the tool so let’s hope it works well.

I’ve always maintained that Google doesn’t hate affiliate sites. They hate thin affiliate sites. We’ve done our best to create the type of value add Google, and consumers, are looking for.

Do affiliates need a lot of money to compete in the market? Or can they win with little investment provided they are willing to put in a lot of effort?

I don’t think you need a lot of money to compete. Granted, it was easier to say that five years ago (if only I’d worked even harder then), but the opportunities are still there. But, if the less money you have to invest, the more time you’re going to need to put in. People sometimes wrongly think that I had all this money laying around when I started. I hear “Well, I’d love to do that, but I don’t have the money to build those kind of sites.” I didn’t either in the beginning. I was the designer (in spite of being what I like to call artistically impaired), programmer (even if I barely scraped by – and nowadays, with WordPress, it is much much easier to “get by” in that department), content writer (I knew crap about telecom when I started – I learned, learned, learned the field) and marketer (please sir, can I have a link?). I was a one man band in the beginning. I still like to think people can claw their way into any market they choose with the right plan and right dedication. I have employees now, but that was because I couldn’t scale without them.

Do you see offline networking as being a key component of affiliate marketing strategies? Do you do it to promote any of your brands?

We network offline all the time. We run ads in targeted offline publications for our very niche sites (the ad prices tend to be lower and the return higher). For our telecom sites, we attend the major conferences like CTIA, WES, the Prepaid Press Expo, etc. It makes it a lot easier to develop contacts in the industry. Just like SEO’s go to SMX, PubCon, etc. You have to network face to face sometimes for better results. There is a cost associated with it, but we usually get a good ROI on attending. And if we don’t, we don’t return.

Google's Eric Schmidt made a public comments about "brands being how you sort out the cesspool" ... does this statement concern you? Has Google done anything over the past couple years that made you view them differently from a competitive standpoint?

I didn’t really get too concerned about it. As I mentioned, we build our sites to BE affiliate brands. If we’re doing things right, we should come out okay. As for Google and competitiveness, they’ve made it a lot harder on the smaller guys and the up and comers. But, that was to be expected. They haven’t made it impossible by any means. But they have made it harder.

Given Google's 2-tier justice system (penalizing smaller webmasters while giving big brands a pass), why do you think some well known SEOs still publicly out websites?

My number one answer would be “fame”. Too many people in this industry play the fame game. I personally have never outed a site, publicly or privately for doing anything against search engine guidelines and never will. The other reasons people tend to “out” sites is for competitive sabotage (my opinion is that if you’re being beaten by someone, fight harder... In the end, you’re site will be better and stronger for it) or because they think they’ll impress engine reps and make connections. The engines are not our friends (though I truly like a lot of the engine reps themselves). I’m a strong believer in Omerta in this industry [waves to Matt].

What makes you decide to start a new site? Do you have to love the topic, or can you make a profitable site around a topic where there is $ even if you do not care for the topic?

I always say you don’t need to love the topic, you need to learn TO love the topic. To make the best site, you have to be willing to either immerse yourself or pay to immerse someone ELSE in a topic. I find industries where I see opportunity.

Do you try to make money off every site you build? Or do you invest more in the sites that really take off, while spending less capital and effort on the lower end sites?

If the industry is small and the site will only make 3 or 5K per month, then we build a site that will only take a day or two or three a month to maintain after the initial build to keep the ROI in position. For sites with much higher revenues, we put in a lot more time – but for a much higher return. I personally like the smaller niches. It takes more sites to hit bigger numbers, but the competition and upkeep is relatively low.

Do you ever view sites as self-sustaining and stop investing into them? If so, how do you decide when?

It depends on the industry. We don’t have any “active” site that we don’t at least spend a few days a month on. We do have some sites we deem “inactive”... Meaning they didn’t do what we hoped so we shelved the site. We might come back to it later or we might let it earn whatever it does until it dies a slow death. I don’t ever want to get complacent with a site we consider a “winner”. That’s when you give the competition the opportunity to do what we’ve done to our competitors in various sectors. Donald Trump talked about that in Think Big and Kick Ass. He got comfortable and lost his A-game. You can’t do that. We never stop trying to make “active sites” even better. We have to do it before our competition does.

You dub AdSense as "webmaster welfare" and seem to much prefer affiliate revenues to AdSense revenues. Do you have any sites in illiquid affiliate markets? How do you monetize them?

I try my damndest to keep AdSense at less than 20% of our revenue. I don’t like being dependent on one company, who doesn’t even tell us what rev-share we’re getting. It makes me nervous. I also don’t like to be dependent on one affiliate program either. Diversity is a good thing. We have a few in illiquid affiliate markets. Some are “future plays” meaning that they don’t have affiliate programs now, but we think the topic will eventually get big and the monetization opportunities will come. But we don’t spend heavy time on those. We usually research before we dive in to make sure affiliate programs are available.

Some of your tweets, blog posts, and past interviews have showed a bit of a distaste for all in one webmaster solutions. What tools (cms, ads, design, seo, etc.) do you consider to be key to your successful fast growing publishing enterprise?

Our CMS was built in house, as our most of our internal reporting tools. I’m actually pretty simple. I like to look at a lot of things by hand. It probably isn’t the most valuable spend of time, but, it works for me. I’m a big evangelist of the Thesis Theme and we use that on several sites (and hybrid it with the CMS) and the folks who we hire to skin them do sexy work. I think we use Open Ads for the CPM based advertising. I use some of your tools too. I also use Compete (for competitive intelligence) and Basecamp (to organize everything). Like I said, I’m pretty simple on the tool front.

It seems a lot of the SEO discourse at the public level has dropped off sharply in quality (but not in quantity) over the past couple years. Some people (like me) have created private sites, but a lot of the old timers that I consider mentors have sorta disappeared from the public discourse. Do you think this is a temporary shift, or a trend that is likely to continue? Are many of these other people moving on to other private communities?

A lot of the old timers have a distaste for the fame game. If I wasn’t now also running an Internet marketing company, I’d probably be underground too. It’s easier to just do your thing and make your money. They work on pushing their sites and not themselves. I still meet with a lot of the folks you probably consider old timers, but at non-conference gatherings and small meet-ups. With so many people willing to out someone to get their blog to the Sphinn homepage, you become very careful with who you trust. Just like the engines have made it harder for small brands, fame-seekers have made it harder for people to make it into many folks “inner circles”. SEO Bloggers are like reality TV stars... Most don’t have the talent, they just have the platform to pretend they do.

Do some of the cultish behaviors in the SEO industry surprise you? What can the industry do to clean up such behavior, or is it just a fixture?

I don’t read many blogs or belong to many communities, so I tend to shield myself from a good portion of it. The rest, I’ve learned to mainly ignore. Every once in a while, someone will really get under my skin. I don’t think we will ever be rid of the behavior to be honest. We just have to learn not to react from it or be distracted by it.

A lot of new webmasters have a remarkable sense of entitlement while being exceptionally lazy. Do you think this new breed of webmaster has been led astray by get-rich-quick scammers, or do you think the game getting harder and more expensive is causing more people to beg for short cuts?

I think it’s a combination of both. Sometimes I wonder if people realize the amount of time and effort it took for the “bigger guys” to get where they are. Get rich quick schemes are like “amazing weight loss pills”. You know they don’t really work or everyone would be rich and skinny. But, you like to believe it, because it means you can ignore the fact that the real answer for achieving anything you want in life is actually hard work. Not everyone deserves a trophy.

What books, blog posts, forum threads, offline events, etc. were key to you becoming so successful with your online business?

Wow. Well, Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” was instrumental for me early on. It really helped me learn to monetize. The “game changer” for my career was probably “E-Myth Revisited”. That book was what made me decide to scale from my kitchen to an office in downtown Guelph with a staff. WebmasterWorld was also a big source of training for me in the early days, along with a private forum I belonged to back then. My first PubCon also was a game changer, because it made me see that I really did have a career and was good at what I did. It gave me a lot more confidence.

Recently you moved back into the consulting model a bit, which sorta surprised me because I always saw you as the super-affiliate type who would avoid client work because you loved doing stuff your way. What brought you back to the client model?

It surprised me too LOL. I’ve taken on occasional consulting clients over the years... It was interesting to see mistakes and issues I don’t deal with day to day in my own sites. It also helped keep me sharp with working on site types Sugarrae and MFE doesn’t build. I don’t have a lot of patience, so dealing with a lot of client work has never been my style.

Back in January, Lisa Barone and Rhea Drysdale decided to head out on their own and create a consulting firm. They contacted me because while Lisa is an expert in blogging, branding and social media strategies and Rhea specializes in ORM and social media with a very strong SEO base, they both felt they lacked the business experience of running their own company. They were both becoming first time entrepreneurs and felt my experience with running companies, in addition to my expertise and “brand” in affiliate marketing, monetization and SEO, was something they needed/wanted in addition to their own skill-sets. Being able to leverage my talents to create a consulting firm and create strategies for client sites, without having to be the person managing clients on a day to day basis, was what made me decide to give it a go. We’ve been very successful thus far, especially considering everyone said we were nuts to launch in the middle of a recession. I expect pretty big things for the company.

Given how well you do with affiliate stuff, I would imagine you are quite selective with client work. What type of client is ideal for Outspoken Media?

It’s funny you mention that. When we first launched the company, we immediately started getting leads from potential clients. I’d decide to turn down half of the leads (one of my responsibilities with Outspoken is business development – AKA, deciding who we work with) without ever even speaking to the potential clients. Of the 50 percent with did speak with, we’d usually end up referring half of those out. I think Rhea thought I was insane at first. One of the first lessons (based on my own feelings) in entrepreneurship I gave her was that we didn’t want to take any client willing to shell out cash. We want to work with good sites, where we think we can make a big impact and with good people. I didn’t want to fill up our roster with “anyone willing” and not have room to take on the clients that would keep us challenged and be awesome to work with down the road. Of course, it was likely easier for me to be calm with taking that route since Outspoken isn’t my sole source of income. But I think Rhea and Lisa have seen that the leads haven’t slowed and our client roster keeps filling and trust that strategy now. So yeah, we’re pretty picky.

That said, it doesn’t mean anyone we’ve turned down or referred out was a “bad client”. Sometimes we turn down clients due to conflict of interest (either with current clients or sites that are direct competition to any sites owned by Sugarrae and MFE Interactive), ROI reasons or for budgetary reasons.

The ideal client for Outspoken Media is someone who believes in us and trusts us to do what we do best.

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Thanks Rae. To read more of her latest thoughts on marketing, affiliate business models, the internet, or life in general subscribe to Sugarrae and her consultancy PushFire.

Often, in our rush to get ahead and do things, we forget to plan.

Do you have a business plan? Do you have a plan, but haven't updated it in a while?

A business plan need not be complicated. A few bullet points on the back of an envelope can constitute a business plan. A business plan is simply a description of what you intend to do, and how you intend to do it. Once you write down a plan, your business becomes a lot easier to visualize, and you have a clear, simple means to measure your performance.

The Importance Of Writing Things Down

We all make lists. Why? Probably because our memories aren't that good. A list also helps to focus attention. There's something about the very act of writing things down that makes a nebulous action concrete.

The same theory applies to business plans. Write down what you plan to do, how you plan to do it, and put some milestones around it.
i.e. I'm going to achieve target x by December. It's also a good idea to have a rough idea of how much that milestone is going to cost you to achieve, and the revenue you expect from it.

For Whom Are You Writing The Business Plan?

Is you aim to attract VC? Get a loan from the bank? For internal staff to be clear about direction? For your own use? Depending on your answer, you business plan will have different requirements in terms of the information provided.

All business plans have the following components:

• Executive summary
• Business description
• Market strategy
• Competitive analysis
• Design and development plan
• Operations and management plan
• Financial factors

Business plans aren't just for start-ups, either.

As a business transitions through different stages as it grows, the plan needs to change. You might want to figure out the best way to invest or fund expansion. A new financial period may be beginning. What are your plans for the next financial year? Do you need to refinance? Are you taking on more employees? Does your old plan fit your new reality?

The Three Types Of Business Plans

Complete business plans often contain all these elements. However, if you haven't got the time to construct a detailed plan, you can break it down based on intended audience.

Short Plan

Could be as short as one page.

Answer the following questions.

• What is your concept?
• How much money will you need to execute your plan?
• How do you intend to plan to market your business to customers/clients?
• What will your cash flow look like, and over what time frame?

Simple questions, right. Many business ideas can be adopted or discounted on those four questions alone, saving you a lot of time, money, and more importantly - opportunity cost.

However, these plans aren't detailed enough if you're seeking investment.

Presentation Plan

The essential difference between a working plan and a presentation plan is style and appearance. It's tone is serious, and it usually comes complete with charts, forecasts and diagrams designed to convey to people that you've put a lot of consideration into your venture. Presentation plans should be free of industry jargon. Investors like to see a lot of due diligence, especially when it comes to competitive threats.

Working Plan

A working plan is a plan used to operate your business. Like a short plan, it is less formal in terms of style. It is used internally to ensure everyone has enough information to be on the same page.

The SEO Business Plan

We've drawn up a complete business plan that provides an out-of-the-box SEO model for those thinking of starting up their own SEO service. This includes charts and detailed financial breakdowns, as well as SEO industry information and a ready-to-use strategy for 2009-2013.

You can use this plan as it is, or use it as a template to adapt it for your own needs.

In the coming weeks, we'll also provide detailed business plans for an SEO publisher model and SEO product seller.

In one of the more absurd public privacy invasions online, Google has announced they are going to use FICO scores to help advertisers target ads at consumers in different credit buckets.

I wonder if at some point in time if AdWords advertisers selling the scammy government grand & biz-op offers will get to use this data to target poor people with low credit scores. It only makes sense that Google would spin this positively stating that it is good for brand advertisers to find credit-worthy customers, which is the story that was marketed in the above linked piece:

Consumers with high FICO scores demonstrate some unique attributes that show they shop carefully for the best cards. For example, shoppers begin using search earlier in their application process, they use the term "best credit cards" at three times the rate of lower FICO shoppers, and they are more likely to use branded terms.

Consumers with high FICO scores use non-branded search terms more than branded -- approximately 60% of high FICO searchers. They tend to search on terms, such as "travel rewards," "low rate," and "balance transfer."

From a marketer's perspective this makes a lot of sense. Smart people who manage their credit well look for tangible benefits in their financial choices...they don't just blindly buy the brand.

The problem is that (so long as the current bankruptcy "reform" remains in tact and taxpayers bail out any banking losses) bankers have little to no incentive to reach people with good credit scores. People who pay their credit cards on time are seen as deadbeats while the least credit worth are the profitable market segment because they use credit ignorantly and accrue billions of dollars in unneeded fees every year:

Overall, we find that debt literacy is low: only about one-third of the population seems to comprehend interest compounding or the workings of credit cards. Even after controlling for demographics, we find a strong relationship between debt literacy and both financial experiences and debt loads. Specifically, individuals with lower levels of debt literacy tend to transact in high-cost manners, incurring higher fees and using high-cost borrowing. In applying our results to credit cards, we estimate that as much as one-third of the charges and fees paid by less knowledgeable individuals can be attributed to ignorance. The less knowledgeable also report that their debt loads are excessive or that they are unable to judge their debt position.

Bankers have historically hidden these fees in illegible 30+ page contracts, as mentioned by Elizabeth Warren

I teach contract law at Harvard Law School and I can't understand my credit card contract. I just can't. It's not designed to be read. Read the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on this. The GAO looked at credit cards and they said: "Nobody can understand this stuff." Are you kidding me? And understand when you've got terms that say: "In effect, we'll charge anything we want any time we want for any reason or no reason at all," what's the point of reading it?

She later commented on the ideal credit card customer

Every credit card for a credit card company is like a lottery ticket. They're just waiting to see who's going to maybe stumble a little. Maybe get into trouble on a car loan. Maybe nothing at all except they just look vulnerable. They're just in the right zip code. They're just the right profile for people who won't be able to run any place else. And those are the ones you slam. Those are the ones you hit with the 29 percent interest rate, the 35 percent interest rate, the new fees. And then, because of course if you can't pay it, then you get hit with a fee for not paying or for paying late, for going over limit. And the game is afoot. With any luck at all from the credit card company's perspective, these people will become little annuities that will just keep generating profits for the credit card companies for months, for years, maybe forever.

The idea of only servicing legitimate debt needs of customers that can afford their credit card bills has made banking industry executives so angry that they are threatening hitting consumers with lots of bogus new "conveninece" fees:

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

This new consumer-credit profiling Google is offering will be far more profitable to use on the poor, the weak, the desperate, the ignorant, and the uneducated. In early research Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin stated

Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. ... We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.

So were they right back then? Or are the right now? They can't be both.

Update: Sandra from Google's PR team emailed me the following

I've included an outline of the research methodology below the body of this note. Please let me know if you have questions or need clarification on any of the below -- or anything else, for that matter.

Best,

Sandra

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* Compete conducted a clickstream analysis on their opt-in panel of 2 million US online consumers, to associate FICO score categories with sites in the Google Content Network.
o The analysis took a look at the online behavior of Compete's opt-in panelists who shopped for or applied for a credit card online between January and March 2009, for the 30 days prior to the application and/or research.
+ Compete, via a sister company that provides secure matching of certain characteristics (one of which is FICO scores) to anonymous/anonymized individuals in the Compete panel, segmented the opt-in panelists into one of three categories, based on their FICO score: Super Prime (720 and above), Prime (600 to 719), and Sub-Prime (below 600).
+ Individual scores and personally identifiable information were not used by Compete, nor were they received by Google.
o Google provided Compete with a list of all sites in the Google Content Network.
o Compete compared how panelists in each FICO band searched and where the panelists spent time on the GCN, and ranked each GCN site based on its ability to reach consumers in particular FICO score bands.
o The ranking/scores of the GCN sites were passed on to Google -- not any information about the credit scores of individuals.

There are a lot of parallels between Google AdWords and SEO, and a lot of the beginner mistakes are the same for both traffic acquisition strategies. I figured it would be worth outlining some of the most common ones to help save you money on your search engine marketing campaigns.

1. Weak Domain Name
2. All Search Traffic Driven to Homepage
3. No Link Building
4. All Links to the Homepage
5. No Link Anchor Text Variation
6. No Focus on Quality
7. Lacking On Page Optimization
8. No Site Structure
9. Site With No Value Add
10. Competitive Saturated Market With Inadequate Budget
11. Picking a Market for 1
12. Pick a Market Which Does Not Monetize
13. Over-Aggressive Monetization From Day 1
14. What Other Common SEM Errors do You See?

1. Weak Domain Name

Google AdWords

When I interviewed Perry Marshall about AdWords he recommended split testing URLs because the URL can and does have a major impact on your ad clickthrough rate.

Since Google factors click-through rate (CTR) into their quality scores, anything that influences CTR influences your click prices. And while competitors can and will steal your AdWords ad copy, they CAN'T steal your domain name.

SEO

There are many potential errors that can be made with domain names. Two of the more common errors are creating a domain name that is impossible to remember and creating a name that restricts expansion.

Recommendations

Some people feel the need to limit their domain name budget to $10, but it is a foolish strategy. Almost every piece of marketing you do will be influenced by your domain name. Your domain name has limited recurring costs associated with it, but can represent a huge recurring market advantage or disadvantage. Yeah for CreditCards.com, and boo for cheapest-online-apply-credit-cards-and-loans.info.

1. If you are using Google AdWords for a new product or a non-branded product then test clickthrough rates across multiple domain names.
2. Make sure your domain name allows you to expand as needed. This is sorta an error I made early on with this site...I had no idea how successful the site would become when I started it and did not anticipate us creating the #1 SEO training program back when I thought of selling an ebook.
3. Avoid names that are impossible to remember. If you intend to create something that is easy to market online and offline then your domain name must pass the phone test, which typically means avoiding hyphens & numbers. This is especially true if you are trying to build a big brand.
4. If you feel your company may expand internationally it is best to buy any matching domain extensions where you might intend to eventually do business.
5. Exact match domain names can create a big SEO advantage if you can afford them - since some engines may give them a relevancy boost and your domain name influences the anchor text people use when they link at your website.

2. All Search Traffic Driven to Homepage

Google AdWords

1 page can only be relevant for a certain sector of search queries. In an efficient market anyone who directs all traffic to the homepage will lose a lot of money.

Every additional click you force users to make has some amount of slippage. When using Google AdWords / pay per click marketing a small change in conversion rates can be the difference between sustained profits and sustained losses.

SEO

It is sorta impossible to make a page "optimized" for hundreds or thousands of popular keywords because eventually after you add enough different keywords in the page copy it ends up reading bad and it harms conversion rates.

With SEO efforts mis-directing traffic is not as obvious as it is with AdWords because you don't have to pay for every click. But giving users an irrelevant experience still means you are throwing money away and only operating at a fraction of your potential.

Recommendations

With the prevalence of Google (and web search in general) every page of your site is the front door. We navigate via search. So map out keywords against URLs and try to offer the most relevant user experience whenever possible.

Observe how we map out core keywords, variations, and modifiers.

Some Google AdWords advertisers take perceived relevancy one step further and use the search query to help define the page content through the use of keyword insertion into their page copy and/or altering the page based on geographic information based on your computer's IP address.

3. No Link Building

Google AdWords

The equivalent of links to AdWords is keywords in your AdWords account. If you only advertise on 1 or 2 keywords you miss out on a large stream of relevant traffic.

SEO

If you build it they will come is simply not true in the search game. If it was easy to rank for competitive keywords without links then few companies would buy AdWords ads. You can't typically rank a new site until you have some level of awareness. Search engines follow people. Links are seen as votes of trust.

Recommendations

With AdWords, don't just bid on 1 keyword. Look for additional relevant variations that make sense. If you don't mind splashing out $50 you can also look at what competing sites are advertising on using SEM Rush, Keyword Spy, SpyFu, and/or KeyCompete. There are so many new tools popping up in this market segment that I have not had the time to review them all.

For SEO, download SEO for Firefox and the SEO Toolbar and look at how many links competing sites have and how many domain names those links come from. You will likely need to build some number of links in the range of what competing sites have (from a similar set of sites) to rank. Today is the perfect day to start building links. And yesterday was even better. ;)

4. All Links to the Homepage

Google AdWords

Since you are buying the links from the search engines based on keyword, this problem would be corrected by solving issue #2.

SEO

A variation of the above thinking. Most quality sites have useful content somewhere that people link to editorially. If all your links point at the homepage then that means you are not using anchor text from external links to boost your internal page ranks. In most markets that creates a big loss considering that some of those pages would get a lot of traffic with just a few more deep links which would yield higher rankings.

Recommendations

Search is a winner take most market. Analyze your traffic patterns, rankings, and target keywords to ensure you are promoting key pages. Look at top competing sites and keyword ranking values to gain additional insights.

Create linkworthy content that people would want to link at and push market it. The objective (vs self-interested) viewpoint here is "if you did not own your site what is unique about it that would make you want to visit it every week and/or recommend it to a friend?"

5. No Link Anchor Text Variation (or AdWords Ad Copy Variation)

Google AdWords

You shouldn't use the exact same ad copy on all of your keywords. You should segment it out by trying to understand user demand and create compelling advertising text that is relevant to the search query, relevant to the user demand, and relevant to your landing page. If you use a single generic boilerplate ad copy you are loosing a lot of money because your ad will not look as relevant as some of the top competing ads.

SEO

When people link to things naturally there tends to be some variation involved. If all your inbound links say "my keywords" then that can look suspicious...particularly if you are buying lots of links.

Recommendations

With AdWords, at a minimum you would want to use dynamic keyword insertion. But if you sell a lot of different products then you should try to find a way to match up small groups of relevant keywords against a set of ad copy. Make your core keywords stand out on their own, and be willing to be somewhat less descriptive with low search volume backfill keywords.

With SEO you should try to mix up your link anchor text when you are manually building links. If you create original compelling content that people want to link at (and push market it to the right audience) then that will also pull in natural anchor text.

6. No Focus on Quality

Google AdWords

Some advertisers are compelled to go after "cheap" clicks. But some of the more expensive keywords are expensive because they are associated with significant and valuable consumer demand.

SEO

Google algorithms estimate the probability of a new site being quality or low quality. If you start off with 2,000+ "free" directory links you align your site with sites that are often of lower quality. Similarly, if you try to promote watered down or average content then few people will be receptive to those efforts.

Recommendations

There is nothing wrong with buying cheap traffic, but make sure you track the business value you get from that traffic. If you buy "cheap" traffic from 3rd tier ad networks and/or keywords without any commercial intent those will not build your business anywhere near as well as developing a solid traffic stream from valuable industry keywords on leading search engines.

Start your link building efforts with quality links first. As your site gets more trusted you can fill in some lower quality links as well, but you don't want to do it first, and you don't want to do it in bulk.

When you decide to do push marketing for link building make sure the content you are promoting is unique, original, useful, compelling, & citation-worthy.

7. Lacking On Page Optimization

Google AdWords

Quality user experience and usability are crucial to converting well. When users come from search to your site they are switching channels. The more cues you can give them that they are in the right place (like relevant page headings + navigation) the higher your conversion rates and visitor value should be.

SEO

For really competitive queries links are crucial, but you can rank for many less competitive keywords and keyword variations without lots of links (because there is much less competition for those keywords). And even if you have lots of links, it is still typically hard to rank for keyword phrases that are not in your page copy.

Recommendations

With Google AdWords you can reach many of the stray searchers by using a combination of phrase match and broad match, and then using negative match to filter out irrelevant searches.

For every person searching for "seo" or "sem" there are probably 10 people searching for more obscure queries like "how do I promote my business on Google?" You can see how our page about link building ranks for hundreds of related keywords.

This is probably the single most powerful graphic explaination of why having lots of useful on-page content:

With SEO you can reach a lot of the searchers by using alternate word forms, alternate word orders, related phrases, and keyword modifiers in your content.

8. No Site Structure

Google AdWords

If your AdWords ad campaigns are not well organized then you are likely losing money. A strong site structure also helps ensure that your AdWords account has a strong structure, which can aid profitability.

SEO

If your site is not structured well then...

• navigation will likely be hard or confusing
• some of your key pages may not get much of your link authority
• some of your unimportant pages may accumulate a lot of your link authority

Recommendations

Most successful websites have a structure in which key pages which are mapped out against user demand and search volume.

• Create separate AdWords campaigns based on goals. Perhaps you can have campaigns for brand related searches, seasonal offers, public relations, campaigns that are based on ROI metrics, and even backfill campaigns like misspellings.
• Some content management systems (CMS) have major errors with duplicate content and site structure issues. A review of that topic is beyond the scope of this article, but search for the name of the CMS and SEO prior to implementing it to verify there are no serious issues and/or that there are easy fixes on the market.
• Set up site categories and sub-categories that are aligned against the keywords people use to search for your products and services.
• If you blog (or publish content regularly) reference older related materials when relevant.
• If your content is in a database you can use automated contextual links to help fix some site structural issues and redistribute PageRank down toward lower pages in your site structure.
  

9. Site With No Value Add

Google AdWords

If your site does not add much value it can be quite hard to sustain profit margins in the AdWords market. Affiliates routinely copy the work of each other and drive up click prices, which kills profit margins.

SEO

My very first profitable website was a no value add website that I got some spammy links for. The site did make thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions (a gift from God at the time), but that income was only made ***because*** I was a bad speller and misspelled some casino brand names back before search engines integrated spell correcting aggressivley. Such a site would simply go nowhere today.

Google often considers sites without value add to be unneeded duplication and/or spam. If you ever get a chance to read some of the Google Remote Quality Rater Documents you can see what Google believes is associated with "value add."

Recommendations

• In competitive AdWords markets competing businesses are forced to keep improving their business processes and efficiencies to be able to afford increasing bids from competing businesses.
• If you have a lower lifetime customer value than competing businesses you may eventually be driven out of the market.
• With some seedy affiliate offers in many cases the only people with sustained profit margins are basically those who are surprisingly sleazier than the rest of the market or those who are barely breaking even themselves, but are using their blog to build a downstream of followers that they get commissions from.
• Some (perhaps most?) affiliate networks ***will*** shave your commissions AND steal your keyword list if you send them the data.
• If you don't have a value add and want to play catch up in a competitive SEO market you need to have some sort of competitive advantage (be it nepotism, domain name, market experience, etc.).
• Making paid things freely available, creating useful software or tools, and having deeper & better editorial are 3 great ways to add value and win marketshare.

10. Competitive Saturated Market With Inadequate Budget

Google AdWords

In some markets it is hard to compete buying traffic without having a strong brand. If Geico pays Google $30 a click, but only pays affiliates $10 per lead then there is no way an affiliate can compete against Geico on the core industry keywords like auto insurance.

SEO

Want to rank for hotels and insurance? Me too. But I am uncertain if I have the resources to do it from scratch in a lasting manner given the algorithmic trends promoting well branded business and how corporations are increasing their SEO budgets.

Recommendations

• Have big ideas, but set reasonable goals, and measure progress.
• Do the math in advanced to estimate how much you can afford to pay for a click.
• Pick and chose your spots in the Google AdWords market. If after you do significant testing and optimization a word is still losing money consider dropping it.
• Try to pick a market position you feel you can dominate. The #20 result for "insurance" produces traffic worth ~ $0. The #2 or #3 result for "pet insurance" yields much more.
• Make at least 1 incremental improvement to your web business everyday.
• Aggressively re-invest early profits into growing your website and building a moat.

11. Picking a Market for 1

Google AdWords & SEO

If there is no demand for an idea then it is quite hard to create demand through search engine marketing. Search engine marketing works best when it captures existing demand.

Recommendations

• Keyword research tools can give you estimates of search volume.
• Since AdWords is so much quicker and easier to test than building a full site and implementing an SEO campaign, you can use AdWords to test market demand and interest for an offer before spending money building and marketing a full website.
• It can be good to be out front of trends (as one of the easiest ways to win a market is to be the first person in it), but just as easily you can go after an established high money market with your own original spin or angle.

12. Pick a Market Which Does Not Monetize

Google AdWords

If similar competing business models have much higher visitor value you may have to change your business model to compete. Some low earning business models might simply be precluded from participating in the AdWords market in a meaningful way.

SEO

There is nothing wrong with building a site about a topic you are passionate about and interested in without knowing how well it will monetize, but if you are trying to build a business you should pick something with a high enough visitor value to create enough profit potential to make it worth the time and money investment.

Recommendations

If you are planning on participating in the AdWords market, but have a low margin business then you should look for ways to increase profit margins, customer order size, and lifetime customer value.

If you run an editorial site it can be a good idea to under-monetize off the start to build market momentum without people viewing you as a competitor, but it can be hard to bolt on a business model if you have spent a lot of time servicing the wrong market segments.

13. Over-Aggressive Monetization From Day 1

Google AdWords

If you are buying traffic there is no problem with trying to monetize it. But most website visitors will not convert.

SEO

Sell in line text links & have pop ups? Is ever other post an affiliate link? If so, why would anyone want to subscribe to an ad stream when there are many useful alternatives to look at?

Recommendations

• Since most website visitors will not convert to paying customers on the first visit, you should look to establish a relationship with them by giving them a free offer and/or some reason to come back to your website. You can see the offer we make at the bottom of our pages and on our join now page.
• Existing leading trusted sites that have built up a following benefit from cumulative advantage. If your site is brand new and driven by editorial content it is a good idea to give away more value than you capture. Under-monetize until you build enough market momentum to make your rankings stick even when you do monetize.
• Consider monetizing some areas of your site more aggressively while not monetizing other sectors of your site, but instead using them for public relations and link building.

14. What Other Common SEM Errors do You See?

The folks behind SEM Rush recently launched SEO Pivot.

SEM Rush does a great job of comparing sites head to head, but is a bit top heavy in the search results (only searching through Google's top 20 search results).SEO Pivot is more for just looking deeper into 1 site at a time, however it does use a smaller keyword database of 500,000 top keywords. It can help you uncover some broad keywords that you rank better than expected for.

Who knew we ranked #97 for price fixing, #98 for invisible hand, or #32 for dark art? The 3 examples I used were more of an attempt at humor than useful data, but we also rank for other valuable phrases.

Between this tool and SEM Rush I still like SEM Rush way more, but this is another useful tool to add to the toolbox. Look at deeper search rankings for such broad keywords...

• can help give you a good idea of how strong a particular site is
• help you see the unlocked ranking potential of a site that is currently poorly optimized
• perhaps can help you rethink making some site structural changes like promoting some pages a bit harder in your link structure and/or using internal 301 redirects to combine some related pages