Articles & Information

Avoiding the Internet Marketing Scam

There a hundreds of people online “teaching” Internet marketing to help website owners and web masters develop a better understanding of marketing on the Internet. Sadly, it is hard to determine who is providing the right information, and who is just trying to make a few extra bucks off of those new to the online business world. It can be hard at first to determine who the “scammers” are and who the real people are.

WOOT Marketing thought we’d take the time to explain to you how to pick out the scammers from the real guys, hopefully saving you hundreds of dollars on information that you can actually find for free.

How to Spot a Scammer

Scams are literally everywhere on the Internet. Millions of people are taking advantage of others want to learn, and making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of those buying in.

When you do a search online for ‘internet marketing strategies’ you are right away going to be presented with multiple websites trying to offer you the best information out of everyone. Sadly, a lot of these “marketers” are only at the top because they’ve really pushed their pages to rank for ‘internet marketing strategies’ and a lot of the pages have useless information.

Key Signs of a Scam

The following are the top signs that you are entering into a scam. Over the years of learning things ourselves, and seeing what others are trying to teach, it is amazing how many people will not notice the scam at first, until they are scammed.

  • Instantly wants you to buy their eBook/product/services
  • Doesn’t show email address/phone number anywhere on website
  • States you can earn over 6 figures in a year
  • Have to sign up to receive the secrets
  • Site doesn’t include a privacy policy/terms of service/disclaimer
  • Sounds too good to be true

Okay, sure. These signs are pretty basic, but you’d be amazed how easy it is to point these out if you know what to be looking for. When you have zero ability to contact a company or even find their information to contact them, you can’t pull out, meaning you could find yourself in a bind for revoking a paid subscription if you’ve paid to join in.

When a company states that they can help you earn over 6 figures in less then a year, walk away. No person in their right mind will guarantee you that you’ll earn that much. That is just a law suit waiting to happen. Sure, it could happen but it isn’t something anyone can guarantee but yourself.

Another thing you should ALWAYS look for is the privacy policy, terms of service and disclaimer. If there isn’t one, you could find yourself having your information sold to other companies online and soon be receiving a lot of unwanted things in your inbox, and some instances in the mail. A legitimate company always takes the time to legalize things, especially when they are selling information online.

This is also true with websites requesting you to register to receive free information in your email. If you can’t find any of the above items, do not give them your information. They are probably selling it to other companies, making money off of you.

Protect Yourself from the Scams

Best way to protect yourself from any scam, is to avoid all things that sound too good to be true. There are a lot of ways to make money on a website, but the ways that sound absolutely fake and unrealistic, guaranteed are.

If you are worried something might be a scam, but don’t know how to tell, do not hesitate to contact us and ask us. There is a lot of things out there that are scams, and we want to help protect you from them. Internet marketing is something everyone is wanting to learn, and there are many scammers out there taking advantage of those wanting to learn. Most of the information you need is available online, for free. Stop paying into the scams and start protecting yourself.

What Is SEO?

We thought we’d start our SEO section off with a bang. Many of you who are new to the online world will hear the term “SEO” a lot if you are starting an online business or a website dedicated to a certain niche market. It is something many are confused about and hunt for days to get all the information they can to understand it fully. WOOT Marketing thought, instead of allowing you to hunt for endless hours, we’d provide you some information on what SEO is.

What is SEO? 

SEO, also known as search engine optimization. When you search in Wikipedia SEO you will be provided one of the shortest and to the point descriptions of what SEO is… the process of improving rankings in search engine results.

Very simple, very forward and very correct. SEO is a process utilized by website owners to improve their website rankings in the many search engines out there. Now, this doesn’t really give you much to work with however. If you are trying to learn about SEO, you are of course trying to learn how to use SEO to benefit you. Anyone could easily figure out that SEO is based around search engines, since it is search engine optimization if you are actually typing out the whole term.

Where Do You See SEO? 

You’d be amazed at where you are actually seeing a websites SEO if you are new to the online world. Most people don’t realize that when they are searching online, they are searching things websites actually optimize their websites for so you can find them. Here is an example of what one might search for online…

Example

In Google, a person searches for “How to Change a Baby’s Diaper”… and they are then shown the first ten results that Google has discovered, that are most relevant to what you want.

seo example

As you can see by the results provided, the wording you used brings up pages that have used a lot of the words you have. When you search “How to Change a Baby’s Diaper”, this is known as a keyword phrase or key phrase. Website owners optimize their websites/webpages for a wide variety of things so that people can find their pages. By using specific keywords and phrases in titles and page descriptions that people would use to find them, they are optimizing their websites to be found.

SEO is seen in search results and on websites using internal link building, and also throughout the Internet on other websites linking to other websites. When you do a comment from another website and have it linking back to your website, you are usually using anchor text (Name), the website URL, and your email. The anchor text becomes your SEO, as it is what the search engines will see, and also what others will see if they read through that websites comments.

SEO is however most commonly seen in the search engines. The title of a page and the description of the page are the most commonly used areas for search engine optimization, as this is what the search engines pull to allow others to find your websites.

Do You Need to Use SEO? 

Yes, yes you do. If you own a website that you want people to see and be able to find in the search engines, you do need to use SEO. Don’t waste your time hiring a mister know it all though to do it for you. SEO is one of the easiest things to learn when it comes to website development, and as you begin doing it, you’ll find yourself getting more comfortable with it.

SEO is a highly recommended item to know, whether you are a website owner, a content developer or a website developer. It is used everywhere on the Internet, everyone practices it and if it is a piece of knowledge you have, you are ahead of the game compared to many. Even though it is fairly simple to learn, it is something that is commonly ignored and not used because of its simplicity.

If you want to keep learning more about SEO, feel free to contact WOOT Marketing or watch this website for further information. It is something we will continually write about so you can get all the knowledge you need to utilize SEO at its utmost potential.

Have you sat in a room full of people and heard the term “Tweet” come up? Guaranteed you have. Millions of people world wide are tweeting their lives away, and it seems to be a very popular thing for online businesses now too. At first it was mind boggling, but over the past year alone, the use of Twitter in businesses is becoming a must have activity.

How Twitter Can Help a Business

No really, it can. When we first heard about Twitter, it took us a bit to understand the overall benefit of it. Over the past year, Twitter has become a resource to millions of online marketers. You have the ability to push out your promotions, to hundreds, sometimes thousands of people and hopefully some of those people push it out to their Twitter friends.

Twitter is like a domino affect. One person tweets something out, and then it gets retweeted across the Twitter-verse, if it is interesting enough to catch the attention of others. When you are a business owner trying to improve your online presence, going to Twitter is a good idea. Once you begin getting followers and getting yourself known by people, you are bound to see some connections occurring.

How to Improve Your Twitter Experience

Most people give up on Twitter fast because they aren’t seeing results. You may find you aren’t getting friends or followers as quick as you expected. This is usually because you aren’t offering people things they want to see all the time. Don’t be a robot. Tweet stuff that will make people talk, and talk back to them.

The time you spend replying to people, that could in turn become a customer, is worth it. Twitter is the online world of word of mouth. People tweet back to you, their friends see that tweet back to you, friends go check out who you are, and hopefully follow you. The time you spend interacting with others, is time you would of probably spent answering phone calls anyways.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Twitter

There are some things you’ll want to do and some things you shouldn’t do. We thought we’d be nice and tell you some of these.

Do’s

  • Be social
  • Be consistent
  • Be kind
  • Be knowledgeable
  • Have fun!

Don’ts

  • Do not spam
  • Do not focus on just your businesses offers
  • Do not ignore those talking to you
  • Do not tweet useless information
  • Do not expect people to follow you if you don’t talk to them

These are all pretty basic do’s and don’ts, but you’ll be amazed how many people do not care and abuse Twitter beyond belief. Twitter can be a huge benefit for any business, if used correctly.

Give people what they want, a human being. Don’t be afraid to talk. Don’t be afraid to make people want to ask you questions. Make people like you by being you, unless of course you aren’t overly pleasant.

Online businesses are turning to Twitter because of the amazing social aspects of it. Twitter keeps things short and sweet. Tweets are right to the point and when you are a business owner, this is a huge benefit. You get your promotion out there in less then 140 characters, and hopefully get re-tweeted by hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world.

Incorporating Twitter into your business doesn’t have to be a difficult thing. If you find yourself stuck and in need of assistance, feel free to contact Woot Marketing for some Twitter back up. We’ve been utilizing Twitter since the beginning, and will gladly help you get more comfortable with Twitter!

Link Building – Quantity vs Quality

There are a lot of things that webmaster’s are led to believe when it comes to their online presence. One of the first things any webmaster will learn about is links. The power of links. The frustration of links. A websites overall power is based on links coming towards the website, but is quantity better then quality?

Quantity Could Kill You

You read that right. Over the past 5 years, the art of link building has had a huge change. Since the sudden slaughter of the Panda Effect, it is appearing the amount of links a website has will not have much affect in a website’s rankings in the search engines.

Shockingly, there are hundreds of websites ranking that have barely any link power. They instead have link relevance power. Relevant websites seem to be ruling the search engine ranks. When your website is powered by links coming from relevant websites, you will quickly discover having a handful of these will benefit you more then having thousands from irrelevant websites.

Quality Rules All

Quality does rule all. When you have links coming from high quality, niche relevant sites you are hands down going to rock it. Many are led to believe a link is a link. Sure this is how it used to be many years ago, but now link relevance plays a major role in rankings and page authority.

There are many things people will tell you to look at when it comes to finding links that will work with your website. One of the most important things to look at is the amount of outgoing links. If the website has a high external push, you won’t get much power from the website itself. Sure, the homepage may have a PageRank (PR) of 7, but this doesn’t mean you’ll receive the full power of the 7.

Make sure when you are selecting websites to have links coming from, that you try getting links from your niche market. When you have links coming from websites in your same niche market, you are instantly expanding your reach as you are relevant to that website too.

Things You Should Avoid

There are a few things you should avoid when it comes to links coming towards your website. They are as follows:

  • Only going for high PR link pages
  • Not having any relevant websites linking to you
  • Over optimizing a few pages and ignoring the rest of your site
  • Having only run of site links
  • Using automated link programs

As you can see, quantity doesn’t matter as much as you thought. There are a lot of search engine optimization guru’s out there that will tell you you should spend every waking moment link building to your websites. Guess what ladies and gents, these are the guys that listened to the other guy, who charged that guy for their “services” and their companies flop usually in a year to two years time. We’ve seen it many times.

Balance Out Your Website

Have quality, relevant links going throughout your entire website. This will help distribute quality power throughout your entire website, not just a few areas of it. There is no need to have 10,000 links to one page. Especially when the majority of these links will come from approximately 100 different root domains, using the same keywords across all 10,000 links. This is known as over optimization effect and a website killer! The guy who sold you that piece of information, also probably charged you to get every piece of information he has, that is also another lie or twist of information that is useless and will murder your website.

Stop murdering your websites by following those “gurus” false information. They tell you these things so you destroy your website rankings and go to them for SEO assistance. This is called future business security. They lead you in the wrong direction, so you require their services in the near future.

For more link building information, Woot Marketing provides a huge selection of information throughout their website. Make sure to search around, find what you need and if you don’t find the answers you want take the time to contact Woot Marketing. Someone will take the time to answer your questions, without charging you hundreds of dollars!

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