Category: Pay Per Click

A few times each year I have the pleasure of speaking on the fascinating world of Internet Marketing.

Recently, I was invited to speak again at a group of young professionals, many of whom work in the non-profit area. The audience was attentive and asked great questions! (I’ll mention a few below).

I promised them I’d share some slides with them… and if you are a reader of this blog, or perhaps got my latest newsletter, you of course are welcome to review the slides as well.

Here is the link to my 2014 Internet Marketing presentation!

But if you haven’t clicked yet, hang on. I wanted to share a few of the questions (and answers) that were asked, and point out a few other resources on this site you may want to take advantage of.

 

Question 1

One student asked a great question about incoming links. They had someone who took a differing view from their blog post and then linked to it from their own site.  The result was even more ‘haters’ coming over to bash their blog post and leave nasty comments. They asked if they should take down the blog post, or somehow block that incoming traffic. I said No, and here’s why:  Just like there is no bad PR, in my humble opinion, there is no bad traffic or links… except for totally spammy links, which is a different story. In that case, I think the inbound link is doing more harm than good in terms of better search engine rankings. But in the student’s case, not only are the inbound links valuable, the student is getting people that disagree with them to take notice and engage. Now it might be hard or uncomfortable to engage with those who don’t agree with you, but it’s a good opportunity to at least try to reason with them to get them understand your side of the issue. You may not win them over, but how you treat them will say a lot about you and your blog. Do it well and you might gain some new fans.

Having said that, if the comments on your blog are downright nasty or hateful, then you have every right to remove that comment from your blog. It’s YOUR blog, and you can control the narrative. But just know that if you start removing everything that doesn’t agree with you, then you are not really engaging them, and they will likely take notice of all the deletes.

Question 2

We discussed directory listings and how important they can be.  On my homepage, I offer a free tool that will let you check your listings. PLEASE use my free Listing Checker found here. If you go directly to Yext and run their tool, you’ve just given a sales rep your company name, address and phone. You WILL get a sales call from someone. My tool however doesn’t send anyone (not even me) your info. So you can check out your rankings, and then if you are interested in learning more, you have to reach out to me.

 

Question 3

Finally, someone asked if posting content to a Google Plus business page is worth the effort. I can only say that I use a tool such as Hootsuite to automate posting to Google + at the same time I post to Facebook and LinkedIn. So it’s no more work, and there are rumors that a link from a Google + page is helpful in Search Rankings. So I say, why not!

 

So again, please enjoy my 2014 Internet Marketing presentation!

And if you know others who might benefit from this, please feel free to share this blog post.

Thanks.

Wishing you all the best and online marketing success….

-Andy

PS. If you are not on my newsletter list, please sign up. You won’t get too many emails, but when I do send one, they just might have a golden nugget you can use in your business.