Top Internet marketing stupidities

Almost everyone who sets out to generate revenue through an online marketing campaign, regardless of whether they are promoting a blog, eCommerce store, or something else, inevitably run into the question of how to get people to visit the site. Without human eyeballs on webpages, you can't hope to make any money.

The temptation is to find a quick and painless Internet marketing solution that so very many people out there are just waiting to capitalize on. Probably with the stereotypical licking of the lips and rubbing of the hands.

The first thing to note is this:

So when you see a service that will offers ten thousand backlinks for a few bucks. What are you going to do? Browse to another site, because the one you're on is putting lipstick on a pig and making it run for president.

1. Mass directory submissions

Unless you are getting a hand written, SEO enhanced, socially integrated web review (a good example of quality site reviews can be found at LinkDoozer, don't bother with web directory submissions. If anything, they'll actually hurt your website's PageRank.

Mass directory submissions often add your site to a network of sites created by the people offering the service in the first place. These are all low quality sites. They do nothing to enhance your SEO and certainly won't send any traffic to you.

2. #1 Google Ranking Guaranteed

If you've already fallen for this one, I'd love to hear what you were thinking. Knowing that it's not hard to get a webpage or site to the top of Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) for really long and obscure keyphrases, this guarantee is actually a waste of the time it took to read it.

If a service guarantees a top page ranking for any keyword or phrase of your choosing for less than a few thousand dollars they are simply not telling the truth. It takes a lot of manhours to get top page results for keywords that are highly competitive. It is simply not cost effective to offer a genuine service at anything less than several months worth of salary.

Most good SEO people won't guarantee a top page result anyway. They'll do their best but sometimes it's not possible to knock the top dogs of their place in the sun (in a reasonable amount of time) because they have built up a huge SEO lead with hundreds and thousands of genuine, high quality backlinks.

3. Email marketing with thousands of opt-in subscribers

Hoo boy! Don't touch these guys. How much do you love receiving emails from companies you've never heard of? Even if you have given someone permission to email you, it's likely you would get very irritated (very quickly) if they keep bombarding you with products and services from completely unrelated businesses.

With that in mind, how many people do you think will be pleased to hear from you (assuming you have your heart set on buying an opt-in email list)? How many of them would actually make the effort to report you as a spammer? Probably more than would actually buy something from you.

In this case, you are likely paying someone to give you a reputation as a first rate spammer. Perfect, for anyone hoping to destroy their business for only $19.99.

4. Mass backlinks

There is only one proper way to get huge amounts of backlinks quickly and easily. It isn't even that hard. So why do people fall for the old "Get 500 backlinks for $19.99" trick? I'm not sure...

But here's how to actually get masses of backlinks:

What's more, backlinks derived from legitimate means are always going to be of some quality. Backlinks from services that sell them, are not.

Avoid mass backlink services with extreme prejudice.

5. Mass search engine submissions

About 95% of all Internet search traffic is handled by the four largest search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask). These will all index your site for free. Since there are only a few of them, if you can't be bothered to submit your site to them manually, then you are either in the wrong business or so lazy you deserve to be fleeced by the "1000 search engine submission" scams.

Anyway, there is a lot you can learn about how to help your PageRank and SEO from Google itself, so it is highly recommended you join up with Google webmasters and add your site there. This will help it to get indexed, and is, of course, completely free.